How Smart Investors Make Better Healthcare Investment Decisions with Alexandria Wild

Speaker A: Alex, what do you think is the most common mistake that investors need to pay attention to before putting money, putting their trust into a startup company?

Speaker B: I think the most common mistake is not taking the time to step back and look at something through a, uh, 30,000 foot view lens. And part of that also falls under the purview of not having trusted advisors that will help them take that step back and play devil's advocate for them and their interests. So I think not getting enough external input and removing themselves from an emotional perspective of potential investment opportunities is probably the biggest pitfall that any new investor, especially into a new investment space, is going to get tripped up.

Speaker C: Uh, on you're listening to Clinical Investment Insider where clinical leaders share how they moved from the bedside to the boardroom without abandoning their calling. Whether you're exploring your first healthcare investment, evaluating a board role, or ready to build capital that creates meaning, this episode is for you. Subscribe for weekly conversations conversations with healthcare leaders building what lasts.

Speaker A: I'm your host Sabrina Rombach, a clinician turned business strategist, TEDx speaker and three time best selling author. Today our guest is Alexandria Wild, Founder, Wild Thing Techs, Wild Thing Bookkeeping and Wild Thing Crypto, a cloud based CPA firm serving clients nationwide. She has 14 years plus CPA experience and former tax analyst at Mercedes Benz, specialized in investment tax strategy and crypto compliance. Trusted advisor helping founders and investors understand tax complications before and after every major decision. Hello. Hello. So we're um, so glad that to have you here with us, Alex. Such honor and what a fun and joyful to be in a place of. Sometimes I feel like when we talk about tax it can be, oh, I don't want to think about it. What, what does that IRS wants from me? And because most people, whether you're a thought leader, you're founder, you are clinician, all of us are in a mode of create. We're producers. Right. We are really about change, impact. But then there's also the regulatory body that we have to be compliant to. So then we do have to think about how are we protecting ourselves when it comes to investing our time, money and resources into any venture, whether someone else own or of our own. So what is that ah, made you dive into this crazy space of tax and then investment. I really want to help other people to not get jipped right and not really protecting themselves in the space when they're investing and putting their best foot forward.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I got into tax simply because my bachelor's degree program told me that I should probably go into Accounting. And then I just did really good in my tax classes. So that was the beginning. Somebody else told me that I would be good at something because they identified something in me that I was not aware of. So I took that advice. Right. And now I have my own CPA firm and I help thousands of people per year to. Yeah. Not get screwed over by a number of things. And in all of my work and all my experience, I have found that for the most part, people in the US don't understand our tax code. Whether it's just filling out their W4s for their 9 to 5 job versus making a massive investment that might be the first big investment they make in their life. And not understanding the nuances of entering into, uh, what should be a pretty hefty contract between themselves and whoever they're investing in. So having input in that and providing my expertise and my experience to those people can be invaluable because I've seen it go both ways, right. Where I'm helping my client pick up the pieces after an investment has gone poorly versus actually helping them to see the forest for the trees, so to speak, before they launch into handing over over potentially their life savings. Right. Depending on the tax bracket we're talking about. But, yeah, uh, the word you were looking for earlier, it's taxing. The whole tax situation is very taxing.

Speaker A: Exactly that. Right. And I love it that you have so much fun with it. And even just from your companies. Right. The wild things. Right. Tabbing right into your name. Uh, being able to help us. From a business owner perspective, bookkeeping is hard. Right. Keeping track of invoices going in and out. People feel like they got paid on time. A lot of us, from a start perspective, you're paying people 1099. Right. There's also different complications and implication of how you need to put some money away into your bank account. So at the end of the year, you can pay your taxes or you're supposed to do on a quarterly basis. Right. Like all these regulations. And some of us are true serial entrepreneurs, builders. We don't know numbers. We just like, oh, we have the people to do it, but if we're not really in it, then we kind of get lost at the shuffle. So what do you think is your superpower when it comes to supporting angel investors, VCs to make the best investment from the tech space financial perspective versus what's your superpower when it comes to helping these startup founders to also protecting their asset?

