The Renegade Lawyer Podcast

Ep. 190 – Leaning Out: Dr. Dawn Baker on Redefining Success, Burnout, and the Freedom to Choose

• Ben Glass

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What if success wasn’t about doing more—but about doing less, better?

In this powerful conversation, Ben Glass sits down with Dr. Dawn Baker—board-certified anesthesiologist, author of Lean Out, and one of the featured speakers at the upcoming White Coat Investor Conference 2026. From climbing mountains and living off-grid to redefining the metrics of professional fulfillment, Dr. Baker shares her deeply personal journey from medical burnout to designing a life rooted in clarity, values, and true freedom.

Tune in to hear:

  • How a pituitary tumor transformed her entire perspective on life and career
  • The “treadmill of achievement” that traps so many high-performing professionals
  • Why off-grid living and intentional community are part of her long game
  • The mindset shifts that help lawyers, doctors, and professionals reclaim agency over their work and well-being
  • Her upcoming talks on confidence, imposter syndrome, and the five types of freedom

This episode is a masterclass in permission, presence, and purpose—and an invitation to rethink your own trajectory as a professional.

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.




SPEAKER_00:

I lost my way and ended up going into a going down a path of becoming a very specialized anesthesiologist. And the thing that woke me up from that and got me back to my original vision was that I had a health scare, the diagnosis of a large pituitary tumor. And it was causing my infertility and it was causing some of the symptoms I had, which was like a profound fatigue, a depression, difficulty with doing procedures because I had vision loss. And all of those things were what made me wake up and say, why am I here? What am I doing? What is my actual purpose? And, you know, what's my can I go back to my true vision? What are my values?

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, still make it hopeful. Each week, Bet brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging as quote. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02:

Everyone, this is Ben, and welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where just about every episode I'm interviewing someone inside or outside of Legal who is dinging the world. And we're doing a little mini-series here. As you all know, I'm speaking uh next March for the Whitecoat Investor Conference. I'll be actually speaking at long-term disability claims. So we reached out to the other speakers and asked, would you like to come on the podcast? And it's a really neat conference, Dr. Baker, as I'm as I'm interviewing folks from your realm. Like, we don't have anything like this in legal at all. Like a kind of a health, wellness, and financial education conference. Dr. Baker is a board-certified anesthesiologist, a lifestyle design coach, a vagabond rock climber. So I want to hear about that. And she's written a book called Lean Out, a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance. And she has a podcast, the Lean Out Podcast. She is a keynote speaker, interested in other things too. My research shows like off-grid living, homeschooling, fitness, and travel. And so this is going to be fun because before we went live, I'm like, you know, the professions and the occupations are different, but a lot of the challenges are the same for professionals. And honestly, like in our space, Doctor, in the legal space, like women trial lawyers, I'm a trial lawyer. So women trial lawyers, and particularly women trial lawyers who are moms, like they're my superheroes because I think this is the most challenging juxtaposition of duties in the world. And I just don't think it's, it's, it's, it's uh not dissimilar in medicine. I mean, I think that's the space you've carved out. So tell us first, thanks for coming on with us and tell us a little bit about how you developed into what you are doing in the world today.