Why Sheryl Sandberg is Wrong — Dawn Baker on The Art of "Leaning Out" | The Pathless Path Podcast

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Today I am talking with Dr. Dawn Baker. She's a self-described physician, writer, speaker, and now author of a book I just read over the past week. Called Lean Out.

It's sort of a counterpoint to the 2009, 2010s era of lean in popularized by Sheryl Sandberg. But more than that, it was Dawn's story of really leaning out and slowly kind of disidentifying with work as the core part of her life resonated deeply with my own story. And so much to talk about. Really excited about this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Dawn.

[01:59] Dr. Dawn Baker: Thank you so much, Paul. I'm really excited to be here with you.

[02:03] Paul: Yeah. So a question I start with, what are the stories and scripts you grew up with that sort of shaped your expectations around adulthood, what you thought you were supposed to be doing in adulthood?

[02:17] Dr. Dawn Baker: I have a couple different things. One thing that was always emphasized in my family was academic excellence. Both of my parents were at the top of their high school classes, went to college, and then also it— there just wasn't a question that I was going to go to college. And there was also quite an air of upward mobility in my family. Both of my parents came from working class families, and they were very into climbing the success ladder in the outward terms of success. And I saw my father go from being a beginning manager in a utility company to being a middle manager, to being, you know, a higher manager, to being an executive before he retired.

And that said, he worked quite a bit. He was gone not overnight or any kind of big, long business trips out of the state or anything like that, but I would say that he worked very long hours each day. And my mother dabbled a little bit in part-time work, but did stay home with us most of the time. But that role model of work in my life was my father's. So both of those things shaped the way that I saw what I was supposed to be doing.

[03:48] Paul: Yeah. And you ended up becoming a doctor. You sort of have to make that decision somewhat early. I know the people I went to college with, they were deciding to get on this track at 18. That terrified me. I was like, I do not want to decide anything now.

How were you thinking about your life when you decided to go into medicine? Was it like, okay, here are the next 10 years laid out for me?

[04:13] Dr. Dawn Baker: Oh my gosh, no, not at all, actually. I went straight out of high school into engineering, and I thought originally I wanted to be an architect, but then I got really excited about math because I had a really good math teacher. And I switched to engineering. So I got an engineering degree and I actually worked as an engineer. So I already was a non-traditional medical school student. What you are describing is the very traditional medical school path, but I was a second career physician.

So I thought that engineering was very challenging, very fun, lots of problem solving. I met my husband in my engineering classes and I loved it, but then when I got out in the world of engineering, I realized that something was missing, and I didn't quite exactly know what it was at first. And what helped me to figure out what was missing from it for me was getting really involved in rock climbing. And I know that sounds really odd, but my husband and I started getting very serious about rock climbing, and it became something that was just ingrained in our lifestyle. And when we met other people that were out climbing, that really formed a completely different vision for me of what it looked like to have work-life balance or to live and work and be happy.

Because like I said to you, I had this model of my dad and the people that I met when I was out rock climbing were completely different from that. And so rock climbing informed all of our time off. All of our vacations. We formed sabbaticals, if you want to call that, or early retirements or mini retirements like you talk about in your book. We did that really early on, like in between jobs and in between schooling. And I realized that I wanted to do something more service-oriented.

And the other thing was that engineering really pegs you to live in very specific places. So if you are, for instance, I had a major of chemical engineering and you are in the petrochemicals area, you're going to be living in Texas. Yeah. Like you're going to be living in Houston or you're going to be living in Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Okay. And then if you do Silicon Valley type stuff, you know, you're going to be living in that area.

So like biotech or something like that. I dabbled a little bit in semiconductors. And so you need to live where the fabrication facilities are. And when I started rock climbing and traveling the world, I realized that I wanted that freedom. I wanted to be able to live anywhere. So I wanted to do a job that was technically challenging, had science, but also had a service aspect because I was going to all of these countries that were— had a variety of types of people and interacting with people on all levels and from all different backgrounds.

And so I wanted that in my life, and that was how I got to medicine, actually.

[07:21] Paul: It's so interesting how the people around us influence us. Early in my life and career, I was only surrounded by people working full-time jobs, and I often wonder if I had those people like the rock climbers. And I think certain people into surfing are often like this, where this other activity becomes so important they start designing their entire life around it. And then by nature of that, work has to become less important because everything's just oriented around going to climb more or going on these trips and creating space in your life. Did you notice the tension between you and other people more solidly in the work mindset?

[08:06] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, I definitely noticed a— it just was mind-blowing, a complete difference in some people. And I specifically remember there are two examples of people. Where I was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that people could be like this. Like, for instance, one guy who was a school photographer, this guy probably made like $10,000 a year. This is back in the '90s, but still, you know, very, very low wages. And he worked for this very specific period of time.

It was like he worked in the beginning of each semester for an intense period doing this school photography for like elementary schools and up to high school. And then he'd be done and he would just go on road trips and rock climb. And he lived by himself and he lived extremely simply, but he was an extremely intelligent man, very happy, very challenged, very fulfilled. So he's one example. And then the other example was a couple where the man was a rigger. And you will find a lot of rock climbers that do rigging for events and, you know, big sporting things and building construction and stuff like that.

