Chris (00:00.347)
But the last two times I’ve been getting some weird stuff popping up like last time it didn’t even record me But it recorded my guest like what the hell, you know, but Yeah And we went on for like 40 minutes an hour and I was like, oh man, it’s not good Alright, cool. Well, let’s get started here Alright, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the no BS dental growth podcast. I’m your host Chris Pistorius
Clint Harris (00:07.148)
Hmm. I haven’t seen that one yet. It definitely glitches a little bit sometimes.
Chris (00:27.451)
Now today’s conversation is one that I think every dentist needs to hear, whether you’re crushing it clinically or just getting started really. We’re sitting down with Clint Harris, a general partner at Nomad Capital and co-host of the Truly Passive Income podcast. But here’s what makes Clint a little bit different. He spent 16 years in the cardiac device and medical sales trenches working directly with surgeons in really high pressure clinical environments.
So he’s seen firsthand what we all know too well, the burnout, the time constraints and the frustrating income ceiling that bounces up and down, right? So especially when your wealth is tied directly to your clinical hours. So now Clint dedicates his work to helping dentists and healthcare professionals break free from that single source income trap, which I’m kind of in as well, honestly. And he’s going to show us how to build real passive wealth.
without sacrificing chair time, without becoming a real estate expert overnight, and without adding more complexity to our already packed schedules. So we’re diving into the uncomfortable truths about why high earning dentists still feel financially stuck. The biggest mistakes we make with our money outside the practice and exactly what you should start doing today if you want more freedom five years from now. So this is the exit strategy conversation most dentists avoid until it’s too late.
So let’s change that today. Clint Harris, welcome to the No BS Dental Growth podcast.
Clint Harris (01:56.366)
Thank you so much for having me. really appreciate it. That was a great intro. I’ll have to get a copy of that. You did a great job outlining the problems that so many healthcare providers are facing today. I love that. So really excited for this conversation.
Chris (02:09.435)
Well, I wish I could take credit from writing in a Bajen or marketing guru helped me out with that one, but I will send it to you. about that? Thanks. Well, so why don’t you tell me, man, why do you think that why are so many high earning, not just dentists, but I mean, professionals really medical professionals still feel financially trapped in given if they’ve worked for 15, 20 years or.
Clint Harris (02:15.874)
Great job.
Clint Harris (02:32.024)
Sure. Well, it’s a combination of things, right? I mean, there’s the lifestyle creep and the golden handcuffs that everybody talks about. you’re that rare situation where a lot of you guys could actually save your way to retirement. But you go from the situation where you’re spending a lot of money, not making a lot of money. And then finally you get out of school, you have money and it kind of grows from there. And next thing you know, you realize you’re a few years in and you’re like, wow, I still probably could save my way to retirement, but I would really have to change the way that I’m living.
a lifestyle standard and very few people want to do that. And the reality is our parents, I’m 43, married, two little kids, but my parents could save their way to retirement. My grandparents could work in a factory their whole life and after 30 years, get a gold watch and retire that way. The reality is that’s been taken away from our generation for the most part. And it’s really hard to get ahead by saving your dollars when the value of those dollars are being
deflated out the back door faster than you can put them away. And I think that we all have to get to the point of realizing that practicing defense and saving is a really hard way to get ahead. And it takes some strategy and that means being an offensive player and being willing to create value instead of just store value. And I think a lot of healthcare providers are forced to practice defensive medicine. The healthcare system has never been so administratively top heavy. Burnout is very, very real.
Chris (03:56.229)
Yeah.
Clint Harris (03:58.767)
And, you know, a lot of people are just at the hospital working for their RVUs and going home. I really like dentists because a lot of you guys are more of that private practice mentality. You’ve got that blend of being a white coat professional healer, but you also have to be the bean counter and looks at the dollars and cents of the business. Right. So it comes down to at the end of the day, unfortunately, you guys are still trading time for money. And when you are trading time for money,
Chris (04:22.468)
Yep, I totally.
