#100 Seven Keys To Become A Wise Investor

Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. I'm your host, Peter Kim. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe so I can bring it to you every week. Now let's get on with the show. Hey, everyone. Hope you've had another great week. This week's episode is a special one. It is the hundredth episode of the Passive Income MD podcast. I can't believe we're here. It kind of snuck up on me. Honestly, I didn't realize it until the last episode I was recording. It said number 99. I was like, wait a minute, we're already at 100. I think it's amazing. And we're going to talk in this week's episode about some of the backstory behind how this podcast got started. I'm also going to share some points that I really want to summarize, which really kind of tell you what this podcast has been about, where we're going from here. If this was the only episode you ever listened to, I'd want to make sure these key points were covered. And if this happens to be the last one I could ever record, then this is kind of the way I'd want to go out with it. But in any case, we're going to be talking about all these things. I'm also going to be taking a little bit of time at the end to thank some people who have been supportive of the podcast and some people who said thank you on our Facebook group. And I told them I'd do a quick shout out to them. So wherever you're listening to this, whether it's in your car, out walking your dogs in between cases, I want to thank you so much. We could not have gotten here without you. You shared it with so many people. Every week it seems like you're sharing it because the number of people listening to this seems to continue to increase. And so it's been amazing ride. I will tell you, doing a podcast is not something that feels natural to me. I'll. I'll just let people know that right off the bat. It's like when I first started doing podcast interviews, I started getting invited to be on some. I was really self conscious. I didn't know how I'd sound. I don't know about you, but most people don't love hearing the sound of their own voice. Used to be on like answering machine messages and things like that. And that was me. I was kind of worried about how I would come across my Sound, these kind of things. And so I remember after the very first episode that I recorded, I think it was a white coat investor podcast that I went on. I went on it, I was nervous, and I remember I felt like I was sweating. The interview ended and I was like, I don't know how that went. It aired, you know, I got some good messages, but I also got one message in particular that told me that listening to me was, quote, unquote, relatively unbearable because of the number of ums and, you knows, and these kind of things that I said. And they suggested that I work on it. And so I remember reading that, that piece of feedback, and I remember just, like, being down on myself, and I was like, oh, man, I knew it. I sound silly. I don't sound good, and these kind of things. And then I decided at some point, I was like, you know what? Forget it. I'm gonna try to get better. And the only way to do that is to do it 50 or 100 or 200 more times. And so I just decided to try to go on as many podcasts as I could. I ended up getting on those, and I said, you know what? Actually, the best way to learn would be to start my own podcast. And so that's what I did. And I started this podcast a couple years ago, and it's been an amazing ride since. So I kind of joke to people, thank you very much for bearing with me for a hundred episodes, and hopefully I've been able to bring some value to your life. And, you know, it's been a fun ride, even just talking to people in the real world. And people have told me they listen to podcasts. I just want to thank you for that and I really appreciate you. So if I could summarize what this podcast is about and some of the things we've talked about, I think I could do it in, like, seven points. And I'm going to hit these points really quickly, one by one, and you let me know if these are kind of themes that you've seen as well in our podcast. Number one, it's all about passive income and passive cash flow. What does that mean? Cash flow is what ultimately drives how we live our lives and how we behave. We all have bills to pay. We all have, like, a certain lifestyle to keep up, some more than others. And all of that, whether we're able to do that is dependent on cash flow. And so that's why a lot of us work, because we want to make that income and it comes in to be able to support that lifestyle. And the more I talk to people and I ask them the same type of question, like, what amount of money, if I was able to cut you a check every month, you know, would change your lifestyle or change the way you live? And that number varies all over the place. It might be 5,000, it might be 10,000, might be 20,000. For some people, somebody put 40,000. But if somebody were to give you cash flow every single month, there's no doubt that you would live differently. Now, what I mean is that you may not work as much. Maybe you'd work less nights, maybe less weekends. Maybe you would change your job, maybe you would change your location. But there's no doubt there's some amount of cash flow out there that would impact the way you live your life. So the key is to figure out how much that would be. And then ultimately, how do you get that? How do you get that outside of your day jobs? Because if you're in the situation right now where many of us are and have been, and, you know, some will be, if you're in that position where time equals money, where you're reliant on stepping into the hospital to make an income, you have to do a procedure to create an income, and that is your only source of income, then that means somebody else is in control. I mean, somebody else could change the insurance, could change your reimbursement, your hospital could change the amount you're able to work. They could change the amount they pay you in terms of salary. They could change your incentive structure, whatever that is, you're under the control of somebody else. And so I think it's absolutely important for all of us to at least consider creating some other streams of income. The more passive, the better. And the goal of that is not just to have a nest egg that grows, that you can pull from in retirement and that sort of thing. It's actually to produce cash that comes in your pocket every month. Cause that's actually what changes lives. So we've talked a ton about those things on this podcast, hopefully different ways that