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, let me start by saying, Ben, thank you so much for inviting me to come on this podcast. It's really always so fun to have conversations on different people's shows and expand horizons. And I am a physician, as you mentioned, a former engineer. And I am married to a patent attorney former engineer. So I am very well versed in the world of what it is like to go to a professional school and just really be lured by what I call the treadmill of achievement, which is like the thing that is difficult to get off of when you're a high achieving, high-octane professional in many different realms. You mentioned my a lot of things about my background in the intro there. And I guess I'll start by saying that I have designed my life to be a unique work-life balance of as a professional currently. I'm living this vision that I originally had for my life. However, as I was going on in my training, I definitely lost my way for a period of time, which is what prompted me to write and do the wellness work that I do. So I started out going to medical school thinking that I wanted to have some more time freedom and location freedom in my life compared to what an engineer's life is like. Because when you're an engineer, you're really pegged to live in a very particular place because you choose your niche in engineering. And it's like, well, if you're going into petrochemicals, you got to live in, you know, one of two places. Right. Or you're going to go into biotech, you got to live in like, you know, Northern California or something like that. So I didn't like that. And I was very shaped by wanting to travel the world as a rock climber early on. My husband and I got into rock climbing when we were in college, and it took us to places all over the world. And rock climbing is something where you can't just like go for a weekend and do it. It's it's a lifestyle sport, kind of like people get into with surfing and skiing and you know, to some extent. So that really shaped me wanting to have time and location freedom. And I ended up going to medical school thinking that if I chose the right specialty, I would be able to get that. However, as I mentioned, I lost my way and ended up going into a going down a path of becoming a very specialized anesthesiologist. And the thing that woke me up from that and got me back to my original vision was that I had a health scare. When I was in my residency training, I started having some strange, non-specific symptoms. And at the same time, I was doing a fertility workup because I was a non-traditional student being going back to medical school after engineering. So I was getting a little older. And we decided that we wanted to start our family, and I was having trouble. So those two things together and a lack of self-awareness that made my diagnosis take a really long time, um, it led to the diagnosis of a large pituitary tumor. And it was causing my infertility and it was causing some of the symptoms I had, which was like a profound fatigue, a depression, difficulty with doing procedures because I had vision loss. And all of those things were what made me wake up and say, why am I here? What am I doing? What is my actual purpose? And, you know, what's my can I go back to my true vision? What are my values? You know, we only have so much time on this earth. And so wanting to get back to my original vision for what I wanted to do with my life. And so I did get back in that place. And luckily, I'm, you know, I'm here to say because I I had my surgery. I I'm on medications all the time, but I'm doing really well. And I uh started just designing my life and carving my life out and working to get to a place where I had location freedom and time freedom. And I work part-time. I live in the mountains in an off on an off-grid homestead. We still travel sometimes, but a little less because now we're kind of running this ranch. And I travel for work. I work per Diem and locum tenants. So I now do travel anesthesia only and do all these other wellness efforts, coaching and speaking and books and the podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