So he did that. So he would travel off and on and then, you know, come to and from work and then, you know, had a home base in Arizona, which was where we lived at the time. And then his wife was a laboratory scientist, but she didn't, do the research designing. She just carried out the experiment, the experiment. So she got a fulfillment from doing scientific work while she was there, but she didn't have an added responsibility of kind of all the things that you associate with someone who is like a research professor or something like that. And then they would take these huge times off, time periods off when the husband wasn't doing rigging and the wife wasn't doing her science.

And it was kind of, you know, her work was kind of like shift work. They were extremely happy, extremely intelligent people, and they were very good rock climbers. So those were two examples of people that I saw that just were mind-blowing to me because all I knew was like people like my dad and then people like the janitor at school.

[10:22] Paul: Yeah, it's sort of this student mindset of you should always do your best, right? And I think there's obvious wisdom in that, but then it gets mapped onto a career and you're sort of always just maximizing every achievement. It, and it's really hard to lean against that, especially if you are capable and intelligent. And it's almost more, it sort of breaks our brains when we see those people. Oh, you can just do those things with something must be wrong. Did you think those things or are you just like, oh, I need that in the future?

[10:57] Dr. Dawn Baker: Did I think the, that I needed to have that kind of that achievement? Is that what you mean?

[11:03] Paul: Well, what— when you saw that couple, like, oh, the other people, how did you explain it to yourself?

[11:11] Dr. Dawn Baker: I think at first when I noticed the difference, I thought, oh, they have a really good setup, they have a really good system. They're just lucky that they found that. So it's kind of like when someone who really wants to get in shape is looking at a fit person and they think like, oh, that person's really lucky, they just have good genetics. But really, that person designed their life so that they're fit. I think that's how I first thought of it. And it took a little while for me to realize that I could make whatever work circumstance I wanted, and I wasn't pegged to be in a certain role.

[11:54] Paul: So talk to me about shifting into medicine. How did that start to change you?

[12:01] Dr. Dawn Baker: So at first, when I went to medical school, I was loving it. It was new, and I really value learning new things and challenge. So it was just very invigorating. I really liked, um, the rotations. I went into every single specialty rotation in medicine, from surgery to clinic to pathology thinking that, oh, is this something I could do as my career? So, I just had very open eyes and just really was thriving.

And definitely there is that performance aspect and the achievement like you talked about and expectations because you do need to get good grades. You need to pass your rotations and your classes and things like that. So that's always there, but I was used to that from engineering and from even from way back into like high school and grade school. And when things started to shift to kind of a, a more negative, um, aspect, I would say was when I got into my residency training. So for medical school, you go for 4 years and learn basic sciences, and then you do these sampling rotations of all the different medical specialties, and then you choose your specialty and you go into residency, and your residency can be anywhere from 3 to 8 years depending on what you decide to do.

And I chose anesthesiology, and the reason I chose it was because I knew, going back to my desires of why I was going to medical school, to get more location freedom, to get the service aspect, but to still be able to do trips for rock climbing and those kind of things. I knew that if I picked the right specialty, I'd be able to do that and I would be able to live wherever I wanted to, and I'd be able to take long periods of time off because I wouldn't have maybe a patient base in a clinic, or I would have a lot of partners or something like that. So I chose anesthesiology, and when I got into residency, it was, it was quite more challenging than I expected. And part of that is that the subject matter is very intense. It's, it's 4 years for a reason.

So when you go and you have surgery and an anesthesiologist is taking care of you while you're asleep, you don't really realize everything that goes into that. And even I didn't realize it. And even though I had gone to medical school, I didn't realize it. So it was pretty overwhelming. There was so much information to learn, and I thought that that was why some things started happening to me. So what started happening is I started having some nonspecific symptoms, I will call them.

I started feeling not myself, and part of this was having trouble academically, having trouble with motivation, having trouble with sleep. The only thing that was really very medical in nature was that I had stopped having my period. And a lot of women, when they're going through something stressful, can say that they will skip a period, but I had skipped like a year of periods. And so that was the one medical symptom that I really had. Other things were Things that you could just kind of chalk up to basic stress, or what in medicine a lot of us call burnout, because you get really just overloaded and it can make you feel depersonalized. And, um, there are a lot of, a lot of things out there about burnout in medicine.

Um, it's becoming really a, a topic. And also the one thing I wanted to mention about achievement was at the same time when I got into residency, because I had this engineering background, I got very excited about a specific niche area of my specialty, anesthesiology, because it married my engineering background with anesthesiology. And if I had continued down the path of doing this, I would've pegged myself into exactly what I was trying to get away from. Which was living in a very specific city center and working in a very specific practice environment like an academic environment. So all of that is to say that things were going downhill when I was a resident, and it all came to a head when I had a lot of diagnostic tests that had to be done on me that were all initiated by this period thing. Because at the same time, I thought maybe I wanted to have a baby soon.

I was getting to be a little older. I was about 34, 35 years old, and I had been married for a number of years, and we decided that we wanted to start a family. So I had looked into that, and long story short, it turns out that I went and got an MRI on a day when I had been putting it off for months and months and was just super busy. And I was in between call shifts and I went and got an MRI of my brain and I had a very large brain tumor.

