Defining Moments: When Being a Father is More Important Than Being a Dentist

I make a lot of money as an endodontist. And a few years ago, I decided I was going to go all in and work extra long hours, more days per week so that I could achieve my goal and earn over $1 million in active income. Guess what, I set my mind to achieve that goal and I did it. I was now making ballplayer money, and that makes me rich, right? I made it, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel like it. Something was still missing. The day that I realized what that something was, was the day that I missed my daughter’s Christmas recital at school. She was very upset, and I too had the biggest feeling of guilt as I failed my daughter as a father by not being there for her. At least this was my interpretation at that time.

To provide some context, I absolutely adore my daughter. I mean, I adore my son as well, but this story is about my relationship with my daughter, and how it relates to me working as a dentist making ballplayer money. What I realized was, making a ton of money doesn’t matter if I’m missing out on a thing called life! That’s when I knew things had to change.

I had already earned millions of dollars as an endodontist, as well as built a multimillion real estate investing portfolio. From the outside looking in, I looked extremely successful and accomplished. Remember I said, I started working more because my goal was to make more money. I started working longer hours. I stopped working out as often, so my physical health started to suffer. I was no longer working on spirituality. I was no longer spending enough time with the relationships that matter most to me – my wife, my children, my family, my friends, and my loved ones. In the end, at the very end, the things that we think are so important now are seldom the things that we think are most important when you’re on your deathbed. When it’s our time to go, we’re not going to think about how many more millions we could have made or how much more we could have worked. We’re going to worry about whether we spent enough time with our children and if we raised them right. Did we do all the things that we wanted to do to make this life worth living?

It isn’t going to be about how much money you made or what kind of watch you wore. It will be about the relationships and the important people in your life. It will be about the contributions that you have made to society, to humankind, that will continue to impact even when you are dead and gone. Now to be honest, I absolutely love, love, love being a father. It’s the most important hat that I wear. It is also the hat that I wear with the most pride.
I’m one of those fathers that don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want to only be the father that is a provider, but a nurturer, a teacher, a friend, a coach, a mentor, and someone that they talk to. These are the things that I want to be for my children. And if I’m not around, I can’t do those things. Now I will never, never forget the look on her little face when I told her that I had missed her recital. She had on a red frilly dress with white lace. She had her hair in curls, bouncing and springy. She looked like a little angel. I remember, I walked in late because I had a late patient and ran into traffic. By the time I got to the recital, I had JUST missed her on stage. When she saw me, she ran up to me and she said, “daddy, daddy, did you see me singing?!” And me being one not to lie to my daughter, I quietly told her that I had just missed it because I had gotten there from working late. I’ll never forget how her bright smiling face transitioned to one of utter disappointment and sadness.

It was at this very moment that I knew that something had to change, something wasn’t right. This is what allowed me to shift my mindset, and what led me on a journey to discover passive investing, changing the trajectory of my life forever. That’s what it came down to, what are we actually after? Are we after money, and that’s why we work so hard? Or, if we look a little bit deeper and peel the onion back a layer, are we really after what money brings?

You see, money is a means to an end. I used to think money was the end. We have to work hard, we have to make $1,000,000, and that’s the way to be successful. But if you don’t have time to do the things that you want and spend it with the people that you want, it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you don’t have the freedom of time to do the things that you want to do with it. I needed a mindset shift to go from being an active real estate investor, a guy that’s dependent on exchanging time for money, where I have to work more in order to earn more. That’s working backwards. That’s not the right way to do it. That’s when I realized passive investing is the way to go.

Building passive income from multiple sources is the key to financial freedom. Passive income meaning without your involvement, without you exchanging time for money, without you working. This is money that is always being earned no matter what you’re doing. This is the income that comes in, whether it rains, hails, sleets, whether there’s sun, whether you’re on vacation, whether you’re sick, whether you’re working, or you’re dead. That’s the beauty of passive income.

From that point on, I started completely focusing and giving all my intentional thought, when it came to finances, on how I could decrease my need to work with my two hands without decreasing my income. By doing this, I started to develop cash flows and multiple sources of income. Remember, where your intentional thought goes is where your world will manifest around you. All the energy I put out as it pertained to finances was towards passive investing and passive sources of income.

These passive sources of income and passive investments have allowed me to take a giant step back from my clinical practice to working a manageable and enjoyable part-time hours. I spend enormous amounts of time with my children and family. I take my kids to school every morning. I take 6 to 8 vacations per year. I also have time to pursue my passion, which is investing in real estate and developing this platform so I can also empower my fellow dentists, to take this financial freedom journey for themselves. And most importantly, I can now afford to spend enormous amounts of time with my family and loved ones. And as a side note, I have never missed a single recital, play, competition, or tournament, since.