You packed a lot into that. Um what was the what was the specialty inside of anesthesia that you got attracted to?

SPEAKER_00:

So because I was an engineer, I got uh peg to do this transesophageal echocardiography early on. Like I had an interest in it because there are a lot of parallels with engineering and ultrasound technology. And I was really good at it. It was like somehow the the stars aligned and I understood the equations and the physiology behind it and the ultrasound tech. And then the attendings recognized that. And they're like, wow, you're really good at this. And so they gave me a research project. They were, you know, telling me to take these special board exams that a lot of people only took after they had done like an entire fellowship in cardiology or things like that. And so I was starting to study for that. And I uh presented at a conference about this research that I was doing, and it would have put me exactly where I was, which was like getting into a niche and having to live in a very specific environment. Like you need to work at an academic center or like be in a big city center if you're gonna do that kind of work, especially if you're gonna do research. And that, you know, that's fine. I mean, I'm not saying that that's a bad life or something. It's just that I was looking for something different originally when I went into medicine. And if I had gone down that route and all these things hadn't happened to me, I may have been just exactly back to that same place of being feeling confined.

SPEAKER_02:

You would have, you would have maybe ended up as the accidental world's greatest expert on this particular very narrow subject of anaphresia. I'm curious because I think in law school, like the kiddos who are in law school are kind of told, like, great, but this is tough and it's gonna be hard, and that's just the way it is, so suck it up and do it. I think the training for physicians is, you know, it I know it's it's so much longer. Like we unleash lawyers on the world after three years and go do it. And you all, not so much, right? But what is the sort of ethos I'm curious in medical school about this ability, you know, the sense that you have one life, you don't know how many days you have. You're you're everyone here is a type A achiever, right? Or else you wouldn't have got to med school, you wouldn't have uh done well in med school. What then is the philosophical or life message, if anything, um, in medical school to students, to future doctors?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a hard question, and it's a good question. I think the tide is changing, but I will tell you this. We see death, we see people needing to take advantage of what they have right now because we see bad things. We see people with life-changing events occurring to them all the time. And they're sometimes we're treating patients like on their worst day possible, right? And sometimes it's like their best day because it might be an OBGYN situation or anesthesia for OB where there's a birth, right? So we see it all. But at the same time, somehow there is this unwritten culture in medicine that physicians are somehow impervious, that we are superhuman, that we should be superhuman, we should strive to be superhuman, and that we are beyond human in the sense of being able to just experience our own sickness and our own difficulties. And so it has been traditionally this lone ranger mentality where it's like, you know, publish or perish and perform or perish. You should not ask for help or admit that you are having difficulties or weakness. Do not show weakness. Do not come into work unless you, I mean, do not call out from work unless you're dying or like your arm's falling off, and you need that arm for work. You know, that is like traditionally the culture in medicine, unfortunately. But I do think that over time, because of the epidemic of burnout that has been talked about for the last maybe I would say about 15 years in medicine, it really kind of came to the forefront around the time that I was in residency where people were talking about the the epidemic of burnout. It is now more common for people to be going to conferences and talking about the human side of medicine, talking about how physicians experience life events too that cause them to need to take time off. Or, you know, uh that maybe not all physicians need to work 80 hours a week in order to be a great physician and that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

It's probably a relatively easy sell to a class of supermen and superwomen who all got there because they are hardworking, disciplined achievers to say, and and and now the world needs you, really. This is the message. I think the world needs you to be Superman, Superwoman, don't sleep, let's go, let's get it. We are we are the special ones. And then it and then, you know, I think in law, what happens is when I talk to, you know, some lawyers who are out six, seven years and went to Harvard Medical Har Harvard Law School, they're working in in big law, they're making a lot of money, but they're really working two jobs. I mean, the the number of hours. And I think the the sad part for me is when I talk to them is that they've never even seen or heard about, or no one's ever suggested that there's these, there are these other alleyways to go, to take your skill set and the things you're interested in and to go and live this life, make your family proud of you, happy, make your patients or your clients proud of you, happy, but still be able to like enjoy it. And and these kiddos, I call them kiddos because I'm you know old, just because I'll say to them, you know, there's they're they're coming, they're making$185,000 a year, and they're they're working really hard. And I'm like, you know, there's there's easier way to make$185K. They're like, oh, there isn't. Well, actually, yeah, there's a whole world out here of the solo and small firm practice. Tell me about this. I'm now curious about the off-grid homestead. I have a picture of what that might be, but and you then you said a ranch, I think. So is this like I'm watching Yellowstone and you're the neighbor, or what is for you and your family?

SPEAKER_00:

It does kind of look like that, actually, because uh so Yellowstone is supposed to be like the Wyoming wilderness, and we are actually in southern Utah. So it is a very similar type of um elevation and climate. Uh, we bought an 80-acre property that is between Zion and Bryce National Parks in southern Utah. So it is high elevation, alpine wilderness with aspen trees, pine trees, ponderosas. It's beautiful. There's so many different variations of wildlife and foliage that we have right there. We have a stream on our property, we have multiple water springs and water rights, and which is really helpful for in the future when maybe we do animals. We're working on it. We have some animals now, but we're starting small. We really have chickens, we have some lambs, and we are working to improve the property. It's a very special piece of property, and we could recognize that when we identified it as something that we wanted to buy. And it may be something that we turned into a retreat center someday. This is one of our ideas.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, might be my retirement plans, kind of like what I was thinking about when I phase out of clinical anesthesiology. And uh at the very least, it's a very enjoyable place for us to live. It offers the challenge that we love too. We do a lot less of the rock climbing now than we used to. We have a child now.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, and you're not willing to take what? Certain risks maybe that you're less willing to take when you have children.

