I sat down with physician turned entrepreneur Dr. Christopher Loo expecting to chat about his journey from medicine to business. But we ended up covering a little bit of everything, how we're conditioned to be good workers to how we have to get good at giving AND receiving if we want abundance to flow. Join us for rants about corporate greed, why aiming for an "A" is holding you back, and our take on which marketing tactics NOT to use.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
Trust me, you'll laugh, reflect, and walk away with concrete ways to build authentic connections and kick ass. Don't miss it!
Dr. Cristopher Loo's bio:
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, is a physician who became financially free at the age of 29 and retired early at the age of 38 as a result of making strategic investments after the 2008 financial crisis. He is passionate about the intersection of social media, Web3, digital assets, metaverse, and AI for thought leaders and influencers. He is a graduate of the MD-PhD program, through the Baylor College of Medicine and Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, and is the Founder and CEO of Financial Freedom for Physicians Podcast. Dr. Loo has been a top 10 host on PodMatch since 2021.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
I sat down with physician turned entrepreneur Dr. Christopher Loo expecting to chat about his journey from medicine to business. But we ended up covering a little bit of everything, how we're conditioned to be good workers to how we have to get good at giving AND receiving if we want abundance to flow. Join us for rants about corporate greed, why aiming for an "A" is holding you back, and our take on which marketing tactics NOT to use.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
Trust me, you'll laugh, reflect, and walk away with concrete ways to build authentic connections and kick ass. Don't miss it!
Dr. Cristopher Loo's bio:
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, is a physician who became financially free at the age of 29 and retired early at the age of 38 as a result of making strategic investments after the 2008 financial crisis. He is passionate about the intersection of social media, Web3, digital assets, metaverse, and AI for thought leaders and influencers. He is a graduate of the MD-PhD program, through the Baylor College of Medicine and Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, and is the Founder and CEO of Financial Freedom for Physicians Podcast. Dr. Loo has been a top 10 host on PodMatch since 2021.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, Angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hey, welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, Dr Christopher Lu. Say hi.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Hey guys, I'm really happy to be on the show and I'm really excited about the conversation.
Angie Colee:Yeah, me too. So tell us a little bit about your business. I know we got doctor in the title, but I think we might surprise some people now.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, well, I mean, I'm a physician by training. I did the traditional route, followed all the rules and jumped through all the hoops and specialized in orthopedics, but then, on the side, I was always looking for a way out, so for me, it was always passive income. So through real estate investing, equity investing, and so I was able to buy my financial freedom by investing my money wisely. So it's 2016. I'm about 16 years in my career and this was after the financial crisis, and I had made enough passive income, made enough money to be set. So I wanted to do something different. So I turned in my keys, badge and pager on a whim and, you know, quit on spot and set out to become an entrepreneur. So, and you know, we'll get into more of it. But now I do a lot of coaching, consulting, public speaking, and, since the pandemic, my brand has evolved to more of a platform and a brand, investing heavily into brand content, brand awareness through podcasts, youtube and partnerships, affiliate sponsorships and so on.
Angie Colee:Excellent. Oh, this sounds fascinating. I love that you mentioned. I, on a whim, turned in my badge keys and quit. Tell me more about that. Like I have a feeling it was a little bit more than just a whim, but I do love that. That suddenness, that spontaneity. I'm done Like, yeah, tell me about it, how'd that go?
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, well, it's very similar to what I'm experiencing. Well, like now, because I'm in Houston, right, and like the climate, climate change, you start to really start to start to feel it right. But I started to feel these, the effects of just lack of jobs ability, really frustrated with the system, frustrated with health care, frustrated with, you know, just the government, the way things running and so, and just no control over time, over my money, you know, or my lifestyle, basically, is being run by bureaucrats and politicians and lawyers. So, you know, it's September 2008,. Lehman Brothers just collapsed.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Everybody's scared, you know, holding onto their jobs, real estate markets crashed and I was like this is my chance to get out, this is my exit, this is my calling, because if the door's open now, but if I don't walk through it, it's going to shut and you'll never have that chance again. So, just, fed up with the current system, and I just turned to my keys badging pager and I was like I don't want to be a part of the system. I don't want to be part of, you know, making corporate America extremely wealthy while watching people suffer, struggle, see the poor get poorer, see the rich get richer and just basically just the middle class shrinking. So that's kind of that in a nutshell.
