Kids Calendars and Calm with Dr. Alex Schloe and Dr. Olga Deengar

🎙️ 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗿. 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗹𝗼𝗲.

💡 What if the real return on your investment was not measured in cash flow, door count, RVUs, or business growth… but in the moments you did not miss?

In today’s episode, we’re sharing a special presentation from Dr. Alex Schloe and Dr. Olga Deengar on how busy physicians, entrepreneurs, and parents can build a meaningful family life while still pursuing big professional goals.

Dr. Alex Schloe is a family medicine physician, Air Force veteran, real estate investor, founder of Physicians and Properties, and co-founder of The RAL Room Assisted Living Mastermind.

Dr. Olga Deengar is a hospitalist, certified life coach, entrepreneur, and mother of three young boys who coaches women physicians and professionals on how to thrive in life, family, and career.

In this presentation, Dr. Alex and Dr. Olga talk about what it actually looks like to be present with your spouse and kids while building a career, growing a business, practicing medicine, and managing the demands of everyday life.

They discuss why “work-life balance” may not be the right goal, why intentionality matters more than perfection, and how to build family systems that protect your most important relationships.

From morning routines and household delegation to family dinners, travel, phone boundaries, and creating meaningful memories with your kids, this episode is full of practical strategies for building a family life that actually feels like the life you wanted to create.

🔥 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻:

✔️ Why work-life balance may be the wrong framework for high-achieving physicians
✔️ How to build independence and responsibility in your kids
✔️ Why your household should have systems just like your practice or business
✔️ How to identify the “glass balls” and “rubber balls” in your life
✔️ Why outsourcing, automating, and delegating at home can protect family time
✔️ How to create non-negotiable rhythms like family dinners, date nights, and bedtime routines
✔️ Why travel with kids is one of the best investments you can make
✔️ How to be more present at home instead of mentally stuck at work

🔥 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:

✅ The people who matter most usually do not send calendar invites
✅ Your career will take every hour you give it
✅ Presence has to be scheduled, protected, and practiced
✅ Outsource the rubber balls so you can protect the glass balls
✅ Your home deserves systems just like your business does
✅ Family trips create stories your kids will carry for life
✅ The real ROI is measured in dinners, bedtimes, trips, and moments you did not miss


𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿, 𝗮 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗼 𝘀𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲.

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Transcript

Dr. Alex Schloe: The real return on your investment is not ever gonna be measured in cash flow or door count or podcast downloads or the number of patients you saw or your RVUs. It's gonna be measured in the moments that you didn't miss.

Welcome to the Physicians in 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.

 Well, hey, everybody. Thank you for being here. I'm Dr. Alex Schloe, joined here, uh, by Olga. Super excited to have folks here listening in, and then for folks that are listening after, appreciate you spending some time with us. I think this is really, really important not only for physicians, but also busy entrepreneurs.

And I wanna say, I am not an expert when it comes to thriving in family life for business and entrepreneurs, but I have picked up a few things along the way that I think is helpful for folks to know. Um, and Olga is much more of an expert than me, so she's got some really great insights in regards to how you can be present as a family, as well as being a busy entrepreneur and a physician for folks who are here that are physicians as well.

So I think Olga's gonna start us off with a little icebreaker, and then, uh, we'll go ahead and get started.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, so excited to be here. Um, we're gonna start off with a little icebreaker. So these are just questions that I came up with, uh, and I'm gonna ask Alex to answer first, and then I'll give my answer.

But you can also think of your own answer as well. First question is, how many hours of screen time per week do your kids get?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Jack, I would say, gets three to four hours, and Owen, maybe 30 minutes at the beginning when Jack's watching TV. He's also obsessed with monkeys right now, so he watches a lot of baby monkey videos.

So yeah, three to four hours a week for Jack, and Owen, I don't know, half an hour maybe. 

Dr. Olga Deengar: And how old is Jack?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Jack is five and a half, and Owen will be two in a couple weeks. It's crazy.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Oh. Uh, my kids watch TV all together, and they get two hours of TV a week. What is one travel destination that your family keeps wanting to revisit? Alex?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Um, I would say Malta. Uh, we went there last, uh, summer. We went to Europe for about five weeks, and Went to Malta on a whim and did some, uh, cliff jumping there, and Jack, our five-year-old, he was four at the time, jumped off like a 10-foot cliff into the water, and he talks about it all the time. It was an amazing opportunity. Great time.

Dr. Olga Deengar: For us, a place we love to revisit is India. Uh, we have a lot of family there from my husband's side, and it was a bit of a culture shock for the kids the first time they visited, but it was just so great to connect with everybody. Next question is, do you prefer road trips, beach vacations, or city trips with your family?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Uh, I would say camping road trips. Uh, you'll see throughout this presentation, the Schloes love camping, and the camper was the best purchase I've ever made. So I'd say the, the camping road trips.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Perfect. Um, I'd ha- I'd say city trips 'cause that's something that we don't have here. I mean, we live in a smaller town in Florida, so I s- I would love to explore more cities, and that's what we like to do.

We're also going to New York City this summer, so it'll be a lot of fun. And then if you had a family theme song, what would it be?

Dr. Alex Schloe: "Staying Alive." Just kidding. Probably "Good Day" by Forrest Frank. That's, that's been a, a banger playing in the Schloe household lately that the boys love.

Dr. Olga Deengar: For us, it'll be Mission Impossible, the theme song.

Dr. Alex Schloe: That's awesome.

Dr. Olga Deengar: And the last question here, your first international travel trip that you've ever taken, uh, where was that with your kid?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Uh, the first, it would've been Germany. First one- Germany ... with the, with the boys. Yeah. Nice.

Dr. Olga Deengar: For us, it was Costa Rica.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Nice. Costa Rica's amazing.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Oh, and one more question here. What's your family's go-to comfort food when you're traveling?

Dr. Alex Schloe: Oh, it's the same when we're at home Pizza and ice cream definitely would be our comfort food.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Those are classics. For us, it's burgers.

Dr. Alex Schloe: That is awesome. Well, thank you for the icebreakers, Olga. Hopefully, folks, uh, had some good answers going along with us too.

And again, this, this can be interactive, so feel free if you have comments, questions, concerns, anything in the chat, feel free to put that in there. Um, that would be just fine. But first I wanna start with a confession. Uh, there was a stretch not long after I became an attending where I was crushing it by every measurable standard.

Patients were getting good care. I was the medical director of the clinic. The metrics looked great. Military-wise, things were, were looking awesome. Real estate deals were getting done. The podcast was growing. The numbers looked great. But I remember slowly slipping into burnout over time, and there was one moment that really hit hard for me, and it was a day in clinic that, that the family med docs and the pediatricians can relate to.

