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Pharmacy Residency Podcast


May 28, 2018

In this two-part series, I talk about the real estate market and the value of an MBA. I was a real estate agent for almost 7 years and talk about how I feel a real estate license trumps an MBA for return on investment. In the next episode, I'll talk about how to evaluate a real estate investment. 

Full Transcript:

welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast
with your host Tony Guerra the pharmacy
leaders podcast is a member of the
pharmacy podcast network with interviews
and advice on building your professional
network brand and a purposeful second
income from students residents and
innovative professionals hey welcome to
the pharmacy leaders podcast it is
Memorial Day weekend and I am recording
an episode for next week but I kind of
figuring out kind of a transition into
this new year gonna continue to have
interviews with other people but there's
a couple of things that I feel I can
help with and that certainly you've
responded to so in terms of downloads
we've had 92 thousand downloads since I
started in December and December's kind
of a wash because people are just
figuring out that you know this podcast
was up but there's no reason I couldn't
hit 200,000 quarter of a million
downloads so thank you guys for
listening I appreciate it
and what I'm trying to do is respond to
which episodes were downloaded the most
and which episodes maybe weren't as
popular and the things that I keep
hearing that you want to hear our
careers and investing ways to make money
and I'm not gonna talk as much about
careers in the way that Aaron Albert
does she brings in people with
interesting careers or maybe that's
something that you want to do I'm gonna
talk a lot more about how investing fits
into your career so real estate
investing especially that's the thing
that I know the best and maybe I'll
bring in some people that understand
money a lot better than I do but what I
wanted to do was talk a little bit about
real estate license versus MBA in this
episode a number of people when they
graduate that didn't get an MBA during
pharmacy school under well should I get
an MBA afterwards and I'll you know kind
of go through the the rationale my
rationale for all of that and so let's
just get started so first of all
as you know I just brought out my new
book memorizing pharmacology mnemonics
what I really wanted was I wanted my AP
PE students especially in this academic
rotation but also other AP PE students
to have an eight-hour one-day review of
all the pharmacology from you know Gi to
musculoskeletal respiratory immune neuro
cardio and endocrine and have all that
ready before they start my rotation so
that when they're presenting and
depending on when they come in until of
teaching pharmacology they might teach
neuro or they might teach cardio or they
might teach GI but as you know with
pharmacology it goes you have somebody
asks you a question about cardio but
then an interaction with something in
musculoskeletal you know the obvious one
is you know so you're talking about
maybe heparin not heparin but you're
talking about warfarin and aspirin and
so you've got warfarin and cardio
aspirin which although it's in cardio as
low dose for platelets you've also got
it in musculoskeletal as you know a
non-steroidal so how do those kind of
fits together the irreversible binding
all that good stuff so a way for them in
one weekend the transition weekend
whether they're driving or whatever they
can just listen to the book and then
because they can get it on audible for
free won't cost them anything and then
when they come to the site they get a
free print copy or they can get it ahead
of time
so again memorizing pharmacology
mnemonics pharmacology flashcards and
fillings for the future nurse doctor
physician assistant and pharmacists and
I because I teach pharmacology to any
either future nursing physicians
physician assistant even veterinary and
dental medicine I wanted to think more
interprofessional II like you guys could
study together rather than this being
this very disparate thing where
pharmacists go with pharmacists and
physicians go with physicians that we
started thinking interprofessional e so
enough about that leader development
seminar just if you are PDC or Phi Delta
Chi you should know about this but
heading to Virginia Beach Wednesday
August 1st through Saturday August 4
hopefully I'll be able to make it out
there I may not make it to the actual
sessions I may just go for a couple of
days to just see friends and things like
that I've got a really good friend from
back in Baltimore that now lives in
Virginia Beach we coached together on a
high school track team and won a number
of championships really under his
leadership I was just kind of they
actually called me to shadow or like
you're you his shadow because I would
always be around with them it's kind of
funny I already mentioned the numbers so
thanks again but you know we'll be
hitting a hundred thousand downloads
soon but let's talk about this let's
talk about you know should I get a real
estate license and you know or should I
go to an MBA program or should I do
neither well the first thing is my
premise or my hypothesis is that my real
estate license beats your MBA hands down
and when I say MBA your postgraduate MBA
investment to get into real estate or
for the real estate courses is five
hundred dollars or at least in Iowa it
is the courses are online so it doesn't
get in your way and I'm not trying to
you know and although the Iowa
Association of Realtors has this I'm you
know a proponent of it because I want to
tell you kind of what I learned and what
I'm going to do is I'm going to compare
some properties later in the episode to
kind of show you what I look at is a
real estate agent or a former real
estate agent and there's something
called steering so we want to be very
careful that we're not talking in that
way so what steering says is oh this is
a good neighborhood and this is a bad
neighborhood we don't go to these