SPEAKER_00:

That's true. But you know, there are other kinds of risks too. I mean, there is a harsh climate. We do have transportation issues in the winter getting back and forth. But the challenge that it introduces kind of fills that void that we used to have. And we are living this lifestyle as a doctor and a lawyer. And when we tell people uh that, you know, local and from the area, they're just like, we're able to do it really with high-speed internet and with the ability to travel. You know, for me, I cannot do my work remotely. My husband does the bulk of his intellectual property work remotely, as you can imagine. However, uh, he occasionally does need to go to a city center to do things, but there's a lot of online depositions now, online work. And for me, anesthesia, you still have to physically be in the operating room, but that's okay because we are a few hours away from a large city center where I can work. And so I go and travel and do that for a number of days each month.

SPEAKER_02:

Does the name uh Jerry Spence mean anything to you?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02:

Trial lawyer. So famous trial lawyer. He just passed away recently, but very famous. And and Jerry uh was in Wyoming and had a ranch. Sounds very similar. And one of the things, you know, he did in his second part of his career is he he developed uh really it was a retreat and a camp where trial lawyers came and lived at the ranch for a week and milked the cows and you know, got in touch with nature and with themselves so they could better understand sort of the human condition. But I can see that for you. Like, okay, that when you said maybe retreat idea in the future, like, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're definitely interested in doing that. And what I am focusing on right now is really showing professionals that, like what you said, there are other ways out there to live and still be a professional. You don't have to take the golden path, the expected path that everyone takes, where it's like, go work for big law, get your partnership in X number of years, and then you're doing that. You can do different things. And I've had on my podcast and in my book, I feature a few different lawyers who talk about starting their own micro firm that has a very niche practice or things of that nature. Someone that worked for being a very niche expert for nonprofit organizations, that type of thing. So there are a lot of different pathways you can take and they may afford a little bit more of alignment with your values or the family unit that you're trying to build, or those kind of things. And you mentioned women in the beginning of the interview, talking about women trial lawyers, and there's a perfect storm for physicians and lawyers where right after you're done with all your training, that age is the age that you're trying to build your family because that's your fertility window. So it's really difficult to for everybody to do the traditional path. And what I really want to show people is that there are other alternative ways to still be a professional.

SPEAKER_02:

Talk about lean in and lean out because your book is called Lean Out. And it is uh, I think at the subtitle of Professional Women's Guide Defining Authentic Work Life Balance, although I'm sure it applies to human beings. Yes. And then one of the things that we like to, I don't like to talk about work-life balance because I think it's life. Like you have life. You have life, one, one of those. And work is necessary because you have to eat. Man is not born with instincts, a man needs to learn how to eat and produce, or or to produce work and get fed and shelter and all that stuff. Is a lot is how much of your work do you think is getting someone to give themselves permission to see what I have described as the other alleyways and highways of life? Because they've been so indoctrinated by I think the schooling and then the the occupational elders, I think, certainly in law, the you know, the the standard state bar associations are still 50 years behind real life, I think. Maybe in the same in medicine. But how much of that is like somebody comes to you and says, I I have this idea, I've discovered Dr. Baker somehow, but I don't even believe that what you are describing is possible.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's I mean, a good majority of the potential clients that I get and the clients that I have have this issue. And there's an entire chapter in my book, which by the way, you are correct, it the material in the book is very applicable to both men and women. But I do start out making an argument that is related specifically to women and this fertility window and those kinds of issues that I talked about. But yes, most people, I have this entire chapter called permission. A lot of people are not able to give themselves permission to step off that traditional treadmill of achievement that I'm talking about. We all know what a hedonic treadmill is, where like you buy a new car and then the car you're seeing all of the same, you know, say it's like a silver Tesla, and then everybody around you has a silver Tesla, and you're like, oh, this is so awesome. And then you get your car and you have this like boost of happiness. And then after a while, that fades and you go back to your baseline. And it's the same thing with achievement. And we add more and more to our plates. And of course, the reward for work is more work. Gretchen Rubin, who's a former lawyer and a happiness expert who's an author, says for making partner, her quote is like making uh partner the reward is like uh winning a pie eating contest and the prize is more pie. Exactly right. Yeah, it's the same thing. You just have more work, right? But yes, people, a lot of people that come to me that want help or people that are finding the podcast, they are or the book, they are people who know that they are not feeling as fulfilled as they expected to in their position. They're usually early or mid-career and they're like, is this what I spent years and hundreds of thousands to do? And no, you know, I I don't feel the fulfillment that I wanted. I don't feel in complete alignment, but I either I'm not sure exactly what I want to pivot to, or I have an idea, but I really need like an extra push for someone to tell me it's okay and for me to decide that it's okay myself.

