Episode #25 – Dr Andrew Threadgold – From Council Estate To Retiring at 46

Podcast Introduction and Mission 0:00

Welcome to the Startup Support Surgery podcast, where we light the entrepreneurial spark in medics and healthcare professionals. Join me, Dr. Jo Watkins, GP, business coach and co-founder of The How People, on a journey to discover where your medical know-how meets the business world. This will help you find some clarity on how to balance work, passions and family, so that you can gain more freedom and control over your life but also continue to help people, which is actually why most of us went into medicine to start with.

Embarking on this entrepreneurial adventure is not easy. It is a roller coaster of emotions, but it's hugely rewarding and exciting in the process. Drawing in on my 20 years of blending medicine and business as a GP, I am here to share experiences, insights and lessons. Expect lively chats, expert interviews and real life stories from medics who have taken their own path. Let's break free from traditional healthcare norms and explore more innovative ways of making a real difference to people's health and wellbeing, along with paving the way for a brighter future for us as healthcare professionals.

Oh, don't miss my free PDF called From Stethoscope to Startup, which is an 11-page guide in the show notes full of practical help and advice. This is your roadmap to kick-starting your journey with us. Enjoy the Show. So I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Andrew Threadgold to the podcast today. From a council estate upbringing to retiring from medicine at 46, Dr Andrew thread goals journey is anything but ordinary. After earning a place at Barts and excelling in surgical and GP training, Andrew became a GP practice partner and clinical director of out of hours organization.

It was a career defining challenge as we will hear a GMC investigation that really sparked his pivot into entrepreneurship. Andrew's going to tell you himself what the last 12 years has looked like.

Andrew Threadgold's Background and Career Pivot 2:04

But in this podcast, Andrew really shares the raw, unfiltered insights on building wealth, overcoming adversity, and finding success beyond the conventional path. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or just curious about what it takes to pivot and thrive, I know that Andrew story will inspire and challenge you in equal measure. And the random fact that Andrew has shared with us today is that he used to be in a band called The Small Feces instead of Small Faces. Even I get that and I'm not even into music.

I can also rebuild and repair car engines, he tells me, having a car lift and a workshop at home. So welcome to the show, Andrew slash musician slash car mechanic, Doctor. Thank you for having me. Oh, thank you so much for coming, spending your time here this afternoon. I know there's going to be a lot that's gonna come up here that is gonna fascinate people. So thank, you thank. Why don't you talk us through it? You've done an awful lot. It's a pretty impressive amount that you've since your retirement at the age of, what did you say, 46. Talk us though it, start wherever you like and fill us in.

And I'll give you the, this is a journey. I hate the word, but it's a path that's been going on for a long time. Um, I started off on the entrepreneurial path, uh, after a GMC investigation, which I'm happy to talk about in as much depth as you want, Which was in 2011, 2012. But from then to now, it has been a a long arduous journey with lots of mindset, work and personal growth and, personal development, which I'm actually properly into. Um, but if you want a bullet points for the last kind of 12 months, what I've done in the 12th months just so that, you know, kind, of where just starting small can lead to in, the, last 12, months of, uh, myself and my business partner bought 40 houses.

two guest houses, a 23-bedroom hotel, three businesses, physiotherapy business, security company in Norwich, the physio businesses in Warwick, in Warrickshire, Kenilworth, The Norton Hotel, which is in Seaton Carew up in the Northeast. And the property value for the last 12 months that we've added to our portfolio is 4.9 million. The revenue that was added through business acquisition just through the businesses is conservatively 1.5 million. So that's kind of the last year. Right. All sounds like you're smashing life.

Yeah. It sounds pretty good. And when I say it, I think, who am I talking about? Cause I look over my shoulder because it shouldn't be someone like me that I'm talking. But I've got the receipts, you know, have done these things. But it all started off because the GMC thought they'd found the new Harold Chipman. And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be where I am now. So, sometimes it takes something like that to put a fire up your ass. Okay. Life changed pretty dramatically after that investigation.

Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? More than happy, because it's every doctor's nightmare, isn't it? Absolutely. I was going to say, we don't want gloss over that. Tell us what happened. So context, there was a couple of moments in my career, my medical career where I realized that the career is not as stable or as secure as you think it is.