[17:38] Paul: Yeah, that, that was profound when I read that.

[17:43] Dr. Dawn Baker: It's—

[17:44] Paul: it makes perfect sense to you. You're in this environment where many people are burned out. And you kind of had a story for why you weren't feeling great, but it turned out there was a cause. And I mean, I'm sure you might suspect that it could be linked as well, but it's just hard, hard to ever really know. But it's pretty amazing that they caught that and were able to help you.

[18:12] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's hard to know how much of it was exacerbated by stress levels. We don't know those things really at this point.

[18:25] Paul: Yeah, I mean, so many people I know who have sort of taken different unconventional paths in their life always have these health crises. I had a 2-year period after business school, and I think I definitely had some bad habits and health stuff over the years. But in some sense, I think it was my body saying, hey, wake up a little, you're not headed in the right direction, which can be really brutal to go through. What— how did you feel when this was happening? I know it happened pretty quick, and you almost immediately had to go into surgery. But what What was the following few months like?

[19:13] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, the diagnosis part wasn't really fast. That took like over a year, and part of it was that I was too busy to always get everything done. But once they did the diagnosis, yeah, I was like on the table for surgery, being operated on by the head neurosurgeon of the place where I was a resident, and having my staff people that were my supervisors be my anesthesiologists basically. And that was within like a week. And so, yes, how I felt was initially just immediately kind of a, oh my God, this has been going on. This is what's been going on.

Like kind of a relief. Like, oh, I, I just thought it was all this weird, you know, getting older, burnout, nonspecific stuff, and it wasn't explainable and it wasn't fixable. Whereas I kind of saw the surgery as fixable. But at the same time, it's scary because I hadn't had major surgery. So it's like, am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna have any complications?

Um, you know, I, I think I had seen enough to know that I was gonna live. I mean, I, but I was also grateful. I was grateful that I knew that this term tumor was the kind of tumor that was benign. Um, people get brain tumor diagnoses and they're almost like death sentences. It's like within 6 months, you know, huge mortality risk with certain types of brain tumors. And I knew it wasn't that kind of tumor because of where it was, even though there wasn't any pathology at that point.

So, um, I had gratitude in that sense. And then you just kind of go into go mode because you're like, well, this is what I have to do. I've gotta drop everything else. I'm just going to focus on this one thing. And so it was like, you just take it as it comes and you're just going to go to surgery and you're just going to get better. And you're, you know, I'm in my residency and I'm not thinking like, well, am I going to graduate?

I'm just thinking like, I'm going to worry about that later because this is the most important thing. The most important thing is that I get through this and I get better.

[21:20] Paul: Yeah. And it sounds like after that, that's when you started sort of heading in a new direction. Of course, you still had to finish up residency and things like that. But talk to me about some of those first shifts in that new direction.

[21:41] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, it's like a new old direction because, yeah, it was kind of like I went back to my roots. How did I do that? I think I had a period of time off because of all of this stuff. That was going on. So I had time to think, right? And then at the same time, I wasn't assuming the mantle of my other roles.

No one was calling me Dr. Baker, asking me to do stuff for them. Um, so you're, you're just with yourself and you're like, who am I now? Because I'm stripped away from this role. And then the other thing that was stripped away from me in that time was, was being a rock climber. Like I had this identity of being an athlete, and here I am.

I had brain surgery, and you would not believe how debilitated it makes you feel. Like, it wasn't like I had my hip done. I mean, I had brain surgery, but it was so hard to get out of the car. It was like I was so weak. So you're just starting from basics, and not only is that difficult physically, it's like difficult mentally. When you know yourself in a different way.

And so it was a really good lesson in realizing that I am more than just my roles. And it allowed me to think back to like, what do I really want out of my life? Why am I doing this? Do I really want to graduate? Number one, do I really want to finish? What do I want to do when I'm done?

What do I really want to spend my time doing? What matters to me most? And so I was able to go back to the idea that having career freedom mattered to me the most. And that helped me to decide that I did wanna finish my residency cuz I was so close. I was like within a year of being done with this huge, long, years-long thing. And at that point I could then go and look for jobs that offered the freedom that I wanted and I could find a clinical job or I could find a non-clinical job.

And I knew that I had credentials that I could I could get that kind of a job because other companies want doctors that are trained to do non-clinical things at times. So I knew that I had some options. And then at the same time, also going back to the idea, well, you know, the fellowship idea and this whole like perioperative echocardiography anesthesia specialty, like woo-woo, this is so awesome, like I'm such a badass thing, just went went out the wayside. I was like, I'm not going to do this. And then it was like, well, what, what else matters to me? I want to get my health back.

My relationship matters to me, and I want to build my family whenever I can, as soon as I can.

[24:29] Paul: Yeah, I think you wrote, um, you were writing about how at one point your passions were receding— travel, rock climbing, fitness, and spending time with your husband sort of just faded. And the process really helped you realize like, oh, I need to lean back into that. And I sense sometimes that life is like this. It's just this constant remembering who you really are and then keep trying to get back to that. Yeah, it's kind of scary when you realize your passions recede, right?