neighborhoods and things like that all
I'm doing is saying this is a familiar
neighborhood and what I mean by familiar
is that I used to live there so I know
the neighborhood I know there's some
things that are going to be real
advantages and I'm only going to be
talking about positives so take it with
a grain of salt because I don't want to
get sued so I'm only going to talk about
positive is about these real estate
properties but you can find them on
Zillow right now and you could buy them
now if you really wanted to so I'm going
to talk about that and
so the buy-in to this real estate gig is
$500 for the class it's I think 60 hours
are supposed to be 60 hours worth of
online education and then you go and you
sit for your real estate license test I
don't know how much that costs and then
you go to a brokerage and I say you
interview but it's a little bit
different in that because they're not
really paying you you're going to be
someone who might bring money in so the
way that real estate agents get paid is
let's say that you begin your life as a
real estate agent and you sit down at
your desk and usually it's gonna be
someone you know that's selling a place
like hey I just heard you're a real
estate agent and you know do you want to
help me with my house do you and help me
list it you wanna help me go buy a house
or maybe they're frustrated with their
agent and it's they're like hey you know
I've been going around with this agent
and they're just they're too busy for me
they just don't have time and and we
just kept missing houses and missing
houses and so as you think well I'm not
competent to be a real estate agent
really what a real estate agent does is
very similar to what pharmacists do
which is problem resolution and it's not
much different than figuring out how to
solve the problem which is we are in
many areas of the country and so well
I'll talk about why Zillow says it's a
buyer market but in many areas of the
country it's very hard to get a place
with the person's you know whether the
person specifications and all of that
stuff but also for yourself and and
that's going to be kind of the crux of
my argument is that the big mistake I
think a lot of people make is that
they're so worried about the money
they're going to be making in real
estate that they don't think about the
true value which is getting to be
educated in real estate to understand
real estate to be able to go see
properties without having to ask
someone's permission you you know you
would get your own lockbox key and you
would visit these as as someone who's
interested in buying them yourself and
you should be interested in buying them
yourself not to just visit them and look
at them that would just be weird
so 500 bucks that's your buy-in maybe
it's a thousand bucks altogether or
something like that okay so then you go
into the MBA and you know you could get
an AI MBA from the University of
Illinois and that's four through
Coursera I think and that's I think the
least expensive online MBA I've seen
it's about $20,000 I think so in terms
of the other MBAs you can spend up to
$100,000 and that's just the online ones
no we're not even talking about going to
an MBA school spending two years they're
losing all of that income that you have
to do it and so don't listen to me I've
got I know someone who's much smarter
than me Josh Kaufman who wrote the
personal MBA and you can read the
beginning of his book and in the
beginning of his book he gives you here
is the number the bottom line number of
how much you lose by getting an MBA and
that that was kind of an eye-opener to
me because I thought of it from from the
very point that I was in pharmacy school
I thought about maybe getting an MBA
right after getting a liberal arts
undergrad degree was kind of a departure
from that and it actually served me a
lot better but I'll talk about that as
well okay so the personal MBA I
recommended I'd listen to audiobooks
exclusively but you only need to read
really the introduction to understand
the ROI or return on investment on the
NBA so this morning I ran 16 miles and I
got up it oh gosh so I got up at 405 or
something like that and I was just being
lazy and I just did not want to get up
so I didn't get to the actual run till
4:40 and so I get there and I run my
first two miles which is a lap around
the park here about a mile from my house
I go to the drive to the library and
then I run around the park in two miles
and and I'm already sweating and I'm
like oh my gosh this is gonna be brutal
and it just was it was like 87 degrees
by like 7:30 or and somehow my my
temperature thing went from 87 to 80 but
it was between the 80s by 7:30 so I was
you know going up this
Trail it's the high trestle trail
because of the you know at 20 miles
there's this high trail that's over a
river and it's just amazing and that's
20 miles down but if you just go six and
a half miles down and six and a half
miles back it's a half marathon so what
I did was two miles around the park and
then seven miles out and seven miles
back and I'm telling you this because I
first want to talk about persistence the
biggest reason that people don't finish
the real estate things because they
don't persist or they don't finish it
and there's no finish line if you just
keep reading real estate books like
there's no end to it but we're really
familiar with classrooms it's really
comfortable to say all right this is a
class this is sixty hours this is how
much I have to dedicate each week and
there is a finish line I get a
completion certificate for the class and
then I take the test and then after I
take the test I join a brokerage and so
all of these things have pieces to it
that are very comfortable for us that
have been in college for you know so you
start school when you were six and then
you graduate when you're twenty five or
whatever so you're in school for
eighteen years you know you're
institutionalized it feels good to be in
a curriculum that is specific but I want
to be very careful to make clear that
going to real estate school in no way
makes you a a competent real tour or a
