The Underdog Physician Podcast

In this Underdog Physician podcast episode, PharmD and healthcare executive Dr. Tarul Kode shares her career path from an accelerated pharmacy doctorate at the University of the Pacific to over 20 years in managed care and PBMs, including 15 years at MedImpact in clinical executive and account leadership roles. After completing a Harvard global healthcare leadership program, she pivoted into startups as chief of staff to a virtual primary care CEO, then navigated layoffs when the company failed to raise a Series A amid personal challenges. She built a consulting practice and expanded advisory work with Techstars and Remedy. Tarul describes her venture capital education, joining Loud Collective as a venture partner raising a $175M healthcare fund with partners including Persephoni Bio, while discussing funding fit, scalable growth, responsible AI, inclusion barriers, mentorship, parenting, and a service-driven legacy.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:02 Origin Story and Pharmacy Path
02:20 Managed Care and PBM Career
03:49 Leadership Coaching and Harvard
04:58 Leap Into Startups
05:51 Startup Culture Fit
06:56 Advising Clinicians in Startups
08:24 Setbacks and Resilience
09:36 Consulting and Advisory Launchpad
10:57 Calibrate Lessons and Integrity
11:47 Entering Venture Capital
12:34 Loud Collective Thesis
13:45 Board Work and Co-Founder Role
14:59 How VCs Evaluate Startups
17:22 Funding Fit and Diligence
18:22 AI and Responsible Scaling
19:14 Barriers as Woman of Color
22:51 2025 BLOC BLOC100 Most Impactful Women of Color and Allies in biopharma, healthcare, and life sciences.
24:29 Mentorship and Executive Presence
27:37 Mindset for Uncertainty
30:01 Work Life Balance as Single Parent
31:31 Legacy and Closing

On the Underdog Physician Podcast, Clint Harris describes moving from 16 years in cardiac device medical sales—implanting pacemakers and defibrillators with heavy call, travel, and burnout—to building a real estate career focused on time, location, and financial independence. After starting with single-family and small multifamily, he scaled beach short-term rentals to 14 units, then realized the model still left him “on call,” leading him to build a property management company and pivot to passive strategies. He explains how syndication lets busy professionals contribute capital while operators provide time and experience, and details Nomad Capital’s approach of converting vacant big-box retail (e.g., a Kmart bought for $1.5M with $2.5M rehab, later appraising at $9M) into climate-controlled self-storage across the Southeast, now totaling $150M AUM with goals of $500M in five years and $1B in ten. Clint outlines why he prefers storage (sticky tenants, month-to-month pricing, fewer operational headaches), the long lease-up timeline risk, industry consolidation, the importance of location and feasibility studies, team-building principles, and his personal focus on family time and building a legacy centered on character and purpose rather than money.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:55 From Pre Med to Cardiac Sales
01:57 Why Real Estate Became Plan B
03:18 Airbnb Success and Burnout
05:17 Buying Back Time with Partners
06:16 First Kmart Storage Conversion
06:50 Syndication Explained for Docs
08:27 Leaving Medical Sales for Nomad
10:59 Why Self Storage Wins for Him
14:53 Value Add Model and Tax Benefits
16:23 Demand Drivers and Customer Trends
18:15 Risks and Economic Headwinds
19:46 Where Storage Is Heading Next
20:50 Long Term Investing Mindset
23:17 Building the Right Team
25:54 Raising Capital and Track Record
28:19 Setbacks and Key Lessons Learned
30:15 Day to Day Schedule and Family
33:04 Legacy and Closing Thoughts

