It's quite possible to just save up with a couple years at a hospital job or a decent-paying associate job. Use those years to learn what you can about how you want to run your own.
And yes, you'd want the credit score for a potential LOCred, but starting a pod office isn't as expensive as one might think - esp if you already have some pts/goodwill in the area for refers. You're talking under 100k in most places (lower rural or skip XR or u/s initially, just one staff to start, do more pound-the-pavement and less paid ads marketing early, cheaper instruments can always get upgraded later, etc). Many do it with half that... no joke. It's
entirely possible to bank that amount of capital pretty fast with a job ~$125-200k and frugal lifestyle to achieve goals. Even a $100k job should be able to do it within 5 years.
The problem is that a lot of DPMs "can't save" since they are trying to support a family or a big lifestyle on that ~$150k or whatever. That usually will struggle and cause frustration, esp in combo with student loans. It always goes back to savings rate and reigning in spending... whether you make $75k or $575k.
A lot of the fear factor on starting an office is just from people who are afraid of doing anything "risky"... so they advise play-it-safe just as they do, large group or hospital employ pods who want to bash small PP or often don't understand it, and definitely from PP owners who don't want you to leave them or compete with them, etc. We forget that even a decade or two ago, in podiatry, there were really only two choices for grads: go solo or work for a PP. Now, we suddenly decided small podiatry PP is impossible.