Clint Harris (04:26.614)
It’s really, really hard to break that cycle. And that’s ultimately what you have to do for as we get older, your time is going to become more more valuable to you and more and more valuable to the people that you love. But sometimes your compensation for that time that you’re trading doesn’t go up and you have to find a way to create an off-limb ramp from that lifestyle yourself.
Chris (04:48.643)
Yeah. Do you see like one or maybe a theme of financial mistakes that, you know, health care professionals make outside of the practice? Is it just that defense thing or is it, you know, I guess is there a common theme other than what we just talked about?
Clint Harris (05:04.6)
think the biggest thing is that in that lifestyle and in that industry, you’re surrounded by so many other people that are either in the hospital, in the industry, in the clinic, that you don’t get as much exposure to outside opportunity that comes up. So mean, opportunity like strategies for investment, but also things like the bonus depreciation that just came back in the most recent tax bill creates really big opportunity for.
people to really capture significant depreciation that can immediately offset their W-2 income. I think that maybe not enough people are getting exposure to some of the things that become everyday nomenclature in the real estate investing world. You just don’t get that in the medical community unless you’re looking for it. And that’s something that, you know, that’s where people like you come in, right? That education, turning yourself into a lightning rod for the right conversations. And then
Physicians understanding that yeah, you’re not a student anymore, but we all believe in the law of a hundred hours. And if you spend a hundred hours focusing on one thing, that means that you’re going to have more knowledge about that topic than 95 % of the people in the world. And in a year that comes down to 18 minutes a day, which is less than the average physicians commute to work. So you’ve got opportunity within a year to give yourself an advantage to know more about any topic, more than 95 % of the other people in the world.
but you’ve got to put yourself in a position to absorb and metabolize that information.
Chris (06:32.571)
That’s awesome. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that. I might steal that. So if you hear that in any of my other podcast episodes, that’s why. But that’s incredible. That’s a great way to put that, I think. So let’s say a dentist out there is right now, let’s say they’re 43, 44, 50, you know, and they want more freedom in five years. They’re like, you know what, I’m going to I’m going to sell the practice. I’m going to do something different. What do they start doing today? What’s what’s what’s block number one, I guess?
Clint Harris (07:01.454)
So let’s talk about what not to do first, because I’ve done it wrong twice. First, I built up a portfolio of single family homes buying cheap rentals between 2010, 2013, and the post 2008 crash. That was a really slow way to get ahead. Even with, there’s different investment strategies where you can recapitalize by refinancing things like that. But the reality is it’s a really slow way to get ahead. Then I built up a portfolio of Airbnb properties, small,
Chris (07:03.555)
Okay.
Clint Harris (07:26.562)
family properties that we converted to Airbnb, started a property management company, running our properties plus another 75. And it was that second time I realized I had built up a portfolio and done it completely wrong. I was just focused on financial freedom and financial independence. That’s what, that’s the buzzword. That’s the marketing word we all talk about. And I’m here to tell you, there’s a little bit of oversimplification, but that’s trash because what we don’t
What we want is not really financial independence. What we are looking for is a combination of financial time and location independence. Those three things, location independence, time independence, and financial independence combined create an independence of purpose. Independence of purpose is where you go where you want, when you want, you do what you want, you decide what that looks like for your life. Hopefully in a way that’s good for your family, providing value for the community around you, et cetera. For some people it may look like getting drunk on a beach.
That’s okay. Other people, it may look like building or skiing or whatever, but the reality is don’t just focus on the money that is short-sighted. You want to focus on the independence of purpose, which means don’t lock yourself into something that’s going to require you to spend a lot of time focusing on it or be in one location. Cause really all you just did is create a job. What I focus on is real estate investing. That’s what I’ve done for.
Chris (08:23.29)
Yeah.