SPEAKER_02:

I think one of the things that we see in America today, there's a book called Bowling Alone, I think. And really it looks at in the 60s and 70s, we did a lot of social events and we were together with people. And today, as we're doing this interview in late August of 2025, like each individual American is so much more isolated. Just because of technology and stuff. So talk to me a little bit about the value of finding a community of like-minded women in your case who are going through this mind shift change and this going through this discovery of there's other people out there who think like I do and hang out with them. Like you're uh you're the average of the five people you hang out with most. So talk to me about that. Like, are do you first like do you agree? And then what are you doing to help foster this community of people that want to live the one life in the happiest way that they can?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I do see that we have a lot less opportunities nowadays, even though it seems like we're more connected because we have Facebook and Instagram and things that connect us immediately. They don't have the same kind of connection that you're mentioning, which is like deep connection, the ability to be present with other people. However, at the same time, what I am doing is utilizing all of the modalities. So you mentioned the White Coat Investor Conference and the beauty of that conference. I think that conferences nowadays, and this is not your traditional conference. You're right. It's a different conference.

SPEAKER_02:

I understand, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Uh you are fine. The the beauty in those conferences is networking with people, meeting people that you then make this connection with, like, oh my gosh, this person is doing this thing. I didn't even know that you could do that. You know, not just speakers, but also when you go to sit down at lunch, you sit at a table where you don't know anybody. I mean, maybe you go to the conference and you don't know anyone, but the power of those types of conferences, and by the way, I know you've said that there aren't a lot of conferences like this for lawyers. However, I know of some women professional entrepreneurial conferences that really welcome both physicians and lawyers and people from finance and tech. I'm speaking at a conference in a month or so that's called Brave Enough Conference. And that one is also for it's for any type of woman professional. And then there is one where I just interviewed someone on my podcast. She started, her name is Tiffany Moon, and she started the Lead Her Summit. And it's also geared toward all women entrepreneur professionals, so not just physicians. They're not just CME conferences. So these are coming out and they're they're in the ether. I mean, I hope that there are going to be some of these for men as well. I mean, these in particular are geared toward women professionals. But so I feel that conferences are a huge part of this. And then on the other side of the spectrum, even though it's not as good, having these real conversations on podcasts, sharing the podcast is creating somewhat of a community because even though it's asynchronous, you're listening to someone else's conversation, you are still being able to get that feeling of inspiration from like, wow, this person is doing this thing that I thought of, but thought no one could do this. And there was too many barriers and that kind of thing. So really, there is a breadth of opportunity, I believe, from in-person to more digital.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, there's no doubt. And and men are probably uh even a tougher nut to crack, maybe, in getting them to accept permission to to what I call live live life big. Like again, if you followed me around for a week or two, you'd you'd have a hard time figuring out what's working, what's play. And that's that's a life by design. It hasn't always been that way, but we work very deliberately on it with we have corporate coaches for the law firm. We've got my leadership team has mindset coaches for you know for individual work. Walk me through a framework. So we we talked a few minutes ago about the individual must give themselves permission, right, to, to, to break this mold and to see what's outside the box or to see the other alleyways. What are some of the things that you do in terms of now leading a woman physician or woman entrepreneur or a woman executive, C-suite executive through this journey of this re-emergence of, oh yeah, it can be for me. I can be great at the thing, at the at the occupation, the skill set, but I can also be great for myself. And when you're great at both of those things, your family like will benefit from that. Your again, your clients or your customers, patients will benefit from that. Where where do you take them next after this mindset shift of you can I give you permission to seek realignment?