On the Underdog Physician Podcast, host Anish interviews Dr. Chiagozie Fawole, a Johns Hopkins–trained pediatric anesthesiologist, real estate investor, and founder of Savvy Docs, about building wealth outside medicine through real estate and business acquisitions. Born and raised in Nigeria, she moved to the U.S. at 16, studied at Howard, attended Johns Hopkins for medical school, initially pursued neurosurgery but did not match, and chose anesthesia for a better lifestyle. She shares her first entrepreneurial experience—a long-distance house flip during residency that lost $10,000 due largely to not staging—then explains moving into multifamily syndication, BRRRR duplexes in Syracuse, and a 2021 pivot to short-term rentals. She discusses shifting focus to acquiring “boring” cash-flowing businesses using SBA financing, her acquisition buy box (≥$1M revenue, ≥10 employees, 5–10+ years old, strong leadership bench), and using AI to improve operations, plus how family support, delegation, and automation help her manage time.
00:00 Meet Dr. Chiagozie Fawole
00:51 From Nigeria to Hopkins
01:32 Finding Anesthesia
02:42 Lifestyle by Design
03:52 First Real Estate Flip
06:12 Losing 10K Lessons
07:35 Scaling to Multifamily
08:37 Syndication Mindset
10:51 BRRRR to Short Term
11:34 Why Real Estate Focus
13:31 Pivot to Acquisitions
15:58 Buy Box Criteria
18:26 AI and Future Proofing
19:58 Team and Automation
22:04 Savvy Docs Mission
23:42 Work Life Counterbalance
25:54 Books and Mindset
26:13 Wealthier Doctors Better Care
26:57 Closing Thoughts

On the Underdog Physician podcast, Dr. Amna Shabbir— board-certified internal medicine and geriatrics physician, speaker, coach, and host of Success Reimagined—shares how pandemic stress, added family responsibilities, and severe postpartum depression led her to reframe her career, pursue a geriatrics fellowship as a healing reset, and step away from core academia to part-time post-acute/long-term care. She distinguishes moral injury from burnout as cumulative distress. She discusses perfectionism versus healthy striving, emphasizing intrinsic motivation, learning to fail, and risk tolerance for entrepreneurship. Amna describes the Early Career Physician Institute’s coaching, advocacy, and organizational cohorts focused on boundaries, communication, confidence, negotiation, and retention, and notes AI is a tool whose impact depends on intent and physician empowerment. She is also writing a book on perfectionism and emphasizes seasonality over “balance,” rest, non-negotiables, and rejecting narratives that people are broken.

00:00 Meet Dr. Amna Shabbir
00:46 Burnout After Residency
02:17 Geriatrics And Reframing
03:37 Coaching Roots And Support
05:41 Moral Injury Explained
07:09 Perfectionism And Failure
10:30 Early Career Institute Mission
13:43 Coaching Formats And Results
16:44 Identity Beyond The White Coat
20:44 AI And Physician Empowerment
22:41 Writing A Book On Perfectionism
23:58 Ditching Balance For Seasons
26:36 Legacy And How To Connect
27:55 Final Thanks And Resources

On the Underdog Physician Podcast, ER physician, chief medical officer, and FI Cap Fund general partner Dr. Vipul Kella shares how watching “ER” and rotating in inner-city Detroit drew him to emergency medicine, and how frustration with being downstream of innovation, corporatization, and loss of autonomy pushed him toward startups and venture capital. He explains that clinical experience—not an MBA—is the primary differentiator for physicians in VC and advises entrepreneurs to start before conditions are perfect, think beyond patient care to all stakeholders, and build networks with a non-transactional mindset. Vipul describes a GP’s work as mainly fundraising, sourcing and diligence on early-stage health tech deals, and building a clinician-driven LP network to accelerate adoption. He discusses AI opportunities in admin workflows, clinical decision support, wearables, digital biomarkers, and precision medicine, outlines startup evaluation and timing for VC funding, warns about equity-only advisory roles, and shares time-management and health priorities.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:25 Origin Story to ER
01:26 Why Pivot to VC
02:59 MBA and Real Value
06:16 Startup Lessons Learned
07:31 Networking and Reciprocity
10:52 Life as a VC Partner
13:03 Physician LP Model
14:51 AI and Future Healthcare
17:21 Longevity Hype Reality
19:02 How VCs Evaluate Startups
22:07 When to Raise VC
24:41 Mentors and Career Paths
27:23 Advisory Equity Risks
30:24 Time Management Balance
32:19 Mission and Closing