Speaker B: Oh, gosh. So for helping the founders, my superpower is Definitely playing devil's advocate. Right? Founders, in my experience are very headstrong. They're used to calling all of the shots, having all of the answers. Being the smartest person in the room, that is what got them to where they are now. Right. So highly important. Right. And cannot be understated. The importance of that tenacity. Right. It's just, it seems to be natural within founders. However, part of being humbled by being in these positions that your brain and your personality got you to is that you're actually not the smartest person in the room for every single discussion. So being able to just trust the people that are here to support you and believe that there's other people who are more experienced in a particular area, such as tax or bookkeeping or reg regulations, like you really need to take that step back and believe that these people are here for a reason and it's not to circumvent your authority. So my superpower when it comes to the actual founders is sounds mean, but it's like checking them. Right. You're fantastic at, uh, building this company. You've done great work. I'm fantastic at doing taxes and tax planning and making sure that you're not making a massive misstep that's going to end up costing you not dollars, but potential opportunity in the future because tax violations are a really big hindrance to investors. So from a founder's perspective, dot the T's and cross the eyes. Right. And then my superpower on the other side is again playing the devil's advocate. Right. Do you know who the founding members of this investment are? Right. Because I've seen both sides of it. I want my founders to have a certain perspective and I want my investors to have a certain perspective. And that's not to say all founders are going to take your money and then not be accountable to you, but also know where the information is coming from and what the motivations are. Right. And is this founder reliable? Right. And are they going to take the advice of the advisors that they're bringing on? Right. I think both of those aspects are very important to keep in mind on either side of the spectrum.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's why we do so much of filtering, vetting. From the leadership performance and individual capabilities standpoint. What we always say, there's a five dimensional of individual. Right. It's not just mind, body, soul anymore. And a lot of time due diligence are done in so long is because they can't really figure out is this founder actually have the capability to do Are they the good leader for the existing team even? They're just solopreneur with bunch of virtual assistant doing it, uh, at this early stage, can they have the capability, ability to really lead to the next bigger phase? Because we of course all want to invest in the next million dollar billion dollar projects, right? Can they get to that point? Because your six figure problem is not the same as seven figure problem, is not the same as eight figure problem. Right? It's all about the human being in it. And that's also why when we think about investment, even for us just to match experts, right? From Alex's expertise, matching with a startup or matching with another collaborator, we also want to make sure you guys are not clashing. If we already know something is going to be more frictional, then why will we waste your precious time? You can be spending building the business, helping other people, doing the core thing that you really love and um, not get bogged down with just all this side conversation. Because most of us are not built a salesperson, right? So it's being very intentional with our time, our resource, our money, our people. I think that's how I even defi define freedom when we talk about what does that mean for you? Career wise, personal wise? It's actually how do you define freedom? Right? Your freedom was your money, freedom was your time, freedom was your people, freedom was your location and freedom was health. Right. Uh, and sometimes those are the tough questions and people don't really think, think of now what's next for you? Right? Uh, you're doing many different things, right? From multi business people like myself who are just managing and just keep building versus people who are with the VC firms, with individual angel investors. You do a lot as well. So what's coming up for you next?

Speaker B: Right now a lot of my clients are in their growth stages so I'm growing right along with them. Um, right. We have new issues coming up that they've never experienced before. I might be running into some issues with some tax situations I've never encountered before and that's currently happening. So really just rolling with the punches and just continuing to just stay on par with everything which in the tax world everything's changing all the time and the more things you're involved in, the more impact you're going to have from any particular new law at the state level, at the federal level, anything is going to impact taxes. So in the crypto space versus the VC space versus other solopreneurs, right. Everyone's a affected by a tax law change. And so saying A price of that is super important. But from a non business standpoint the my next big thing that I'm working on right now is um partnering with my local public library to bring tax education to some smaller. Some minority groups of people that live in my community namely retirees and people dealing with end of life issues. Things that are very hard to talk about and very hard to deal with especially if you're helping somebody or helping with the. The passing of somebody who didn't have a CPA or didn't have those kinds of advisors around them. So navigating brand new spaces in a very hyper emotional state. Right. So that's my next big thing is helping people with death and taxes.

Speaker A: Yeah I'm life in itself. It's a whole market. Uh we had a client in that sense space because we know family is just so overwhelmed when you have to deal with these situation. So banking financial funeral is expensive. Right. Like knowing and some people are just the one always uh, in a family have to clean up the houses. Right. Be able to know what to sell, what to keep. It's a whole burden. So definitely it's amazing for you to wanting to teach more uh helping those people in those spaces. And we're excited to hear all the things that you have coming up now what drew you to our HBA community? What do you think is that stands out from our ecosystem than some of the other ecosystems that you're engaged with?