Angie Colee:Mm-hmm Did you know, right away that you wanted to pivot toward helping people with their finances. Like was that a journey. How did you arrive there?
Dr. Christopher Loo:Well, it was actually a process. So it's actually an eight year process. So it took me eight years to get my financial freedom, to buy my financial freedom, to become an entrepreneur. So for the first eight years I was an entrepreneur, I was an investor. I invested in single family homes, learned about pasting, investing, you know, investing in the equities and just basically getting financially free. So I had that footing.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Once I was financially free, my next goal was to retire early, you know, and retire early. Meetings. I didn't have to, you know, go to a boss or go to a job. I didn't have to do any of that anymore. And so once I did that, that took me eight years. And then I took a year off, and you know, that year off was actually everybody thinks, you know, you're a multimillionaire and you can travel and, you know, eat and stay in fancy places, and I was like wait for the first month, but for the remaining 11 months it got really old and really boring. So I needed a purpose.
Dr. Christopher Loo:And this is when physicians started coming to me asking me how I did it. They were burned out, divorced, stressed, losing their jobs, getting ripped off, scanned by insurance companies, financial advisors, and so they. So I started. There was a growing need to help physicians in this area of empowerment to get their claim, their lives back. Claim their time, their money, you know, get their lives back. So you know it started out. I wrote four books oh wow, yeah, can check it out on Amazon and I started speaking. I started a blog and from there just grew and grew to different distribution outlets. Social media was a huge part of pandemic hits so that helped me to transition more to video and virtual webinars, live streams, and you know. That's that in a nutshell as well.
Angie Colee:Awesome. Well, I know that we condensed you know I can't math on the fly there what that's. That's more than 12 years of goodness down into like the single, the hockey stick of growth, right, and I imagine it wasn't all smooth. I'm going to circle back to that in a in a minute because I've been writing down some notes as you were talking. I love the fact that you saw the financial downturn as an opportunity, because I think you know I agree with you that most of the people were were like you know what was happening with the shutdowns and panicking and desperately holding on to those jobs and accepting the fact that, like, okay, if I want to keep a roof over my head, then I have to do this, and that's why I love this show and being able to share stories like this. You don't have to do anything. It may feel like you have to do something, but if you're done living a certain way, working for a certain person God, I can only imagine what it was like dealing with the system, right, I'm frustrated with bureaucracy, not even having health insurance and you having to deal with those folks every day. So I mean to me that's both incredibly brave and then just betting on yourself. Taking that risk, I think, is really, really awesome. So, yeah, just want to double highlight that for everybody listening you don't have to do anything, we don't. The other thing that I thought was really cool was mentioning okay, so I worked really hard, I did some investing, I grew my portfolio over several years. I hit my goal. Right, I set a goal, I hit it. It took me a while.
Angie Colee:Then mentioning the fact that, like, what are you going to do? Just like coast and be lazy forever? I think that this fantasy that a lot of us have in our minds, that we're working really hard to where we can cross the finish line and then just be done. And, guys, I have said it before, I will say it again when you cross the finish line, that is the finish line. As in shuffled off this mortal coil, as in done with life, I don't know what happens after that. None of us do.
Angie Colee:But, like, if we're operating under the principle of I've got this only one and only precious life that I've been given and I don't know what happens next, or if I'll get another chance, and we owe it to ourselves and to the people that we love to do everything we can to live the ever loving shit out of this life. Right, you can't coach forever. Even if you hit your goals, there's going to be something after that that forces you to get up off the couch. You know, maybe watch Netflix for a month and don't shower Cool, but that's going to get old.