I was scheduled to see three kids from the same family back to back to back in the middle of the afternoon, and the, the family showed up 30 minutes late. The mom lost her mind when we said, "Hey, you're gonna have to reschedule two of the kids, but we'll see one, and you get to pick." So f- the administrator came up to me and they're like, "Hey, is there any way you can see all these kids?

She's super angry," blah, blah, blah, blah. Me being the nice person that I am said, "Sure, that's fine." Well, then she comes back, and as we all know who we see kids, it takes like some time to fill out the ASQs and M-Chats and all the paperwork. She took 45 minutes to fill out the paperwork. And so ultimately that day I spent more time waiting to see those kids and seeing those kids than I got to see-- than I got to spend with my own son.

And, and Jack was really young at the time, and I got home and he was already asleep. And I was like, "This is ridiculous." And that was one of the first moments where I really realized that something had to change it because my family is what matters and what matters most. And here's the thing about being a physician entrepreneur that I've realized.

The system, healthcare, business, whatever you're building, it is going to take every hour that you give it. It doesn't have a ceiling. There will always be more for you to do. And the people who matter most, they don't send you a calendar invite. Unfortunately, they just wait. And eventually, for some people, and plenty of physicians that we know, some of their family members just stop waiting.

And I was determined that that was never going to be me So I hit a moment of understanding in my career that I, I wish I learned earlier, and I, I am a young physician, but I, I realize there's always gonna be more patients, there's always gonna be more charts, but the only people who are going to remember that you came home late from the clinic or the hospital is gonna be your partner and your kids.

Your patients, they do not care. Your administrator ultimately does not care. Uh, but the people who remember will be the ones who truly care, and those are the ones who matter. So that's why we're here today, not necessarily to talk about work-life balance. I actually think that phrase is kind of a lie, and we'll talk a little bit more about why.

But to talk about what it actually looks like to be fully present in a life that you've worked so hard to build.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, that's exactly right. There we go.

Dr. Alex Schloe: All right. So yeah, so, uh, we're gonna talk a bit about who we are. So quick intro for folks who don't know me. I'm, I'm Alex Schloe. I'm a Christian, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a family medicine physician, Air Force veteran, real estate investor.

My-- myself and two of my partners founded a mastermind called the RALRoom Assisted Living Mastermind, where our mission there is to empower 1,000 entrepreneurs to create financial freedom by providing luxury assisted living care to seniors. Then I also founded Physicians of Properties, which is a, a platform, largely a podcast and a community that I built to help doctors use real estate investing and entrepreneurship as a vehicle to obtain financial freedom, allowing them to practice medicine and live life how they want to.

And I, I've been really fortunate to create financial freedom while I was in the Air Force, and now I'm able to practice medicine how I want to, which is about two days per week. Uh, and then Sizzle, Sizzle, Chloe, and Angela, they are, uh, they're RALRoom members in the Red Pod, and that's their catchphrase there, so I had to laugh when I saw that pop up in the chat.

I'll go ahead and let Olga introduce herself as well.

Dr. Olga Deengar: So my name is Dr. Olga Dingar. I'm a hospitalist, internal medicine trained. I work as a locum hospitalist in Toronto, and I'm also an entrepreneur. I have my own coaching business. I'm a life coach for women physicians and professionals. I'm also a mother of three young boys.

They are six, three, and sixteen months old, so I'm right in the thick of it. They keep me very, very active and, um, I'm a certified life coach as well. I think I mentioned that. I also have a community called The DAMA Club, which is a community of incredible women, um- are chatting every single day on WhatsApp.

We have really great strategies going back and forth, and actually how to build your family life and how to thrive at home is one of the bigger focuses, uh, or it has been in past months. So I'm, I'm excited to share the strategies with you here.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Awesome. Well, before we dive in, I wanna name something. Uh, the word balance personally drives me a little bit crazy.

Uh, 'cause especially in this room, if you're a high achiever, if you're a physician, if you're an entrepreneur building a business, the idea that you're going to have, like, perfectly equal portions of everything is just not the reality that we live in, unfortunately. Uh, seasons are gonna be uneven.

Launching businesses are intense. Call weeks are gonna happen. And that's what we're-- what I think what we're actually talking about is intentionality, intentionality of time, and making choices on purpose instead of just reacting to whatever the loudest thing is that's in front of you, and I know I'm guilty of that.

In fact, this year I've been really trying to focus on that. My, like, personal word or word of the year, the theme I'm, like, really trying to build around this year is the word abide. It comes from John 15. The idea is that the fruit needs to be connected to the vine in order to be productive and in order to grow.

And so for me, I'm trying to realize that, like, sometimes the most productive thing that I can do isn't always the next task. It's just being fully present where I am, and I'm su-sure that some of us probably feel similarly, that it's difficult to just be fully present, to just be there I don't want to practice medicine until I'm sixty-five and then decide at that point, now it's time to travel, it's time to be present, it's time to really be there for my kids.

I want that now, and so that's why I've really tried hard to build the life that we have while I'm young, young enough to enjoy it, to enjoy the travels, and while Jack and Owen still want me around and think that I'm cool. I'm trying to savor that as much as I can. But that's the spirit of everything that we wanna talk about today.

We're gonna talk about four different pillars, some real tactics today. We're gonna talk about a goal and a family life that actually feels like the life that you wanted to build. Here's the map. It's gonna be building independence at home, smart home systems, protecting quality time, and traveling with young kids without losing your mind.

So we'll go ahead and get started. So I wanna tell you a story that changed the way that I think about fatherhood. It's not my story personally, but I've reflected on this so much. The first podcast guest that I had on Physicians and Properties was Dr. Tom Burns. He's an orthopedic surgeon. He works with the United States Ski Team.

Tons of investment experience, great guy, wildly successful by any measure. And he told me one day when we were talking on the phone about a colleague of his, he also mentioned this story on the podcast, who was an orthopedic surgeon, similar career, big practice, all the external markers of success that you could imagine.

And one day, the guy looked at Tom and said this, and I'm paraphrasing what he said, but he said, "I spent fifteen years building this practice. I didn't spend that much time with my kids. Now they're teenagers, and they don't want anything to do with me." And when Tom told me that, he had a tear in his eye.

I'm pretty sure I had a tear in my eye because that's the fear that, that we all have. And so Tom's response back was, "That just iced it. There's no way that I was gonna be that guy in ten years." Fortunately for Tom, he heard this when he was a very young attending, and that completely changed everything for him.

I think about that a lot because as physicians, we're wired to fix things. We intervene, we solve, and when we bring that instinct home, it tends to show up as us trying to, like, rescue our kids from every difficulty, or doing everything for them, or running the household ourselves because it's faster, or no one else can do it better than me.

And what we end up doing is have a family that depends on us for everything, and then w- that leads to kids who haven't built the skills that they need to run their own lives. So I think the best thing that we can do as fathers or really as parents is to show up, not to do it for them, but to be there while they figure it out.