[25:07] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, definitely. I've had a couple of different time periods now where that happened to me, where something is going on in your life that just makes you just not care about the things that you really cared about before. And one of 'em was during this time before I had the diagnosis. Now the other one was once I was better and I board certified and I got finished with all of my residency and I got a great job and I was doing that and then started figuring out how to start my family, which at that point required some— it required some medical assistance because I had permanent infertility from my brain tumor. I then experienced a second wave of that actually, where we were back into our rock climbing. I had found that passion again, and then my husband wanted to go to Spain on a rock climbing trip, and we were in the middle of doing infertility treatments.

And, you know, his part isn't as major as my part, and I didn't go. And in a way, I kind of regretted that because I could have maybe, you know, put off my treatments or tried to work around it, but I wasn't in the mind space, and I just didn't even have the desire to want to go and do this thing that normally I love doing. So yeah, it, it comes and goes. I think other people can resonate with that too. At difficult times in your life, some stuff that you normally really love, you just, you don't have room for in your head.

[26:41] Paul: Yeah, and I, I love that you're so open about your infertility. It's, I mean, something my wife and I started thinking about a family a few years ago, and you start to notice a lot of these conversations are just sort of hushed conversations. Also in the US, it's like just by policy, we don't really take it that seriously. We sort of let individual companies decide how they want to treat people. Some companies treat people really well. Most do not.

So it's sort of just up to everyone to navigate this whole sort of obvious thing, which is we, we need more people. To keep society going. But yeah, it's, it's such a hard thing. And it was interesting reading the quote you chose from Sheryl Sandberg, which is the months and years leading up to having children are not the time to lean back, but the critical time to lean in. And I write about this too in my in my writing, which is like the 2010s were like a weird time when we sort of silently agreed that work was the most important thing in the world. And like, I don't think I could be the father I want to be now unless I spent several years actually leaning out before I had kids.

[28:08] Dr. Dawn Baker: So I'm wondering how that ties to like your journey and why you chose to put that quote into Yeah, well, first of all, I don't like that she says, as an opposite of lean in, she says lean back, because that's why I titled the book Lean Out, because I think that implies something about like laziness or apathy. And that is not how I see this kind of movement that you and I are writing about, which is that people are taking control of what they really want out of their career and not letting other people dictate it for them. And so that's why I like the word out. And as far as why else did I include that quote, it's because I feel like it's too late if you say, well, the critical time is when you're building a family is to lean in because of, the typical age that you are and like the type of career path that you're on at that time. That's the assumption she's making there.

But she is absolutely not addressing the fact that 13% of couples in this country are infertile and worldwide infertility is going up in professions like medicine and probably law. But we don't have data there. It's double. It's at least double.

[29:37] Paul: Wow.

[29:38] Dr. Dawn Baker: That, yes, the incidence. And so, you know, there are a few studies and they're pretty small and we need more. But what is going on there? Why is that? Part of it is delayed childbearing. You know, women are delaying having children to older and older.

And by nature, your eggs get older. And as they get older, they incur DNA damage. And so then they don't make babies as well. And so the pregnancy rates are lower in that sense. And then when people are trying and trying and trying, they end up needing to have infertility services. But it is, as you mentioned, something that is just hushed.

It's something that isn't talked about because it brings about a lot of shame. It's something that people still feel like is their fault, that something is wrong with them. And that it's not really as acceptable to ask for the flexibility that they need to do these treatments. So they just like keep it a secret. And so many people, as I have started telling my story in the physician space, have come up to me— so many people— and said, oh, I had infertility too. Um, yeah, I just, I never said anything to anybody.

I just dealt with it and I did this. Or, you know, I had one kid and then when we tried to have our second kid, we had infertility. And men are coming up to me and saying that about their wives. They're about their coworkers. So it's not just women either.

[31:09] Paul: Yeah, it's— yeah, it's definitely— I've noticed once you start having kids, people tell you these things, but they don't tell you before. So I don't think people can prepare. We're so deep in these like crush your career mindsets that we forget there's basically all of life and the production of life, which is not this trivial process you can fit into, like, a dip in your career trajectory or something?

[31:39] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, it's hard because part of me really wishes that I had started sooner and because I could have had more kids. But yeah, part of me is really like going back to what you said about I couldn't have been the dad that I am now if I hadn't been on this Pathless Path. And I feel like that about me too, because I feel like I am so into my role as a mom now, and I love the relationship I have with my daughter and the things that we do. And I feel like I'm a better parent because of some of the things that I've gone through. And so there's a double-edged sword there. Um, you know, if I had had kids earlier, would I be the same parent?

No, I wouldn't be.

[32:22] Paul: Yeah, it's really hard to figure these things out, and I think all I'm trying to do in my writing often is to point out that there are these dominant stories about how your life is supposed to go, and they may not be serving you right. I think my wife did not grow up in the US, and she hears people talk about how they're struggling with being mothers because they feel like their work is no longer valued. And that wasn't her story she grew up with. And she's like, I actually feel amazing as a mother. This feels so cool. And it's cool that I can sort of lean in to being a parent as well.