Angie Colee:So tell me a little bit about this journey. Like I said, we glossed over it. We kind of went with the hockey stick growth, but I imagine that there were some fits and starts as you were growing this business. I thought it was really cool that you were doing your thing and then people came to you and started asking for help and that was kind of the next iteration of what you were doing with your time and your money. Tell me a little bit more about finding that opportunity, stepping into that role as the financial leader and advisor to your peers and colleagues.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, so it was really. I love it because there's been so many, so many. It's like entrepreneurship is everybody thinks it's basically zero to hero, but it's really a lot of peaks and valleys and this idea that everything is a destination. But, talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, this destination syndrome is more ingrained by mainstream media and society, but it started in 2008. That's when I was fed up with the system. I wanted to figure out a way to exist outside, independent of all of these different institutions. So I started with that and then it was just learning how money works. What is money? What is financial? What are financial resources? Do we just hoard and accumulate it or do we do? What is money for? It's a currency, it's a medium exchange. It's used to pay for goods and services, to help other people, and so, like you know, a really popular thing is you can't take it with you. So you know you have 500 million. You know if you die tomorrow it's useless. So that was kind of learning just how the monetary system works.
Angie Colee:And I say that that is super funny. Sorry to interrupt right there, but literally. So everybody knows by now that I record multiple episodes a day, but literally on an episode that I recorded less than a couple hours ago, we said that exact same thing. You can't take it with you. Why the hell are you working this hard to hoard it like a freaking dragon when you can't take it with you?
Dr. Christopher Loo:Amen.
Angie Colee:Anyways, please continue.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, and in the meantime, you know it's getting inflated, it's getting taxed. The institutions, banks are taking it and lending it out 10 to 1. So you know they're the ones that are benefiting and you're just kind of just trading your time and hoarding and you know just kind of this, this like scarcity. Of course you have to save and you know. But you have to think of money in a different type of way. You have to think about the flow. So that was one. But just you know real estate in itself has so many ups and downs. You have to deal with tenants. You know a lot of tenants toilets and trashes, the three things that they talk about. You have to learn how to identify scams and bad actors, and you know all of these things. So then you know.
Dr. Christopher Loo:The next thing was learning from COVID when everything shut down, business shut down. Learning have to. Actually, now my business is 100% digital and virtual, so I can do it from anywhere in the world at any time. I don't have to go to a particular spot or location. You know it's all dependent upon. You know good Wi-Fi, of course, and you know running water and all that. But just pivoting to social media, learning how to leverage technology, zoom video, webinars, how to develop an audience from video and how to create community engagement from that attention as a currency and leveraging into seminars, group coaching, social media communities and, you know, building more brand, more relationship, more social capital, political awareness. That's kind of that in that show.
Angie Colee:Oh, I think that's really awesome. Okay, first of all, that's definitely going in the show notes, if not the actual title, or like the subject line Tenants, toilets and Trash. It's so snappy. Of course, my inner copywriter is like oh, that's a hook, that's a hook, I need that. I also starred like I wrote it down, as generosity needs to flow, but cash also needs to flow.
Angie Colee:I've talked about it on the show before with this interesting concept and I was shut down to it for a long time. I'm actually in the HUSIN area right now how I was sitting for a friend, and for a long time, as what I call Southern Woman Syndrome, I had a really hard time asking for help, let alone accepting help, and over time, I've come to realize that that particular habit of mine was not as virtuous as it seemed. I was not the independent person that was doing it all on her own and damn the man. What I was doing was stopping the flow and I was actually destroying a lot of goodwill and joy in the process. And here's what I mean by that. I am someone who gets a lot of joy from giving. I put a lot of thought into a gift that I give to someone, into the connections that I make between people, even into putting this show together, making it able so that you and I are able to talk right and build a connection, put a lot of thought into that stuff and I get a lot of joy when people write in and tell me that show was incredible, it did something awesome for me, that gift was amazing. Oh my God, I can't believe that you thought of me. But I love seeing that light in people's eyes and it breaks my heart when somebody refuses that and it never occurred to me that I was doing that to other people and refusing their generosity.
