02: A Conversation with Military Dentist, Dr. Emma Schwartz

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Episode 02: A Conversation with Military Dentist, Dr. Emma Schwartz

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST EPISODE 02.

Speakers: DP Harris, DDS & Emma Schultz, DDS

DP: Today on the show, we have Emma, a military dentist and recent grad, who is going to be deployed to Kuwait May, 2021. Welcome to the show, Emma, lucky to have you! What’s up?!

Emma: Hi! Thank you so much for having me here, D!

DP: Disclaimer, Emma and I worked together in New York. She was my chief-of-staff. This is when she was a dental assistant and she is now a dentist.

Emma: This is over eight years ago.

DP: Oh my gosh! We’re so grown up now!

Emma: I know a lot has happened since then.

DP: Tell me more about your choice in dental school. You decided last minute to change programs.

Emma: I got into U Penn, Nova and NYU, and I was already in New York. I had lived in New York for four years already. I had friends, I had my network there and I wasn’t ready to make the change into the suburb of Ft. Lauderdale nor into Philadelphia yet. I was getting ready to make the move back to Florida, but something in me didn’t want to miss out on the opportunities of continuing to meet artists and just seeing passion in the street. I really enjoyed that. And there is nothing like New York!

DP: So right now you’re not a business owner. You are in the military.

Emma: Yes, I’m in the military. I did it to pay off school loans.

DP: That’s a huge win. Most of us will never experience what it’s like to be in the military and that sense of cohesion.

Emma: We’re all going through the same stuff, the same annoying tasks and nobody is complaining about it. I mean, they kind of complain under their breath, but they’re more like, “yeah, give me more of it.”

It’s great attitude!

DP: I think the last example might’ve been your classmates

Emma: Oh, it’s very similar to dental school!

Everything that, we, as dental students experience in dental school. Dentists will always be able to understand other dentists. That’s how I felt. I don’t know how it is among associates and owners. Do owners actually feel what associates feel?

DP: That’s a really good question. I have been able to find some owners very relatable, especially when it comes to clinical philosophies and clinical practice. The most fun I’ve had at work is when it was more of a collaboration with the owner. And, those are really special people. I can’t really speak for owners since I’ve been a career-long associate, but I will definitely get back to you on that.

That’s for sure.

We know that you survived admissions and graduation but let’s go back to your introduction to dentistry. When did you decide this was something you wanted to pursue and something you wanted to look into?

Emma: I was a cocktail server in chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I, was serving drinks one week, there was a woman , And she was like, “yeah, this is a great career. It’s the best career ever. You’ve got big teeth. You could be a great dentist.” And I was like, huh . Think about that. I mean, I majored in psychology.

And then when I came to New York, I shadowed, and they were like,

“A lot of times they’re sitting back, they ended up telling me that they’re going through a divorce, or stomach cancer, or some life changing experience. And then you become their psychologist in a way.”

DP: What do you think motivates you?

Emma: That is a good question.

I don’t know, honestly, what motivates you?

So I have people, I know. Friends I know. And if you were to ask that question to them, they’d say money, money motivates them. I can’t say that motivates me.

Someone could say like, “Oh, serving others, full wholeheartedly,” but I can’t say that motivates me either. So somewhere in the balance between those two, I’d say,

DP: That’s just real talk. To answer your question. What motivates me?

I really enjoy the process of something. The outcome is great. Don’t get me wrong, but I really, really, really love almost to the point of obsessing over the process. Clinically, I love that in dentistry, which step builds on itself, starting with just local anesthetic. That’s really at the core of my motivation. Financially though, I, I was very financially illiterate when I graduated dental school. Money wasn’t something that we discussed at home. It was just something that my mom managed.

We didn’t discuss budgeting. We didn’t discuss affordability. Savings were discussed but nothing like high yield savings accounts, or interest. When I made the decision to invest in myself in the form of a very expensive education, I was ill- equipped to manage my personal finances during school.

And soon after dental school, especially once I started to earn a living as a dentist and meet my financial obligations of repaying back my student loans. What’s been your financial literacy growing up or even now?

Emma: It didn’t hit me how little I knew until I started asking others, I was in credit card debt up to $10K.

And I brought it up a little bit to a friend and my friend said, “Oh, that’s not good.” And to me that was like, “wait, what?” That’s not normal. And in my head, I was like, “Oh my God.” I’ve been lied to this whole time.” Here’s my, dad’s saying, “yeah. It’s okay. Just put it on the credit card, out of sight, out of mind, focus on school.” And like, I wrapped up so much to the point of $10K, and there was no plan. It was just a tomorrow problem. How come I didn’t know that was an issue?

it’s not the way to do things. Everyone pays it off every month.

