Beyond The White Coat With Dr. Alex Schloe

Welcome back to another meaningful episode of The Physicians and Properties Podcast with your host, Dr. Alex Schloe.

💡 What if the life you dreamed of—the parent you hoped to be, the spouse you wanted to become, the physician you envisioned—can’t be built inside the limits of your current medical schedule?
What if the real path to freedom isn’t time off or a lighter call schedule…
…but cash-flowing assets, ownership, and autonomy?

In today’s episode, Dr. Alex shares the deeply personal story of the night everything changed during residency—a night in the middle of peak COVID when exhaustion, fear, and a single text from his pregnant wife forced him to confront a truth he had never allowed himself to consider. Medicine alone was not enough to build the life he wanted for his family.

This episode is an invitation for physicians to rethink freedom, redefine identity, and reclaim the autonomy they were never taught to build in training.

🔥 What you’ll learn:

• The Night Everything Changed: How a moment of fear during peak COVID uncovered the unsustainable reality of modern medical training—and sparked the search for a different path.
• Your Identity Beyond the White Coat: Why your degree is not your entire identity, and why separating who you are from what you do is essential for long-term joy and fulfillment.
• The Power of Your First Passive Income Check: How a $1,000/month short-term rental fundamentally reshaped Alex’s view of freedom, work, identity, and what was possible for his life.
• The Lie Physicians Are Taught: Why “just work harder and someday it gets easier” is a myth—and how physicians unintentionally sacrifice their health, families, and dreams waiting for a future that never arrives.
• The Three Freedoms Every Physician Needs: Time freedom: Control over your hours. Financial freedom: Income not tied to patient volume. Mental freedom: Space to breathe, dream, and build a life outside the hospital
• Why Real Estate Isn’t an Escape—It’s a Launchpad: How entrepreneurship and investing bring physicians back to the best version of themselves in medicine: more present, healthier, grounded, and fulfilled.

🔥 Key Takeaways:

• Freedom doesn’t come from time—it comes from cash-flowing assets.
• Your first passive income check flips a switch you can never unsee.
• You’re allowed to build a bigger life—without being ungrateful for medicine.
• Burnout isn’t a personal failure; it’s a systems failure.
• Real estate creates options, and options create life.
• Medicine was designed to serve others—not to give you financial freedom.
• You are more than the white coat. More than the stethoscope.
• Your medical degree is not your identity—it’s your launchpad.
• The dream you’re chasing is often hidden inside the work you’ve been avoiding.
• When you reclaim time, financial margin, and mental space, you become the physician—and the person—you always hoped to be.

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Transcript

Dr. Alex Schloe: For a lot of folks, the current way that you're practicing medicine  is not gonna give you a sustainable,  fulfilling life, the life that you wanna live,  because freedom doesn't necessarily come from time it comes from cashflow vehicles, real estate, entrepreneurship, leverage. These are the things that nobody teaches us in our medical training.  

 Welcome to the Physicians and Properties Podcast, the show where we teach you how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want. Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor. Now here's your host, Dr. Alex Schloe.

 Welcome back to the Physicians and Properties Podcast. I am Dr. Alex Schloe. If you're a medical student, resident, or young attending who feels stretched thin,  if you've ever wondered whether your life, the life you imagined is  slipping away under the weight of a schedule you don't control.  If you want medicine and freedom, not medicine, instead of freedom,  then today's episode is for you.

 This is a story of the night that things really changed for me  and about how real estate became the vehicle that helped give my life back and gave me freedom. The nights. That really broke me open was on residency. It was peak COVID. I was  on inpatient nights.  And to be honest, the hospital felt like a slow mo motion war zone.

 As a lot of folks know, Florida did not care a whole lot about the pandemic.  However, we did, and the hospital was crazy.  Every room was filled with patients who were alone,  isolated, gasping for air. Every hallway was echoing with exhaustion and fear. Fear amongst the patients,  fear amongst the healthcare workers.

We didn't really know  what we were gonna do.

I wore a N95 a face shield that dug into my forehead. The isolation gown that smells like plastic and chemicals. It's a smell I can still smell right now,  and around 3:00 AM After running between rooms nonstop,  I stepped into the call room and I pulled off my N95 and my chest felt tight. My heart was racing and my phone buzzed.