Angie Colee:And that's not to say that everybody lights up and is just like eagerly awaiting. But I know more people you know birds of a feather and all of that stuff get a lot of joy out of giving that are sitting there kind of like could you open your gift please, could you open? I can't stand it One second longer. Please open the gift. I need to see how you were going to react. I think you are going to love it. I'm like can you imagine just looking at somebody who's that excited to give you something because of the love and joy that they get from doing that and going I don't want to open it or I don't like giving gifts, it makes me feel bad. I get it to a certain extent. If it makes you feel bad, but like get over it, let it flow. If you like giving things to other people, then let other people give things to you. All right, rant over.
Dr. Christopher Loo:It's really interesting because, as physicians were trained, you know physicians is one of those professions where you know you, it's almost like a solo endeavor where you know you got to have to score the highest grades, get the best tests and exams, you have to get accepted, you have to go through training.
Dr. Christopher Loo:So it's all this like me, me, me, me, me, me, it's all on me, it's all on me, whereas in the real world it's all about networking and relationships. So the reason why physician burnout is so high is because we have this wellness perfection. But it's also, you know, a lot of us operate through guilt and shame. So, you know, we're people pleasers. We give, give, give, and then when we want to, when people want to reciprocate, we don't take it or refuse it, and then what happens is that we get taken advantage of in the form of you know all different forms and so and that's why, that's why a lot of the you know, policies and the regulations are not for physicians, are actually for the business and corporate world. So, you know, one thing is that I've learned is you know you have to give but you also receive it to keep that flow, because if it's just you giving, giving, giving, you're going to burn out very quickly.
Angie Colee:Mm-hmm, I'm glad that you mentioned the wellness perfection. That's another just like snappy thing, but I do like this conversation about generosity needing to flow, and I think it's really related to. There was another thing that I wrote down that you said about networking, which was something that I really struggled with in my early days, because I had this completely different impression of what a network was, and maybe one of these days I'll do like TikTok skits on it or something like that. Like if we behaved in person like we do online when trying to get business, could you imagine how freaking awkward it would be? I got the worst pitch the other day in my email inbox. Of course, and if you are listening to this person who sent this pitch, all of my love to you and also do better this is no judgment like we do the best with what we've got right, but there's a better way to do this than to click a random blog post of mine from two years ago.
Angie Colee:In this particular blog post, I talked about how there was no way my guitarist in an old band of mine could mistake me for David Lee Roth. There were some big differences between me and David Lee Roth, and it was this big jokie post about a mismatch of expectations. He wanted to do like note perfect covers of Van Halen and other classic rock. I wanted to be on stage in leopard skin with a gigantic wig and blue eyeshadow and like rocking out and having fun, right? So this person that sent me the pitch picked that random blog article and I described it in such detail for a reason they wanted me to edit that article to add in their trademark search software because they thought it would greatly benefit my audience. So this is just what I had a vivid picture of like you and I sitting at a bar having a conversation and some dude walking up and being like hey, so we're over here talking about trademarks, right? Actually, we weren't, thanks.
Angie Colee:Well, like, I've got this great thing of value to offer you. It's about trademarks and it cost me to offer it to you, but I'm willing to do it because I think it's going to deliver value to you. It's not actually going to deliver value to me because you're literally interrupting a conversation between me and my friend Chris here. Would you please kindly go away? Like we have enough robots. We have enough system is tisation. We have enough shortcuts that are happening in life. I think we need more peopleing, right? Don't fire off a whole bunch of a gazillion emails trying to get my attention if you can't even bother to take five seconds to read a post and see where you fit into it.
Angie Colee:I know that that seems kind of like a tangential rant, but it's really related to the relationships that we create and that perception that I used to have when going into a network that it was about my name out to as many people as possible, passing out as many and collecting as many business cards as I want. That's such an over complication with what relationship is. And the fact is you already have a network. Are you connecting to it? Are you using it? That's the challenge.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, it's so. The more I study, the more relationships and the more networking are super critical skills. The ability to develop relationships and foster them and nurture them provide value and I've seen some of the most unqualified people but with the best relationships and political skill and networking skill get much farther ahead than the one who just buries their head in the sand and just kind of blinders on just solely. So everything is about relationships, social political networking, capital.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, and you can do whatever you set your mind to do, but you first have to approach it from the belief that this thing is possible, right? You're never actually going to put yourself out there and try something new if you don't see models of this happening, or if you don't look at somebody in the public arena that you admire and go, hey, I think I'd like to do that too. Right, you need to actually believe it in order to be able to achieve it. And then you have to put yourself out there, and how that ties into what we were saying was you said there's somebody out there that's way less qualified than you, that's already doing the thing that you want to do. How can't you do it too? You can figure it out. You are smart and resourceful.