So then I payed it all off, and my mindset is completely against debt now I’m learning about investing. So it’s urgent to figure out how to invest.

DP: You mentioned learning to manage credit card debt, did that have an influence on you choosing to go the military route to fund your education as opposed to taking out the traditional student loans?

Emma: Yeah. When I told my parents Hey, I think I’m going to go into dentistry. They were like, Oh, how are you going to pay for that? And I said, I don’t know. They’re like, well, join the military. They’ll pay for it. And probably give you a $20K signup bonus. So I went straight to Army and then, went through the whole process. It was a huge application. and then I got in, so I got the scholarship.

DP: Congratulations-that’s a huge win!

It’s not just an automatic. You don’t just sign up and they accept you. It’s an actual application process. Do you think that coming from a military family, it was just more accessible of an idea versus someone coming from a different background?

Emma: Absolutely! The mentality of it, when you come from a military town, is just so pro, it’s so supportive of it, they’re just all very happy and proud of you when you do something like that.

DP: So this really ties in and to the military investing in you, you’re investing in yourself and you having access to certain resources so that you can continue to invest. The fact that as a recent grad, you calculated that you can invest around $4,000- $5,000 a month I think that’s really incredible! That’s a huge win, that’s a huge win! So tell me more about your strategy to put into place some processes before you are deployed Kuwait in May of 2021?

Emma: I still don’t know. I am still trying to figure it out.

I want to just sit down with someone one on one and just talk about it.

DP: Yeah. When we graduate dental school, all of a sudden, we go from having a relatively predictable schedule, relatively predictable situation. The curriculum is laid out for the next four years. If you get into a good living situation, you can be there for three to four years.

Emma: You’re right.

DP: So there’s not a lot of variability for us to navigate, but then when we graduate, like you said, it’s like you have a fidelity account, you have different kinds of insurances to navigate, different pay structures. In your case, deployment changes taxes and salary. Even if you did start with a plan you’ll have to iterate to adjust for those changes in your career or different periods in your life.

Emma: Yeah.

DP: Now we’re left to adult

Emma: Right, it’s kind of hard if you don’t have a mentor who has been through it.

DP: And going back to what you said earlier that sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know what accounts to open, through what services, what interest rates to look into, to manage our debt and our income.

Emma: Yes. I think YouTube has been the best resource for me, but also the most dangerous. YouTube is great. if you get the right resources, but it can be so detrimental, especially to a community, if you get the wrong resources.

DP: Or you don’t question the origin of the information or you don’t question if it applies to you and you just do as you see versus learn/question/and apply best to your situation. I think that YouTube is a great resource, when used efficiently and productively.

Emma: The main thing is just to try to find as much evidence as you can in anything and everything. “BMW’s are a money pit,” you gotta look that up, fact check it. Low and behold, Yes, it is!

DP: I would agree to that. That’s why I don’t drive one anymore. That’s probably the biggest money mistake that I made, was buying a fancy car as a recent grad. I moved from a high cost of living area to a lower cost of living area. So I had this perception that because my other expenses were lower, I could afford a slightly higher transportation fund. And so I did that.

Emma: What car did you get?

DP: I had a Beamer. I think I drove it for three months and then I got hit and that repairs were so expensive.

Emma: How much was the car that you bought and was it new?

DP: No, it wasn’t new. It was used and I don’t remember how much it was, but I think it was like a $35,000 car, which is a lot of money. And knowing what I know now, I would’ve been just as happy in a Honda Accord. And I really wonder what $35,000, nine years ago would be today if I had invested that money.

Emma: Now it’s great. Once you learn about investing and compounding interests, your mind gets blown.

And then when you think of it like that, you’re like, “I don’t want to buy this hotel night because I could just invest that money.”

And then it makes living so much harder because now you don’t want to spend money. You just want to only invest.

DP: You know my husband and I have very ambitious goals to retire early and to make work optional.

But we have this ongoing conversation that it has to be worth it for the present day, because what if something happens to your savings and investments. And what do you have to show for at that point? All you have to show for is your experiences and how you’ve lived your life.

So even though we have these financial goals, we are still very mindful of our day-to-day happiness and contentment and fulfillment. And we just approach it as, you know, within reason.

Emma: That’s amazing.

DP: Oh, I just, I credit it to him, my husband is very financially literate. And so I’ve just benefited from being elevated in the conversation. I also feel very lucky that he includes me in the conversation. if anything, he’s like, “you need to learn this because it’s a joint decision and one that we have to make together. So show up, show up ready.” it’s a big incentive.

