In the past, you were considered free if you had a high payin g job, stability and security. Now, in the post-covid era, that paradigm has changed.
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Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Welcome to this week's podcast episode for the Financial Freedom for Physicians podcast. And I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Loo. And I want to welcome you to this very special episode, because it's the one year anniversary of the podcast.
As a little bit of a background, so I started Financial Freedom for Physicians back in 2016, after my year hiatus as a digital nomad, studying digital entrepreneurship. And what I came back with was a profound sense that the world needed financial literacy. So in addition to academic education, we really need to learn about money and finances, and how money plays a part in our world in how it works today. So I came up with this idea of just freedom. And back then it was just an idea to empower people, how can they get more free in terms of their time, their emotions, their money, and their location. And so this led me to a study of what freedom is.
So in the past, you were considered free if you had a high paying job, and you had stability and security. And now in the post COVID era, that paradigm has changed.
So freedom is composed of four different types of freedom. So you have emotional freedom, which is just your ability to be happy and to be pursuing what you want to pursue independent of money or other people or factors. You have time freedom, you can do whatever you want. Location freedom, you can do it from any place in the world. And you have financial freedom, which means that you have a healthy balance of finances upon which you can build your health, your relationships, your wealth, and you can contribute in a meaningful way in today's world. And so fast forward all the way to 2022. And really, the last two years have been a wild ride.
And really, it's really been the podcast that has really grown since 2020, during the pandemic, when we were all forced to stay at home, which forced, especially my company and my business to really move into a remote digital virtual company. So we've finished the final touches on that. So a lot of the speaking engagements, conferences, everything is moved into the digital realm. A lot of virtual conferences, I still speak at conferences in person, although that is not a majority. It's just a small portion. It allows me to travel, see the world and help other people. So the next thing, I'll tell you a little bit about where the long term future plan for the podcast and for the brand is towards the end of the show, but a couple of updates.
So we've really expanded the team. So back in 2016, it was just me, I was doing all the content. I was doing all the editing, I was doing all the marketing, advertising, sales, everything. And really, because the brand has expanded, it really needs a lot of help on the back end. So we've hired editors, we've hired virtual assistants, we've hired social media managers, and a lot of them initially were contracted and some of them are moving into part time and eventually full time positions. We've also expanded my book. So my books originally were in Kindle and paperback and now they've expanded into hardback editions, as well as the Audible version. So the Audible versions have really picked up, because a lot of the way we're consuming media and content today is through audio. And so podcast, Audible. These are all viable forms. They're very easy to access, and they're very cheap on the go and on demand. So I expect the Audible book sales to surpass the Kindle book sales very quickly.
So we've also expanded our YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, we've also expanded the blog, as well as Instagram and Tiktok. So, back in 2016, we've grown from one follower. Now we've also grown to amass a following of over 16,000 followers across all channels. And we're expanding into different mediums not only just written, or video, we're also in the audio as well as the recorded in live versions. So we continue to contribute to major outlets, including SoMe Docs, KevinMD, Doximity, MedPage Today, White Coat Investor. And we've brought on additional sponsors, affiliates, partnerships, and which has continued to attract additional revenue, additional clients additional funding, and overall enabled us to expand our reach in our mission.
And I want to reiterate that the mission originally with any of that, so with any great enterprise or any growing business, it's not a one man show. So there's a lot of backstage actors who really helped to run the show and helped to make things run smoothly. So I want to acknowledge all of the virtual assistants, the social media editors, especially the podcast editors, the blog editors, as well as all of the content creators and editors. So without them, it really would, it would be impossible to achieve what we're doing. And so we know, with the increased revenue, with the increased growth, we've been able to invest more into equipment into hiring more talent to produce more content, and make it more efficient and grow with the brand and scale.
So now, I want to shift a little bit. I have talked about a little bit of the updates and how the brand has grown. I want to talk about the mission. So mission and vision are super important. In my own personal my own personal skill set, and my personal strengths are in strategy in the long term vision and execution, so that's my and the brand has grown so that I can now really focus 90% of my time on those the grand strategy and the grand vision for where I want to take the brand and help the masses. And that wouldn't be possible without the help of all of them, with all the help of the staff that we have. So initially, the mission was to empower physicians to achieve financial independence and financial freedom early on through education so that they could have more control over their time in their lives in their career. And never, in my wildest imagination, has this mission grown and expanded.
So not only did it provide education, but it provided coaching, it provided inspiration, and it inspired a lot of physicians to start their financial journeys a lot earlier, especially in college, medical school, and started investing earlier. And a lot of physicians, they took the leap of faith, took the risk and started their own entrepreneurship journeys, and created companies and businesses outside of clinical medicine. So this has been fantastic. It's been almost a huge movement, especially after 2020. And I'm really proud of the work of myself as well as my physician colleagues. That being said, if you were to categorize what stage the company is in it's in the toddler-teenage stage.
So at this point, we have to assess where we've been, where we are and where we're going. So one of the number one questions I got from people was, is this only for physicians? And I had a lot of people outside of the physician community contact me including lawyers, doctors, dentists, financial planners, entrepreneurs. They want to come on to the show, they want to participate in the ecosystem, and they want to help expand and grow the reach. So it's time to grow and expand. So what I've done is I've expanded the reach of the mission, so that not only are we going to bring guests that are non physicians, we're going to talk about non physician type subjects, including personal finance, personal development. And this not only serves the ecosystem, but it also helps physicians because it shows them what else is out there, what else is possible, as well as how you can incorporate what other people are doing inside of your own practice.
As physicians, we should all be entrepreneurs, we should all be growing and developing, always be adding new skill sets, new ideas, new ways of growing and innovating, so that we can stay on the cutting edge and continue to succeed and flourish in today's times of uncertainty.
So that's one aspect. The other aspect is we're going to see an increased number of posting, especially on the blog, posting about topics such as real estate, finance, consulting, student loans, you can also hear about new, exciting FinTech developments, a lot of new developments in the financial innovation space, digital assets, NFTS, cryptocurrencies. And what I want to particularly emphasize in the last two, especially NFTs in crypto, is that we're going to really focus on regulation policy and how to spot bad actors, because there's quite a few, and it gives the industry a bad name.
While I believe that the industry has a lot of potential in innovation, and I believe that it's the future, I believe that it is going to be much bigger than the Internet. So you'll see newsletters, you'll see weekly lives, you'll see an increased number of podcasts devoted to different subject topic matters. And I'm really excited.
So to recap, this is the one year anniversary, we've really grown, expanded in ways I thought unimaginable. And now it's time to take it into the next year, which we have lots of stuff, a lot of things planned in store for you, the audience and listeners and whether it's your cup of tea, there's a lot of different going to be a lot of different options and a lot of education and content. So with that, really, really thank you for your time and attention, and we look forward to the next year.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Many thanks again for being here. If you’re new, you can find me online at Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, where I have links to other episodes or links to online resources that will support you on your financial literacy journey. I’ll see you there in on next week’s show. While I bring you thoroughly vetted information on this show regarding a variety of financial topics, I cannot promise you a one size fits all solution. This is why I caution you to continue to learn. Educate yourself and seek professional advice unique to your situation. If you want to talk to me, I welcome it. Please reach out via my website or email at Chris@drchrisloomdphd.com. I read and personally respond to all of my emails. Talk soon!
Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.