Like, I've designed my life around flexibility and earning less. And this is, this is something you talk about in your book as well, is that other people sort of project their own current This happens to me all the time. People project their own current, like, expensive, fancy lifestyle onto mine. It's like, well, you can do it because of this. And it's like, no, I've been living below my means for 6 years. And you write in the book, having money saved and knowing that I could easily live on less gave me added confidence to ask for a reduced schedule after I had a baby.

It later enabled me to leave a steady job and lean into that more unpredictable life. And I sort of see this as like a practice, right? You need actual experience practicing leaning out. Do you see it as a sort of practice?

[34:00] Dr. Dawn Baker: Absolutely. It's like a continuous practice. You're never going to be perfect at this or a lot of different things. It's, it's applied to medicine too. That's why I, I like to explain it as the word practice, because people say they practice medicine, and they say that specifically because you're never a master, you're never perfect at, at that. And as far as work-life balance goes, leaning out, taking alternative paths, it's going to be this continuous process where at times it feels really hard and at times it feels great and you're coasting and then it goes back to being hard.

So yes, yes, it's continuously something that you have to be working on.

[34:54] Paul: Yeah. And one interesting thing I've seen, I am obviously a guy on this path, many men want to lean out and I saw there's this McKinsey study. I'll link it up. In 2017 or 2016, I was reading it was Women in the Workplace by McKinsey, and it was showing like the percentage of women who don't want to be top leaders in companies. But then next to it, they also had men and the percentage of men was not much higher than— not much lower than the women. And I'm like, oh, that's me.

And the funny thing is they got rid of measuring the men in the next edition. Right. So I'm wondering, like, do you think it would be better if this conversation is expanded to men as well? Or like, are you just trying to reach— like, I mean, you're writing from your own personal experience, but oftentimes it's— I wonder if there's a disservice by it being like, oh, this is like a woman's decision to enter or stay in the workplace.

[36:02] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, I do think that what you're seeing is very valid. And when I wrote my book, honestly, I just wanted to narrow down who I was writing to. But I go out and I do talks and I get coaching consultations from men, and I talk to mixed audiences, and I get men coming up to me and they say exactly what you're saying, where they're, they're like, well You know, I don't want to do the traditional thing either, but it's even like less acceptable in certain circles, um, for the men to be like, well, I don't want to achieve and I don't want to make the most money and be the, the biggest breadwinner. And I have a, a great role model of that in my husband, and he is someone that really showed me how it was done because he's He's actually a patent lawyer.

And so he went to law school and did that path where there's like a very traditional path there where you would go and work in a law firm, be an associate, bust your ass for 5 to 7 years, and then be a partner and, you know, make the tons of money and still work a ton. And he really quickly was like, I do not want to do that. And so that harkens back to our shared experience in the rock climbing. And, you know, you had touched on living on less earlier. We had role models. We knew that people could be happy living on less.

So early on, both of us just lived below our means, and we saved, um, not to the point where we didn't enjoy things. We just were just living the life the way that we had already always lived it, you know, just kind of like as casual rock climbers and spend money on our gear. And we didn't buy a Mercedes and we didn't buy a, a fancy house. And so back to your question that you just laid out, yes, I do think that this stuff applies to men. And I do think that you're, you're expanding it by, you know, being a male author who is writing very similar messages in a book like this and sharing a podcast where you're giving people a platform to say, this is what I've done. Um, you know, I've heard other male guests on your podcast that are doing something out of the ordinary.

And that's what I think we need to be keeping doing, is we need to do it for both, for both sexes.

[38:32] Paul: Yeah. What— how do you and your husband, uh, think about your past? Do you have conscious conversations? Are there frameworks you've used? Um, I'd love to hear more about how you, you guys intentionally design your lives. Hmm.

[38:50] Dr. Dawn Baker: Well, we went to our professional schools staggered, so I feel like my husband was always kind of the leader and would experiment and try things as far as work-life balance goes, and then I would kind of take cues from him. So I've been lucky in that sense. He did his law school before I did my medical school and then got out and was going on the traditional path but knew he wanted to get off. So when I was in medical school, he said to me, well, okay, first of all, one thing that you reference in your book I know is Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek. He read that book really early on, was like a really early adopter to that style of thinking of simplifying and having a very low overhead model to whatever you're doing. And then recouping your time that, you know, you're, you're gaining by having that kind of very simplified business.

So he sought to build that for himself, and I saw him doing that when I was in medical school. And then I had my whole residency issues, and, you know, you, you just deal with what's most important at the time. Like I said, my health and things like that. Now, when I was done, what did we say when we kind of got together and we're trying to figure out how we were going to design our life? Well, first of all, after my surgery was said and done and I was better, he was like, I really don't want you to do a fellowship. He just said it straight out.

Like, we just have very open conversations. We're the kind of couple where there's not a lot of fluffy language or beating around the bush. Um, and it was difficult in the beginning, I would say, for me, um, because he's very blunt. And so he's the kind of person that's just going to tell you if you're doing something stupid. And so he does that. And so, you know, we would have these conversations and he would just be direct, like, I really don't want you to do a fellowship.