Angie Colee:Part of the reason that I used to struggle with accepting help was I saw myself as a burden. Now I've learned to see myself as being resourceful because I know the person that has that solution. I know the person that I can connect them to that can solve this problem. I know this person will be able to provide me with a resource within like five seconds that I would have spent five days trying to find on my own and trying to remember. Let's learn to flip the script on what we can and can't do. This ties perfectly into something that we were talking about beforehand, with what society conditions us to believe. You are not a burden, you are resourceful and have more at your disposal when you think you can. You have been trained to believe that you have to follow a certain system of steps and processes, and all of that has been designed to make you not think critically, not step out of your box, not do anything to change the status quo, and it's time that shit changed.
Dr. Christopher Loo:It all starts in childhood, when we go to school and we're socially conditioned. School has its place and it's got its advantages and there's things we need to learn. There's basic skills you have to learn, but that's just one path and I think I was reading a statistic. It's school is good for around 10% of the population and excludes the other 90%. So 10%. You're kind of SOL. Until now we have the internet, which is one of the greatest creations ever to allow people to have that opportunity. And yeah, I just and the more I haven't watched TV since 2008, just because the more I realized is it's just mainstream propaganda and it's just kind of trying to get you to emotionally react to certain things so that you buy certain products or you endorse certain candidates or you know, of course, quality shows and quality content is all subscribed to that, but not something that's just kind of hypnotized into believing.
Angie Colee:Or manufactured drama. That drives me nuts. That's another theme that has come up today on repeat. Just the drama for drama's sake. What did we call it? I think we called it like toxic vulnerability, this idea that everybody has to have some sort of like ultimate low point origin story in order to be seen as a person in business. And again, like, don't overcomplicate this shit. If you don't have a sobbing on the floor, lost everything moment. Don't make one up, Just be yourself. You don't have to manipulate this to build a connection with people and, in fact, you will build more genuine connections by not manipulating it and making it up and trying to be something other than you are. Anyway, please continue.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. And there's so many because there's so many stories that you know there's, of course, the zero to hero origin story there's. You know there's so many ways influencers can grab attention now with their stories. You know it doesn't have to be always this. You know, riches, the rags, the riches story, or you know all of that. Just be authentic, be yourself. You know, tell the truth, offer value. You know, like I said, it's all about flow, which we were talking about. You know, keeping the system lubricated. You know, increasing the points of friction, all of that.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, and developing your people skills with all of this can only help the situation. You mentioned the word value and that came up in a coaching conversation that I had with someone earlier. So I work with a lot of freelancers, creative service providers and especially a lot of marketers, right, who are still kind of learning their craft and getting better at it, and one struggle that I see with a lot of early copywriters or people who are just learning email marketing in particular, is they are fixated on this idea of giving value to the point that they actually miss the point of giving value. Sometimes value is selling me a solution so that I can fix my problem right now. Sometimes value is giving me more information so that I get educated on the real problem that I'm facing, right, but I told them, you know, I see this fundamental misunderstanding of marketing, especially when it's like sign up to get more information on my website and I'm going to put them through and welcome email sequence and I'm going to give them value and then I'm going to make an offer and I said if I want to change the oil in my car, do you think I want a 20 page PDF on choosing the right oil?
Angie Colee:Just change my fucking oil. I have a problem that I need to solve. The value to me is not an education about the quality of oil and which one is for my car. I trust you to make that decision for me because you're the expert. But, like you, don't you get really confused about what delivers value if you are not good at creating relationships with and talking to people Right. And I imagined that if you had tried to create, you know, to bring this full circle back to where we started with, with moving from the medical industry to advising people on finances physicians on finances that you know if you had tried to create a business advising people on how to do their finances in a vacuum without these people approaching to you and saying here's my problem and I think you're the person to solve it, do you think you could have come up with the same solution?