All right, Olga's gonna talk to you a bit about the mindset shift at home.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. So when you're thinking about your home life One of the things I like to think about is just having a different mindset around that. So your job at home is not as the chief operating officer of your household. It's really to be the architect of a system that actually works, that helps you get your kids to become independent and do what they're supposed to do.

And so you operate not like you're operating in your practice. You don't have to do every single task yourself. You have to put in protocols in place, so there should be some rules. You should delegate, and, um, you should train the people and really trust them to do their job well. Then that's exactly what you need to do at home So the goal, again, is independence, creating that autonomy for your kids so they are able to carry out the household tasks that they need to for, for the home, because you're all living together and you're all contributing to the home environment.

Dr. Alex Schloe: So practically, what does this look like? For me personally, the morning routine is the single highest leverage place for me to start, and it's the same for, for my, my kids. Now, Jack is five and a half. He gets it a lot more than Owen does, but he knows what his morning looks like. He wakes up, he goes to the bathroom, hopefully not in his bed, hopefully in the toilet.

Uh, he gets dressed. He set- we set out his clothes the day before. He eats breakfast. He brushes his teeth. He packs his backpack. He doesn't need me to tell me these things. He just does it most of the time, and that didn't happen by accident. We tried to build that routine in for him, and we made it visual when he was younger.

We practice it, and then we get out of the way. Now again, not everything is perfect by any means, and this doesn't happen every time. But I think just as it is for us, that morning routine and having that structure is really, really important. But what may be more important, important is the evening because your morning, I've realized this with kids, your morning is actually won or lost the night before.

So if you lay the clothes out, if you get the bag ready to be packed, if you have everything together and you eliminate as many morning decisions as possible, you eliminate the morning chaos, again, most of the time. Olga, what about you? How do you handle three active boys?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, it's, it's a lot. I'm not gonna lie, you know?

It-- But we are working on having systems in place as well. One thing that I really love to do is give my boys autonomy, especially like my three-year-old, just asking him to choose between wearing a blue shirt or a green shirt to school, you know, and he just chooses the one, and that really helps build that independence and that responsibility.

He feels like he's doing something on his own. So that's definitely one thing that, that I use. We also have a whiteboard that we write on every single morning with my six-year-old, and this kind of sets up our workflow for the day. So we would write Monday, and we would give, um, little-- we make little check boxes that are empty, and then we would write all of the things that we need to do that day.

So for example, have breakfast, school, soccer, reading, writing, whatever the activities we have to get done. And that also helps kind of create that goal-setting mindset and so that he really looks forward to checking off those boxes and gets really excited about the activities that are to come. for the day.

We also love to play a lot of music when we're getting ready in the morning, and that really sets the stage. It gets everybody's energy up. We play our favorite music. Everybody gets to choose their own song that they love, and it's just creating a great atmosphere, a great environment. And I always ask, like, "How do I make this more fun?

How can I make this even more exciting for the kids so that they're really enjoying the morning routine?" It's not something that's boring and tedious, but now it's something that they're actually excited about and they wanna wake up and do the whole morning routine again. Um, another thing we do is every meal we play a game.

I- it's a guessing game, so I give them hints about an animal that I'm thinking about and they have to guess it. If they guess it right, they have to take a bite of their food. And a lot of times you'd be surprised how many bites they take in between the answers that they get right. So these are just- I'm gonna try this tonight

so these are just fun ways to get them engaged and get them, you know, doing the things that they're supposed to do, like eating their meal, uh, but in a really, really fun way.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah. I think a few practical things that can be helpful too is, like, a, a visual routine chart for ages, usually like four through nine, that can be helpful.

Kids are incredibly rule following once that rule's visible. In fact, a quick story. My son goes to this amazing school called The Courage Academy. It's an Acton Academy school, and they have guardrails is what they call it. It-- all the kids come together, they create their guardrails, and they sign it. Um, the other day we were doing something, I don't remember what it was, and Jack and I were messing around and, uh, I told him to do something.

He said, "No." And he said, "Dad, we don't have any guardrails." And I was like, "Oh, yes we do, buddy." And he's like, "Well, they're not signed yet." So that's something that we need to work on is some- ... some guardrails. But, like, age-appropriate responsibility is really important. When they do something wrong, resist the urge to redo it.

Like, we've tried to lower the standard. If he just, like, maybe pulls the sheet up a little bit, that counts as making the bed. Those sorts of things are great. And another thing we started is a lot of, a lot of f- uh, folks struggle with the idea of like, "How do I teach my kids about money?" And so we have three different jars that we started for Jack.

It's a save jar, it's a spend jar, and it's a share jar, and he's got a list of gigs, not chores, of things that he can do when he wants to. And if he does them without us prompting him, he gets a quarter. If he puts it in the save jar, we'll match that with another quarter so he learns about interest, and then he can pick which jar that that goes in.

And then he has his spend jar where he can use that money to buy whatever he wants. And so that's been really, really cool for us. The, the beautiful thing with that too is it's also been a great way to discipline him. If he does something wrong, I'll say, "Hey buddy, can you go get a quarter out of your spend jar?"

And that really hits home, and so that's been really awesome. Alicia said, "We call our chores family contributions." Yeah, I think calling it chores just is not the, the best name for it. Nobody loves hearing that All right. Olga, before we move to pillar two, can you talk about kind of the action that we want folks to take at this point?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. I, I, by the way, I love your jars idea. We have a similar one here, but we give our son a dollar. Why are you giving only a quarter?

Dr. Alex Schloe: I'm cheap. We'll talk about that later. But yeah, I'm cheap. It's also really hard to find quarters though, so I might need to, might need to move it up to a dollar.

Dr. Olga Deengar: So yes, tonight's assignment, uh, before we move on to pillar two, we want you to write out your family's morning routine on paper.

Just write it out, every single step, and then tomorrow morning show it to your kids and assign each of them a step to do, so then they're responsible for those steps and not you. Uh, this way you're helping to remove yourself from the morning... Sorry, you're not removing yourself from the morning, you're just changing your role from being a manager to being a coach.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, well, folks, uh, I want you to raise your hand, and you don't have to do it on camera, but raise your hand if you have documented systems in your practice or in your job. Good. I'm sure that's everybody. Now raise your hand if you have documented systems at home. Maybe, maybe not. Some. Okay, great.

We'll take it, Chloe. That's awesome. You're, you're above most folks, which, uh, is what I would expect. Um, but that's what I thought. We're, we're very systematic at work, right? We have protocols for intake, for handoffs, for emergencies, for billing every step of the way, and then when we walk through the front door of our house and operate in, like, complete improvisation mode.

Uh, every week there's, like, a new adventure to figure out. We gotta figure out what's for dinner, who's taking the kids where. And here's a reframe that changed my life, and hopefully it will have some impact in yours. Your household's a small business. It has recurring tasks. It's got labor requirements.