And so I had learned to listen to that. And when he says something in that way, like, okay, this is very important to him. And I would say that we came together also and just really would talk about our values together and what do we most value. And as podcasts and as social media and blogs started becoming popular and something that you take a lot of learning out of. He started doing that and then would share things that he learned from to me. And then I would listen to the things that I like and I would share things with him.

And we still do that to this day. We've been doing that for, you know, like 10 years or something.

[41:47] Paul: Any specific sources that were incredibly inspiring or helped you both think in new ways?

[41:56] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, I do think that, um, one thing that we started following as a couple— so I did mention Tim Ferriss, so there's kind of like that, um, time, the, the 4-Hour Workweek idea. But then, um, one thing we started both getting very interested in was the financial independence movement. And that was probably mid to mid-2010s. There was a particular podcast called Choose FI. They still exist. They've morphed a little bit into what they talk about.

But as a beginner person in that space, I thought that that was very helpful, very helpful information. A lot of inspiring stories where people would be on their path to financial independence regardless of what kind of income they were earning. And we had high income potential as a doctor and a lawyer. So we knew that, you know, that set us up in a certain way. When you have more that you're able to, you know, make based on what your career is, then there's more that you can save. So, you know, maybe you don't have to do as creative of things in other areas.

Um, such as like a side gig or like a rental property or, you know, your investments or something like that. But, um, that was one thing that we got very interested in and figuring out really where we were. And around maybe the time that our baby was born, which was 2015, 2016, we started figuring out that we were actually financially independent. And that opened up the realm of, for me especially, what I could do with my medical career. Because my husband was already on this self-employed micropractice law path that is totally unconventional, but then I was still working in an academic hospital. And while I had a great situation, I was part-time and I had a no-call type of a job, which means like no overnights in the hospital, and I had very limited other responsibilities that I had to do, which is unusual for academic medicine.

I still didn't have the kind of vacation freedom at that point that we were— had originally wanted. And so I started getting interested when I found out that we were financially independent in just seeking these even more alternative paths and doing just fill-in work as a physician and traveling physician and stuff like that.

[44:41] Paul: And how do you define financially independent? Was that like, okay, given a certain— like, we think we can make a minimum amount of income because we want to keep working? Was it we don't have to work at all? Or was it like, this is a certain amount like right now, if we don't touch retirement, we'd have this when we're older. Like, I know everyone has sort of their own definition. I've sort of declared myself financially independent mostly in the sense that I can, we can live on very little and I think I can make sort of enough income most years doing work I like.

[45:19] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah. So I would say that the way that we at the time were we're defining it was the way that that podcast and some of the other financial sources that we were following, like The White Coat Investor, which is, you know, for healthcare medical professionals doing financial independence and also kind of a lot of financial literacy information because doctors like know nothing about money management. It's really bad. Lawyers can be bad too, but so we're following them and they define financial dependence by the 4% rule, which was like your annual spending would equal about 4% of your net worth. And we realized that we were there, but at the same time, neither one of us intended that we were gonna completely quit.

So that is assuming that you quit right then, and then you live on your retirement spending and that things progress with the stock market the way that they've always progressed historically, and that inflation is the way that it's always progressed historically, then you would be financially independent and set for your lifespan. Now, we didn't hang our hats on that. I definitely think that that's something that you need to be a little flexible on. It was just something more that gave me permission to even go a step further in leaning out and doing something different.

[46:53] Paul: Yeah, that's, uh, that's amazing. I think, um, people have such a hard time talking about these, and I think the financial independent community has done such a good job of sort of destigmatizing conversations about money because a lot of people are just applying this script of like, you work continuously in adulthood no matter what, but it sort of hides that one, you can level down your desires. You can just decide not to buy a mansion. You can decide not to buy an $80,000 super truck. You can decide against elite private schools for your kid, which is a lot of the people I sort of talk to sometimes and they're like, yeah, I need $15 million. And it's like, whoa, my numbers are a lot lower than yours.

So I love when people are willing to talk about this. How did you decide to move off-grid? I know you're living— you wrote you're living on 80 acres in a tiny house. Is it still a tiny house? Still?

[48:02] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah. Yeah, we actually aren't going to upgrade that. We're building a nicer tiny house that's like slightly bigger tiny house, but it's still considered a tiny house.

[48:12] Paul: That's, that's so cool. How did you get that idea? Was that inspired by other people? I know there's a lot of like tiny house financial independent community overlap.

[48:23] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah. Okay. The tiny house is one thing. The off-grid living part was that my husband has always been really interested in owning land. And even back to the days when we would go stay on like a rock climbing ranch somewhere and there'd be a person that maybe had a house on the ranch and they had a little farm, but they just like rented out space to people to go climb. He was like, I want to do this when I get older.

And so we started looking actually during the pandemic because rewind a little bit when I was talking about the financial independence and realizing that I had more freedom than I thought. And trying to scale back my work even more, we decided that we were going to do something different with our living situation. So we moved. We decided we were going to move away from the city we were living in, but we didn't know exactly what we wanted to do at the time. And in the middle of that, COVID happened. And so that was really what informed our, our decision to buy a property because traveling internationally was difficult at that time.