Speaker B: The other ecosystems I'm engaged with are like hyper networking. Right. Or super specific to this really tight niche. Right. But health board advisors is way more holistic. Right. And they aren't doing ROI analysis on just the bottom line numbers. Right. You're very intentional who you work with and why you work with them. So for in in Wild Thing Tax and Wild Thing bookkeeping, I would always have an initial call with any potential new client. And the whole point of that is I don't know if I can curse on here but we don't work with assholes. Right. Because it doesn't matter how much you're paying me if you're going to treat me or my staff like garbage or not give appropriate respect to the fact that I have this experience. Experience and this education that you're paying for. Right. Then I'm not sure how this type of relationship is mutually beneficial. Right. You pay me to not listen to me and that's a no go. So the fact that you guys are taking that same position of we need to know how you are and who you are in order to make sure that everything is meshing together well and all of the encounters are going to be successful and nobody's wasting their time.

Speaker A: Yeah that's so critical is because I think half of the job for most business they feel like it's all marketing and sales and what is the marketing and sell is filtering system is trying to attract the right people to you and filter out all what I say. The noises, right? The noises of people just lurkers. They're just reading, not gonna make a decision, they're gonna ask 10,000 questions but they're just in their little own head. Or you have the people who say just want to dabble. Right. Let me just uh do a little bit here, do uh there. We're like okay if you're a ah visionary just like dabble anything around. You are a hobbyist, you're not true leader and you're not a true founder. So if you truly wanted to do something we also wanted to m make sure people meeting at their capacity capability and who they meant to be while they're in this life. Right. So we talk so much about what does legacy means for each person. That's why it's not so much just oh I can do this uh, for all the clients I can do this for that. Right. We know people are super enthusiastic but we don't like people who are overly hype that couldn't deliver. So that's why for us it's very intentional about assessing if you're a startup that we wanted to engage with, whether it's funding, getting more pilot, getting you into the right contract clinician with our larger ecosystem of uh schools and universities and whatnot. Then you have to have the right qualification and not just letters behind your name or years experience. It has to be like Alex, you were saying we have to be able to work with them and the team who truly have that growth mindset, adaptability that's also rare to find. So we wanted to make sure that people are don't have to do all the backhand admin um right. Sales marketing is a lot of operational admin thing to sort things out until you actually play at the top of what we say in uh medicine. Right. Top of our license. Right. Then we can actually do everything I want to do not get bogged down. So how can the HBA ecosystem continue to support. Support what you're up to.

Speaker B: Bring the questions right? Like I get asked what are like the number one questions that you get from clients. They're not general questions, they're hyper specific. So not only Can I not share the question with you? I can't share the answer with you either. So bring the hyper specific questions. Right. Like I'm really good at figuring out the answer so the general is great. M but you can usually find the answer to a general question by Google searching it or asking an AI. Right, but you want the hyper specifics. Give me the hyper specific details. Right. I don't need identifying information but give me percentages, dollars, time frames, ownership structure. Right. Like I can dig into anything and tell you your options for treatment or your options for flying away from the situation. So that's what I would love to have is more questions in this hyper like niche space that are super specific because yeah general you're going to get a general answer and it's probably not going to apply to you the way that you like the type of answer that you need or the quality of answer you need. So that's what I want. I want to know what people need help with.

Speaker A: Yeah. That means that people have to have more of a self reflection and deeper thinking into what they want, what they have problem with. Just like we say, if you throw things out of the world it's not clear nobody can help you. Right. It's amazing to be as clarity is always the power in anything that we do. So that's Alexandria Wild. Links and resources are going to be in the links at show notes below. And uh, whether you're watching this on um, YouTube, listening to our podcast, we would love to hear from you. This is a clinical investment insider. Clinical insight means strategic capital. I'm your host Sabrina Rombach. Keep building what truly lasts until next time.

Speaker C: If our conversation resonated, share it with another clinician. Exploring what's next beyond practice. And if you want to explore what it looks like to invest with intention and advise with influence, visit healthboard advisors.com to explore membership. We connect physician investors with vetted healthcare startups and match you with opportunities aligned to your expertise and goals. From seed to scale.