Clint Harris (08:50.734)
14 of the 16 years that my wife and I have been married was heavily in real estate investing. That’s eventually what led me to taking off my surgical scrubs for the last time and leaving medical sales behind in 2022 to do this full time. And our focus is we buy old vacant big box retail buildings like K-Mart’s grocery stores, warehouses, textile mills. We buy these buildings for dirt cheap, cheaper than the cost of replacement. We use our in-house construction team and we convert them into climate controlled self-storage facilities.
And the end result is we get these giant big box retail buildings and we can convert them into storage for half the cost of building a facility from the ground up and in less than half the time. So that’s sexy part that everybody likes. There’s a lot of challenges. I’m not trying to oversimplify, but here’s what I think your community needs to know. You can invest in the stock market. That’s great. And then the hope is that when you’re ready to retire, that the market is up and not down.
and you’ve invested in those paper assets and that they have behaved appropriately. worked with a lot of cardiologists that were expecting to retire between 2008 and 2010 and not, they had to keep going for a little while longer. The other option is you can invest into what’s called alternative assets, which really weren’t available to the common man. They were something that ultra wealthy have invested in for hundreds, not thousands of years, but it was really the jobs act that really opened this up.
Chris (09:58.818)
I bet.
Clint Harris (10:17.752)
to the average person over the last 15 years or so. And I would, I think it would surprise people to know that you probably pass a dozen offerings every day on your way to your dental practice that are a syndication or a group of people that have pooled money together to take on a project larger than what they can handle on their own.
Chris (10:38.523)
All right, is that like a, what do they call those? REITs or R-E-I-T’s?
Clint Harris (10:42.272)
A REIT is a real estate investment trust. That’s basically where a lot of this stuff rolls up to. You get a lot of those projects together and one trust will buy all of it and it may have a billion dollars worth of storage facilities in it. That’s exactly what that is. Those are the groups that sometimes we sell facilities to and roll it up. But to have success, here’s what your listeners should not do. You should not go buy rental property. You should not go buy a
Chris (10:46.723)
I see.
Chris (10:52.644)
Right.
Okay.
Chris (10:59.653)
I see. Yeah.
Clint Harris (11:11.082)
a small multifamily building or single family home or duplex, unless you really love it. And unless you are looking to take the accelerated or bonus depreciation that’s now available through the net new tax bill that was signed into place by this administration, that is not political. I’m just saying there are some strategic tax advantages. If you’re not a nerd for real estate deals, like I am, you should keep the main thing, the main thing, focus on what you’re good at, but you should know.
that to have success in real estate investing, always requires three things. It’s time, experience, and money. Your white coat professionals that are the listeners to your show probably have money, I hope. What they don’t usually have is time, and without it, you can’t get experience. But you don’t have to have all three of those things. It just has to be a combination. So there’s a lot of people out there offering offerings where you’re
You can put your money into the deal partnered with their time and experience. And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And I’m talking about self storage, car washes, vineyards, multifamily apartment complexes, ATMs, RV parks, know, trailer dealerships, pretty, almost anything. If you can take a business model, put a value into it, and then raise money to execute that business model by promising a return to your investors.
Chris (12:38.32)
Mm-hmm.
Clint Harris (12:38.826)
a great way to get diversification out of the paper assets of the stock.
Chris (12:43.673)
Wow. Is there anything, is it true? Is there any such thing as a passive income in the way that a lot of marketing people talk about it? Invest in this, sit back and just collect checks.
Clint Harris (12:52.93)
This is a great question. And it’s actually, the name of my podcast that we’re about 150 episodes in is called truly passive income, which is a little bit tongue in cheek, right? Because the reality is, and the direct answer to your question, no, there’s really nothing that is truly passive income. Everything is on a spectrum. Now what that means is something is the most passive, something is the least passive and everything else falls in between.