So we thought about like home exchange and living in different countries. We even thought about liveaboard sailing and buying a sailing sailboat and then like sailing around to different countries in the Bahamas area. But it was so difficult to get in and out of countries. And so that was when we turned and we just started looking. We just kind of started shopping. And it's not like puppy shopping.

I mean, you know, it's big. So you definitely are, are looking for a while. And we spent like a year looking at the properties and COVID was still a thing. And then it became a little easier to travel, but we found the property that we really loved. And I think that was what made us settle into that alternative lifestyle for now and then shelf the other stuff. Maybe we'll still go back to like living in other countries and moving around from country to country at some point.

But not right now. So we ended up buying this property in southern Utah, which is the state that we've actually been living in. But we were living in the big city center of Salt Lake City. We found this property that's in between Bryce National Park and Zion National Park in southern Utah. Those are really beautiful areas. Yeah.

And it's on the mountain plateau there. So it was 8,000 feet and it had that kind of like what we envisioned was this like forest that was evergreen forest and aspen forests and something with water. And we found it. And it's really difficult to find water right now, to find land that even has a body of water or water rights or a water source of any type. And it had both. It had a spring and it had a stream.

And so we jumped on it. We had sold a couple of houses. We had a rental house and a house we were living in in Salt Lake City. We sold them and then put that money all toward this property. And as far as how we got into the tiny house thing, there are like too many options of what you can do with a big property like that. And sometimes you just have to see something and then go, oh, let's just do that.

And so that was kind of what we did. We bought a tiny house on wheels out of necessity because we needed something to live in and we wanted something that was a little more permanent than like living in an RV. And we, we had an RV, but we wanted something that could be like a standalone thing. And there was a trailer pad on the property. That was the only thing that was there, was like that and a non-working solar panel. And so we upgraded the solar panels, we fixed the septic system that was there for the trailer pad, and we just like pulled this tiny house on wheels on the property.

Then we met somebody through another person that you know, just happen to live on the mountain, who is this master carpenter and kind of a general contractor. And he builds tiny houses out of shipping containers, and he's able to build them down in the nearby town and then haul them up. And so the ease of that, instead of having someone building something constantly on your property and trying to get permits— the other thing is you can move these around and you don't have to get a permit for them. So that's like, makes it easier.

[52:38] Paul: Yeah, that's awesome.

[52:39] Dr. Dawn Baker: So that's how we decided. And And then there's another factor, which is that there's snow load in the area. So shipping containers, it's bombproof and they're also critter-proof and there's a lot of animals. And so if you leave the property like our property is seasonal and in the winter it's difficult to be there, you can be there, but we tend to leave and like go and, you know, play in the warmer climates and stuff. And if we leave, we don't have to worry about animals getting in there and living in the house.

[53:12] Paul: And do you homeschool?

[53:15] Dr. Dawn Baker: We do. Yeah, we homeschool.

[53:16] Paul: And we have— was that—

[53:18] Dr. Dawn Baker: yeah, we had always thought of it from the beginning.

[53:20] Paul: Yeah.

[53:20] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yes. Yeah, we had, because we were already thinking of living in different places.

[53:25] Paul: How has that journey been?

[53:27] Dr. Dawn Baker: When my husband first said to me that he wanted to homeschool, I thought he was crazy because I really didn't know anything about modern homeschooling. The picture I had of homeschooling, which is probably what a lot of other people have, was that like you're sitting at the kitchen table with this stack of books this high and it's traditional school but at home. So it's like 6 hours of sitting there and, you know, the Bible is involved or something like that, right? But that is not what modern homeschooling is. You, because of internet, because of all sorts of apps, all sorts of co-ops, all sorts of online classes and things. You don't have to sit there all day with your kid.

And so once I read a little bit about it and I learned about it through some podcasts that are out there, I decided that, you know, that it was okay, that I could actually do this and wrap my head around doing it and still being a working mom. And it's just a— it's a work in progress. You adapt what you're doing based on what works and what doesn't work. And it's very low cost and it's very flexible, and our daughter loves it.

[54:34] Paul: Yeah. What, um, did people say stuff to you about homeschooling?

[54:40] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, yeah, they did. Well, first of all, my mom and my husband's mom and my aunt, they're all school teachers. They thought we were insane.

[54:50] Paul: Yeah, it's all— I— my wife and I are very interested in it. And yeah, we've gotten a bit, a few reactions. There's sort of one line people always say is like, how are you going to socialize them? Which is actually a really interesting word choice too, because it's like, we assume that like the socialization of like learning what everyone else is doing is one of the most important things. And in both my and my wife's life, like that was what caused us the most challenges in our young adulthood is kind of like unlearning some of the expectations of what we're supposed to do and getting back in touch with our curiosity. So that's really cool to hear.

It's going really well for your daughter. And I think a lot— something people don't realize is most parents really care who homeschool. And if you thought school might be better, you could just enroll her the next year, right?

[55:52] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, you can always change. You can always take your kid out or, or put your kid in. And if Aspen, our child, ever said, hey, I want to try school, we would try to facilitate that. It's a little difficult where we live because we live quite far away from a school. Um, and so that also, the homeschooling gives us the freedom to live on this property that is out like 45 minutes away from a school. But there are hybrid options too.