GMC Investigation and Medical Career Shock 5:36

The first thing, so I went to Barts in London, I wanted to be a surgeon, and I was going to a career urologist. In order to get on the training program, you have to go where you've got to got on because it's a highly competitive program. So I ended up in the Northeast moving from, at the time I was living in Chigwell, moved up to the northeast to do surgery, got onto a surgical training program, and then after a while, the government introduced online applications and they made us all reapply for our jobs online.

And the people that got the interviews for these jobs weren't even on training programs already. They were paying the how to fill the forms out. And they got the most points and they've got interviews and the rest of us, myself and my other colleagues that were in training jobs, we got scattered around the country. Some went off to be trust SHOs and on training, jobs. People like me ended up moving into general practice training because I was anchored here by this point. Um, and I needed a job. and so, then after six months, the consultants were like, well, where's Mr.

Threadgold and where is Mr Bales and And when they realized that none of us had got interviews, the consultants walked out and the whole thing collapsed. And that was called the MTAS debacle. Some people will have heard of it, medical training and applications service. That was the first attempt at the electronic thing that everybody has to do now. But it was poorly thought out. They call it the lost tribe of of trainees at that point, because we all got disbanded, basically. After six months, they offered us our jobs back, but we'd all disappeared by that time and it was just a waste of time, as then in general practice.

But I thought to myself at the time if this is supposed to be a secure job and something completely out of the blue can just pull the rug from under you, you know, what kind of job is it? And it's a bit like in my current, role these days in business and property, it is a big like somebody selling widgets on Amazon. You've got this amazing widget that you're selling on. Amazon and it goes great guns and you've making fortunes on amazon. And then amazon suddenly notice and think, oh, we can make that widget for cheaper.

So they start making it cheaper, their shadow ban you from amazon and all of a sudden your business has gone in a flash and amazon have took over and they speak. It's an existential threat that. No control over. That's exactly what medicine was like for me at that time. So I should have learned really, but I didn't, and I pursued, I went into general practice, blah, bla bla, qualified, was a partner in a practice. And then Christmas 2011, it was two days before Christmas, day before new year, Christmas Eve, 2011. I, went in to a funeral directors in my lunch break because I was on call at the surgery, um, to do a part one of a cremation form on one.

So no problem. Whilst I was in there, the funeral director came and said, we've got this funeral, cremations tomorrow. The part two doctor was supposed to come last week. He's not answering his phone. Will you do it? So I'm like, okay. So, I had a look at the form, 90 something year old, expected death, end of life pathway in a care home. Straightforward enough, rang the part one doctor to talk to him about it. And he was at a Christmas party, not to be disturbed. rang the part two doctor, phone was switched off, just like they'd told me.

So under pressure, busy Christmas on-call surgery. I thought, okay, so I signed the phone, went back to the surgery, finished my clinic, rang that part 2 doctor again that evening to have a conversation with him, waived the fee, which at the time was about 40 quid, I think, waved the free, rung the geezer and he said, First, he said, I said hi, it's Andrew Threadcold. Just letting you know about this cremation form at this funeral. He said I've heard about you. They've told me that you've been filling my crematon forms out.

It's not on, you can't go around stealing people's cremeton phones. La la la, la. So long kind of difficult conversation. And it ended with him saying, look, It is obviously a mixed kind message, a misunderstanding. Forget about it. I thought, fine, got better things to think about. came back after Christmas into the new year and I got a letter from the GMC that the part two doctor had referred me to the G.M.C. for signing cremation forms without following due process because I hadn't spoken to him and the Part One doctor before signing it, bang to rights.

And then what followed was 18 months of abject misery because the gmc investigated me in a way that I didn't think was possible. They wanted all my bank statements to see how many 40 quids I was making. Cause they thought, you know, who is this fella? I think I'd done 160 quid with the creme forms in two years. So that, they interviewed all, my patients, the interviewed, all of my colleagues. The asked for witness statements from colleagues that work within other departments, like the out of hours.