The most passive may even be something as silly as a savings account. You’re to get almost no interest, but you do nothing. Right. And typically the higher return you’re going to get is going to be correlated with the risk. You can put your money in the stock market. That’s still passive. You could put it into a syndication, invest it into storage or multifamily. And that is considered passive. But the reality is, hopefully you still did the work upfront to build a relationship.
make the decision, do the due diligence, do your, you know, your responsibility upfront of making sure that your ethics and core values aligned with the operator. And then after that, it’s a set it and forget it. And you’re reading the monthly updates, looking at the quarterly financials and getting the checks. It’s about as passive as you can get and still get a 15 to 20 % annual return. Uh, but it comes down to choosing someone who’s what they’re doing aligns with what your goals are. It’s what.
On a piece of paper or listening to someone like me on a podcast is not the way to decide if a deal is a good deal or not. What makes it a good deal or not is if it aligns with the goals that you and your husband or wife or spouse or partner have for your family. Cause it could be the best deal in the world, but if it doesn’t help you get where you’re going, then it’s a bad deal for you.
Chris (14:38.499)
Yeah, that’s interesting. I listened to some of these guys. Sometimes I just kind of shake my head. like, you know, I’ve been around long enough and invested in enough things that, you know, I just don’t think there’s a whole lot of other than savings accounts, like you mentioned, truly passive, passive, the least long term income. So I think that’s a great way to put it. Yeah.
Clint Harris (14:58.734)
I with you there. think the key is like, everybody knows that self storage has been one of the top performing commercial assets of the last 40 years. Don’t go buy a self storage facility. If you want to do that, if you’re interested in that, I would encourage you partner with an operator who’s already been doing it for a really long time. Make a small investment that you’re comfortable with and be as involved as you want to be. You’re what’s called a limited partner, which means your exposure is limited.
but you can still be involved as you want. Read the updates, be a part of the meetings, be a part of the quarterly financials. That can teach you what you need to do to go successfully have your own self storage facility. But if you’re a practicing dentist, you’re not going to have as much success operating real estate as you will at just keeping the main thing the main thing. And then do that first.
The idea is like, when you make an investment into an alternative investment strategy, I think about it like this. You are buying future days off. That money is getting up and going to work the same way you get up and go to your office every morning. That money is getting up and going to work and it’s buying future days off. And eventually if you buy enough of them, you don’t have to go to work. You’re going to get to the point in your career where you decide, Hey, I don’t want to get up and go to work anymore after next year or the year after that.
That’s not the time to be creating a plan for your money to get up and go to work for you. The longer you give yourself to build that runway or that quote unquote off ramp from a life of trading time for money, the better it’s going to be. And that’s the idea is you’re choosing operators that you trust their core values and their communication. You’re choosing commercial assets like apartment complexes or RV parks or campgrounds near national monuments or self storage or whatever it may be.
You choose things that align with what you’re looking for. And then you start investing in those things. And over time that it doesn’t take very long when those kind of returns start compounding, you’re buying those future days off. And eventually when you decide you want to stop going to work, that’s okay. Cause your capital is still getting up and working for you.
Chris (17:12.569)
Yeah. You know, you mentioned this a couple of times and it’s these multiple family apartment buildings. I’ve heard other people talk about this and I’ve heard other people talk about it’s best if you don’t, you know, go, go get the money. Don’t use your own. Use that to, invest in these promise or return.
I love that idea, but where does somebody start with that? You call your your buddy, your cousin and say, hey man, this thing’s 15 million. Well, how much you got? mean, what does that look like? How do you even get started doing that?
Clint Harris (17:44.153)
Yeah, mean, honestly, everybody starts out with friends and family, but you find the right deal. But first, like you better show track record. Like my wife and I had 14 Airbnb properties, a property management company and a double digit single family properties that we had had gone through before we ever got into our first Kmart. And that was just a joint venture with a handful of us. And then that went really well. So then we grew into doing another Kmart.
Chris (17:48.848)
Yeah.
Clint Harris (18:09.678)
We just actually sold that when we bought a Kmart after second one we bought was in Danville, Virginia. We bought it for 2.5 million. We put three into it and 37 months later we sold it for 9.53. And it’s, you better have a couple of those under your belt with friends and family before you really take it to the national stage. Over the last two years, we’ve raised $20 million and we’ve got between 120 and 140 million in assets under management.