you can do this. But hopefully we've hit that point again and again. And it's something that will continue to carry on as a theme in the podcast moving forward. Number two, and I think about. I talk about this quite a bit, is that success when it comes to investing, success when it comes to all of these things, we all think it's strategies. You got to find the right strategy for this. That what do I invest in, how do I invest that? What, you know, these kind of Things are absolutely important and I will tell you, but the truth is the information's out there. The information's out there at our fingertips. We can go online and Google anything and get it instantly. So I actually believe it's not a matter of strategy because it's out there. Maybe choosing which strategy, you know, is important, but the thing that's actually the most important thing is our mindset. You know, do we believe that we're going to be successful? Do we believe that we can make good decisions? Do we believe that we can do and learn how to do the proper, you know, due diligence on these type of investments? And I find that is what holds more people back than the actual strategy. Somebody could lay it out for them step by step, but if they're worried about the decisions that they make, if they don't trust that they can make good decisions, then it doesn't matter. None of that will happen. The same goes for when you start a business. For many of you, when you create multiple streams of income, you started a business, are you gonna start a business? They say that 80% of success in business is the psychology of the owner, the operator, the founder. And it does matter because you can have two ideas and two businesses. One business that the owner and founder, it's a sincere must for them to be successful. They are absolutely mission based. They know they're going to succeed and they take massive action to make that happen. Then there's another business where you might have this, another great idea, but the CEO, the founder just doesn't really believe that they can make that happen. So maybe they don't take the greatest action and so they don't end up making a good amount of impact and the business doesn't grow. So I've seen this in my life, I've seen this in others lives. And I think it's absolutely important to continue to work on your mindset, to make sure that when things don't go well, especially that you continue to be strong and continue to move forward and that you're able, in spite of certain failures or missteps, you can continue moving forward and creating amazing results. So how do you work on your mindset? Well, there are a lot of books out there. You know, one way that I've. It's really helped my life is to get coaching and also to, to find a good community of people around me who are doing the same things and supporting me. Number three, I want to talk about fear. Now. Fear probably drives more of what we do than like optimism. I think In a lot of ways, you, you know, we worry more about what can happen in terms of failure. We worry about all the things that can go wrong. And that really shapes what we do, whether it's invest our behavior, what we do at work and these kind of things. And so we fear the consequences of taking action. But something I've mentioned on this podcast before is that many people don't consider the other side of that, what will happen if you don't take action? You know, Tim Ferriss, a great podcaster, thought leader in the space, he has a great TED talk on the fear of inaction. And he likes to talk about, yeah, people need to define their fears both ways. For what if they take action? What if they don't take action? And so that's also, that's something he refers to as the fear of inaction. And I remember in my life when I started thinking about creating other streams of income, yeah, I was scared to make a decision, I was scared to invest, I was scared to do these things. The thing that actually scared me more was the fear that if I did nothing, I would be in a worse place in five years, in 10 years. And that's what really got me worried. It was bad in the situation when I felt the need to create other streams of income, but I worried that it would be in a worse position if I did nothing about it. If you do nothing, nothing will change. And so I decided that is what I use as my motivation to move forward. And so for many of you that are listening to this, is there something that's holding you back? Are you being held back because you have a fear of, that you'll make the wrong decision or you're gonna make the, you're going to make the wrong investment and you're going to lose some money. The thing is, what's the other side? What's the flip side of that? What if you do nothing about it? And I hope you'll consider that as you make your decisions. Real quick, are you thinking about investing in passive real estate investments like syndications or funds? Maybe you don't even know what a syndication or fund is. Or maybe you've tried investing before but really felt like you didn't know what you were doing or didn't have the confidence when you were investing? Well, I want to let you know and remind you that our four week course, Passive Real Estate Academy is about to launch soon. It's a course where we take you to the place from zero to little knowledge on the subject to investing confidently in real estate without being a landlord. We teach you about the due diligence process over these modules. We do live Q and A sessions so that we can make sure you have your direct questions answered. We're bringing in a ton of experts in the areas of asset protection, taxes, due diligence, anything that's important to help you vet a deal. You'll also be doing this along with a community of like minded people who are trying to do the same thing you're doing and you can learn together, ask questions together and ongoing after the course you're part of an alumni group that shares opportunities and vets deals together. The course only opens up twice a year. You can join our waitlist now and be the first to be notified when it goes on sale on April 9th and 10th and there's a discount there for waitlist members as well, but there's a regular sale after that so you can get more information. Join the wait list at passive real estate academy.com thanks. Next I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes. Well, it's kind of a quote that a lot of people have said very similar type things, which is the we all have heard that knowledge is power, but the truth is knowledge is only potential power. It only becomes actual power when you take action on it. You