Dr. Christopher Loo:That's. Yeah, that's a tough question. I mean you probably could come up with the solution, and yeah.
Angie Colee:I see so many folks who are in the beginning stages of their business or in their awkward growth stage of business and they're trying to solve all the problems here in between their ears, without much feedback, without talking to the people whose problems that they actually solve, and they get all discombobulated and start to make things super complicated. I'm not saying that business isn't hard and that it's not complex, but it doesn't have to be. You can let it be easy, you can let it be. I am, chris, helping these physicians make better financial choices, one person at a time, until I build a speaking career, until I come up with books. Right, because after a while of talking to people, you notice similar problems repeating themselves, similar patterns popping up. I can write this answer once in a book or give it once in a speech or in a video or webinar and have it reach multiple people instead of having to blow my voice out saying it over and over and over again, because I know multiple people have these questions, but guessing at the questions versus just having a conversation.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, yeah, so well said.
Angie Colee:Yeah, and I find it fascinating that we brought up school and the education system. I want to circle back to that because I don't know if you had a similar experience, but I think I was the last generation where teachers were really allowed to teach and experiment. I remember my second and third grade teachers teaching spelling with like rapping songs and whatnot, and I'm sure that that still exists. We've got some very creative and talented teachers now, but I had the gifted and talented program when I was younger and we were building dioramas and creating our own plays and doing logic puzzles and I loved that shit and it kept me engaged. And then at one point they shut down the gifted and talented programs for reasons I don't know why.
Angie Colee:I was put back in the rest of the class and I immediately became super bored because this is just memorizing facts and getting good at taking tests and that's not me going oh look at how smart she is, I'm so freaking brilliant. That's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that kind of education that, like you mentioned, only works for a small segment of the population set me up to really struggle for about 10 to 15 years after graduation, where I kept trying to find a set of steps that I could follow to get the A to win at life. And I couldn't, and I kept thinking that I was a failure for not being able to find the steps for not being able to get the A. And there's not really an A at life, guys, there's just life.
Dr. Christopher Loo:You know, that brings me to the point of mentor, because mentors, you want to find somebody that's doing what you're doing or that's doing what you want to do, and replicate it. So you know, for school it's like, okay, somebody that's can memorize facts and take tests. But for real world it's like if you want to learn how to be an entrepreneur or raise money or be an investor, influence people, these are skills that you have to develop. These are soft skills. So it's not, it's like it kind of takes the hard skills but then you have to combine these different soft skills together to create what you want to want to do. So now there's I mean now we have so much, there's so much opportunity. You know people ask whether they should still go to school or not. I still think you should go to school just to keep yourself out of trouble, but always have your one eye on the exit. You know, developing other avenues, developing other interests, developing other skills that the school system does not teach.
Angie Colee:I, I love that you brought that up, because I went back to like right around the time that you were leaving the medical profession. I went back to grad school because, again, I was not winning at life and I didn't know what to do, but I knew how to do school. So I'm going to go back to school. Mia the Mia the boxer is flopping around underneath me, so if you hear weird noises in the recording, that's what's happening. But I go back to grad school and I'm like all right, I'll figure out how to you know, I'll get this grad school degree. It's called master of entertainment industry management. I will work in the entertainment industry. I will create these TV shows, not propaganda TV shows. I wanted to create good TV, like you know, breaking bad and all of that does and I had one class that I fucking hate. I mean, I hated it and you will never guess what that class is. Do you want to try to guess or do you just want me to tell you?
Dr. Christopher Loo:I would, I mean, I would maybe something like reading or math, or it was entrepreneurship.