real estate agent what it does is it it
allows you to become a real estate agent
but it is not in any way yeah it's not
going to help you and the way that you
become a competent real estate agent or
the way that I did was through coaching
through Brian Buffini comm and you can
listen to his podcast for free but Bri
a.n and then it's B uff I and I and I
think he just came out with a new book
called the immigrant edge he was an
immigrant from Ireland and you know it
talks about how to make it big in
America and I don't know did he do the I
know he has an audio book but he had
Fred Sanders narrated from Simon and
Schuster so I'll listen to it I haven't
listen to it but it's he spells at EMI
GRA NT rather than IMM and so his voice
I just remember through all the the real
estate coaching that I had from him over
those five years that I had it that's
how he learned to be an agent and so
this is the the apples to apples
comparison in terms of money so with an
MBA you go in you pay your money and
then at the end of two years you get
some kind of reward maybe you get some
kind of job maybe you don't get a job
for years that you know it in some way
helps you with the real estate license
once you start you're on your way like
you can start making money right away
and the first way that you could make
money and this is why I recommend
getting a real estate license before you
buy your first home is that if you get
your real estate license before you buy
your first home you don't need another
person to go with you and so you don't
have to feel like okay I want to see 50
homes that's too many what you can do is
really take your time and you can really
go okay well I'm gonna start looking at
this neighborhood and all this just
doesn't seem like this is this is for me
this doesn't really fit us I'm gonna go
look here but it's on your time you're
the one making the appointments you're
the one setting up all this and it's
just so flexible and because of that
flexibility you're able to make a much
more informed decision and it's just
like when you you know how you go and
you go try to get a car and you just
feel like okay you're gonna go take a
test drive but they have this route
that's like five minutes okay well how
can you know if you really want to be in
that car if it's been five minutes and
so the same thing is true with houses
people make the mistake with buying a
house of looking at the house and that's
what they want rather than looking at
the houses and making a comparison to it
and as you look at more houses and more
houses you have more data and I'm not
talking about making a spreadsheet
though some of you love spreadsheets
especially for residency but what you're
really doing is you're making
this bigger and bigger wealth of
information and you can say definitively
at this time in the market in this area
this is a phenomenal fit for what I want
but I don't think you can do it looking
at a couple houses especially in this
kind of market where you've got to be
able to do it right away the other thing
is is that you depend in a market where
you you may be it's a more of a seller's
market where you're looking at you know
you depend on the real estate agent to
get you the listing that morning and if
they don't get it to you then you might
miss it whereas if you're already on the
MLS you'll see it every single morning
and you know you think about it you're
like okay well I spent two to three
years or maybe even a bachelor's degree
before I went to pharmacy school and
then I went to pharmacy school for four
years and then I became a pharmacist but
if you go house buying without going
getting a license without going and
seeing houses for yourself and
understanding how the process works
without reading the contracts over and
over again as you go through different
transactions you're depending on the
real estate agents experience because
it's not their education they had 60
hours of education and that's only so
they don't break the law and then you're
depending on your lender who you may not
this may be the first time you've ever
worked with a lender and you have no
idea what makes a good lending decision
bad one whatever I just went to maybe
refinance to put money back in my house
to accelerate the loan and the it was up
almost a percent and I was like whoa
that was just in a couple months you
know so there's this kind of perfect
storm where the interest rates are going
up the students are coming out with
heavy loan debt and the houses are kind
of peaking I don't know if this is the
peak it might be the middle I don't know
I know I'll talk about a podcast that
you can listen to but anyway so in terms
of becoming one I highly recommend Brian
Buffini and company it's about 5,000 a
year if you want to get coached by them
they have some cheaper options but the
point was with the real estate it's 500
to get in maybe a thousand total
and then instead of spending $20,000 on
an online degree or $100,000 whatever it
is every year you can spend 5,000 on
this coaching or you can meet other
people and these are other people that
can give you referrals throughout the
country and so you would be able to get
four years of individual coaching versus
whatever it is you know two years versus
of this online degree so again I'm just
really bullish on being a real estate
agent in terms of getting your education
to where it needs to be because if you
just dropped 160 thousand on average or
it's actually closer to two when you add
undergrad and now you're down $200,000
and then you're gonna go make the next
decision which is to spend three hundred
thousand dollars on a house and you're
gonna do that with ridiculously little
education then it just seems like it
just doesn't fit it just doesn't make
sense and then you're gonna have kids
right and then then you have no manual
on that so a lot of different reasons I
think to become a real estate agent none
of which has to do with actually real
estate in terms of you know the selling
in the homes now there's a 1 in 10
chance that you'll be one of the real
