76. How to Boost Income With Locums Medical Work and Short-Term Rentals With Dr. Ryan Mallory

00:05 Dr. Ann Tsung Are you struggling to advance your career and sacrificing time with your loved ones because of endless to-dos, low energy, and just not enough time in the day? If so, then this podcast is for you. I am your host Dr. Ann Tsung, an ER critical care and space doctor, a peak performance coach, a real estate investor, and a mother of a toddler. I am here to guide you on mastering your mind and give you the essential skills to achieve peak performance. Welcome to Productivity MD, where you can learn to master your time and achieve the five freedoms in life.

00:52 Welcome to Productivity MD Podcast. I am your show host Dr. Ann Tsung. Today I have Dr. Ryan Mallory here. He is an interventional cardiologist, board certified. He is also the Founder of Half Time Freedom, where he teaches other physicians how to create time freedom, geographic freedom, and all the freedom that you want through locums and strategic lifestyle design. Also, he is a huge STR investor that allows the whole entire family to deduct the ton off their taxes due to bonus depreciation, and also a father of two young kids—a five and a seven-year-old. The reason why I’m bringing you on or Dr. Mallory on is because we want to be efficient with our time. We want to have control of our time. He has really embodied — like he’s been courageous enough to stop the regular job, becoming a cardiologist at the hospital, just do locums, so he can control his time efficiently and never sacrifice time and energy with his wife and with his kids. So, again, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Please tell the audience why you went through this entire journey of switching from a regular interventional cardiologist to now working locums, STR investor, and then why you created Half Time Freedom.

02:16 Dr. Ryan Mallory Well, thank you for the introduction, Ann. I’m really happy to be on today. Thank you for having me. For me, I started out my job like any other interventional cardiologist—building my practice, trying to get in procedures, and see patients. In my mind, I was going to balance 50/50: time at home with my family, time at work. But as I worked more, the scale started tilting in the direction where it was very difficult to get everything done in the time that I allotted for it. I realized and I had an epiphany. Because I didn’t have control over my time. Someone else was telling me how many patients I needed to see, when the procedures needed to be done. They were scheduling the procedures even at times I had blocked off. And you know, any patient shows up, you’d say, “Sorry. I’m not available,” even though I am available. So it was very frustrating. I heard from my wife I was home and not present. I was constantly trying to get back to work, to get it signed off before the end of the day. I decided enough was enough.

03:15 And so I quit my job and I went full-time locums. My wife suggested it. We got into coaching, and I got linked with somebody else who had done it. It’s been transformational for me. So I went from working 70 hours a week, 4 weeks a month, now I work 10 to 12 days a month. The rest of the time I have off, I’ve been able to preserve, actually increase my income in the last year doing locums. And so now I am a lot more present with my family. I’ve been able to take that additional time that locums gave me and upgrade other parts of my life—whether it’s my own vitality, our short-term rental investments, our tax savings. Now I’m living a life I didn’t think was possible before. And so I’ve started Half Time Freedom to help other physicians bridge that gap. Because there’s a lot of discomfort, a lot of anxiety, jumping from the known into the unknown. Having somebody who’s done it before, I think, would be really helpful to give some guidelines or a blueprint on how to do that successfully.

04:16 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, thank you for sharing that, your why. Since we’re such like numbers person, data person, can you tell me a little bit about how many hours less are you working per month versus before and how a percentage, like approximate income increase can people anticipate going locums? Just in your example.

04:36 Dr. Ryan Mallory For me, I was working four or five days a week and then an every sixth weekend on call. So about 21 to 22 days a month. I would get home at about six o’clock at night. So I’d have maybe two hours with my family before kids went to bed. So that’s about 10 hours a week and then the weekends. Now I’m gone—I travel 10 to 12 days a month, so I’m gone—and so those 10 days that I’m gone, I’m not there in the evening. So I lose those 20 hours, let’s say. But now I’m home 18 additional full days. So when my kids weren’t in school, that’s an entire extra day. That’s 18 of them. If you take the weekends away, it’s almost double the time or triple the time that you’re actually at home present. That was the important part. It was being present. I could be at home and still trying to catch up on work remotely. Now I have a clean break. I’m done with locums. I’m at home, and it’s just my family or whatever I’m pursuing in my personal life.