It’s a strong motivation to gain literacy so that I can participate in my own family’s financial decisions, which I didn’t do growing up. I didn’t do that for 30 years. And so it’s been 30 years in the making. It’s about time that I learned and showed up ready.

Emma: My brother just bought a house, he’s five years younger than me. And my gut feeling about it is, Oh man. I don’t know enough to make such a big purchase like that, but they are so emotionally happy about it, which I’m happy for them. But at the same time, I’m like, Oh man, I don’t know if they made a good decision or not.

I don’t know if they’re being impulsive or not.

DP: I do think that we all have a very emotional relationship to money and accumulation, and debt. You and I can speak to knowing debt in the form of credit card, in the form of student loans, and now having some debt aversion At some point, we are going to invest in a home, if we’re gonna invest in a practice, it’s probably going to come with some debt.

And so I think we’re going to have to just have a better understanding of the numbers in order to feel more comfortable with debt, as opposed to having this aversion to it, that might keep us from other opportunities like a home purchase or the purchase of a practice or partnership.

What we need is to come up with an individualized plan to tackle these goals because everybody’s different, everybody’s relationship with money is so different. And for some of us, it takes some hard knocks to even begin to understand what our relationship with money is.

And I just don’t hear women talk about it.

Emma: Absolutely.

DP: In my culture, it was almost disrespectful to discuss money. And so in college, most of my friends were in business, and so bright and they were great resources, but because I had been cultured to not ask I didn’t tap into those resources. And they’re very smart, kind, helpful humans that would have loved to share with me their expertise, even if we’re just in our early twenties, figuring out college, but I’m confident that they we’re making smarter financial decisions than I was.

And I just didn’t think to even ask

Emma: That’s an idea, right? Don’t talk at the dinner table about finance, money, or religion.

But if you ask yourself why not money? You know, it might be because maybe someone at the table might not be going through good investing decisions, or maybe they’re going through a tough time with money, and I think everyone can learn from someone.

DP: I think there’s this idea that, as a society, we’re very comparative. We’re trying to gauge where we rank. I mean, in dental school, it’s a thing your class rank, and in certain companies, and certain DSOs, and certain offices, you’re ranked based on how much you produce.

There’s always this ranking system.

Emma: In competition, like status, like where you stack. In the military, they compete against physical score. How well you do at the, I think at the gyms, it shows who has the highest and the best.

DP: Oh yeah. Oh, I’m sure. Especially in a culture where physicality matters, you know, and it’s a source of pride.

And so I think the reason why it’s usually frowned upon to discuss money it’s because there’s always going to be someone making more than you and you may be making more than somebody else. And it’s just fine tuning the tone and the voice of that conversation.

So that it’s not a humble brag. You’re not flexing. You’re not putting someone else down. You’re being considerate. You’re being inclusive. You’re self-deprecating enough. But you’re not self-humiliating. I think it’s just a very complicated conversation to fine tune. And I think that’s why we just tend to avoid it,

Emma: And if you’re making so much or so little, you probably don’t want to bring up money. If you feel like you’re the one who’s making more than everyone else.

DP: Or you feel like you’re the one that should be making more based on how you hear others talk about money.

But you also don’t know their lives. You don’t know if they’re just overstretching themselves.

If they’re getting help from their parents. if they have some sort of fund that they can tap into, as opposed to what they’re actually earning on their own, it’s just so complicated. The optics, and display of wealth. It’s just a very complicated, cultural, multilayered phenomenon.

Emma: Especially in the city, I had a roommate, we went to Europe. Well, apparently, it’s very important in her social circle to have this bag and to showcase for it. I didn’t really come with that culture. I’ve never been a part of that culture of, okay, maybe I have without knowing… I combat with this all the time.

DP: I have to confess, I used to be into shoes and jackets.

And then when I moved to Boston for school, it all got shipped, and it all got lost.

Emma: Oh no!

DP: That really was a big lesson on impermanence

Emma: Oh my goodness!

I actually did look up that Goyard bag that she bought and it’s actually $1,500.

She bought it for a deal for $900!

DP: So, I know that you have a meeting coming with a personal advisor. What are your highest priority questions for her?

Emma: How do I best manage for taxes? I’m going to have to start saving for taxes. I have an idea of how much I need to save. And investments.

DP: Those are two big ones

Emma: I don’t know what I don’t know. What questions do you think I should ask?