Chris (18:34.575)
That’s great. That’s that’s amazing. Why do you think not just dentists or health care, but why do people delay investing in things like this or taking action, as I always put it, when they have high incomes? What is it? Is it the fear? What do you think is the number one thing?
Clint Harris (18:51.47)
Uh, think it’s analysis paralysis and underworking a specific muscle. Um, it’s my belief that risk is a muscle. And this is a lot of people that were students for a very long time. You know, you got college and then med school and then residency and fellowship and everything else that went along with it. And all of a sudden they never really had capital. So it’s not like you slowly learned how to invest as your income goes up. All of a sudden you kind of get there.
Chris (18:53.882)
Hmm.
Clint Harris (19:20.13)
And if you’re smart, your first place to invest is back in your private practice. If you’re a dentist or something like that. But at the end of the day, I believe that risk is a muscle. And the more that you work that muscle, the stronger it gets. And if I’m flipping a single family house or quadplex or buying a Kmart and turning it into 700 climate controlled storage units, the fundamentals are really the same. But the people in your industry that you’re talking about.
haven’t really had a chance to build that risk muscle up. And so it’s kind of hard to work it up to the point where you feel comfortable going after a big chunk like that. And that’s a scenario where I think it’s, it’s often wise to ride someone else’s coattails. If all that time you were learning and becoming a better healer, somebody else was focusing on that for 15 or 20 years. I would probably rather invest with that person and trust their expertise.
Chris (19:53.157)
Yeah.
Clint Harris (20:19.286)
Same way I wouldn’t trust that guy to do my dental work. I would go to a professional, right?
Chris (20:22.693)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, cool. We’re going to wrap up in a minute, but I know this is going to be a huge hot topic. I think this has been great information. If you could give Dennis one financial rule, what would it be?
Clint Harris (20:37.474)
Cool, one financial rule. This is a good and a challenging.
Chris (20:39.003)
you
Chris (20:46.499)
It’s got to be a no BS answer too. Cause you know, the podcast name and all.
Clint Harris (20:51.414)
think right now, because of where we are, this is like I said, not political at all, the known as the big, beautiful bill, the tax bill that was most recently brought back, brought back 100 % bonus depreciation. The Obama administration originally came up with bonus depreciation.
Chris (21:03.995)
Mm hmm. Could you click just one second? Could you could you elaborate on that? What exactly that means?
Clint Harris (21:10.697)
Yes. So when you buy a property, it’s different residential and commercial has a different depreciation schedule. One of them is like 27 and a half years. One of them is 31, but basically let’s call it 30 years. You buy a property and the IRS says the value of that structure is going down a little bit every year through wear and tear. So over 30 years on your house, you get to take a little bit of depreciation every year. It’s called straight line depreciation and your CPA is taking it off on your taxes every year.
The Obama administration brought up something called accelerated depreciation, sometimes called bonus depreciation. And the oversimplified version is that it will let you take that 30 years of depreciation all at once if you want to. So I have one of my quadplexes is for sale right now. And whoever buys it, if they want to, they can take between 180 and $200,000 of depreciation in day one. So from the day you close on that property,
Chris (21:55.834)
Mmm.
Clint Harris (22:07.982)
You can take all of that depreciation and it’s going to offset the next 180 to $200,000 of your income, meaning you don’t pay any taxes on that. Obama administration brought that out. was wildly successful. Tax law is just an economic incentive. They are putting those laws into place to stimulate the economy, right? It’s carrot and a stick. So
That rule was there for years. worked very, very well. It was sun setting and going away. The current administration just brought it back and there is a big influx of physicians starting to invest into real estate just for the purposes of taking the depreciation and writing off huge chunks of your income. You can also do that in syndication where you can get year one depreciation in big chunks.
Chris (22:53.582)
immediately.
