State of the Weblog 2023

By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder

Since WCI started in 2011, now we have printed a State of the Weblog every January reporting on our progress towards our targets. Because the enterprise has expanded through the years, these posts have grow to be lengthier. This 12 months we will attempt to do what took >6,300 phrases final 12 months in fewer than 3,000.

Thank You!

First, we wish to thank each one among you readers, listeners, viewers, college students, attendees, and group members. With out you, there isn’t any WCI. YOU are the white coat buyers. We love listening to about your successes and attempting that can assist you via your challenges. There are actually a whole bunch of hundreds of you on the market, serving to one another to have profitable private, skilled, and monetary lives. You deserve a spherical of applause. On a private observe: with out you, Katie and I might have by no means had this unbelievable journey that WCI has been in our lives for greater than a decade. We really imagine within the Imaginative and prescient and the Mission of The White Coat Investor.

The Imaginative and prescient of The White Coat Investor

“To function probably the most trusted, authoritative, and helpful useful resource for monetary info and companies

for medical doctors and different excessive earners.”

The Mission of The White Coat Investor

“To strengthen and assist The White Coat Investor group on the trail to monetary success by

#1 Offering participating, helpful, and correct content material and 

#2 Connecting white coat buyers with best-in-class monetary sources

to empower the creation of significant private {and professional} lives.”

We hope that WCI will dwell on for a few years after we’re achieved working right here, every time that may be.

2022 Accomplishments and Notable Occasions

We’ll go class by class.

The Weblog

Yr 12. We’re nonetheless right here. I am nonetheless writing my ordinary variety of weblog posts annually (about 100). It is really my favourite a part of working at WCI. Nonetheless, that is solely a tiny a part of the story nowadays. We now have 2,953 printed items on the positioning, a rise of 498 (20%!) Suffice it to say, extra WCI written content material was produced in 2022 than in any prior 12 months. So who’s writing the items that I am not? White coat buyers, that is who. They embrace individuals like WCI Community companions Leif Dahleen (The Doctor on FIRE) and Peter Kim (Passive Revenue MD). They embrace individuals like WCI Ambassador Disha Spath and WCI Content material Director Josh Katzowitz. They embrace columnists like:

They embrace paid contributors like:

• TJ Porter
• Jamie Johnson
• Stacey Ritzen
• Dan Miller
• Joe Dyton
• Eric Rosenberg
• Phil West

Plus, there have been one other 50 or so visitor posts this 12 months from every kind of members of The White Coat Investor group, starting from docs to monetary advisors. Not counting the WCI Discussion board, we had 8.63 million pageviews (a 16% enhance) from 3.46 million people (a 34% enhance). Mixed with the Discussion board, now we have had 82.9 million pageviews from 18.3 million people since we began this in 2011. That is notably spectacular on condition that there are solely about 1 million medical doctors within the US. We’ve got had greater than 100,000 permitted feedback on the positioning. I’ve learn each one among them, and so far as I do know, answered each one among your emails (which can very properly be the same quantity!). The preferred publish this 12 months (and of all time with 1 million web page views) was the Backdoor Roth IRA Tutorial, and the preferred publish that was written this 12 months was a visitor publish by Dr. Taylor Christensen titled The Most cost-effective Option to Personal a Automobile.

The Newsletters

We ship out loads of emails. Most of those are electronic mail copies of the day by day weblog posts (virtually 30,000 of you get these) or an occasional advertising and marketing publish (“Hey, Purchase Our New Course” or “Come to WCICON!”). However there are two particular emails that exit each month—the WCI Publication began in 2012 and the WCI Actual Property Alternatives Publication began in 2020. We do not wish to ship you emails that you don’t need, so we’re really fairly ruthless about these electronic mail lists. If you happen to do not open emails from us for a number of months, we ship you a collection of three emails asking if you happen to really need them. If you happen to do not click on on a hyperlink in these emails, you are faraway from the checklist. This helps maintain the “open price” excessive (80%+ for the e-newsletter) and ensures emails get delivered into white coat investor electronic mail packing containers. Regardless of that draconian coverage (and plenty of people that unsubscribed as a result of, heaven forbid, we invited them to return to our convention), we nonetheless noticed the WCI Publication checklist develop to 61,284 (a ten% enhance) and the Actual Property Publication develop to 12,488 (a 39% enhance). By the best way, you’ll be able to subscribe to all of our electronic mail lists right here.