You know they were asking my trainers when I GP regs, they asked them for character references. It went on and on, and after 18 months, I lost three stone in weight and I rang the MDU actually at one point and was sat in this house. So at the time I'm from a council estate near Manchester. I'd never had any money in my life. I've been a GP partner. I was working out of hours. It had over a hundred grand a year income and I live in the hundred-grand a-year lifestyle. You know, I bought this big house that I'm in now.

Massive bills, had a car on credit. credit card debt because I'd been on holiday and then rang the MDU and the M.D.U. said, you do know Dr. Threadgold that people get struck off for the cremation offenses. And I thought, fucking hell, you know, all I was trying to do was do somebody a favor. So I've kind of, I were scaring adverts, can I be a laborer on a building site? How am I going to pay my bills? Can I learn a trade? You know? I, was absolutely panicked. And in the end, long story short, in then the GMC said to me, right, You've got two choices.

You, we know that you've done something wrong because you have admitted it. Yes, quite right. I did say that I've signed the form before I spoke to the person, but I have explained why. Well, nevermind that, you've got two choices. You can either accept a warning on your GMC website registration for five years, or you can go to a full tribunal. And there are two outcomes if you take it to tribunals. One will be erasure and the other one will nothing whatsoever. It depends if want to fight it or not.

And at that point, after 18 months and three stone in weight and having 18 month where you're practicing second guessing every guy can't handle a complaint. What if someone complains? What, if I do something wrong, you practice so defensive medicine, but you've got to put on this professionalism because the good medical practice booklet

Starting in Property and Early Wins 13:00

from the GMC says that you got through my professional, regardless of the stress that your under. I couldn't do it. I just couldn' fight it any longer. And so I accepted the warning. So I got a warning from the GMC for five years. Nobody ever asked about it, I don't think it ever really made any difference to my clinical practice. But what it did do was if the first lesson wasn't enough, this one really drove it home that I cannot be reliant on something outside of my control for my own prosperity and my family's security.

Yeah. that got me started on this journey that was ended to where I'm currently at. Wow. That is a story. Um, that is incredible. Thank you for sharing that. And, um, I think we need to just focus on the forward motion that that created, which was the, it was just where you were, you know, this. Journey that you've had since, but that, push that experience that awful time for you basically springboarded. the rest, right? So how did you even make that move? I mean, you must have been in a fairly desperate situation at that time.

You know, how do you make the moves that I know need so much? You need to be so brave, quite positive in your outlook. How did that happen when you were feeling at such a low point? Well, there's a great phrase that really resonates with me, and it's that in every adversity lies the seed of a greater benefit. Um, and it was truly genuinely one of those things that it, it is the, the need to do something which got me started. So I looked at a few different things before I ended up doing what I'm doing.

Um. Because you have to something if you just sit and do nothing, It's impossible that you've got to make a start. And then what happens is once you make the first move into something, other avenues open up and taking action. Creates opportunity. And that's, that essentially what happens. So my first port of call, because like we said, like you said to me before we came on med, as medics, we were actually quite capable of a lot of things. Um, so you can turn your hand to lots of stuff if you have to.

So my first thing was, I'm quite an analytical person. I wanted to be a manager of a hedge fund. And I thought I'll do. So I went and I did a qualification in portfolio management and stocks and shares, so proper how to trade properly. Then I ran my own short, long hedge portfolio for a while of stocks, and equities, with a view to then proving my track record to get into a head fund, but when you realize how hard that is, The people on Instagram show you following little candle charts and the graphs going up.

So I put your money and now that's all bollocks, you know, to do it properly. It takes hours and often weeks of research before you can even put one trade on. Um, and I thought, well, this is just as bad as exchanging your time for money somewhere else. Do you, know what I mean? Um. And then I ended up in getting into property. I learned a lot about property and bought a little tiny terraced house. in a place called Darlington, which is in the Northeast of England, had no money because as I've already explained, uh, credit, consumer credit up the wazoo and my father-in-law, um, lent me the purchase price of this house in Darlingston.

