How to Scale from a Private Practice to a Real Estate Empire

Hey everybody. Dr. Sam McGough back with the Hunt for Success. Today I have Dr. Jonathan Saigh. He’s a partner of mine in some other businesses, but he also does real estate, has medical clinics, and is a consultant. Thanks Jonathan for being here.

Yeah, thanks Sam. Thanks for having me. Excited for this.

Can you give us a little bit of a background on yourself?

Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Remote part of Michigan, a little bit colder than the rest of the Midwest. From there I went to University of Michigan, played football under Lloyd Carr. Then got into business and found chiropractic. Went to chiropractic school in St. Louis, met my wife there. Now I reside in southeast Wisconsin in Racine, just south of Milwaukee.

As a chiropractor, you’re kind of a technician. When did you decide that you had to get out of the technician role and start getting into the business role?

It was actually before chiropractic school. I knew I was never gonna be the hands-on technician my entire career. My uncle is one of my business mentors — he’s a very successful dentist still practicing in his mid-seventies, but he never talked about dentistry. He only talked about business and corporation structure and taxes. I was probably 14 or 15 when I really started to understand the game of business.

The first years were hard. Living in my in-laws’ basement for four years, commuting 80 miles a day, and drove the worst car in our parking lot. Those were 70 to 80 hour weeks. But probably four or five years in, I said, okay, we’ve built a really good foundation on the medical. What else can we do?

Letting go was probably the hardest mental part — releasing this baby that you’d built for years. I treated my team fairly the whole time. I wasn’t the only one just taking the profits out of the business. I shared along the way so that they would stay. You have to realize they’ll do things 80% of the way you would have done it, and then you train the gap.

Once you make a mistake in business and there’s a financial number attached to it, you’ll never make that mistake again. And that was hard because now it was no longer me responsible for the financial mistakes — it was other people. But having communication and viewership, hopefully those mistakes aren’t too big for the business.

I’m not some Instagram guru with a one-off course. Where I learned real estate was from a few mentors, their books, and then doing the research — contacting attorneys, accountants, reading the actual tax code. I spent money on people who know it better than me and got the basic framework, then grew from there.

I’m very conservative on vetting. I want actual testimonials from clients. I’ll ask: can I get contact info for a client who wasn’t happy? Some will give it to me — I actually don’t even call them, because they gave it to me. But the ones who won’t? That’s a red flag. It was really a test of integrity.

I’m always a lead-by-example guy. I know everybody’s name, I walk through the office and say hello to everybody. We have non-negotiables like pushing your chair in when you’re done in the conference room. Those small standards go a long way. Patients don’t get that everywhere else, so they’re shocked when they get it here.

I didn’t take a paycheck for the first 34 months of being in business. Lived in my in-laws’ basement. At that 34-month mark, I wrote myself a check for $30,000 and thought, “I’ve made it.” Looking back, how naive. But that’s where it started.

Your dad was a big hunter. How did that play into your life now?

Growing up, it taught me patience. A very hyper kid — we didn’t even get an insulated pad. Single digit or below zero, and we were just told, go sit in this area and only shoot if it’s an eight or better. You had to be comfortable being alone. It taught you that you are not guaranteed anything. My uncle’s side of the family had a full-blown logging operation with a sawmill and two kilns. That gave us access to land.

My dad passed away unexpectedly. I was able to create memories with him through hunting that I’ll never forget. I don’t get a lot of free time, so when I do, I have to spend it with people I want to be around. I won’t just hunt to hunt.

I know where I was with every animal on that wall. I know who I was with. I know what point in my life that was. I lost my father about a month before one of those hunts, and I was with Sam. It was a very special time. Not in a good way, but memorable. God had a plan that I was gonna go on that hunt with my best friend and I was gonna need it more than I knew.

Nobody cares how much money you have when you die. Your grandkids aren’t really gonna know you or remember you the way you think. It’s a combination — I wanna be able to go on the experiences, but you need financials to back up the higher-level experiences. It’s not about stacking cash. It’s about experiences and buying back my time with my kids. That’s why I push so hard.

Each person has to define their success themselves. A full freezer is someone’s success. $1,500 in the bank account is someone’s success. We have to define it ourselves.