05:39 With my income, I calculated 10 to 12 days per month was all I needed to keep the same amount of income that I had as a W2. Actually, with the tax benefits, I’ve actually been able to increase my income, working in 2024 eight and a half days a month on average. I increased my income from before I started. So it’s really powerful once you start delving into these other facets of life and optimizing everything, like what you can achieve.

06:07 Dr. Ann Tsung Okay. You have tripled your time with your kids. When we talk about why, really, for me, it’s the same with a one-year-old and a 2.8-year-old now. Oh my God, almost three-year-old. You know, missing their milestones, that time you’ll never get back. Each age, each year has different progress milestones. And for you to be present, to be able to support them through all that, that time you’ll never get back. So now you’ve tripled early on in the stage where they need their model the most, where they’re forming the subconscious the most, if that makes sense. Now you tripled your time with them. And at the same time, you’re able to increase your income by learning more short-term rental. Because now you freed up that time. You don’t have to go in 22 plus hours—I mean, I’m sorry, 22 plus days anymore. You freed up that time to dive into short-term rental. So not only did you triple, I mean, increase your income, but even more with learning short-term rentals, investing in personal finance. Because many physicians actually don’t know much about real estate in general and definitely don’t know much about short-term rental loophole.

07:16 Dr. Ryan Mallory Exactly. I took the time that I’m doing locum. So as a proceduralist, there’s a lot of places that have trouble hiring physicians or have enough. And so they need somebody to cover, to keep the doors open for the cath lab. And so that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re busy the whole time. You can be, but you can choose your own jobs and find ones that need you there, will reimburse you but you’re maybe not as busy. And so I took a couple jobs like that, where I had five or six hours during my work day where I had to be present in case of an emergency, but I wasn’t actively doing anything. I put in that material participation into our short-term rentals so that we were able to use the bonus depreciation and then shelter the income I was making. So it was kind of a compounding effect where the time that I was actually working I got paid more, I worked less and used that additional time to optimize my investments, which then sheltered income and increased more income. By the time I was done, I looked last year and I only worked 101 days, I think. I took five vacations and was able to keep everything as it was before. So just a lot of freedom. I’ve been able to craft my own lifestyle, kind of scheduled vacations and family first, and then work around that.

08:36 Dr. Ann Tsung Wow. Basically, you only work three months of the year.

08:40 Dr. Ryan Mallory Yeah.

08:41 Dr. Ann Tsung Three and a half months.

08:42 Dr. Ryan Mallory I got to the end. I went through and counted the days. Because I had a three-week shift that got canceled in November. I’m actually starting tomorrow going on that three-week shift. But I was like, “Well, it’s too late to do anything else. I might as well take the time and be present with my family.” I only worked six days. From November 1st to January 13th, I worked six days. The rest of the time, kids were off for break. I was here the whole time. We did tons of fun stuff. I had time where it’s like, “Okay. We’ve got a week. What are we going to do?” Actually, we moved to Dallas. There’s a bunch of stuff we hadn’t explored yet. So we did day trips and went to arcades and went to movies, just lots of things that before I didn’t have the energy. Or it was the end of the day, and it was time for them to go to bed and it just wasn’t the time to do it.

09:33 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, and that’s so important. Because most of us are rushing in the morning to get them ready, dropping them off. Then you work the whole day. And really, the time you get is rushing back at home in traffic. Then you’re doing the bedtime routine like feeding, bath and then bedtime routine. So there’s really no space at all to create those core memories, to create those memories that they actually cherish, remember the one-on-one time. You don’t have any space for those one-on-one times. You’ve been able to craft that just by going locums.

10:02 For those of you guys who don’t know about the short-term rental loophole, it has to do with something where, you know, it’s basically a business. You can deduct expenses off of your business. Also, another thing called bonus depreciation., that’s essentially paper losses that you can deduct from your business. That helps shelter your W2 or your 1099 physician income. It seems like that’s what you’re doing. Tell us a little bit about what people — like now we kind of get to have a vision of what’s possible. I want to know like what kind of steps do they need to take next in order to actually — well, the first step is shedding the fear. Before any action, right, it’s deciding to take the action. So I want to know what was that split second time point, if there is one, that you decided, okay, I’m going for it? Because Tony Robbins says it’s in the moment of decision when your destiny is changed.