And I thought, if this works, this can be the thing that, you know, I can buy into it, but I got to try. So I tried the trade in stuff and it just took too long. property, how hard can it be? Um, so I bought this house in Dalton, 45 grand with my father-in-law's money. I refurbished it myself because I wanted to learn how to do it. How long things took, how much stuff costs. And I spent 12 grand refubishing it on a credit card. Um. The guy came out, put a value on it for a mortgage of 75,000. So I then got a mortgage, 75% of 75,000, which put 56 and a half thousand pounds back in my bank.

Paid my father-in-law back his money, paid me back most of my money that I'd spent on refurbishing it. And then I had a house there that was making me a few hundred quid a month. Um, and I thought, wow, this does work. You know, I mean, it took a long time to get that first property on top of working full time as a partner and 30 hours a week in the out of hours, I was still putting in 30 offers a month until I finally got one person that would buy at the right price, that will tell it the price.

Um, but only, it only takes one. And then you slowly get to know other people around you and then things start to snowball. Eventually it takes a long time. Right. But I think the key thing there is I did a talk the other day about this. The key thing is that what really struck with me as I went through this process from the age of 40 to about 44 was that I always thought I was goal-driven and as doctors we are, we kind of have a goal to get our GCSEs and then our air levels, then get into medical school, and on the training program.

And I thought that was me setting goals and meeting them. But actually what drives me isn't the goals. It's the personal development that occurs when you face challenges. And that's what really drives. Me and I committed daily, at least an hour a day from 2018, 2017, an our every day.

Personal Development and Mindset Growth 18:36

I still do it input into personal, development and personal growth. and the stuff that I've collected along the way is a by-product. of the personal growth and personal development. And that is how I look at it now. I don't go chasing this stuff. It just happens as a, as, a consequence of, the, personal develop, development that I'm pursuing. Oh, I think that's, that, is priceless right there, because I, think the other stuff, the training program, it's imparted on us, isn't it? And there are hoops that we need to jump through rather than goals to be on that trajectory.

And I had a similar experience when we were away for a year, when went traveling with the kids for year. That's when I discovered personal development and growth and podcasts and books. I just became totally invested in how I could improve what I was doing and how wanted things to look for for us as a family and for the kids and work-life balance and all of this stuff just became a complete obsession. So I think I love the fact that you still allocate an hour a day to that because despite your first opening sentence of what you've done in the last 12 months, you're still learning and growing and changing as person.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What's your biggest sort of person? Who's, who's you're sort go to listen in that world? There's only one. There could only be one Jim Rohn is mine. Right. Okay. If, uh, if nobody out there has heard of Jim Rohn, you've probably heard Tony Robbins or Tony Bobbins, as I call him. Um, he was everything it him, Grant Cardone, Mel Robins, all of them have all basically nicked Jim Ron stuff. And they've just paraphrased it for a modern audience, but you can get all Jim Roans lectures and seminars on audible quite often.

A lot of him are on YouTube. Yeah. And even though it's old, and he sadly passed away, I think he passed in the early 2000s. Even though its old stuff, it is still so relevant. It's timeless, the stuff that he talks about. I'm going to link all of that up in show notes. Brilliant. So let's go back a bit. Something I'd like to talk to you about, you talked about job security and medicine. Now this is, we're recording this on the 4th February 2025 and I This last year has been unprecedented in that suddenly general practice has become a very unstable career ground.

You know, I think hospital medicine is altering, but certainly for GPs, it's never been like this before. I know many, many people, locums who have been working regularly are now struggling to find work. How important is it for us as medics to have that kind of ownership and agency outside of the NHS, do you think, in this current climate? It's vital. I mean, there's two things about that, actually. The first thing is that my personal belief is where we are in life today is a direct result of choices that we've made so far in our lives.

So take ownership of your position. as it currently stands, because it's only you that can change it. If you don't change, it, you're at the kind of, like a twig floating on a stream, whatever it is that's floating you, which is the government and the department of health, they can move which way the stream is going quite happily and you've got no say in it so take ownership of your situation right now. The second part actually links into when I was under investigation from the GMC because, because it was a cremation issue.