Now, there's legalities around that of course. Inputs, outputs, a budget. So you can treat it like one. And a principle from someone way smarter than me is Parkinson's law, and that's something I've really seen as I've had more time as I've stepped away from full-time medicine, is that work is always going to expand to fill the time that you give it.

So for example, if you have all day to clean the house, it's gonna take you all day. If you have two hours, it's gonna take you two hours. So this is exactly why an undefined home system, not having those systems in place is gonna drain you because there's no container. There's no way to combat Parkinson's law.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. And there's actually a great book called The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni, and it basically adapts your corporate strategies to your household to help you provide a, a framework for how to run your home life. So if you're interested, it's, it's a great book. The questions that it asks are just three questions.

The first one is what makes your family unique? So you really have to define your core values. Next, you have to, uh, figure out what's your top priority right now. Like, what is the one thing, one goal that you wanna focus on as a family for the next two to six months? And you have to define, you know, the different standard objectives there.

He, he goes through that. And then how do you talk about and use these answers? So, how do you have your regular weekly meetings as a family to review your progress? You get to score your progress. There's a green, yellow, and red scoring system- Like the, the traffic lights and then integrate this into the decisions you make.

And it's, it's really fun. It's a really simple book. It's a very short one too. I highly recommend everybody read that.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, absolutely. I need to add that to my list. Well, I wanna tell you guys something embarrassing. For a long time, I refused to hire someone to mow my lawn. This comes back to I'm a frugal guy.

I only give my son a quarter when he does a task, but it's something that I've been actively working on over time. And every time I thought about it, I'm like, "Oh, it's just like 30 bucks. I'll just do it myself." And I'd spend an hour, hour and a half on a Saturday morning mowing my lawn while my son was inside wondering why Dad was outside and he wanted to play.

This was before Owen came along. And one day, I actually sat down and I did the math, and Air Force dollars, I won't say, 'cause it was probably close to 25 bucks. But right now, if I did the math and looked at what I get paid when I'm doing a clinical shift, which is locums kind of family medicine work, I earn $212 per hour of clinical work.

So in an hour and a half, I could generate significantly more value than the cost of that lawn service. But more importantly, and what really shifted it, is that it's not worth an hour of time that I don't get with my wife, Stephanie, and with my boys, and I'm gonna choose family every time. And that was a big mindset shift for me.

Now I try and apply the framework of return on time to everything. It-- Does this have the highest and best use of my time? If not, who else can do it, right? So if it's, if it's something that is less than $212 per hour, I need to strongly consider thinking about who else can do that job for me so I can get that time back to be with my family.

Um, and so now we're, we're, we have a house cleaner who comes a couple times per month. She cleans the whole house, which is amazing. My wife, um, hired a, a mother's helper. It's a girl from church who comes a couple days per week. We pay her $16 an hour, and she, like, does the dishes and cooks, you know, cooks some basic meal.

And just helps us get more time to be together as a family instead of spending that time to do these little chores or these things that we have to do to keep our home running, but takes away from the time we get to be together.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. We also have a, a similar system in place. We have a housekeeper, and that took me a long time to, to kinda get rid of my limiting belief that like, "I can just do it.

I can just do the dishes. I can do the laundry. You know, I, I can just get it done. It's not a big deal." But it kind of is a big deal because you are taking away from that family time, and these things I don't enjoy doing. I'm not very good at them, and someone else can definitely do them better. Yeah. So, you know, paying those $20 an hour has saved me like 15 to 20 hours of, of time to myself, to my kids, to focus on the things that I really do enjoy.

Um, but that is a big limiting belief to, to overcome. But I think most entrepreneurs have, have overcome that. Yeah.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, and it's crazy how fast those chores stack up and how much time that they actually take A data point that kind of surprised me when I was doing research for this is that research shows women on average do about eight more hours of household work per week than their partners.

Uh, they clearly didn't survey my wife 'cause it would definitely be higher. But think about that. Eight hours is a part-time job. Think about what you could do professionally or personally for your family with eight hours back. And so it's just absolutely incredible. Dane Martell has a great book called Buy Back Your Time, where he talks a lot about this, and he talks about hiring someone.

And for the some of us who are perfectionists, we, we have that mentality of like, no one can do it better than me, right? Um, and he says, uh, hiring someone to do a job for you who does it 80% of the way is 100% awesome. He uses a swear word, but you get the point there from that perspective. But the principle is this: build a team at home just like you build a team in your practice.

You don't do your own billing. You don't answer every patient call. You have a team, and your home deserves that same respect, so you can buy back some of that time. Um, so what does a home team look like maybe for you? It could be a housekeeper twice a month. Maybe it's grocery delivery. Maybe it's a lawn service, a meal subscription for the busy weeks.

Maybe it's automating household subscriptions so you're not thinking about, are you gonna have enough paper towels or toilet paper? Uh, the mental block though for most physicians and for most entrepreneurs that I've talked to is that I should be able to handle this. And that's a lie because we're all productivity based, and it's telling you, you handle a practice, a family, and a side business.

But trust me, you don't also need to clean your own bathrooms. So think about that going forward Yeah. All right. I heard a framework once on, uh, on my podcast that I haven't stopped thinking about since it happened. And I want you to think about your life as juggling a bunch of balls, and some folks here probably have heard this framework before.

But some of the balls are glass, and if you drop a glass ball, it shatters. You can never get it back. Some of those balls are rubber, okay? You can drop a rubber ball, it bounces, you pick it up. There's no damage done. But your job is to know which is which, okay? So the glass balls, that's our kids' childhood.

That's your marriage. That's family dinner in the Schloe household. That's bedtime rituals. That's your health, right? You can't, you can't drop one of those glass balls or it can be devastating for your life and for your family. The rubber balls, that's the lawn mowing, the laundry, the grocery run, the spotless house.

Outsource the rubber balls and protect the glass, okay? And some p- practical rubber ball swaps, we've already hit some of these. Grocery delivery. Maybe they charge a $10 service fee, but it doesn't waste 90 minutes of your time wandering through every aisle of the grocery store. Housekeeper twice a month changes the emotional texture of your entire home.

Like, I love coming home from work and just walking into a completely clean house, but also knowing my wife didn't have to do this. She got to spend that time with, with the boys. And so that is amazing. Um, we use Amazon and Walmart to kind of subscribe and save and do, like, the subscriptions for things that we commonly purchase, and that's awesome.

They just arrive at our doorstep. It's super easy. Uh, and then Stephanie and I have a shared family calendar. We try to color code that as best as possible, and every Sunday, uh, we go through that and make sure my calendar looks like her calendar, make sure we understand, you know, who's taking the kids where and how everything's gonna be set up.