It was a text from my wife and, and. She was pregnant inside of her was our first son, Jack. And something inside me just for some reason just broke open up until that moment, I really believe that sacrifice was noble and a lot of us were sacrificing a lot during the pandemic and at that time, and I think that some of that sacrifice has been forgotten.

And you know, I believe that burnout was just part of medical residency and part of training, and I believed medicine demanded everything and, and that was simply the price we paid.  That's simply the price that a lot of us pay,  and it's such an honorable profession and an incredible opportunity that we have to take care of others.

But looking at that text. Thinking about my wife and my un unborn son  in a time that had so much uncertainty for the first time as a doctor, I really felt fear, to be completely honest.  Fear that maybe the life that I was building wasn't necessarily sustainable.  Fear that if I kept going down this path in medicine, maybe I, I wouldn't be the father that I always promised myself that I'd be.

Fear that medicine might take so much out of me,  that my family members just get the leftovers fear like a lot of us had that I could bring that virus home to my pregnant wife.  That night really sparked a lot of anxiety, but it also sparked a lot of thoughts, not because I, I didn't love medicine. 'cause I do, and I will  probably practice medicine until I die because it is, it's such an honor.

Because I realized something that I, I didn't really allow myself to consider, and that was, no matter how much purpose medicine gives you, it cannot be the only thing that defines you.

 I wasn't the same person anymore after that night Medicine was, was not enough to build the life that I wanted for my family by itself. And that realization really kind of  became the origin story. And, and, and this was just one story, but a collection of thoughts and stories and encounters and conversations that ultimately led  to the fact that I needed freedom in my life.

I needed to figure out what this fear was, what this anxiety was, the fear that.  If I keep working 80 hours a week, I'm not gonna be able to be the husband that I want to be the father. I want to be the  even the doctor that I wanna be, frankly. Then I got a little bit of taste of freedom. A few months after that night,  something shifted.

We bought our first short-term rental a cabin in LJ Georgia.  This is with two awesome partners, and here's what that moment. Really made different. I realized that I wasn't running away from medicine. I wasn't  chasing a a, a fantasy.  I simply saw what was possible. I had been learning a lot about real estate and entrepreneurship during that time,  but I really put that into practice and took action  and saw how cashflow  could create margin in our lives.

We understood that income that was detached from hours at the hospital, which at the time my income was minimal as a resident, was the first step towards autonomy. And then we opened and we started operating that short-term rental.  And after expenses and cleaning and all the moving parts that come with operating in Airbnb, my share of the cash flow was about a thousand dollars.

 And, and that wasn't a fortune at all, but it was a revelation because for the first time ever, I made money without having to give more of myself away. It didn't come from  charting late into the night. It didn't come from holding my pee for seven hours. It didn't come from holding the retractor in a surgery, it didn't come from the trauma of running around the hospital late at night.

It came from an asset from ownership,  and that a thousand dollars, it did not dramatically change our finances.  But it did impact my identity because once you experience passive income,  once you experience income that doesn't require your presence, you begin to imagine a completely different life. You begin to imagine a life where  you practice medicine because you want to and  not because you have to.

You spend time with your family without guilt, and you're able to give your best to them. You stop living at the mercy of a healthcare system that will frankly just replace you tomorrow. And that moment was really important for me to realize that real estate was not my escape from medicine.

Entrepreneurship was not my escape from medicine, but it was the tool that allowed me to stay in medicine on my own terms. Once you taste that little bit of autonomy,  which a lot of us as physicians feel as if all autonomy we have has been stripped away from us. Once you feel, once you taste that autonomy, you can't go back and it just compounds over time.

Here's a lie that a lot of physicians are taught. If you just push harder, if you just work harder, if you just see more patients, if you just pick up more shifts, Sunday life is going to get easier. Well, that someday is likely never gonna come because medicine was, was never designed to create freedom.

Medicine was designed to serve others, which is amazing, and I'm so grateful that we have that opportunity. However, for a lot of folks. The current way that you're practicing medicine  is not gonna give you a sustainable,  fulfilling life, the life that you wanna live,  because freedom doesn't necessarily come from time it comes from cashflow vehicles, real estate, entrepreneurship, leverage. These are the things that nobody teaches us in our medical training.  As the podcast grew, as I was speaking with more and more physicians all over the country who had some degree of financial freedom, I realized how remarkable it was.

