Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Letizia Alto, co-founder and CEO of Semi-Retired MD, located in Humacao, PR, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We teach doctors and high-income professionals how to invest in cash flowing rental properties that set them free to build lives they love. We have online courses that teach our students how to build long and short-term rental real estate portfolios and save on taxes, increasing their net worth. Once our students achieve financial freedom, their day jobs become optional, not a necessity.

Tell us about yourself

Kenji and I are both hospitalist physicians who were overworked and juggling too many responsibilities. We started investing in real estate in 2015 to create another source of income outside of medicine, save on taxes (real estate offers unique tax incentives that can potentially allow you to shelter all of your W2 income from taxes), and build generational wealth.

Even though we just started with a few small multifamily properties (duplexes and a four-plex), within a few years, we were financially free, bringing in enough cash flow to support ourselves and having multiplied our net worth substantially. This motivated us to start teaching our fellow physicians and high-income professionals how to do the same thing so that they could also have time freedom, work less, travel, and be with their loved ones.

As of this writing, we have over 150 apartments (aka units) of long and short-term rentals, and we have trained over 3,000 doctors and high-income professionals to do what we've done. Many of them have gone on to achieve financial freedom and do so much faster than we did just because they gained the knowledge, contacts, and community from our courses.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Helping our fellow doctors. We feel passionate about helping physicians because we deeply feel their suffering and stresses and know the pain associated with the current culture of medicine - we were there ourselves. The biggest accomplishment we have is watching as they become financially free. It really fulfills us and keeps us going, building our company, so we can reach even more doctors and high-income professionals and help them transform their own lives.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

There were a lot of skills we had to learn to run a business. As doctors, we hadn't even hired or fired or even thought about business metrics or how to run leadership meetings. We had a lot of skills doing hands-on working with patients and high-level thinking but just didn't have the experience or skills to build a significant business when we started out. Today we have almost 20 full-time employees spread remotely across the US and Puerto Rico.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Lead from the heart and with service. I believe that a lot of our success is because our students know that we truly care about them and that we show up because of them. This makes our interactions so fulfilling, and the joy we feel when they achieve their goals even sweeter!
  2. Manage your mindset. We've done a lot of self-development work, and one of the common sayings is the chokehold on a business is always its leaders. I believe that is absolutely true. If you aren't working on your mind and continuing to improve yourself as a leader and human being, I think you're holding your business back.
  3. It's always about relationships. Spend time cultivating important relationships with your employees, vendors, students, and other business owners. Ultimately what often makes the difference between success and failure is having the right people in your corner who help set a standard for you and want to help you when the going gets tough.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

No matter what your training, you are capable of building a team and running a successful business. It's just a matter of going out and obtaining the skills, putting yourself in a room with other successful business owners, and managing your mind. Even if you have no formal training like me in economics or business or even leadership, these are all skills that can be learned!

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://semiretiredmd.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/semiretiredphysicians/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/semiretiredmd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/letizia-alto-498620ba/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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