And so that's been really, really helpful. Olga, what about you? What are your thoughts on the, the glass ball, rubber ball analogy, or what are some ways that you can spend more time with your family?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. The rubber balls are the household tasks that we really want to try and delegate as much as possible.

So those are the things that, like you said, there are some things that you've automated, which is great, but also the housekeeper that you've hired to help delegate those things. Because the glass balls are the ones that matter most. This is the time with your family. This is your presence. This is the energy that you bring when you get together with your loved ones.

I mean, you wanna be able to be present and be at your best when you're spending time with them. So like we say, time is your most valuable currency, and you don't get that back, and you also don't know when it's gonna run out. Uh, so that's why it's so important to nurture your most re- important relationships.

And just another book here that I wanna recommend for everybody, speaking of time There will also be times when we get very upset with our kids and our loved ones, uh, because, for example, they misbehave or they do something that is not appropriate. And so one great book is called Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline.

It's by Dr. Becky Bailey, and it teaches parents about self-control and how to really build confidence. It's completely transformed my parenting style. I don't overreact as much as I used to. It has some incredible strategies of how to really listen and talk and kind of negotiate with your kids To help them understand why what they're doing is, is not good, and then how to come up, come up with a solution from that.

So I definitely recommend that book.

Dr. Alex Schloe: I, I need to read that. Uh, I'm sure my wife would say I nev- never overreact when it comes to disciplining the kids. Uh, well, this week, our action from pillar two that we'd like you to do is just identify one recurring household task that you hate, and outsource it, automate it, batch it.

Not five things, just pick one. Just find one rubber ball and hand that off to someone else, and then you're gonna see how good that feels, and that'll be awesome. So on the next slide, I want to say something you already know, but maybe you haven't fully admitted to yourself. Things do not slow down. Uh, the season where you have more time, I've been searching for it, and it has not come.

So if anybody has figured that out, please let me know how to add more hours to the day. There's always another launch, another quarter, another patient, another stretch of call, and the pace of a physician entrepreneur life doesn't have a natural finish line where everything relaxes and you finally get to be present.

Presence has to be scheduled or it doesn't happen. You have to rest or your body is going to make you rest. We love to go camping. As I mentioned before, my favorite purchase, the best purchase that we ever made was a small camper, and we've gone all over the United States camping. And the first realization I had of this, we went on a camping trip to all the national parks ki- kind of in Utah, uh, then went into California, and we went to Zion.

And I was sitting around the fire with Stephanie and with Jack, this is befor- before Owen was born, and it was a beautiful night. There were stars. We'd just hiked through the Narrows, which you see in this picture, which people were looking at me like I'm crazy. Sorry, the previous picture. And, uh, people were looking at me like I'm crazy taking a little kid, uh, through the Narrows.

But I was sitting there and I realized I felt anxious, and I didn't understand why I felt so stressed 'cause I was at one of the most beautiful places on earth with the people that I love the most, and I just had to confront it. I was thinking about work, I was thinking about patients, the podcast, real estate deals, and I was halfway out of the moment of, like, this beautiful night.

And that was a turning point for me, and I realized that that applies to all of us. The healthcare system, the business world, it's gonna ring you out as far as you let them, and those boundaries have to come from you. Nobody else is going to protect your family time. You owe your family that as, as being a steward of their time and a steward of having that opportunity to be with them and to be present.

Uh, and so that's something I've really tried to do. Also, a beautiful thing about a camper is you can just go to places where there's no cell phone service, and, uh, that really helps you disconnect as well, so. That trip is why I love the camper so much, and all of our trips have been incredible, especially the ones with no cell phone service, no connection, because then you get to sit by the fire with the family in the woods and have that true connection And I've realized that travel forces you to slow down in a way that sitting at home never does.

There's always something else to do. Uh, and for the first few years when we were camping, it was funny. Jack-- I used to always put Jack to bed every night. I still do. But when we were camping, for some reason, Jack only wanted mom to put him to bed, and it used to annoy me a little, but now I see it for what it was.

We each had our own thing. I'll put him to bed at home, and when we're camping, it flips, and that's not a problem at all. And it was just the opportunity that Jack had two fully present parents who show up differently in different contexts that was really, really cool. And now we get to do that with Owen, our youngest son, as well.

And we spend about 30 to 45 nights per year camping, and it is just the absolute best. But I want you to know, like, you don't need a camper to apply this principle. The point is, is building containers for presence. Things on the calendar that are non-negotiable that everybody knows about, where the default is off for you instead of on, which is really hard to do.

All right. One more thing here, uh, real quick, and then I'll, I'll pass it off to Olga, but here's how I think about structuring the week. You have your non-negotiables and, and oftentimes we gotta figure out how to identify them and what they are. So identify them first. For us, it's family dinners. It's me putting Jack to bed every night we're home.

It's date nights with Stephanie. It's a Sunday rhythm that includes some kind of family rest after we go to church. These things go on the calendar and, and you need to have this be a non-negotiable and then fill everything else that you need to do around that, not the other way around. Some things that have been really helpful for me as a physician, one was I was never gonna bring work home.

I have never brought my computer home to do a note. It goes back to Parkinson's Law. I figured out like, "Hey, I have to get this done by five o'clock," or whatever time was the end of the duty day, and I'm gonna get all these notes done by here. I'm not bringing my computer home. Never have. I, I-- maybe I'm crazy, but that's just the way it has been and the way that it'll continue to be.

Uh, as soon as I walk through the door, I take my phone, I put it on the kitchen counter, and I don't touch it till after the boys are in bed and after I've connected with Stephanie 'cause nothing on that phone's more important than the people who live under my roof, and those people have been missing me all day long.

Uh, family dinner, same thing. Phone's sitting on the counter. There's no TV. There's no nothing. We treat it like it-it's a sacred time, like it's an appointment that doesn't move and it doesn't get rescheduled, except for tonight 'cause dinner's happening right now, so give me a pass. And I've been really trying to ask better questions at dinner, uh, like, "What made you laugh today?"

instead of, "How was school?" Uh, if I ask Jack how school was, he just grunts, uh, and I don't know what that means. And so when I ask him questions like, "What made you laugh today?" it's great. Another one that's been awesome for us has been, "What did you do today that you were proud of?" Or, "What did you do today that made you proud?"

And it has him think through the day. It's been really awesome to see that. Or, "What is something that you're really excited for today?" That's been really fun. We do one-on-one time with each kid Try to do this at least monthly And it doesn't have to be elaborate. I am the classic dad though that like when it's, it's a boys time, I'm like, "Let's go to the monster truck show," you know?

Uh, and make it intense, and so we did. But we've gone on hikes, we've done ice cream dates, we've gone to the monster truck show, theme parks. Jack and I go skiing. He started skiing when he was two. Uh, and I amp these up. We call them boys' days or boys' nights. Sometimes we have boys' weekends, and the boys love it.