DP: I think it starts with tracking, just knowing what’s coming in and what’s been going out. And then having an exit strategy for our profession. I think you and I talked about this along these terms before, and that like, if, you were a startup and you had this company at its early stages, in our case early career, and if you were asking for VC funding, there’s going to be the question of what’s the exit strategy.

And in our case as professionals it’s financial independence. What can I do so that I have more choices, professionally? Let’s say you are in a situation where you want to leave the military after two or three years instead of after four, will that be affordable?

Will that even be an option? if I were meeting with a financial advisor as a recent grad, I would ask the questions to draw her expertise as to how to set me up so that I have more choices at different stages in my profession.

Emma: That’s a great idea because I never considered leaving the military. I always thought I had to do it for four years. Probably even just talking about this idea, it makes me feel like I’m going AWOL, but honestly.

DP: You’re in the military. The military is great at logistics and planning.

Emma: Yeah.

DP: This is right up your ally. I think you got this.

Emma: Yep.

Yeah. So living in San Francisco, have you guys invested in the house?

DP: No, that’s a good question. Uh, we looked into home purchases when we moved here, and we went as far as putting in offers.

And then when they came back asking for more money, we got cold feet. And then that’s when we realized that we hadn’t lived here long enough to feel invested in staying here, that we hadn’t been at our jobs long enough to know if we liked it. And at that time, we didn’t have any family living here. Financially, it’s just such a high cost of living area that the numbers didn’t make sense to us considering our life situation, that we were not here long-term.

For some people it’s financially and emotionally worth it. But it’s, it’s a different financial picture when you do that.

And, the grass is not always, greener. It’s just different. But I think if, if you have your goals in mind, then you’re not as easily swayed.

Emma: Exactly.

DP: Keeping up with the Joneses type of mentality. And I think that also goes for our profession. it’s so easy to go on a social platform and see people and have this perception that they’re just killing it. You know, they’re doing all these anterior cases, are dropping all these implants, but you just have to remind yourself that you really don’t know their life.

You don’t know if they’re happy or you don’t know if that’s the one case that they’ve done in the last six months. I think it’s just important to, like you’ve said in other conversations, to know yourself, have your goals in mind and then iterate, make adjustments as your life changes, as your priorities change, but based on sound mind and body, versus fear/uncertainty or doubt, or FOMO.

Emma: 0Yeah.

DP: Those are dangerous.

Emma: Do you think a lot of dentists have, it’s almost like dentist jealous

feelings via social media of other dentists?

DP: I think it just depends where they are mentally, just like in dental school. If you have this understanding that you’re doing your best, that you can have it all, just not all at the same time, I think it helps you keep perspective.

I’ve had to adjust my focus with every relocation.

For example, when, when we were living in Colorado, my focus was really learning a fee-for-service model from these older clinicians that I worked with. And they were Pankey doctors, so I paid the big bucks and did the CE and so forth. When we were in New York and I was at an HIV/AIDS clinic in Harlem- it’s a totally different education. But I knew there was something to learn from there. Whether it’s because their medical doctor’s on the floor below, learning about antiretrovirals , learning about just the humanity that’s involved in someone finding out they have HIV and they tell you before they’ve told their partner or their family.

Emma: Wow.

DP: There’s a real value in experiences, whether or not you feel like it’s worthy of the ‘gram. And I think that’s, something that I, I want to encourage people listening- to take real stock of their experiences. And come to terms with how do you get something from each opportunity in the form of career capital?

This show is geared towards early career dentists, and it’s important that early in our careers we understand that- yes, money is important, but gaining career capital and building career capital in the form of experiences can be priceless.

So, I’ve just had to adapt almost out of necessity because of the frequent relocations. And so, every time we land in a new city: what are my opportunities? What can I learn from these different practice settings or these different owner doctors or these different business models? Okay, let’s go for it. And then you just gotta show up mentally prepared, it’s almost like you have pre-set settings towards what you’re going to focus on, and then you fine tune as, as your experiences go on.

Emma: That’s pretty good.

It sounds like you’re motivated by learning then.

DP: I, yeah. You know, I, I didn’t have a lot of access to education as a little kid. I think neglected is kind of an understatement.

Emma: Wow. Really?

That in itself is a strong word.

DP: Yeah. Between the ages of zero to seven, almost eight years old… no one, no one was minding if I had breakfast, if I showed up at school. If I showered, if I brushed my teeth, no one was minding me. Luckily my sister who’s four years older, looked after me as best as she could. And she’s the reason why we survived and…

Emma: That’s hardcore.

That’s really hardcore.

DP: And then when we moved here, that’s when I actually learned my birthday. When we immigrated and I had to fill out my own immigration forms.