11:03 Dr. Ryan Mallory Yeah, when you get that discomfort, where there’s too much discomfort that you can’t help but act. I was on a call night. I had tried to optimize everything before I left so that, while I was gone, things would go smoothly. I got a call from my wife saying, “I can’t do this anymore.” That alarmed bells in my head. I never want to hear her say that. I’m doing everything I could possibly can. There’s times, there’s gaps that are happening. We thought we had it figured out. Kids kind of found a way to throw a monkey wrench into the plans. I was like, “Alright. I need to find a way to be around a lot more and have the energy to do things.” Then it was in, you know, I had a lot of discomfort not doing anything. So it was a lot easier to get that momentum going and change things drastically. You know, I took massive action, but I let it get to a point where I was very uncomfortable before I started. I want people to be a little more proactive and test out the waters before you get to that point and up level your life, so you don’t have to go through that, the negative stuff that I went through.

12:10 You know, locums, there’s limiting beliefs that it’s for people that can’t hold down jobs or that the jobs in locums aren’t good ones. All of that’s false. It’s changed a lot, especially since the pandemic. And as most, you know, I think a quarter of physicians are over the age of 50, people are retiring more. There’s more and more jobs available and more people in early career that are now looking at it as a lifestyle play. As W-2 physicians, we don’t have control over our schedules. We don’t have the autonomy. This gives you that autonomy back, and you can do whatever you can with it. So the second part of it is people go into locums and then it’s like it’s lonely. I’m in a hotel by myself. I’m not having fun. I miss my family. I went into it. I was like, they’re missing such a big opportunity or you now have time for yourself, that you can put in systems to be ultra-productive. Because now all the distractions are gone. It’s just you and what can you get accomplished during that time so that when you do go home, you can hang everything up and just be dad.

13:20 Dr. Ann Tsung I have that similar question too, you know. It’s like how can you — you have to have the mindset right to be able to leave your family for 10 to 12 days and then be able to come back. The tradeoff is worthwhile to be present with them for the next two, three weeks. Oftentimes, I know my husband has never been away from our kids after almost three years. Not once. Never stayed away for a night. I pushed him to leave, to get some time for himself literally like two days, three days ago, so I can see how it might be super beneficial for somebody to unplug, to get away, to get some me time, to feed yourself first, your health, to travel on your own. I’ve seen some of your photos. Maybe to go work out on your own. I feel like me traveling on the plane or when I go away for conferences is when I get the most things done.

14:15 Dr. Ryan Mallory Yeah, exactly. Because you can just focus on what you need to do. You can do your journal. You can set a schedule. You can follow it. Just because you’re away doesn’t mean you can’t be active in your kid’s lives. I FaceTime, story time at night. Like my daughter, we read before she goes to bed. And so now either I’ll find free, Aesop’s fables or Grimm’s story tales online and I’ll read them over the phone, or she’ll point the camera at a book and I’ll read that and we’ll go through stories together. So we can still bond. I’m not there physically, but I can still participate, which helps a lot when you’re away. I mean, you just get creative on how you can still interact and connect with your kids even while you’re gone. You know, the one thing with locums that’s important to have is a system at home when you are away. So whether it’s hiring a nanny, getting some other family member to help out so that the parent that’s home isn’t have a full-time job and a stay-at-home parent. Or if they are stay at home, just have additional support. You’re now optimizing your time. You can take a chunk of that to get some help at home so that when you do come back, you’re not coming back to a disaster.

15:30 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, outsourcing, delegating, or eliminating clutter that you don’t need to manage, if that makes sense. Yeah, like stop buying things to sort things and having to organize things all the time and just eliminate them.

15:40 Dr. Ryan Mallory Yeah, absolutely.

15:41 Dr. Ann Tsung In terms of steps, okay, we talked about the mindset shift. Okay. Now that they’ve shifted their mindset, what do you think would be the next three steps?

15:49 Dr. Ryan Mallory For getting into locums, one is starting to look at what opportunities are out there. There’s a lot of locums companies. There’s ones that are going to low ball you and try and get you to take lower rates. There’s physician-owned ones that are a lot more friendly and get higher rates and are a little more streamlined. There’s opportunities all across the U.S. So starting to subscribe or log in to some of the locums companies and see what jobs are available, what the rates are. Then step two is going on like the physician Facebook group for locums that has 6,000 members that everyone talks about what the rates they’re getting are. Figure out what you’re worth. You’ll realize. You look at what you make as a salaried employee and you look at what your rates are on the open market, and you’re like, “Wow. I’m worth a lot more than I thought I was.” That helps you with negotiating in the future. So figuring out what jobs are available and how those could fit your lifestyle, figuring out what your worth is.