The Podcasts

We’ve got now put out 393 White Coat Investor and Milestones to Millionaire podcasts, a rise of 104 (two per week) from final 12 months. We had 7.59 million downloads this 12 months (an 82% enhance), and we’re averaging 45,565 downloads per episode. We’ve got had 18.4 million all-time downloads. We’ve got had 2,119 evaluations averaging 4.8 stars, and we rank No. 37 for investing podcasts on Apple.

The Videocast

The WCI YouTube channel continues to develop, with 331 extra movies printed this 12 months for a complete of 985 (a 51% enhance). We now have 20,500 subscribers (a 42% enhance), and now we have had over 1 million views of our movies—together with 416,000 in 2022, a 19% enhance from the prior 12 months.

WCI Communities

The WCI Discussion board is now over seven years outdated and boasts 9,981 customers (a 4.8% enhance) who posted 4,276 new threads this 12 months, with 60,222 replies on these threads. Most customers, after all, are doing neither, simply lurking within the background. They’d 4.01 million pageviews by 311,378 people. That is a lower from final 12 months, sadly. On-line boards are too boomer, I suppose (and Google now hates boards). All of the younger of us choose subreddits now. Because of the volunteer moderators: ACN, canadianoutlaw, CordMcNally, Doc Partner, Hank, Hatton, ibadmin, jfoxcpacfp, Jim, Kamban, Larry Ragman, and MPMD.

The WCI subreddit now has 27,200 members (a 39% enhance) with greater than 1.8 million pageviews (a 23% enhance). Because of the volunteer moderators there, RadOncDoc and DrPayItBack.

The WCI Fb group all the time has one thing attention-grabbing being mentioned. No shock when there are 85,900 members there (a 25% enhance). They posted 8,974 posts (0% enhance) with 148,127 feedback (a ten% enhance) and 402,439 reactions (a 17% enhance). That is loads of liking happening. Or possibly disliking. Because of the volunteer moderators there (Donna White, Greg Morgan, Invoice Younger, Paula Archer, Andrew Parada, and Diem Ephee) for a really tough job. On a much less quantitative observe, the tone and content material of the group dramatically improved during the last 12 months so thanks to each moderators and members for that.

To summarize the communities, now we have this candy report we take a look at every month in our group conferences.

Social Media

We’ve got tried very exhausting this 12 months to not simply recruit individuals to the web site and podcast on social media however to truly present them with helpful content material on every platform to spice up their monetary literacy. Based mostly on the expansion seen, it appears to be a profitable effort. As an alternative of textual content, let’s simply publish the cool chart all of us take a look at. Try that TikTok development price! That is what occurs whenever you begin with a really low quantity.

Thanks to our followers for following/liking/pinning/sharing WCI on social media. It actually does assist unfold the message.

Books

Guess what? All of our books have been up to date, rewritten, and made prettier in the previous couple of months. Writing books during the last decade has been a really attention-grabbing research of pronouns. Within the unique e-book, we used the “common he.” We began getting increasingly more complaints about that through the years (“Do not you realize there are girls medical doctors?”). When the second e-book got here round, the then-recommended model was to make use of both she or he, so we determined to simply use all female pronouns to offset the primary e-book. However for the third and fourth books, the now present model was to not use any singular pronouns. We have now rewritten all the books in that style (together with extra substantial updates). We do not name them “second editions,” however they beautiful a lot are. So, do not be shocked if a not too long ago bought copy of the unique is not precisely just like the one to procure years in the past. The advantages of self-publishing, I suppose.