Angie Colee:I had a class called entrepreneurship and I hated it at the time and the reason I hated it was for exactly what we were talking about. I could not figure out how to get an A and that class was actually the most similar to the real world lived experience than any other class I've ever taken in my entire life and, like I said, I've got a grad degree. That's a lot of schooling, that's a lot of my life spent in classrooms and that was the most impactful class for me and here's why. So, like we were in these groups the same group all year small groups and we were we were basically taught about the basics of pitching for VC funding and we created this presentation for a hypothetical product and the first presentation that we did, we had it. We're first. Down to the minute, we were all in a retentive type A people like it's your turn, it's your turn, the slide is perfect, the transition is perfect. And we got like a B plus and the group that we knew had thrown together a presentation overnight got an A. And so we're pissed right, just and dignity. We worked so much harder than them and we didn't get an A. I don't know what, understand what's happening. So the next time we decided to half acid and throw it together at the last minute and we got an A. We're like what the hell is happening here? Is she rewarding less work? No, she's not rewarding less work. What's happening when we are taking the pressure off ourselves to be perfect and to get an A, is that we're not overthinking this thing to frickin death. We're letting some instincts taken, we're letting some takeover, we're letting some conversation happen, instead of over analyzing every single aspect of this to the point where it loses any and all personality and appeal. Right, and it would continue. So that was like the first lesson, but I still didn't get it. I hated this frickin class. We're sitting there another night because this was an evening class. We worked like full time internships during the day and took classes on nights and weekends. It was wild.
Angie Colee:So another evening she comes in and we're sitting in our groups already and she literally just puts a 50 on each table and says using this money and only this money, you have two weeks to make me more money. You may not put any of your own money into this pot, but you can reinvest whatever you earn back into growing the business. Go and like dismiss us, she goes wait, wait, wait, wait, wait before you go. One caveat a group that makes the most money wins all of the money. And thus began a wild two weeks of trying to figure out what problems to solve.
Angie Colee:And this is when it really started to make sense. We figured out that our hall on campus was the only one that didn't have any kind of dining option or cafe. We had, like some, some snack machines in the basements. So me being a pastry chef's daughter, I went on a baking spree. I had snacks there every day. We had art classes, we hustled our asses off and we came in second place because we did that first presentation all over again. We overthought it, we over analyzed it. You know what the group that won did? They took our idea and they did it better. They took their 50 bucks to a local restaurant, bought as many meals as they could, brought that back to the hall, sold all of the meals went, bought more lunches and they rinsed and repeated that simple idea for the entire two weeks until they won.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, wow, yeah, it's. You know I think something was, was, was wrong when. Well, you know what's interesting is. You know you talk about this idea of working smarter is this is talking about working smarter and more efficient, and in the real world you don't get rewarded for who works the hardest. You get results and and who.
Dr. Christopher Loo:You know who and you know money is a measure as well, I mean that's why it's kind of a measurement, but you know that kind of tells you but yeah, I, it's not, it's not the A, the smartest hardworking. Those will get you to a certain point, but after that you need you need another type of skill. You need you know what. You took, what we're talking about you know to to save yourself time and networking is one. Working smarter, working more efficiently, you know. So all of that. The other interesting thing is I knew something was wrong. When you have CEOs making 100 million and you know doctors struggling to make you know 250k or whatever, and you know the majority of like in, you know a lot of, we can talk about it, but but it's like amen, amen, amen.
Angie Colee:that should not be happening. That's that's my personal opinion, and I could get up on a soapbox, but please continue.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, and or just like you know the kids, you know a lot, a lot of my friends, their, their parents were extremely rich, so whenever they got in trouble, they, their parents, you know, could kind of grease the wheels and get them out of trouble and so I knew something was wrong with the world. When you know these, you could get away with bad things. And you know a lot of things, especially 911 and Ron will calm all these. You see, you see, ceos were, you know, walking away with millions for running their companies in the ground. You know, you know that's kind of a wake up call to you have to think smarter. You know it's not just about you know just putting your big, big rhinestone.
Angie Colee:Yeah, I think I mean to me. I love to simplify complex topics and I know it's a little bit more nuanced than that. But I've been telling people for a couple of years that I have this theory that business basic like a good business boils down to a balance of people, process and profit. We do need a profit. Profit is not an evil word. But when profit comes at the expense of the people, that is when it is being used to do bad in the world, do evil in the world, right, and I think that that's what a lot of people are experiencing right now.