estate agents that takes off and that
does really well in the practice and all
that stuff but I tell you will you will
not be sorry you spent that money to
learn what you will and to be able to go
look at homes and on your time and the
way that that happens
um a couple of podcasts that I recommend
podcast episodes specifically so the
bigger pod pockets podcast 280 they have
mark gente Minh Anh who's a writer for a
Family Guy
so it's a really funny episode these go
really long is like 80 minutes and he
talks about how he got into real estate
in California and and in some ways it's
one of those stories like oh yeah great
well you know he got in and he spent all
this money and then you know he had the
big million dollar payout and and so in
some ways that kind of pushes you away
and they talk about for plexes and
things like that and so if you're
looking for single-family home
but they talk about a lot of things in
terms of the market now and how to find
deals in the market now so it's just a
lot of really smart people talking about
real estate so that's the bigger pockets
podcast
just the real estate side of it so
there's bigger pockets spin-offs and
bigger pockets money in it so I ran for
two hours and 50 minutes this morning so
I have a lot of a lot of time to listen
the bigger pot gets money podcast
episode 21 so that was episode 284
BiggerPockets podcast episode 21 for
bigger pockets money podcast so how
losing 260 pounds spurred job and
investing success with success with tony
garden and this guy was working at
walmart making twenty thousand dollars
an hour on the overnight shift he was
almost 500 pounds and he was down fifty
thousand dollars in debt and they go
through his story first losing the
weight then getting on track with money
and you know whether it's income outcome
show or your financial pharmacist both
of those guys have great advice in terms
of you know podcast episodes to listen
to the that really can help you with
your finances and so he talks about all
of this and how it just completely
changed him and now he has a couple of
four plexes he's making you know one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year and it's very it's very similar to
what i have maybe my salary's a little
bit higher but where half of my income
is passive income i don't I don't do
anything for it anymore
so anyway the BiggerPockets money
podcast 21 listening to his story Tony
Garden and it was kind of fun you know
I'm running and it's like and Tony and
Tony and Tony so it's just like they're
literally talking to me and then they
said on Monday so I guess that would be
May 28th they're going to do one on
student loans so I do trust these guys
in terms of their advice I really like
what they do in terms of you know if
you've already listened to financial
pharmacists or income outcomes and I
know that they only go like one one
episode a week and then so if you're
just kind of hungry for more knowledge
this is a place I definitely recommend
this is just random I was looking at
somebody put out a Twitter it was a Todd
from pharmacy podcast network put out
Twitter impressions and with the word
pharmacy I'm actually higher than
pharmacy times I thought that was kind
of crazy so they got 900
and then I'm at 1.2 million impressions
in the last month so thank you again for
listening that's kind of cool that's
really cool that I was on that list and
I think that's from simpler com sym PL
you are so let's go back to kind of the
talking about the the real estate and
what I think I'll do is I'll stop the
episode here and what I'm gonna do in
the next episode is I'm going to talk
about a specific real estate deal on how
to evaluate it but let's go back and
just kind of what what I talked about
was as you're graduating and as you're
thinking oh my gosh I maybe you maybe
you were somebody who was working for a
company that cut your hours and before
you pull the trigger on a twenty thirty
hundred thousand dollar degree -
quotation fingers get you forward what I
would do is take a good hard look at how
much it would cost to get a real estate
license because I guarantee that you're
probably going to buy a house in your
lifetime but I can't guarantee that
you're gonna use your MBA post-grad
alright they totally make sense when
you're it's part of your curriculum like
Drake has a great farm D MBA program
things like a couple grand more to get
the MBA I absolutely support that but a
post-grad MBA if you want to learn about
business and you want to learn about
sales and you want to learn about
working with people real estate is
definitely a way to test the waters at a
very low buy-in with really high upside
and I didn't even mention the part that
if you are buying your own home so let's
say you went with a broker and there was
3% to the buying asian so the broker
maybe you have a 50/50 split you would
get one and a half percent back so the
very first act that you do as a real
estate agent is to buy a home and let's
say it's a three or four hundred
thousand dollar house with pharmacist
income if you're at $400,000 you just
made six thousand dollars on your
thousand dollar investment into real
estate so it's just as kind of such a
no-brainer
that it's it really like hurts me that
people like now yeah I just don't have
time I'm just too busy well you're too
busy because you're spending all this
time working when if you could have all
this passive income you could have less
time working and more time to work on
this investment
alright so that'll be it for this
episode and then the next episode what
I'll do is I'll talk a little bit about
investing in a specific how to compare
properties support for this episode
comes from the audio book memorizing
pharmacology a relaxed approach with
over 9,000 sales in the United States
United Kingdom and Australia it's the
go-to resource to ease the pharmacology
challenge available on audible iTunes
and amazon.com in print ebook and
audiobook thank you for listening to the
pharmacy leaders podcast with your host
Tony Guerra be sure to share the show
with the hash tag hash pharmacy leaders
[Music]