The GMT made me do a lot of what's called restitution. So as part of along that 18 months process, I had to do slight repeating your history homework over and over again, you had big long essays about why you're a bad boy and why it'll never happen again. And it really was cumbersome. But what happened along that point was I did a lot of research into the Cremation Act and the history of it, and also the Shipman Inquiry,

Property Risks, Fire, and Business Setbacks 23:00

because they obviously thought, ah, cremation form, Harold Shipmen. That must have been a trigger somewhere in the GMC's kind of annals to if someone does a cremation form wrong, they'll get you for it. And when you look at the NHS England documentation around the shipment inquiry, there is, I can't get it off the top of my head, but I remember reading it specifically that the department of health outcome from the shipment inquiry was that, the partnership model of general practice was not fit for purpose and they would actively look to disband it.

And that was when the Shipment Inquiry was done. So all this conspiracy that you hear all the time about general practise, they don't like partners and all of the rest of it and the way the model is flawed. It's not conspiracy. They've actually said it themselves. It just, it's never been published, publicized, but it is there if you take the time to go and find it. So it was a bit of a surprise to me. How long ago was that? The shipment inquiry? Yeah. The shipment inquiry was mid 2000s wasn't it?

So we're talking 20 years. Yeah, okay. Yes, so taking control and ownership of our choices. And I think, you know, the decisions that we make today are going to shape our future. So make them good ones, make make them count, but make, you know, make the thought through, actually giving yourself that time. And I make sure I do that with anybody that I work with, whether it's one-to-one or within the programme. It's, what are you trying to do? What are trying create? You know what do you want for your family?

and building that and going out there and making that happen yourself because nobody's going to do it for you. And the thing that a lot of the time people will want to this but the Dunning-Kruger effect stops them because people have this inbuilt certainty that they know what it takes to something. And the Dunning-Kruger effect, for those that don't know, is the psychological principle where the less you know about something, the more you think you'll know. So it's a bit like people that are training to do exams.

You might think, oh, I just need to a week's revision and I'll pass this exam. But as soon as you start learning, you realize, Jesus, there's so much more I need learn before I can pass it. And then the realization hits. And so when people sit there think, I'd like to do, property, people think I know how to buy property. It's cash or it's a mortgage and people do buy to let. But that's less than 0.1% of property and until you get going and pursue it and take an interest in it, it is only then that it opens up for you.

So a lot of people don't even start because their brain tells them that they already know what the outcome will be, but they have no idea what it entails because they've never tried. Now, that's fascinating because I see that all all the time. And so many people say, God, I had no idea what this world of entrepreneurship, personal brand starting, you know, using your expertise and helping people in a different way. I have no. Idea what that involved until I was. six months, 12 months 18 months sometimes, sometimes two years down the line of, you know, it's that the, the things that we are, we aren't not able to even understand that.

We don't know yet until you step into that world and immerse yourself in that well, that's when the learning starts, isn't it? Like you said, with property. Um, but I see it all the time with all sorts of different businesses. And I think Property sometimes for me feels totally out of range because of the costs involved. We had a holiday-let property, we bought it, and we sold it. It was a very transactional buying and selling because that's all I've ever seen. My parents weren't really into property.

I don't know anything about property." I had conversation episode 15 with a doctor called Dr. Annie Padgett, She did exactly what you did. Exactly the same thing. Somebody else's money, somebody who believes in you and puts their money in your hands and you've gone out there and built this property empire as a result. So that is hugely possible for people. There must be pitfalls along the way. You must have had some horrendous, you know, there must've been bad things happen. I know that this is not going to be a straight line story.

Yes, lots of bad things from the, like the first build that you do. Like I tried myself to renovate a house, you know, account plaster and I can't render, but I've tried it myself. It didn't go very well. So just the risk at the time is relatively small. Um, it's my father-in-law's money that I'm spending, uh, that is at risk, relatively compared to the stuff I deal with these days. Nowadays. last September. So one of the strands to our business is that we do lots of quite big developments. We take a house, take the top off it, add another story, make it amazing inside.

And we also have the region's only truly accessible property properties for people with disabilities to come on holiday. Um, our first one Liberty stays in red car does wonderfully well, all open plan downstairs and then in the upstairs suite, it's for the carers that want to. Or the relatives of those that might be off their legs that are staying downstairs. So we did another one last year, um, big detached bungalow on half an acre of land, took the top off it. The full shooting match was six weeks away from finishing.