We just, like we fart, we burp. Uh, we just, just get amped up and pumped about it, and Jack talks about them all the time. Uh, and so it's, it's really, really fun to have that opportunity. And then as I mentioned before, we try and take at least 10 minutes on Sunday, usually right after dinner or at dinner, talk about the wins from the week, kind of roses and thorns, the wins, the losses, what's coming up, any conflicts, talk about the calendar, those sorts of things.

And that may sound corporate, but the kids love the structure and the predictability and, and I personally love that too. Olga, b- what about for you? What are some non-negotiables that you have?

Dr. Olga Deengar: I'm gonna piggyback on, on that question that you asked for dinner, because for us, that question is, "Who did you help today?"

Contribution is one of our family values, and we always wanna make sure that our kids are helping others at school and their community. So that's a big one for us. Yeah. Uh, but other things that we do that are part of our kind of daily rhythm or weekly rhythm, I always have a time blocked with my husband to have our coffee date, our weekly one-hour coffee date, where we touch base about everything that we need to discuss.

We make sure that we plan out all of our trips or the majority of our family trips in January for the remainder of the year. That's how far in advance we pl- plan things, but that's because those are non-negotiables, and there is nothing that should be coming in the way of those trips. And we, we try to think of really fun things, uh, that they love to do.

Skiing is one of them Maybe like a, a Disney. We live in Florida, so it's, it's easy to just spend a weekend in, uh, at Disney World. Also, like a short cruise, but even if not, we could just do a one-night hike somewhere, just stay in, in the forest and then come back, and that would be just as fun. Uh, so it doesn't have to be extravagant.

It can be very practical, but something that everybody would enjoy. Um, extracurriculars for our kids are also non-negotiables. Dedicated soccer and tennis, as well as Spanish tutoring for our eldest son. Those are things that we all have to show up for. If my husband's not working, he would be the one coming with us as well.

And one thing that we really value are languages in our family. Between my husband and I, we speak five different languages, so that is really important for us to pass that on to our kids. And a couple of ways we do that is, like I mentioned, our eldest son has one, one-on-one Spanish tutoring once a week.

And then for the summer, we make sure that the kids are enrolled in a Russian-speaking daycare, so that way they can practice the language, they can learn it more, 'cause I speak Russian, and they can even try some of the, the cultural foods that are offered at the daycare. So that's something that's really unique to us And then a couple of other things we love to do is having a gratitude candle.

So we have this little candle that we made at one of those mommy and me candle making classes. And, uh, we take that and we pass it around to each family member, and we just say one thing that we're grateful for. We do that in the evenings, so I'm actually missing out on that too tonight. Don't feel so bad, Alex.

And- I love that. And one other- The gratitude candle. The gratitude candle. Everyone should have one. And one last thing is journaling. So our eldest, he's, uh, six years old, so he's able to write now, and every night he has to write down just one sentence on his own, think of just one thing that he's proud of or one thing that he, uh, did today that was exciting for him.

So he writes that, and that really helps get into the habit of journaling and reflecting back on your day because I feel like that's not something we do very often, especially as physicians. It's like when do you even have time to fit in reflection at the end of a very busy workday? But we wanna instill these habits early on so that they can carry these throughout their lives.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Awesome. Well, here's something that I do think is underused. I try and think about my goals on a one-year, three-year, five-year horizon and, and written out my vivid vision, and if folks haven't done that, that's incredible. There's a book called Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald that's great in regards to that.

But we write out those goals not just financially, not just professionally, but in my family I try and ask myself, like, what do I want my relationship with Stephanie to look like in five years? What do I want my relationship with my boys to look like in five years? And that question can offer a lot of clarity because when you have a destination you can work backwards from that.

You can ask like, "Is what I'm doing today building towards that or moving further away from it?" You build roadmaps for your investments. I would encourage you to think about building one for your family as well. All right. The next one I would say that we would like for you to do is open your calendar on your phone, and if you haven't already, block two family dinners this week.

Name them. They're appointments. They don't move. Make sure you have that. It can completely transform your week. All right, I wanna talk about traveling, uh, and something that I believe deeply. The trips that you take with your kids are investments, okay? This is not a financial sense, it's in the memory sense.

There's a lot of research that looks at the first memories that young kids have are the trips that they did with their family. And those experiences that you create together are gonna compound over time in a way that almost nothing else does. Uh, Jack, when he was, like, two or two and a half, his favorite animal was an elk.

Not sure why an elk, but, uh, they're awesome. Uh, so we were planning a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, and we bought Jack these, like, little blue binoculars. They're, they're terrible. You can, like-- They barely zoom in. They're always smudged. But he loved these binoculars. He was ready. He had a mission.

He always had it with him. And so our first day in the park, we didn't see any elk. Uh, and he was, he was devastated for, like, about four minutes, like a two-year-old typically is, wondering where all they were, where all, all the elk were. And then we rounded the corner, and we saw this just massive bull elk standing on the side of the road, and looked out into the woods, and there were all these...

There was a whole herd of elk just laying there, and it was incredible And I'll never forget watching him with those binoculars. Most of the time he had them flipped the wrong way, so it was actually making things further away. Uh, but that was just one of the memories that I'll never forget, because it was such a fun time.

And I realized through camping and through that experience that, like, kids don't necessarily remember the hotel that you stayed in or where you camped or the, the elaborate vacation, but they remember those moments. They remember the binoculars, the campfire, the, the inside joke that started while you were hiking, uh, the time dad got directions completely wrong and ended up somewhere better than where you were going.

That doesn't happen that often, but, uh, hey, it does sometimes. But travel's how you write your family's story, and you don't have to wait until you have unlimited time or money. You just have to go, and that might be as simple as, like, just doing an overnight in your town, just booking a hotel and just going on an adventure or going on a hike or whatever that may be.

Olga, I know travel's been a huge part of your life as well. What would you have to say in regards to that?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yes. I love traveling. I've been to over 45 countries and counting. So, travel is, is huge for our family, and we do try to travel with our, our kids as much as possible. Although we do a couple of, you know, couples getaway trips a year, one of the most memorable places that we talked about in the icebreaker was going to India, and that was in 2024.

So the kids were quite young, and it was just incredible because it was a culture shock. I mean, India is very overcrowded, extremely polluted, the food is very spicy, and there are not that many kid-friendly activities to do. Uh, but it's home, uh, for my husband's family, and it's also home to his grandfather, who's 103 years old.

So we really wanted to be able to have him spend time with the kids, and he was so tearful, and he had, like, tears of joy when he saw the kids just running in the ba- in the backyard and just spending time together. It, it was just so magical, and that's what we, we do these things for, is to create those magical moments with our family and to be able to have these memories, even though the kids might not remember them, but we will.

And of course, we have a family album where we keep, we print out all these pictures, and we keep them, and, uh, we look at them a few times a month. So it's really important to start creating those memories early on and traveling, even though it could s- be a crazy hassle when you're traveling with young kids.