Clint Harris (23:00.334)
And there’s a lot of physicians doing that. So I would say if you’ve ever thought about investing in real estate, probably don’t do it yourself. If you’re a successful dentist, maybe look at a partner, but it’s not just how much money you can make right now. A lot of it is how much money you can save. You can get a good return on your investment, but you can couple that with taking huge chunks of depreciation that
Chris (23:19.994)
Yeah.
Clint Harris (23:28.414)
automatically reduce your taxes now. And the idea is you take that money and you can invest that into something. Then it just becomes an unlimited.
Chris (23:37.923)
Awesome. Yeah, I think that’s I think there’s so many people and I was a little fuzzy on it too. Honestly, that that don’t even you know, it’s hard to it’s hard to track this stuff if you’re not passionate about it you’re not into it, you know, so I think that was a great explanation.
Clint Harris (23:52.449)
It’s hard to talk about it in 15 minutes too. We’re all in circle back. Remember the law of a hundred hours. would, everyone, everyone should download chat GPT or Gemini or Grok or whatever you want to use. The first thing you should do is go into the personal settings and change it from chatty and agreeable to be my ruthless mentor.
Chris (23:55.521)
Yeah.
Chris (24:15.728)
Yes.
Clint Harris (24:17.944)
Help me get better, improve me, push me forward, make me a more robust investor and business owner, and make me a better husband, father, and put in all the things that you care about in your life, and party your 100 hours on your way to work, hit the voice button so you’re talking back and forth with it, and ask it about bonus depreciation, cost segregation study, and how much you could capture, and how much it could change the financial velocity of your life as a dental professional.
Chris (24:18.426)
Yes.
Chris (24:45.209)
Yeah, I that’s that’s great on so many levels. I tell people that all the time. I’m like, if you’re just using default settings with these things, they’re going to be your best friend, your best buddy, your best yes, man. And that’s not what you need for some of these things. So I think that’s a that’s an incredible bonus right there. I’m glad you said that.
Clint Harris (25:01.602)
Well, tell your tough, love, thick skin, green crushing, ruthless mentor. That’s what’s one.
Chris (25:08.121)
Yes. Yes. Totally agree. Well, Clint, this has been incredibly valuable. I really appreciate it. I think you’ve challenged some of the assumptions that a lot of dentists have. They’ve been carrying around for way too long. For everyone listening, if you’re sitting there thinking, I’ll figure out the investing thing later or I just need to produce more and everything will work out. I hope today’s conversation was kind of the wake up call you might have needed.
Because I know it was for me. The time to diversify isn’t really when you’re burned out or ready to sell. It’s now while you still have some momentum and options. Now, Clint, I know people are going to read this and watch this or whatever they’re going to do with it. And they’re like, man, this guy’s full of information. want I want to talk to him. Is that possible? Can they reach out to you? Is there do you have a website? mean, is there any way that somebody could reach out to you directly?
Clint Harris (25:57.548)
Yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to talk to anybody, whether it’s Airbnb, real estate, starting a property management company or syndication investing or self storage, obviously. Like this is a relationship business. So I do have a website. It’s nomadcapital.us. You can go there, see everything about us. You can schedule a call or I would just say, let’s keep it simple. You can just email me or call me directly. My email is clint, c-l-i-n-t at nomadcapital.us. Tell me what you’re facing, what your challenges are.
If I can’t help you, can probably point you in the right direction.
Chris (26:30.811)
Awesome. And we’ll be sure to drop all the Clint’s links in the show notes once this is published. And also a link to your podcast, the truly passive income podcast. So you guys can continue to learn from him because I know I’m going to and to everyone in the no BS community. If this episode hit home, do me a favor. Share it with another dentist who needs to hear it. We all know somebody who’s grinding hard but not building the financial freedom they might deserve. So send please do send them this episode.
And always, growth isn’t just about your practice. It’s about building a life and a financial future that actually supports the lifestyle you’re looking for, short term and long term. So Clint, thanks again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And thanks for tuning in everybody. Now go take action. We’ll catch you on the next one.
Chris (27:19.489)
Awesome, man.
Clint Harris (27:20.335)
You’re a pro.