 And the remarkable thing wasn't how different that their stories were, it was actually how identical they were. And these were physicians of all different specialties all over the United States. And I realized that we were all masters of delayed gratification. We were terrible at building wealth outside of our W2.

 We were afraid to admit burnout, afraid to admit anxiety,  afraid to admit depression, afraid to explore things outside of medicine. And we were afraid that wanting more maybe made us ungrateful for what we had. Again, we are so blessed to be physicians to impact patients like we can to to make the income that we can.

And so we felt that wanting more passive income, freedom time made us ungrateful  for all the hard work that we already put in, made us ungrateful for the white coat and for the stethoscope, and it gets hard to separate  your identity from that, but. It seemed to be that when a physician got their first deal made, their first investment,  got that first check of cashflow, the first true separation of time and income, or of the clinic and income, a little switch flips and everything changes.

I realized that I came alive again. The physicians that I talked to, they've come alive again. Their marriage is actually improved. Their presence with their kids increased their confidence grew, their burnout faded because for the first time they have options.  And options are everything. And it ultimately led to  becoming a better physician.

 I am not  here telling everyone that they should quit medicine, but I am here to say that you deserve the opportunity to practice medicine how you want to. Maybe that's part-time.  Maybe that's a completely different job. Maybe that is picking up some more shifts because you really, truly love it. I can be whatever you want, but having that freedom to practice medicine how you want to  is absolutely incredible.

 Every physician I truly believe needs three freedoms and, and, and these are really important. First, you need time freedom. You need to have the ability to choose how your hours are spent and when you're first getting started. A lot of those hours are probably gonna be in the clinic and are probably gonna be in the hospital.

 But as more and more deals continue to happen over time, as more and more cash flow is generated over time,  you will get more time freedom. You'll get the opportunity to say no to that shift. You'll get the opportunity to not have to moonlight, and you will get some time back.  And as that continues to compound,  you'll hit financial freedom.

And again, I'm not talking about quitting medicine,  but I'm talking about not needing medicine to survive.  After time, freedom, financial freedom,  we have mental freedom and this is incredible. This is the ability to breathe,  the ability to dream, the ability to see beyond the next patient or the next shift.

The ability to build something incredible for me, that's real estate entrepreneurship, specifically assisted living. Remember, you're not just buying buildings. You are investing in your life and you are investing in your freedom  and you are buying back your time.  So if you are listening to this podcast in you're early in your career, here's what I wish someone told me sooner.

You are allowed to build a bigger life, a life where medicine is part of who you are, but it is not the entire definition of your identity. You are way more than the white coat. You're way more than the stethoscope. You are allowed to build a life where you get to be a present parent, a connected spouse, a healthy human, a fulfilled physician.

And here's the truth.  The dream that you're chasing may actually be hidden inside the work that you've been avoiding. Maybe that's the first deal. The first call going to the first real estate meetup. The first step into the unknown  is always terrifying, but the second step is easier, and the third is even easier than that.

 Your life will change the moment you decide that it will. When you say, I'm done letting fear dictate the size of my future,  you'll be blown away by the future that you are able to dictate  the future that you're able to build and create.  So here's the message that I really want you to walk away with  from this episode.

 Your medical degree is not your identity. It is your launchpad. Don't abandon medicine, just stop abandoning yourself. Real estate entrepreneurship. It did not pull me away from medicine, but it brought me back to the best version of myself in medicine. I am a way better family physician today because I have freedom, because when you have time, financial margin  and mental space, you become the physician and the person that you've always hoped to be.

And if this episode resonated with you, please can you do me a favor and share it  with someone who needs to hear it today. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Physicians and Properties Podcast. See you next week.

 Hey, real quick, if you're still listening to this, I'm assuming you got value from it, so I need your help. Specifically, my two year vision with this podcast is to help 100,000 physicians learn how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want. There are two main ways that a podcast grows.

One is the ratings and reviews and the other is word of mouth. If you can please leave me a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast and Spotify as well as send this to one to two friends that you think would get value from it, we can reach the physicians that we want to reach. Thanks in advance and talk to you on the next episode.

Please know any information sharing on this podcast on this. Guests do not necessarily reflect views the Department of Defense or the United States.