It's still totally worth it.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the practical side of traveling. Uh, this is from my wife, not from me, okay? But packing for-- with young kids can absolutely wreck a trip before it starts. Uh, so here is what we've done that tends to help traveling. Uh, Steph will make a master packing list by trip type, whether it's a road trip or camping or flying, whatever it may be.

Uh, she'll build it, and usually she'll try and save it so we can pull it up each time so that forgetting nothing is a system problem, not a memory problem. So that's been really helpful. Jack also has, like, a, a backpack that he takes to school every day that he also packs when we go traveling. Uh, he packs his, like, little Yoda player, a couple change of clothes, his toothbrush.

He owns those things. Um, and it's been awesome because it helps him build responsibility, and then it eliminates the whole, like, I forgot my thing problem that happens because if he forgot it, it's on him, which has been helpful. I don't know about y'all's kids, but my kids go through snacks like it is insane.

And so when we're on long road trips, we try and pack, like, a snack bag that they control. This was something that was a game changer. Packing a snack bag that they control, and when all the snacks are gone, like, that's it. I'm sorry. Uh, and that eliminates a lot of the I'm hungry complaints on long drives and gives them some autonomy.

We do that with just Jack. Owen's a year and a half, so I don't trust him to, like, not put the bag over his head and suffocate himself. But, but it's been really helpful to, to help with the snacking and the, and the craving from that perspective. Olga, do you have any similar systems or what travel systems have been helpful for you?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, we do. The backpack is, is a It's what we do as well. I mean, our six-year-old, he packs his own backpack. He puts all of his coloring books and all the snacks that he wants in there, and that again creates that autonomy for him 'cause he gets that choice. We also use the packing cubes, and we color coordinate them for each kid.

So one kid gets a, all the blue packing cubes, the other gets all the green ones, the other gets all the black ones, and that helps us stay organized. We also have a list of things that we have to do before we leave the house for a big trip, so for example, making sure that all the dishes are washed and put away, taking all the garbages out, making sure that some of the electronics are unplugged from the outlets, and making sure all the windows and doors are closed.

So just having that system also is, is very helpful. And then we also have a tradition as a family, and this was passed on to me from my parents. I don't know why they decided to teach me this, but it's just taking a minute before you leave the house as a family and just sitting together for literally one minute in silence and just kinda bringing calm before, um, the storm I guess, before we have to go on a drive to get to the airport.

And it, it really makes you kind of reflect on, okay, why are we doing this? Why are we taking this trip? And then what are some of the things that we really want to teach our kids on this trip? So it's a moment of reflection that we've integrated as part of our routine for our family.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Well, here's something that I noticed on the Zion trip and after I got past the anxiety that I mentioned before, that once I put the phone down and I just sat by the fire, something completely shifted.

The silence wasn't empty, it was full. Full of conversation with Stephanie, full of watching Jack, uh, kind of play around the fire, make some s'moreos. Shout out to s'moreos for folks here who know what they are. It's when you take an Oreo and you put the marshmallow in between.

They're amazing. Chloe had some recently at, uh, at our event. Uh, but They're fantastic. But just having that time to be actually there is great, and I think that travel forces you to slow down in a way that staying home never does. Even a type A person, you can't fully optimize a camping trip. You can't control the weather.

Uh, but when you're there, there's no inbox that g- needs to get to zero, and the campfire's just the campfire, and nothing's more peaceful than just being around the campfire with your family, as long as your kids aren't trying to light each other on fire. But I realized that, like, the kids are watching, and when you take them to places that's outside your normal, places where people live differently, where the pace is different, where the language is different, where the culture's different, where convenience isn't everything, um, they're building that...

They're building a perspective that they can't get anywhere else. And taking them to a place like Germany, which is this picture, Mike, they don't have snacks in Germany or really in Europe, so that completely changed how they eat their snacks. And so that was a example there, but this was a, a picture in Germany from our trip there.

Portugal is on the list. But one of my guests on the podcast, they said something that stuck with me. When you take your kids to places where people are wondering where their next meal's coming from, it gives them perspective on what they might want to be complaining about. Uh, that's not a guilt trip, it's a gift, and so we're planning on taking our kids to, like, more third world countries going forward.

Having them get the experience of, like, going to Africa and kind of going through the bush and seeing, like, this is where folks live or, you know, to Latin America and some of these poor countries and really see those experiences and give them that perspective. And we're planning on starting to do, like, month-long trips where we just go for a month to another country, another culture, another language, and we try and immerse ourselves in that community and see how that goes and then maybe do three months and go from there.

How about yourself, Olga?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. Speaking of third world countries, I mean, there's so much poverty in India, so it's, it's actually hard to avoid. We've taken a local train there to get to the Taj Mahal, and it was... There are so many homeless people. I mean, they are living in cardboard boxes. They are so thin, and they look like, you know, they haven't showered in, in forever.

And then our kids, especially our, our eldest, was, like, wondering, "Who are these people, and why are their clothes so ripped?" And so we had to explain to him that not everybody has a roof over their head. Not everybody has food that they get every day, um, and we have to be grateful for the things that we do have.

It's It was, it was eye-opening for him and I'm glad we exposed him to that because that's the reality. That's how some people live in the world, and we're just very fortunate to be where we are

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah. We, we are so blessed here in America and it's definitely eye-opening to see that and especially to have those experiences with your kids to be able to share that with them.

I'm sure that was really powerful. So for folks who, who know me, I'm a pretty rigid person. I'm a military. I was a military doc, military man. I love routine, I love rigidity, I love structure, I love planning. I realize that does not work well when you're traveling with young kids, especially when you're traveling abroad.

So I have slowly realized over time that you need to have enough structure that you travel smoothly but enough flexibility to be surprised and that makes it almost where you're less, you're surprised less often than if you have that structure and that rigidity. I think a lot of times we over-plan when we're going on trips, like every hour is scheduled, you research every restaurant, you build a flawless itinerary.

Uh, and then I don't know about you, but then my kid has a meltdown and the whole thing unravels and it doesn't happen. So once I realized I needed to let that go, that was so important. So now we try to just book the lodging and have one anchor activity per day and then leave the rest of the day for some flexibility.

Which is great. Also try and find like kid bailouts in advance. So every destination typically will have like a playground, a coffee shop, a pool, um, so you know where they are before you need them, uh, because you will often need them. Uh, and then screen time. We talked about this a little bit earlier. We use it as a strategic tool, not as a last resort that's buried in guilt.

