How Semi-RetiredMD grew from an idea into a movement
We began as a blog because Kenji and I kept having the same conversations with other physicians—at dinner, in the hallway, in Facebook groups—about how to get to financial freedom through real estate. We had built a real estate portfolio that gave us more flexibility, and we wanted to show other doctors how to do the same. The goal wasn’t to “leave medicine.” It was to have options and to practice on our own terms.
Early on, we shared a lot of what we knew: how real estate investing works, how to think about cashflow, and what we had learned from building our own portfolio. People were reading, asking questions, and telling us they were interested. But after about a year, we noticed something that was hard to ignore: most people weren’t actually taking action.
It wasn’t because they didn’t want the outcome. It was because they didn’t feel confident enough to move forward. For physicians, that makes sense. We’re trained to avoid unnecessary risk. We want to understand what we’re doing before we do it. And real estate can feel overwhelming if you’re trying to piece it together from blog posts, podcasts, and random advice.
What we realized was that “more information” wasn’t the answer. People needed a clear, proven step-by-step process, and they needed help with the parts that tend to stop doctors in their tracks—choosing a market, knowing what a “good” deal looks like, and building the right team so they weren’t doing everything alone.
That’s why in 2019 we created Zero to Freedom, our course designed to take someone from knowing nothing about real estate to buying their first property. We structured it so participants took action every week. And we made team-building a core part of it—because for most physicians, having the right people in place (agent, lender, property manager, etc.) is what makes the whole thing feel safer and more doable. By week four, people had their team assembled and a clear plan for moving forward in the market they chose.
Once we put that structure and support in place, things changed. Physicians who had been “thinking about investing” for years started buying their first property. Then they bought their second. Some built six figures of real estate cash flow within a year or two. Others saved significant amounts in taxes because they finally understood how to use real estate strategically. The biggest difference wasn’t motivation—it was having a proven process and the coaching and accountability to follow through.
That’s how Semi-RetiredMD grew: not because we had perfect branding or a viral moment, but because we built something practical that helped physicians take the steps they already wanted to take.
What initially sparked your transition from traditional clinical work into entrepreneurship?
For me, the shift into entrepreneurship wasn’t some big, dramatic decision to leave medicine. I actually kept working as a physician the whole time while we were building businesses, building our real estate portfolio, and eventually building Semi-RetiredMD. A lot of this happened in parallel. We started our real estate portfolio in 2015, we were involved in other businesses along the way, and I was still practicing clinically through 2020.
My journey to entrepreneurship started by accident.
When my husband, Kenji, and I got together, he already had a business. I started helping out—at first in a very practical way, just doing what needed to be done. But as I got more involved, I ended up helping grow it. Eventually we sold our shares, started another business, and later sold our shares in that one too. At the same time, we were building our real estate portfolio and learning firsthand what it looked like to create income and stability outside of medicine.
Semi-RetiredMD came later, but it came out of something pretty straightforward: we had gotten a level of financial freedom through real estate in about three years, and we wanted to help other physicians do the same—because we were seeing how many people felt stuck and how few had a clear path forward. It wasn’t about telling doctors to stop being doctors. It was about helping them build options.
What surprised me was how much I enjoyed the business side once I was in it. I liked the challenge. I liked that there was always something to figure out. I liked who I had to become to do it well—because entrepreneurship forces you to grow in ways clinical training doesn’t always require. And I really loved building alongside Kenji. We worked together in the hospital as hospitalists, but building businesses together was a different kind of teamwork. It felt like we were creating something meaningful for our future, and at the same time, it was meaningful because it was helping other physicians change what they believed was possible.
So if there was an initial spark, it wasn’t a single moment. It was the combination of getting pulled into business through life, realizing I was good at it and actually enjoyed it, and seeing that what we were building could genuinely help other doctors.
What barriers—mental or structural—most often prevent physicians from starting something on their own?
A big one is that physicians are used to certainty.
A lot of us go into medicine because we want to help people, but we also tend to be people who feel safer when the rules are clear. Medicine is a long path, but it’s a defined path: do well in school, get into medical school, match, finish training, get a job. And once you’re there, it usually comes with built-in stability—patients will always exist, you’re needed, and there’s a fairly predictable income attached to the work. Even when medicine is hard, it’s familiar. You know what you’re supposed to do.
Entrepreneurship is the opposite of that.
Most business-building involves uncertainty from the start. You don’t know if you’re going to succeed. You don’t know if the market will respond. You don’t know if your idea is “right” until you test it. And you’re taking risks in areas where you don’t have years of training and a clear set of expectations. For a physician—especially one who’s been rewarded their whole life for being competent and prepared—that can feel like stepping into a room where you suddenly don’t know the rules anymore.
That mental barrier alone stops a lot of people before they ever begin. It’s not laziness. It’s not lack of intelligence. It’s that the internal wiring of “I need to know this will work before I start” doesn’t match how entrepreneurship works.