Uh, I think I was quarter of a million quid in, into the build at the time. Um, the knock on the door from a, uh, traveling man, shall we say asking if it was for sale? No, it's not for sell. Thanks. Uh. The next day got called back to the house and it. In flames, that the place had been attacked by arson. So then you think, well, i'm insured. So we're barricading recording everything off. They tried to set it on fire another twice afterwards. No CCTV because it's in the middle of the countryside.

Neighbors couldn't see anything. The fire brigade couldn' find anything, forensics couldn find nothing except that they'd also torched my, I had a pickup truck that had gone up in smoke as well. And then The insurance came out and said, oh, well, you've had work done here, have you? Did we know all about this work? Yes, we knew all of it. Oh, Well, We didn't quite know about that, that joist that you put in there. Well that's because that is not new. That's just a replacement of an old one. Yeah.

But you didn' t tell us about, so we didn t fully understand what we were insuring. So we're not going to pay. Um, So there's a 200 quid development with no insurance effectively because the insurance companies The industry standard is that only 35% of all major claims actually get paid, but I didn't know that until I learned this. So the insurance industry is another topic. And then in the end we were deciding, well, what do we do? Do we rebuild it? And we had it on a bridging loan as well. Then it was towards the of the bridge.

It's accruing costs every month and massive fees. If you want to extend the, the Bridge and rebuild. At our own cost, rebuild again, one option. Option two is fight the insurance company. Then they said, yes, you can appeal. But our standard operating procedure is that it's 24 months before we need to reply to you. And you have to mothball the site until we get back to, and at that point we'll let you know whether or not we will pay or. So do we leave it for 24, months costing money every month and the fees and all the rest of it, or do you sell it?

We actually thought because. I really care about this disabled property stuff that we do. And it's fabulous. Really so close to my heart and we thought, right, we'll rebuild it. We'll take the risk. Will increase the security. Cause we, by this point we own a security company. Um, and then I was at a conference in London and the phone rang at four o'clock in the morning. It was the next door neighbor. Sorry to tell you, Andrew, but your bungalow is on fire again.

Advice on Entrepreneurship and Family Balance 31:36

You know, it was such a quiet road until you bought that house. and I thought. As a people person that cares about the people that I interact with, I just couldn't, it felt so bad for, for the, the neighbor D so we decided to sell it. So we stuck it in an auction. We got the money that we wanted for it within six hours. Um, The day before it completed, we were in, um, taking the remainder of our, of, our building gear out and a transit van full of Irish fellas turned up. And they'd bought it So the police came and said, it was probably the traveling men that set it on fire.

This is just speculation. No evidence for this. I'm just telling you what the. The police said it's probably travelers that caused the fire because they identify a site that they like. They don't want the building. Um, they will usually arson is the usual mo, um, and then they'll come out of the woodwork and buy it in cash cheaper because it's cheaper for them to acquire it that way. And that's a common way things happen. So that was a big kick in the balls. If you want to know that there's been ups and downs.

Yeah, right. That's a big kick in the balls. And this is the ups and downs of entrepreneurship on a massive scale. Huge amounts of money, lots of stress. These things happen, when you're running businesses like this. This is what happens. You've got to be able to navigate those things, just like you navigated that really difficult situation at the end of your medical career, what would you say to somebody, you know, maybe somebody out there, not necessarily in property, but somebody that's interested in entrepreneurship and what it takes.

Um, You know what, would say somebody maybe who's still in the day job, um, that curious about what really takes to do what you've done. Yeah. I wouldn't, I would want anybody to be put off by that story. It's, Um. What happens is that it's about stretching yourself. But you need to start small. So start smaller and slowly take calculated steps to make sure that each move that you make is slightly bigger than the last. And then what you find is that, you'll have problems along the way. Every single thing that do encounters challenges.

The challenges make you feel uncomfortable and you learn how to manage them. Then you get to the point where I'm at now, And the stuff that used to challenge me when I started is now day-to-day stuff. It doesn't really register, but there is still stuff, that really affects me like that episode particularly affected me. Um, and I was really, it felt quite a bit like back in the GMC that actually, because it was such a significant impact on the way I felt personally, cause I feel responsible for the people around that building and it, was my fault.