16:47 Then the third is to try it out. I mean, you can do locums while you’re still working. You take some of your vacation time to test it out. I kind of just jump, took a leap of faith and put my job and figure it out. But you don’t have to do that. You can try it first while you have your regular job and see how it feels, what the experience is. You can jump into it all the way. Because at the end of the day, you can always go back and be a W-2 employee somewhere else. If you’re looking to do locums, maybe you need a change in your current situation anyway. So kind of getting over your limiting beliefs, figuring out your worth, and starting to look at opportunities would be the first couple of steps.

17:32 Now, there’s a lot of other steps in between: credentialing, finding the place, how to negotiate, how to find your Airbnb’s, optimizing your traveling, how to do well once you get to a place as a locums. Because you’re kind of by yourself, it’s a different mentality than being with a team. But those are all doable. You’ll end up finding out that the locums’ lifestyle is probably a little more streamlined and relaxed than if you’re in a high clinical setting. Just because you’re not crunched for time all the time, you can actually think and be yourself.

18:03 Dr. Ann Tsung Do you have any names of Facebook groups or like the biggest website for locums or that specialty specific?

18:09 Dr. Ryan Mallory There’s a physician locums Facebook group. You have to put in your medical license to join. That would be where I’d start. Like I said, there are 6,000 people. People have been doing this for 10, 15 years, people that are starting out. They’re very active, very receptive to other people. There’s a locums conference coming up by someone in the group that’s putting on in mid-April. It’s gaining traction in that there’s definitely a community you can start hearing from, other people who, I’d say, have unplugged from the matrix, realized that they can create their own adventure.

18:43 Dr. Ann Tsung That’s awesome. With Half Time Freedom, how do you compress—of course, this is a lot of work, lots of steps in between, like you said—how do you compress the time for those physicians who want to get the outcome that you mentioned or the dreams that you’ve achieved? How do you compress their time?

18:59 Dr. Ryan Mallory Well, I’ve made two different blueprints. One is for going into locums, and one is for going into short-term rentals. It lists all the steps that you’re going to need to take. It has checklists. It has resources. It has actionable guides and helps you — you know, for the locums blueprint, it’s 70 pages. It’s here’s step one. Once we figured out why, all right, here’s how you figure out whether a locums company is giving you competitive rates or not. Here’s the type of, you know, what about direct contracting? How does that better or worse than locums? Is that good for you? After direct contracting versus locums, then figuring out how to get all your credentialing. I’ve got a list of all the stuff that you need, a lot of the stuff you didn’t realize that you needed, that you can start getting together now while you’re figuring out what your first job is so that you don’t have a bunch of credentialing to do, which makes it a lot easier. Then once you do get on the locums trail, how can you optimize your routine so that when you’re away, you keep everything as it was at home? I stay at an Airbnb. I have a Planet Fitness I work out at. I meal prep the first day that I’m there. I’m not living off of fast-food restaurants for a week. I’m keeping the same nutrition, hitting the same macros. I’m working out better because I’ve got more time. There’s just a lot of different tips and ways to optimize the experience so that you can make the most of it. So you’re not just going away working, vegging out afterwards, then you come back home, and then you’ve got a bunch of work to catch up on. You come home; your work is done. Now you’re just there for your family.

20:35 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, in terms of the blueprint, they can take this blueprint. They can read through it and act it themselves, but I know they can also consult with you as a consultant as well. So, ideally, what do you think? From people who decide to hire you as a consultant to help them transform their entire life, how long do you think it’ll take from them deciding to maybe getting their first locum job just so that we can get a timeline or maybe an example of your timeline?

21:05 Dr. Ryan Mallory Yeah, so I offer consultation. We go through a list of questions. What works for you, your specialty? I can introduce you to the locums companies I’ve worked with. You get the blueprint as part of the consultation. So you get all that information. If you have questions, we can figure and go through them. I mean, really, after one shift of locums, if you do a weekend or a week, you’re going to be able to see the before and after. So getting that first assignment, once you get the credentialing down, doesn’t take too long. There’s a lot of them that have a lot of need depending on your specialty. You can knock that out. Afterwards, it’s like, well, how was it? So there could be follow-up communication later on, email support, or additional consultation calls if they like. So that’s one side of it.