• The White Coat Investor: A Physician’s Information to Private Finance and Investing (2014) bought 8,443 copies, a 13% lower. It is nonetheless #6 in its class and has 2,525 evaluations, 94% of that are 4 or 5 stars.
• The White Coat Investor’s Monetary Boot Camp: A 12-Step Excessive-Yield Information to Deliver Your Funds As much as Velocity (2019) bought 3,731 copies, a 23% lower. It ranks #20 in its class.
• The White Coat Investor’s Information for College students: How Medical and Dental College students Can Safe Their Monetary Future (2021) bought 870 copies (plus the tens of hundreds given away) and ranks #36 in its class. The audiobook was new this 12 months, however I am undecided the 107 copies of it we bought really paid to make it.
• The White Coat Investor’s Information to Asset Safety: How you can Shield Your Life Financial savings from Frivolous Lawsuits and Runaway Judgments (2022) bought 3,085 books in its first 12 months, making it #1 in its class.

WCI Programs

In 2022, we bought seven complete on-line programs on the WCI Faculty, together with two model new for 2022. These embrace:

In 2022, we had a complete of 1,558 new paid college students (a 6% enhance) within the WCI Faculty. That does not embrace those that got a free course as a part of convention attendance or from successful a prize.

Convention

The 2022 Doctor Wellness and Monetary Literacy Convention was, by far, our greatest ever. We had an superior time in Phoenix, together with over 1,200 (605 in individual, 619 digital, the most important ever) of you. Final I checked, there are already greater than 550 individuals coming in individual to WCICON23 (come be a part of us!) and 200+ attending nearly. It’ll be simply pretty much as good.

WCI Retailer

We had 1,023 orders (a 140% enhance) from the WCI Retailer in 2022.

Talking and Writing Gigs

I wrote 5 columns for the AAEM Frequent Sense publication in 2022 and 5 extra for ACEP NOW. I additionally did six dwell displays and 4 digital ones.

Pupil Mortgage Recommendation

In 2021, we began a enterprise with scholar mortgage specialist Andrew Paulson to make sure WCIers may get high-quality, flat-fee recommendation in difficult scholar mortgage situations. StudentLoanAdvice.com did a whole bunch of consultations in 2022. You may get yours with 12 months of free follow-up questions for simply $559. With a satisfaction ranking of 4.89/5, I might say we have been profitable at reaching our aim right here.

WCI Community

Passive Revenue M.D. loved one other superb 12 months of development in 2022. A lot of the main target was on rising its communities centered on actual property investing and entrepreneurship. PIMD placed on two profitable conferences—Monetary Freedom By way of Actual Property (PIMDCON) and the Leverage and Development Summit. For the primary time, PIMDCON was a hybrid convention, attended by a whole bunch in individual whereas broadcast to almost a thousand others at house. A whole lot extra joined the signature course, Passive Actual Property Academy, and the Platinum Investor Membership group now consists of hundreds of educated buyers. It launched a model new web site to deal with its weblog and podcast content material, and The Passive Revenue MD Podcast was downloaded almost 500,000 instances in 2022 (it’ll quickly surpass the massive milestone of 1 million downloads). Peter Kim continues to take pleasure in life in southern California practising anesthesia on his personal phrases and training his children’ sports activities groups whereas working the PIMD empire. We proceed to advocate his weblog, podcast, group, programs, and conferences for these taken with extra earnings (and who is not?).

Outreach Efforts

We attain out and provides again in quite a few other ways.

WCI Champions Program

Maybe an important factor we have ever achieved is distribute a replica of The White Coat Investor’s Information for College students to each first-year medical and dental scholar within the nation, through a “champion” of their class. The champion will get a WCI T-shirt and presumably a WCI tumbler however, extra importantly, offers a lifetime worth of maybe 9 figures to their classmates. In case your class would not but have a champion, enroll right here. For the 2021-2022 faculty 12 months (the category of 2025), we gave away 18,457 books (a $553,000 worth) and hope to beat that document this 12 months.