So I-- We do use screen time when we're traveling on airplanes, when we're doing long drives. I think that is beneficial. I think that's what screens are for. Uh, and I do not think you're failing as a parent if you're managing a long travel day like a rational adult and like trying to have a little bit of peace on your flight internationally.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. And one thing I'll also kind of piggyback on that is we try to create memories with our friends. So if our friends have kids as well, then we, uh, try to travel together as often as we can, and we do it with different friends groups. Um, but also we try to visit our good friends in Europe and see how their way of life and how their culture is and expose our kids to that.

So that's an upcoming trip that, uh, we have as well, and I'm really excited for that. So really, how do we make it more fun? Going with friends or meeting friends somewhere, and then what gifts can we bring them from our hometown? Those are the questions that kinda go through our minds when we are planning our travels.

So for this pillar, we wanna make sure that you plan your trip. Just plan one trip in the next 90 days if you're brave enough to do that. It doesn't have to be like a European two-week adventure. Um, it could just be a one-night camping trip, like we mentioned, just an hour from home or somewhere close by.

And then put that date on your calendar. Really schedule that time, block it on your calendar Because planning starts with having that date on your calendar.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Let me try and tie these four pillars together because they're not independent. Um, when your kids are more independent, when your home systems work better, when your home systems save you more time, when you protect more time, that's gonna give you the opportunity to be more genuinely present, whether that's at dinner, at bedtime, on the camping trip.

Uh, and then of course those trips that are gonna have those memories that your family's gonna bring forward and tell the stories of. It's not four separate projects. All these things work integratedly, if that's even a word. But none of that works without having a great partner. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it, like Stephanie is the greatest cheat code to my life.

Um, I would not have the life that I have, I would not be the husband I am, the father I am, the man that I am if it was not for her. And so having a genuine co-pilot can be helpful, uh, someone who's in that mission with you who helps hold those glass balls when you're juggling too many things. Uh, that can change everything.

Uh, and if your partner isn't fully on board with the systems, with the rhythms, with the travel, start there and just have a conversation and we can call that conversation pillar zero Exactly.

Dr. Olga Deengar: I absolutely agree. You and your partner have to be on the same page, um, because that is really gonna help shape the values that you want to teach your kids, and then really get aligned because you wanna make sure you prioritize the thing that matter to your family.

So if your spouse doesn't care about kids learning languages, then maybe having a Spanish class once a week is not gonna be a priority. So you really have to get on the same page and figure out what works for your family and what doesn't. And then what you believe really ultimately determines how you will act, so work as a team.

Remember, your kids are looking at you as an example, so whatever you're showing them, even with your actions, that's gonna-- they're gonna remember that, and they're gonna probably copy it , and do something similar in their own lives.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, it always blows my mind, uh, how, how well the kids copy, you know?

We've all been there where we've said a bad word, and then our kids start saying it, and that was our fault. Um, I know I have been. But, uh, I wanna close with something that I, I think about really often. I, I've been fortunate to go on a, multiple medical missions trips, and I'm super grateful for those. Uh, one was to Zimbabwe.

We were there for six weeks. We spent, spent a lot of time in the bush. Uh, actually, this hut that you see behind me, when we got to this village, uh, it was like 1:00 in the morning. It was in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe, and the whole village was there. They had, like, prepared a meal for us. Uh, they were dancing.

It was like this huge, like, celebration. You would think that we were, like, Brad Pitt or something. And, it was unbelievable. That hut behind in that picture there, uh, one of the family members, like the families that live there in these huts opened up their homes to us. Uh, and we tried really hard to not, you know, be like, "Hey, wait, no, it's fine.

We'll just, you know, sleep outside or whatever it will be." They would not let it happen, so I, I slept on the floor in that hut. Um, just thinking about how wild it was that I was, like, in the middle of the bush in Zimbabwe. Anyways, that's got nothing really to do with the whole, uh, this, this part of what I want to say.

But what I've realized when I was in Zimbabwe And as I've done more and more traveling and mission trips, I, I remember being struck by the fact that especially there in Zimbabwe, how they were materially so poor. I mean, they had almost nothing. Like I mentioned, I was sleeping on a blanket on the dirt floor in this hut.

Uh, but relationally, they were some of the richest people that I've ever been around. Uh, they valued community. They valued family. They were fully present in a way that's honestly probably jarring to a lot of Americans. And I remember thinking during this time that, like, sometimes I think we need to be a little bit more materially poor and relationally a whole lot richer here in America.

Look, you don't build a career to be absent from the life that you're supposed to create. The real return on your investment is not ever gonna be measured in cash flow or door count or podcast downloads or the number of patients you saw or your RVUs. It's gonna be measured in the moments that you didn't miss.

It's gonna be measured in those dinners, the bedtimes, the elk binocular stories. And I want everyone here to, to really try and abide and be fully where you are because remember the fruit comes from that connection, not from continually striving.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. Absolutely, and when you choose to be present with your family, I mean, you're telling them that right now nothing else matters.

You matter the most to me. And the k- your kids feel that. Your spouse feels that. And that's something that is so important that you have to nurture those relationships. I love how you put your phone away completely, no distractions, and I think everybody should do that as well. Try to keep that as part of your routine and something that you do daily because when you slow down long enough, then the, your kids really see that, and they really feel it.

That's how they end up defining love, connection, and even their own worth. So even long after they forgot what you said or did, they'll remember how you made them feel. So make sure that you make them feel special, like they are there, you're-- they have your full attention, you're with them, you're fully present, and that's how you build and nurture those relationships.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Okay, you wanna go ahead and bring it home?

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yep. So the four actions, each from one pillar. You could choose the one that's really the hardest for you to do, the one that's most challenging, and do this in the next twenty-four hours. So the first one is building your family morning routine tonight. You write it down, and then tomorrow you assign every step to your kids.

Number two, identify one rubber ball this week, something that you can outsource, automate, or batch it, uh, you know, 'cause you wanna focus on the glass balls rather than the rubber balls. Block two family dinners on your calendar right now and make sure, like, you treat them as if they're appointments.

They don't move. You have to do them. You have to make sure you're present there. And then number four, pick a trip date in the next ninety days, any trip Put the date on the calendar and really work towards making that trip happen. And if you want to drop one commitment in the chat, we'd love to see it.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Awesome. Well, thank you so much to everybody for being here. Olga, thank you so much for the opportunity to collaborate and give this presentation together. I learned a lot from you. I am super grateful for our friendship and relationship and continuing to be able to kind of walk through life in the similar stages of raising kids and traveling and entrepreneurship and being physicians.

Uh, it's really fun to learn from folks like you. So thank you so much for being here, for doing what you do. And, and thank you everybody for taking some time with us today.

Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. Thank you, Alex. The pleasure is all mine. I'm, I'm really excited that we had this idea to come up with a really interesting webinar, um, for our friends and our colleagues.

And I learned a lot from you, and I love the stories that you shared. And there were things I can definitely relate to, you know, and I'm really glad that we had this opportunity to work together.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Everybody have a great night, and thank you for your time. Have a great night.

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