Angie Colee:The folks that are going, people just don't want to work. Of course they don't want to work. They're showing up to work and people are being violent at them and degrading at them and their wages haven't increased in years. I saw recently and I don't know how accurate it is because I'm not a math person, so the fact, check me if you want, right, and I don't care, but I basically saw this article that talks about if minimum wage had kept up with inflation, the minimum hourly rate would be something like 26 bucks an hour and I bet you could actually afford to eat at 26 bucks an hour.
Angie Colee:You think right, and it wouldn't take that many changes on a corporate level for most of these massive corporate organizations to make that happen for their people, and they wouldn't go bankrupt because those people would be out there spending money just like oh you love how this is coming full circle. We talked about at the beginning how money needs to flow and not be hoarded. It needs to be out there in the economy doing some good for people. And the way we've got it right now it can't go anywhere and we're all stagnating and suffering for it.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, yeah Again. It's all. The whole system is designed to benefit the ultra elite and the rest of society has to suffer and basically the mainstream has to pay for the mistakes, for the ultra wealthy as well as the societal entitlements and government politicians. Lawyers, I tell my future self that if I had to go back in time, I would study law or some sort of finance or some business or some sort of politics, because these are the individuals running the country or the world.
Angie Colee:So that's true, although it is funny because I mean, not a lot of people know this but my undergrad, I mentioned my several degrees. My undergrad was in French and political science. But the reason that I abandoned political science is you might have, you could have gathered by now. I'm a little bit direct, I'm a little bit too honest, and so it's such a goofy story. I went to Model United Nations, where you basically pretend to be from the United Nations and you put forth resolutions and it's very interesting. You meet with students from all over the world and I took it very seriously. Again, taipei right, I'm not quite so much Taipei anymore, but I think it would surprise people to know that I can be like that sometimes.
Angie Colee:I represented Madagascar and I researched there. I even set up a meeting with the Madagascar representative while I was in New York. Like I took that seriously. And so when we were proposing our resolutions, I'm trying to be Madagascar, I'm trying to come up with realistic solutions.
Angie Colee:And what pissed me off and when I knew I was abandoning politics before I even graduated was one of the resolutions put forward was and passed, while our common sense one was voted down. The one that passed was the G8, now the G7, was going to immediately forgive all debt for the rest of the world, immediately, with no consequences, with no time or structures put into place, and I just went like I mean, I know I'm not a money expert, but it doesn't work that way. Like we've got to figure something out and I know that there's enough wealth to make this go around right, we shouldn't be hoarding things. But I just got so disenchanted after that that I was like no politics for me, it doesn't make sense. Well, this was a surprising episode, like I had no idea that we were going to go to all of these places.
Angie Colee:But I think that's what I love about having so many different people from different backgrounds on the show that it can just be a conversation at the bar, where whatever comes up comes up. So this has been fascinating. I want people to have a chance to learn more about you, though. So if they want to get in touch, where can they find you? Where can they learn more about your business and what you're doing now?
Dr. Christopher Loo:Oh, we have a podcast. So if you go to any of the major platforms, you go to financial freedom for physicians podcast you don't have to be a physician. It's just I built that just because I'm a physician. But it's talking about business, finance, entrepreneurship, mindsets, everything we talked about.
Angie Colee:I've been out there, yep.
Dr. Christopher Loo:Yeah, as well. And then we're building out the YouTube channel. I'm really that it's really rapidly growing, so check us out on YouTube same name. Other than that, you can email me, connect with me on Instagram, twitter, tiktok, linkedin, facebook. We're all over. We have Facebook community and just if you go to Chris at Dr Chris Lou MD, phdcom, email me. We'll get you plugged into the ecosystem.
Angie Colee:Awesome. I'll make sure that they have clickable links in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for going on this grand, windy detour adventure. I loved every second of this conversation and I think we're going to have to do a part two at some point. Let's get good and rancy.
Dr. Christopher Loo:I really enjoyed it. I love the just talking and just you know the conversation.
Angie Colee:Oh, me too. Thank you so much. That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the permission to kick ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcast. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.