WCI Scholarship

Whereas Katie has established a everlasting pre-med scholarship at our alma mater, additionally referred to as The White Coat Investor scholarship (whose recipient not too long ago knowledgeable us that he did certainly get into med faculty), that is not The White Coat Investor scholarship we’re speaking about. This one is funded yearly by us and weblog sponsors. This 12 months we gave away $7,841 every to 10 scholarship winners in two classes (Inspirational and Monetary). Congratulations once more to the winners:

• Lily Nguyen
• Nina Fukuma
• Emma Sand
• Omar Alzayat
• Anima Shrestha
• Brayden Gaston
• Allison Jue
• Josiah Warner
• Rosemary Vergara
• Tracy Tang

and thanks to the sponsors, particularly the platinum degree sponsors.

Monetary Educator Award

This 12 months’s WCI Monetary Educator Award (together with its $1,000 prize) went to Dr. Stephen Pamatmat. Congratulations once more!

Free Pupil Webinar

I get invited to talk at a lot of medical colleges and residencies, most of which might’t even afford to fly me out a lot much less pay me to return. I’ve to show most of them down, so yearly, I attempt to attain all of them nearly on the similar time with a webinar. Final 12 months’s was an enormous success, so Andrew Paulson and I are going to do one other one on February 15 at 6pm MT. Enroll right here!

Charitable Giving

We had WCIers assist us give cash to charities once more this 12 months. The ten charities you chose had been:

1. 1. Medical doctors With out Borders
   2. St. Jude’s Kids’s Analysis Hospitals
   3. Feeding America
   4. Habitat for Humanity
   5. Wikimedia Basis
   6. World Imaginative and prescient
   7. Make a Want Basis
   8. GiveWell
   9. Salvation Military
   10. Boys and Women Membership

A considerable donation is being made to every of them.

WCI as a Enterprise

Sure, regardless of all the outreach talked about above, WCI remains to be a for-profit enterprise. As soon as extra, we had been profitable in producing a revenue this 12 months. Regardless of a difficult financial atmosphere and pushing some income ahead into 2023 as a consequence of altering cost fashions, we managed to extend top-line (income) development by 11.9%. We proceed to reinvest loads within the enterprise so our backside line “development” seems worse than possibly it ought to at -3.1%. Technically, 2022 was the primary 12 months that our revenue hasn’t grown over the earlier 12 months, however we do not count on that to be a pattern.

Most significantly, we met payroll each month and provided our workers a top-notch advantages program (together with the world’s finest 401(okay)) and a beautiful retreat in Jamaica. We had our first worker give up this 12 months. It turned out {that a} work-from-home atmosphere did not work out very properly with Morgan’s workstyle and life-style. We’ll miss her, however her transferring on did give us the prospect to satisfy Ashriel, who wasted no time working Brett, Cindy, and me into the bottom after we went mountaineering together with her on the “get to know you weekend” after being employed. These of you coming to WCICON23 will get to satisfy her. We additionally misplaced a contractor as we moved our graphic design in home. We’ll miss you, Ashley, however we’re additionally excited to be working with Katie F. You will have observed the WCI stuff is way prettier than it was. That is a results of the exhausting work of those girls. One other large occasion this 12 months was the promotion of Megan to podcast producer. Cindy was more than pleased to take away one more of the hats she has been carrying right here for years.

Listed here are the nice of us we get to work with.

First row: Andrew (StudentLoanAdvice.com), James (CTO). Second row: Megan (podcast/e-newsletter), Lauren (digital advertising and marketing director), Michelle (communities/social media), Cindy (gross sales director), Josh (content material director), Ashriel (merchandise assistant), Disha (WCI ambassador), Katie D. (chief product officer). Third row: Brett (COO), Jim (Founder/CEO), Katie F. (graphic design), Chrislyn (convention). Not pictured: Emily (books/modifying), Wendel (AV/YouTube).