And I had to ask my mom, when was my birthday. And that’s how I found out my birthday.

Emma: How old were you?

DP: It was a summer. I was seven years old at summer and I was turning eight that next winter and…

Emma: Wow…

DP: I didn’t speak any English. And so they gave me a math placement exam to determine what grade I was going to go into. And age-wise I was supposed to go into third grade, but I had randomly, passively, learned math when my sister had to learn it. So, I placed into fourth grade. Totally randomly, totally randomly. I started school later than everybody else. I showed up in the wrong uniform. I had a unibrow!

Emma: A little mini Frida Kahlo!

DP: That’s what my sister would call me when, when she would get mad at me. “Mom, she’s calling me Frida.” “Don’t call your sister Friday.”

Emma: That’s hilarious.

DP: But that was my introduction to education.

When we moved to the States and all of a sudden there was structure, there was a library within the school and I could just access all the books I wanted and it got to the point that I would tell my mom that school got out an hour later, just so I would have an hour of uninterrupted reading time by myself because it was this whole other world that I had watched on TV, but had not been my life. I didn’t have, I literally did not have that type of access to even physical books. So…

Emma: Wow…

DP: I think that’s where my love of, of learning comes from, and just observing and questioning things.

Emma: Wow. That’s great!

DP: Thank you. Where do you think your love of learning comes from?

Emma: Oh, my God. I was the first grandchild on my dad’s side of the family. And so

ever since I was growing up, they’d like put their hand on my head and like shake it. But like in a, in a way to kind of like, perpetuate this idea that I had to be smart and that, ingrained in me.

There’s this thing in psychology called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Have you ever heard about that?

DP: I am familiar with the expression, but I’m not sure I have ever really read into the actual definition or concept.

Emma: So, someone else is predicting something upon you, and then you end up doing behaviors that align to fulfill their belief about you.

DP: I’ve witnessed friends take this on in a positive light. I think I do the opposite. And an example of that was, in high school, I was a pretty good athlete, my glory days.

Now I’m a jogger, but I remember, my high school coach asking me where I wanted to go to college and I wanted to go to Stanford because in the school district where I ran all the top runners would go to Stanford. And so, I had this idea that, well, I’m a good runner. This is where I’m going to go.

And I was a good student with good grades. And so that was my plan, compete, be a good student and go to Stanford. And so, when I told my high school coach that I want to go to Stanford, gosh, I still remember this. Um, he said, well, you need a plan B because kids like you don’t go to Stanford kids like you don’t go to those types of schools. And the reason why that stuck with me it’s because I believed him, and I didn’t even apply.

Emma: Oh, that is the worst thing ever, but it’s so true, but it’s. Oh, my God that breaks my heart. What?

I could curse this man out for hours. Can I curse him

out? I’m going to cry. (Curses — Expletives under conga beat)

DP: Oh my gosh. I’m going to have to put an explicit sign on this one.

Emma: God! Oh my God! That is the worst thing you could do to a kid- to set the expectations so low like that! That is terrible! First generation kid, like you, would spend an hour extra in the library.

Oh my God!

DP: But you know why I trusted him? I trusted him because at this point, I was, I was starting sophomore year and everything he had predicted about my performance as a runner had come true.

And so, he would plant the seed that I could run the certain time and I would hit it, I would totally hit it, you know. At this point, here’s this coach, an authority figure, someone that I see as smart and who has accurately predicted all this success, I interpreted it to be insights into my abilities and my potential. And so when he told me, “kids like you don’t, don’t go to Stanford, kids like you don’t go to those types of schools.” I, I believed him because he had been right about everything else. And knowing what I know now I should have just applied. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten in-who cares. I at least would have tried.

That relationship of mentorship, visibility authority, we just don’t know the power that somebody will have over your decisions. It’s so important to me, to represent different ideas of success in our profession because everybody’s life is different.

You just don’t know why someone hasn’t converted from associate to owner, but that doesn’t mean they should feel any less successful.

It was really important for me to have you on the show. Specially as the first guest, because I think it’s really important for women to consider the options of funding their education in a feasible way. And if the military scholarship is something that resonates with someone, I at least wanted to provide a female voice to speak of that experience, to inspire someone to at least apply. They may not get it. They may decide it’s not for them, but at least they gave themselves the option.

They looked into it, they educated themselves about the feasibility, the cultural obligations, and then go from there.

Absolutely.

It was such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We’re going to follow up with you and see how things go with financial advisor before your deployment to Kuwait.

Emma: Cool! Thanks! Thank you for having me!

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