This is also why I think real estate can be such a good middle ground for physicians.
Real estate still stretches you. You still have to make decisions, learn new skills, and get comfortable with things not being perfectly predictable. But you’re not building something from nothing. You’re buying a tangible asset that already exists. It’s an operating business. There are systems in place. There are people who already know how to do the work—property managers, contractors, lenders, agents. There’s already a customer base in the form of tenants. That doesn’t mean it’s risk-free, but it’s a different kind of risk than a startup, and it tends to feel more manageable.
What we often see is that once doctors build a real estate portfolio, it changes how they see themselves. They learn business fundamentals without realizing that’s what they’re doing. They learn how to evaluate opportunities, make decisions with imperfect information, build a team, and move forward even when they can’t control every variable. And once they’ve practiced that in a “safer” arena, a lot of them go on to start other businesses—because they’re more comfortable with uncertainty and they’ve built confidence by taking action and seeing results.
So yes—physicians face structural barriers too (time, training demands, responsibilities), but the biggest barrier I see over and over is mental: we’re trained for certainty, and entrepreneurship requires a willingness to move before you feel 100% certain.
What early mistake taught you the most in your entrepreneurial journey?
I made a lot of mistakes —because that’s just how entrepreneurship works. You try things, some of them don’t work, and you learn faster than you ever thought you could. “Messing it up” is part of the process.
But if I had to name the mistake that taught me the most, it was this: I didn’t understand how to think like an entrepreneur.
In the beginning, I kept approaching business with a physician mindset—like there was a correct path, a clear protocol, and enough hard work and intelligence would guarantee the outcome. And entrepreneurship just doesn’t work that way. You can do all the “right” things and still have something flop. You can make a smart decision with the information you have and still need to pivot later. There’s a level of uncertainty that you can’t eliminate, and early on I really struggled with that.
The hardest part wasn’t the tactics. It was learning how to handle the mental side: staying creative when things weren’t obvious, being willing to pivot, and not making it personal every time something didn’t go as planned. A lot of us aren’t trained for that. Medicine rewards being prepared, being accurate, and being competent. Business requires you to be willing to be wrong, often in public, adjust quickly, and keep moving.
That’s why I think personal development is so important if you want to be a strong entrepreneur. You need tools to manage your mind, because there will be setbacks. There will be challenges and failures. And if every failure turns into a story that you’re not cut out for this, you’ll stop. Mindset work helps you stay steady through the hard parts, keep going, and stay persistent long enough for your efforts to actually compound into success.
For physicians who feel risk-averse or unsure where to start, what are the first practical steps toward entrepreneurship?
If you feel risk-averse, it’s normal. As a doctor, you’ve been trained to think through worst-case scenarios and protect people from harm. The problem is that when you bring that same wiring into entrepreneurship, it can keep you stuck in research mode forever.
So the first practical step isn’t picking a business idea. It’s changing your environment.
Get yourself in a room—online or in-person—where other physicians are actually building things. Not just talking about it. Watching people who are just a few steps ahead of you makes a huge difference, because it normalizes the messy parts: the questions, the doubts, the learning curve, the imperfect decisions. And it gives you real examples of what’s possible. When you see someone who looks like you build a real estate portfolio in a couple of years, it stops feeling like a rare, lucky outcome and starts feeling like a path you could follow too.
From there, don’t try to do it alone. Find mentorship—people who have already done what you want to do and can shorten your learning curve. That can look like a course, a mastermind, a coach, or even peers who are further along and willing to share what they’ve learned. The point is to stop guessing. You don’t need more motivation—you need clarity and a proven framework.
And then there’s the part people underestimate: mindset.
We put mindset work at the very beginning of Zero to Freedom on purpose. A lot of physicians hit that module and think, “This is fluff.” But when you talk to people a year or two later—after they’ve actually built a portfolio—most of them will tell you the mindset work was the most valuable part. Because strategy matters, but mindset is what determines whether you follow the strategy when it gets uncomfortable. Entrepreneurship will bring challenges. Things will go sideways. You will have moments where you doubt yourself. Mindset work gives you tools to steady yourself through that instead of quitting.
So if you want a simple starting point: get in the right community, get around the right mentors, and commit to both the strategy work and the mindset work. That combination is what helps risk-averse physicians move forward—and keep going long enough to see results.
Where do you see Semi-RetiredMD heading in the next 5–10 years?
I see Semi-RetiredMD becoming more of a one-stop shop for physicians who want to get their finances under control. Right now we’re known most for direct ownership real estate investing, and we’ve also expanded through things like FastFire Capital for physicians who prefer passive investing (and other alternative options).
Over time, I expect Semi-RetiredMD to grow beyond real estate and support physicians with more parts of the financial picture—possibly even building out more in-house support like CPAs, financial advisors, and related teams—so people can get both education and execution help in one place.
At the end of the day, the mission stays the same: helping physicians build real freedom and live lives they actually love—just with a broader and deeper set of ways to do that.