21:52 Like you had mentioned briefly, the STR Blueprint is also physician — maybe they’re not trying to do locums, but they want to shelter their W2 income. Short-term rentals has just as many steps to getting optimized if you’re starting a business so that you’re not just getting tax savings, but you’re getting a great investment. I went through a lot of coaching. I put in a lot of hours. So I’ve gotten a lot of experience where I can at least guide people in the right ways to go the right people to talk to and how to underwrite properties correctly so that you have a good investment after your tax savings.

22:26 Dr. Ann Tsung Tell me about the short-term rental property across from the rice way that you guys are developing.

22:31 Dr. Ryan Mallory So we just opened up a property in West Michigan. People love coming there in the summer. The beach, it’s right across from a motorsport speedway. It was an old farmhouse. We added a heated pool to it, a new deck. It’s now a luxury short-term rental. I got a couple listings for $2,000 a night. This summer already, we’ve been able to bonus depreciate it. Between that and another property, I’ve sheltered my entire income for this year. So it’s now all tax-free. So it’s very powerful. But there’s a lot of headache and handling throughout the process. But the mistakes or learning opportunities I’ve made, coaching that I’ve received, I can distill that down and at least give you a blueprint of how to maybe avoid some of those pitfalls to get to the same positive outcomes.

23:22 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I just really want to highlight that for those of you guys who are listening. What he meant in layman terms if you’re not into investing is that he paid no taxes on his physician income. That essentially just increased — it’s like a raise, automatic raise. You put a lot of work for this year. Yes, for sure. Lots of learning for sure. That’s essentially what that meant. There are so many paper losses, deductions, that you can do as a business expense that you can deduct it against your active clinician income. You’re getting a giant refund check back if you’re a W2 or 1099. Same thing, I think I deducted like 90,000 or 70,000—I can’t remember—off of my 2024 taxes from one property, one short-term rental four-bedroom in Galveston. So it can be super powerful if you can combine locums and short-term rental.

24:15 Also, for the people listening, the reason why you hire consultants or coaches is because you are going to pay either with your time or your money. You pay a consultant or a coach, so you can compress that time, so you can save that time and not make the same mistakes. So you’re paying either way. I don’t get any financial benefits from Ryan at all, whatsoever. I’m just saying that if you’re listening to this, if you want transformation fast, then I would suggest booking a call or going to his website and figure out. Take the first step now, right? So if people want to hear more about you, where can they find you?

24:52 Dr. Ryan Mallory So you can go to halftimefreedom.com. On Instagram, @ryanmalloryMD. I’m putting out content about my experiences in locums, some with short-term rentals. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to help out any way I can. I mean, this has just been such a big change in my life. I can’t go back and it’s not something I want to keep to myself. I hear other physicians I work with on my locums journey that sound like I used to. I’m on the other side of it, and I feel completely different. I’m thinking about things completely differently. It’s definitely prolonged my career. I really enjoy practicing a lot more, and I’m going to do it a lot longer. I just do it on my own terms.

25:32 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, now you don’t have to go to work. You can just choose to go to work. It feels very different. What is the first micro step for people who are going to STR and the first micro step for people who want to go locums, would you say, right after this call that they can take right now for people?

25:48 Dr. Ryan Mallory First micro step, if you go to Half Time Freedom, I’ve got free downloads for both how bonus depreciation works for short-term rentals and basic steps to start with locums. So you can get those resources for free. I’d love to help you in taking that step. It’s really just getting that curiosity and making a commitment to either learning about something or taking action. You got to do something. Gaining the knowledge is one thing. But actually taking the steps to implement it, getting over that inertia, those are the micro steps that’ll start the momentum.

26:22 Dr. Ann Tsung Awesome. Thank you so much. And for people who are listening, just remember that if you have kids, if you have a spouse, they’re not going to wait around forever. Each time that you lose with them, each hour that you lose with them, it’s gone. It’s never coming back, right? Especially the ones with young kids. So again, thank you, Ryan, Dr. Mallory, for coming onto the show and for sharing with us how you achieve freedom so early and the methods. It’s work, but it’s possible. So again, thank you.

26:53 Dr. Ryan Mallory Thank you, Ann.

26:54 Dr. Ann Tsung For those people who are listening, everything, all the resources we talked about will be in the show notes on productivitynd.com. Just remember that everything we need is within us now. Thank you.

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