I bought that house and that had happened to it and I felt personally responsible. So, but you know, as I get bigger and if we scale and keep scaling or whatever, there's going to be even worse challenges that come up. But the stuff like the fire will be a smaller problem another two or three years down the line. And you just grow into it. It's a process and it's supposed to. Yeah. And it's the same with anything, isn't it? In normal life, we have these challenges. For example, when the kids are born and you have your first baby and your like, oh my God, how do I look after this thing?

And how did I get any sleep ever again in my whole life? And then you know, you have your second and it's like, oh, this is a bit easier than I thought. And, so it, it so, It's, navigating those things, stretching yourself, putting yourself out of your comfort zone and understanding that those challenges are going to help you grow in the, in long run, aren't they as well? Are you a family man? Yeah, I've got a wife and two kids and three dogs and 3 cats. Amazing. So how about those boundaries? We often, so many of the people I have interviewed have been women, women in business and juggling with families.

You know, I know that business can seep into every little bit of your being and your pores and you're house and family. How do you manage your boundaries, is it something you've always been good at? Is it's something that you learned? Um, it is something your not good, you can be as honest as you like. It's an evolving process, if you want the honest answer. When you start, everyone's kind of enthused and even the people around you are enthused. Your colleagues at work, they'll be like, oh, look at Andrew and his cute little hobby.

And everybody loves it when someone, go on, have a go. There's that attitude when you started something. My wife was not into property at all when we started. That first little house that I mentioned, she couldn't really stand it. And I thought, well, we've got to do something because I can't do this without my wife. So I had some massive difficulty before we, before even the GMC in my personal life. And if it wasn't for my, my life, I would have, you know, credit, whatever I'm doing, a credit to her because she was absolutely my rock.

So I thought, I'm not going to be able to do this without my wife's support. How can we do that? So we looked into, and I needed to get out of medicine pronto tonto, as I've explained and 300 quid a month from a buy to let, how many of them are you going need to replace 100 grand a year? Do you know what I mean? holiday lets. So predominantly we do service accommodation. That was the bedrock of what got me out of medicine before the explosion into what we did these days. And I said to her, look, let's get you on some interior design courses.

Let's got you involved. Oh, that's what it took. It took Nicola to be involved and be creative and she does all the interior design for all our stuff now. And as we've scaled and the cashflow has got bigger Nicolai retired from midwifery, she's no longer in the NHS. She does one day a week as a lecturer at the local university. The rest of the time she is involved in guest communication, managing the cleaning teams. sometimes managing the build teams when I'm off in Norwich looking after that business down there.

And she's, and we're always kind of, it's a fluid, there's no kind five o'clock cutoff.

Closing Reflections and Podcast Outro 38:00

You can't do that in business. But it is a real collaboration between me and Nicola. If I ever come up with a crazy idea that I'll go and do something else, she always says, just go for it. I've always said behind every good man is pushy woman. I don't mean it like that, but I'm not misogynistic in any way, I really wouldn't be doing what I do without Nicola. She sounds brilliant, absolutely brilliant. You've got to do this together, haven't you? That's what it takes. It sounds like you're a great team.

I've loved everything you've shared. These are really, really special insights and really vulnerable stories that you shared and I appreciate that today. Thank you so much. And this is actually the first time we've had a proper conversation. So I love these ones. It was exactly the same with Annie. I found her. We jumped on a call and recorded it and we have done exactly same here today. Thank You Andrew so very much! You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. Transitioning from medicine to business is not easy.

It's about adapting our skills while embracing the unknowns of entrepreneurship. it can be nerve wracking but remember you are not alone on this journey. Please feel free to reach out to me via direct message on LinkedIn or Instagram or just shoot me an email at joe at bendylegs.com for support and don't forget to grab the free PDF from the show notes from stethoscope to startup, which is your go-to guide and resource for diving into entrepreneurship. Many thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time.

Thanks for spending your precious time with me. This has been a Monkey Pants Productions Podcast.