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, I think the mindset shift part doesn't isn't necessarily something that is quick. Yeah. And so the way that you can get around that is first making sure to identify what is holding you back. What rules are you adhering to that either are from your culture of your institution that you're working in, where you trained, or maybe it's just like family rules. Like, I am not able to be a good, you know, person unless I'm in this particular job or something like that. And that can be, especially from first generation professional families or like immigrant families. Um, there's a lot of pressure on people. But those rules are not necessarily true. And that's the thing. We live by thoughts and rules a lot of times that are running our lives. And if you stop and think about them and analyze them, where is this coming from? And is this really serving me? And is this really a true thing or is this in line with what I want? So that's something that I work with people on. The other thing is like thought patterns that are holding you back. So you've got the rules stuff, but you've also got things like sunk cost fallacy. Like I spent X number of dollars to do this school. And so I can't go off the path because, you know, I can't afford to make a slightly less amount of money. It's like, no, that's not necessarily true. You know, you may have a career sustainability issue where like you burn out and you make way less than if you were to work a little bit less, make a little bit less money, but you worked longer period of time, you know, and you accrued all of those, those benefits and and that uh money that you're investing. Say, maybe you need to change your lifestyle around a little bit. So sunk cost fallacy, another one would be something like all or nothing thinking. Well, if I'm not in the golden position, if I don't make partner by five years or whatever, then I'm I'm so bad. I'm the worst. I suck. That kind of mentality, a lot of us have it because it's the weed out mentality, right? That's what we went to school with, weeding out. It was like, well, you're, you know, you didn't get this L scat LSAT score, then you're weeded out. You're not good enough to go to law school. But at some point, you know, you get to this higher echelon of performance and of achievement. And then that becomes a lot less important. Those things, everything blurs, right? Um, and so thought patterns. And then now, so after that, the one big thing that I really try to instill in people is that they need to learn about themselves. And this is if you want to lean out and do a different job and you don't exactly know what you want, or you need permission to do what you want, or you just want confidence. You I have this whole new framework that I'm developing, and I'm hoping that this is going to be my second book about confidence because that's what everybody says. They need to come to me and they're like, I don't have the confidence to do what I, you know, what I want to ask.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so so learning about yourself. So, what that entails is spending time with yourself, being by yourself, which some for some people is really scary. Some people don't know how. Be by themselves and just be in stillness. Take a walk outside by yourself. You get mindfulness, you get self-knowledge, and you get outside and you get exercise, right? You get like all these benefits. So maybe it's like taking a day, maybe you can't take a whole weekend off, or maybe you can't take a week of vacation and be outside of your, you know, unplugged from work. But whatever you can do, spending some time to learn about yourself. I have people take assessments, and that can be an assessment on if you're an introvert or an extrovert, if you respond to inner expectations in a certain way or outer expectations, there's these certain personality assessments, if you will, that are administered by other people that I really recommend. And then other things would be figuring out where you gain energy and where energy is depleted from you on a daily basis. So doing energy audits with clients, figuring out what items in their day are really, really zapping their energy and bringing their bank account so low that they feel dead.

SPEAKER_02:

Energy right out of your soul and figuring out that there's somebody else, whatever it is that is sucking your energy, there's somebody in the world that that thing would give them immense energy. And so now go find them and get them to do that thing for you. That's that big thing. You know, one of the things I tell people who lack confidence is you get yourself into a mastermind group, a group of high achievers, and you'll find out that everybody in that group is really good at something. Like something got them there, but they're wildly dysfunctional at something else. And it may be a simple activity of daily living that they're just clueless at. And so you look, you look around and you go, oh my gosh, this person can be really, really successful and they don't even know this thing. They don't know how to do this thing and can do it. So, because everybody thinks, like everybody looks inside themselves and finds like the one thing that they're not very good at. And that drags down, even though it has nothing to do with the thing over here that they are bringing to the world, and that brings down their confidence. Like, who am I to be able to go start another business or you know, create the next AI tool or whatever when I don't even know how to, you know, use a mouse. Um so getting in a mastermind group, you will see highly successful people who are highly dysfunctional in some area, some area of their lives.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh when you feel like you can't learn a particular thing, you need to step back and remember, like, I went through X number of years of school and I'm a specialist in, you know, X thing. And um, so in order to remind yourself that you can do hard things, I also highly recommend to people, and I'm always talking about embracing a challenge of some sort that's really just for you. So like it does not have a certification or a certificate or something tied to it or a degree tied to it. So go back and like take a challenge, like learn how to play pickleball, or you know, take an art class or something that is a little bit difficult for you that you haven't done for a while and do it just for you.