Connecting You with Finest in Class Monetary Sources

As you’ll recall, the primary a part of our mission is to give you an superior monetary schooling. The second is to get you the most effective monetary sources on the market. Main updates proceed to be achieved behind the scenes with our scholar mortgage refinancing companions, incapacity insurance coverage companions, mortgage companions, monetary advisor companions, and actual property investing firm companions—all to serve you higher.

Whereas {our relationships} with all of those companions clearly assist us to make payroll and to be a worthwhile enterprise, we additionally see it as a useful service. We join you with the great guys within the trade and assist run the dangerous guys out of enterprise. If you want these companies, we’d admire it if you happen to would at the very least think about using those that promote on the positioning. They’ve had some preliminary vetting by us and a few ongoing vetting by your fellow readers. The 2 new ones this 12 months are Surveys and Credit score Playing cards. You’ll find most of them below the really helpful tabs on the prime of the positioning.

Conflicts of Curiosity

We can’t run a worthwhile enterprise with out conflicts of curiosity. I am not keen to do that work at no cost, and I am constructive none of our employees members are keen to try this. So, now we have to handle these conflicts as finest we are able to; balancing our want to be as unbiased as attainable with our must be worthwhile. Full disclosure of those conflicts is essential to me, so yearly, I remind you, our employees, and myself of those conflicts of curiosity. They do not change a lot from 12 months to 12 months, however yearly or so, I handle to consider a brand new one.

• We’re incentivized to run content material that pertains to our advertisers’ companies (and particularly these with whom I’ve an affiliate marketing online relationship) extra continuously than different content material. The content material group is generally separate from the enterprise group, however the battle nonetheless exists.
• We’re incentivized to just accept visitor posts from monetary professionals who promote with us extra continuously than those that don’t, though the one “sponsored posts” this website has ever run are these by the 5 platinum scholarship sponsors annually (and 100% of that income goes to the scholarship recipients). We’ve got a coverage to guage visitor posts purely on the idea of the content material, and we do our greatest to observe it.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you buy time period life and incapacity insurance coverage insurance policies, particularly via our really helpful brokers.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you refinance your scholar loans when maybe it could not be a superb transfer for you (which is terribly uncommon if you happen to’re not going for PSLF, however the final couple of years are a notable exception given the “momentary” modifications with federal scholar loans since 2020). I do not assume we have ever achieved this, however we’re definitely incentivized to take action.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you hunt down skilled assist with insurance coverage, monetary planning, funding administration, scholar mortgage recommendation, buying and promoting actual property, negotiating contracts, getting teaching, and getting ready your taxes when maybe you can do a few of that by yourself.
• Since now we have actual property advertisers, we’re incentivized to debate actual property investments extra continuously than we in any other case would possibly or greater than we focus on conventional investments like index funds or various investments, for which we shouldn’t have promoting companions. Let’s be sincere, we may get promoting companions for EVERY various funding on the market, and we routinely flip many down. What we can not seem to do is get Vanguard, Constancy, Schwab, or iShares to promote their index funds right here.
• We’re incentivized to just accept advertisers that don’t meet our excessive requirements for advice to family and friends.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you employ a doctor mortgage mortgage over a standard one.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you learn monetary books, together with and particularly our personal.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you are taking our monetary programs and people of our affiliate companions.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you attend WCICON both in individual, nearly, or ideally each!
• We’re incentivized to get you to buy from the WCI Retailer.
• We’re incentivized in opposition to recommending content material by others who’ve the identical affiliate marketing online companions or who compete for a similar advertisers except I’m additionally a partial proprietor of their website.
• I’m incentivized to advocate the content material and merchandise of the WCI Community weblog companions, through which I’m a minority companion.
• We’re incentivized to advocate you employ the WCI discussion board over different boards, the White Coat Traders Fb group over others, and the WCI subreddit over different subs.

I did not meet my aim of holding this below 3,000 phrases, however it’s half the size of final 12 months’s report. That additionally appears price celebrating.

What do you assume? What did you take pleasure in most on The White Coat Investor in 2022? Remark under!