So you can do online schools and you can do— there's a school in the nearby town that we have where they allow you to go either 1 day or 2 days in person, and then you do the rest on— yeah, at home. And so it depends on where you live. But I will say about the socialization comment, there are tons and tons. All you have to do is look of homeschooling communities. In different places. Now, different states are more friendly than other states as far as homeschooling, and if you get interested in this, you just have to figure out what the rules are in your state and then what the communities are, and you can find all this information online.

And our child is quite social, and so because we do live in that remote environment, we make a concerted effort to drive to the nearest town at least twice a week so that she can take a jiu-jitsu class and she can go to the homeschool hiking, hiking group and meet friends. She, she has a couple of friends that she knows in the town. There aren't any kids that live around us right in our, you know, mountain community. In fact, there's no one that even lives there full time. But this is a very good mix because then we have these other days of the week where things are very simple, but she's very free to roam all over the property. And we have no drive days.

We have days where we don't drive anywhere. And that is awesome. I mean, they're so quiet and they're beautiful. And our relationship has just really strengthened because of this.

[57:56] Paul: That's, that's so cool. That's so inspiring. What, what are things your daughter says, like, about your life? Does she realize her parents are sort of living this unconventional path, or is this just her normal?

[58:13] Dr. Dawn Baker: So she's 7, and I think that she's starting to realize things because we do tell her about how we're very different from other working parents. And then she's starting to have friends where she sees that we're different. Now she does have homeschooling friends. A lot of her friends are homeschooled, so they sometimes have different arrangements, but a lot of times the, the dad works out of the house all day. And that is not how my husband is because he works remotely like you do and is very part-time. So that is an unusual thing.

And we will point out to her like, hey, you know, do you see that, you know, such-and-so's dad is gone 10 hours out of the day and your daddy is not, your daddy is here. And that's because we chose to work this way. And we have explained this kind of stuff to her. I think she's getting it now. What does she say? Um, she told me the other day— so I'm actually right now recording this in an Airbnb because we traveled up to the big city to give her this camp experience.

There is this forest camp that we happen to know about because we had lived here before, and we had to come to town for some stuff, so we were like, let's put her in this camp for a week. And So we're staying here. And she, she said that she came back from the camp and kids had asked her where she went to school. And she's like, I'm homeschooled. And some of the kids said to her, you are so lucky you're homeschooled because I have to be gone 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day. Because sometimes if you go to school and then your mom works or your dad works or both, then you've got to go to aftercare for like another 3 hours or something.

That's how a lot of like doctors and lawyers and professionals and, you know, business consultants, that's how their kids are. And so they told her she was lucky. And I was like, well, what do you think? She's like, well, I like our life. I think it's great. And, you know, I—

[01:00:08] Paul: that's great. Yeah.

[01:00:09] Dr. Dawn Baker: So she's, she's psyched. But I, you know, we do try to tell her— we don't try to be like, do you know how lucky you are? Or something like that. But, but we definitely try to point out differences in a non-judgmental way.

[01:00:23] Paul: Yeah, it's— I think it's great that you're sharing this too. I think for me, I'm at the start of this parenting journey, and in, in some ways there are roadmaps like yours, but in a lot of ways there just aren't. Like most of the people I know and grew up with, they're sort of running one single playbook, and I don't think I can be the person I want to be on that playbook. So I mean, I guess obviously The Pathless Path is my name for it, but yeah, it's, it's great to have people like you sharing their story.

[01:00:58] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, I mean, I totally get it. I have siblings like what you're saying and so many friends and friends of my spouse, and we definitely always take stock and just talk all the time about what do we want and what do we care about, and remind ourselves. Because it's easy to compare yourself to everybody else, but you have to just remember, like, why am I doing this weird thing that's unusual that people think is strange?

[01:01:31] Paul: Well, I think it's cool. I think it's normal in my world. So appreciate it. Um, I will link up to your book, Lean Out. I thought it was a really well-written and good read around just, oh, here's somebody else's remix of their own unconventional path. And I appreciate you sharing it.

I know you have a website. I think it's Practice Balance. Is that the website? Where else do you want to send people?

[01:02:02] Dr. Dawn Baker: Yeah, you can definitely find everything on practicebalance.com because that's a longstanding blog that I've had for over 10 years. And then it has a link to how to get to my book. I also have a podcast that I have recently started and it's really growing. Yeah, thank you. So I profile women professionals of all types that are doing something unconventional without that all or nothing, like I completely quit my profession to go buy houses or something. But, you know, that are— they're using their skills in an a unique way.

And I would love to put the offer out there to your listeners too, to anyone who knows somebody like this, because I'm looking for especially non-medical people, women to interview, because I know a lot of doctors. So, um, all of that stuff is on My Practice Balance. And the most, um, the most active social media presence I have is on Instagram because I love photography. So that is also, my handle's Practice Balance.

[01:03:06] Paul: Amazing. I will link up to all that, uh, to all the amazing, um, weirdo women listening. Reach out to Dawn so you can have a conversation with her. I have a couple names I'll send you as well, but appreciate the conversation today and, um, keep going.

[01:03:25] Dr. Dawn Baker: Me too. Yeah, and you too. And good luck with the parenting. It's, it's an awesome journey.