SPEAKER_02:

I describe that as having uh different realms of my life: lawyer, entrepreneur, coach, but also CrossFit athlete, sucker referee, member of church. And it's really hard to have a bad day because everything would have to go wrong. And there's always something going right in one of the realms of my life that I can go celebrate and embrace on the day. And so there's there's value in doing exactly what you just described, which is which is doing hard, you know, we have we all have t-shirts, do hard things, right? And CrossFit, do hard things, leave that puddle of sweat on the floor. But there's value because we learned how to ride a bike when we were little, right? We learned how to jump in the swimming pool and survive that. And as adults, like a lot of times we just don't do the things, the types of things that we did as a kid. And that's when we explored and found out a lot about ourselves. And today there's a never-ending opportunities for doing what you just described, which is going and trying something that maybe you tried before, or maybe you've never tried, and you thought, gee, what if? Like, what if I could learn to play the piano or or you know, learn to play golf or or paint, or what if I could like walking in the woods by myself for hours? Just go and do it. Um, let me ask you this. If I followed you around for a couple of weeks, I'm I'm curious about your own sort of personal habits, routines. You read books, you listen to audio. I I know you have your own podcast and you've been a guest, you probably learn from other people's podcasts. But if I followed you around, like what would I see you doing in terms of you building your one designed life?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I like to, I'd like to think that I live by my values. My core values are continuous learning, challenge, health, adventure, or outdoors. And, you know, each week is different with my life. So there may be some of those more demonstrated in some weeks than in other weeks, right? So I typically, when I do my anesthesia work, I go away because I have a nine-year-old daughter. I will not do a huge amount of time at once. I tend to do a Monday through Friday stint in the city center, and then I come back. And they don't normally go with me. They stay on our homestead and do the chores and all those things. And it's so nice that we have FaceTime for those days. Uh so that kind of a week, you know, maybe I'm not outside as much, right? I'm inside most of the time. However, uh, I still do on a week like that, I still get up at five in the morning, I do exercise, I either take a walk or I weight train. Um, I am very specific about my training right now. Uh being 51, I have been on this path of trying to gain my muscle mass and trying to preserve that and be as healthy as I can as I age. So that's been something I've been doing for the last couple of years. And before that, I I trained to be a yoga instructor. So I was really into yoga for a long period of time. But health and fitness has been something that has been a constant theme throughout my whole entire adult life, pretty much. And that's still a thing. So consistency, like every day I'm doing something. Five days a week of strength training, probably, five or six days a week of like taking long walks myself, even if it's in the city. And then if I'm on the homestead, you know, other things I'm doing are I am interviewing people, I'm coaching people during the days. I am spending time by myself to do my own personal development. I read articles, listen to podcasts, I read specific books that are about personal development, I take notes, I do my own meditation and sometimes doing my own yoga practices. I actually teach yoga at a local jujitsu studio that my daughter takes jujitsu at. And so I will design my own yoga retreat or yoga uh routines. And each month I'm giving that to the student. So I'm practicing the routine and like making sure that it seems like it's going to fit in the right period of time and it's going to be appropriate for I do a kids and an adult class. And so those are the kind of things I'm doing and making my own food because health is really important to me, and spending time outside each day when the weather is good.

SPEAKER_02:

Sounds awesome. What will you be speaking about specifically in March at White Coat Information?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so at the White Coat Investor Conference, I am speaking on a new topic. It seems like every time I present a uh I present an idea, they pick the one that's like this random new off-topic thing that I haven't studied. And so it's so fun because then it's a an opportunity for me to develop a new talk that I've never done before. And this talk is called Understanding the Five Types of Freedom. And really the idea is that there are different types of freedom and that you have a lot more freedom than you think you do. And yet a lack of freedom, perceived lack of freedom, is what holds a lot of professionals back from feeling happy, from making a move, from feeling from escaping burnout. And so I'm talking about this freedom idea. It's a little bit of a riff on that new book, The Five Types of Wealth, but it's not wealth. It's um other, you know. And when I'm talking at the Brave Enough conference I was mentioning in September, I am talking all about shedding imposter syndrome and building your own inner confidence.

SPEAKER_02:

So that's kind of like a new topic that I say lawyers complain too much because you know, here we are. We make money with our brains, you know, we our refrigerators like most of us are not worried about whether there's going to be food in the cabinet on Friday, right? We are able to we can travel across the country in a number of hours with getting on an airplane. Like there was a time when man could not do that. Um, and you know, no one's bombing us unless you live in certain parts of the country where there is really, really horrendous or you know, horrible weather from time to time, most of the time we're not in hurricanes and things like that. And we have so much. Like the the baseline in America is is is pretty good. Pretty good. And then we complain about not having freedom and you know, not having enough time to do stuff, and no one ever has enough money. I read some study recently that no matter what number a person is at in terms of net wealth, they always think that if they doubled that, it doesn't matter if your net wealth is 50,000 or 50 million, if you don't they'll they'll be only be happy when they double that. So it's an interesting space. I can't wait. Will you be live in um Vegas?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I'm an in-person speaker. And the conference is in Las Vegas, which is the nearest city center to me, where I actually happen to do my clinical work. So it's a very familiar place to me. And um, it'll be really nice to be there with everybody. And yeah, I think that the thing about the freedom is that people think only about financial freedom, like you said. But there's a lot of other types of freedoms, and any physician knows that like we all have bodily freedoms that our patients don't have. Yeah. You know, that's just one example of another kind of freedom that you have that you're not tapping into.

SPEAKER_02:

Folks want to uh find out more about you. Of course, they can go and get leaned out, a professional woman's guide defining authentic work-life balance. Um, I assume you've got website because you do coaching and one day you're gonna have a retreat at the homestead. Uh that'll be cool. But where should they go to find out more about you?

SPEAKER_00:

The best place to go to learn more about me and all my offerings is practicebalance.com. The name of my company is practice balance. So it's you need to practice your balance, but it's also balancing your practice of law, of medicine, of whatever. So practicebalance.com, I have a course about confidence. I have my lean out podcast, I have my lean out book, I have a blog there, and you can sign up to do a coaching consultation. I coach any professionals, and there's a section on my website to schedule that if you want to.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome. What's next? We're not the end of 2025 yet, but people like you and I and me, we think like, hmm, I you know, in my life is like, what's next stage of life? What what is quote retirement look like? What are you gonna retire towards? What is that for you? What are you thinking about next?

SPEAKER_00:

So I would say that my I I'm trying to push it off for this year, but my next big creative project is going to be a second book. And it is going to be all about confidence, inner confidence that is transcendent of your competence level. So is not based on how much knowledge you have, how many certifications, how many trainings you have, just really inner self-confidence. I want to develop that. I've been thinking about it and writing notes now. And then I would like to branch out into doing more retreats. I have the ability to do retreats at other people's facilities. And I would like to maybe at least start with that. And then eventually down the road, we'll have enough infrastructure at our property that we could do them. But I think it's probably a few years away, which corresponds with, I would say, my slow retirement from anesthesia, probably, you know, like the next five years or so.

SPEAKER_02:

That's so awesome. Dr. Don Baker, Lean Out, a professional woman's guide defining authentic work life balance. If you're listening to this, you should look at the White Gun Investor Conference because I mean, I'll be there. But but more importantly, there's a lot of really neat topics there and people, and it's going to be applicable to my tribe of lawyers who listen to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Dr. Thanks so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.

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Ben Glass

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