know that can. There are a lot of people, again who have said that. I think it's Jim Rome, Eric Thomas, Tony Robbins have said some variation of these type of that. Without action, knowledge, it doesn't matter. And so many of you have spent so much time acquiring knowledge, especially in the area of finances, business, whatever it might be. But you know, if you've ever been part of our leverage and growth summits, you know that the one thing that seems to be a running theme through all of these successful entrepreneurs is that they took imperfect action, meaning that they didn't know all the steps in front of them. They didn't know if they would be completely successful. But the thing is, they took steps, they kept moving forward, they course corrected over time. And that's something that I've learned in my life, is that yes, I've failed quite a bit. I made a lot of mistakes, both personally, career, you know, financially and in my investments. But you continue to move forward and you continue to kind of assess what you've done, where you could have learned, and figure out another direction or another step. And I found that taking action is the difference between getting what you want and staying where you're at. And so hopefully in some way this podcast has at least motivated you or encouraged you to take action. And now it doesn't have to be big. It can be a small thing. It can be, honestly listening to this podcast, even listening to others podcasts. It can be reading books, taking a course, going to a conference. Whatever it is, there is a step there that will move you in the right direction. I don't know what that step is for you. Maybe it's talking to a friend or colleague or being on a Facebook group, asking a question. But whatever that is, try to take that first step today and every day, take a small step. Okay? This next step is absolutely important too. I know that many of you are investing in various type of investments, Both active real estate, passive real estate, whatever it might be. Many of us make, you know, these investments and we talked about mindset and it's all, you know, these things are really important. But the thing that was really important is to learn how to do the proper due diligence. But these type of things, and I've spent a good amount of time trying to educate people on this topic. I'm still learning myself, I'll tell you that. And every time I come across a deal, anytime I come across a different opportunity, I'm learning new things about how to do better due diligence for them. And so especially when it comes to passive real estate investments like syndications and funds, so many of us have gone into these type of investments by just crossing our fingers and just wishing for the best. The point of due diligence, though, is not just to, you know, try to make great returns. The real reason to do due diligence is, you know, it's really three things. Number one, I think it's to mitigate risk, we're trying to mitigate the downside. You know, we're making incomes through our day jobs. We work really hard for that money and we're putting time in. That's time that we can never get back. The thing that you don't want is to lose your hard earned capital. That reminds me of Warren Buffett's rules of investing. Number one, don't lose money. Number two, see rule number one. And I think that learning to mitigate the downside will ultimately help you get where you need to be. And so learn what that proper due diligence looks like. Yeah, maybe by reading books, by taking courses, learning from others. Sometimes you have to actually invest a small amount in some of these investments to actually learn how they work. That's not a bad idea as well. But the key is to figure out where can this go Wrong. Where are the weak points and can I mitigate for those? And how is, you know, how are the operators or sponsors that you're working with, how are they mitigating those risks and to learn what that looks like. You also want to do due diligence because you want to make sure there's good returns there. You want to make sure that the returns are actually what they, you know, the potential for. It is what they say is possible. So. And you want to see if that fits your goals and objectives. Every deal, I will tell you, it might be good for me, but it may not be good for you, it may not be good for your next friend. It all depends on the type of returns, the risk they're willing to take, whether it fits their portfolio and what they already have in their portfolio, and does it fit the profile of what they're looking for. So we do due diligence to understand what the assumptions are in those deals, how those sponsors or operators feel like they're going to create those returns, because honestly, at the end of the day, anybody can promise anything, but how do you know that they're going to give you what they say they project? And so learning to do the proper due diligence will help you get there. And then third, you want to actually be confident when you make these investments mean that you'll never have the perfect information, meaning that you'll never know. I mean, there's always risk involved in every deal, but you want to make sure you know why you're investing in a particular deal. And the reason why is, number one, you want to know what you're doing. You want to mitigate the risk. You want to find good, great returns, you want to do well. But you also want to learn from every single deal that you go into that if things don't go as planned, you want to make sure that you know why. And the only way you're going to do that is if you learn how to do the proper due diligence so you can take that knowledge and do better the next time. Number six, if there's one thing I'd encourage you to do, and this has been one of the greatest accelerants in my journey to financial freedom, to living my ideal life, it's finding the right community to surround yourself with. You're the average of the five people, you probably heard that of the five people you surround yourself with. And you. I find that in my life, I find that absolutely to be the case if you're around people who are, you know, if they're constantly living in a world where they're not content. If they're living in a world where they're not taking action, if they're living in a world where they constantly just living in fear. When you're around people like that, these things rub off on each other. But if you're around people who are motivated, encouraging, they're inspired, they're taking steps to create their ideal lives, they're trying new things, they're innovating, they're excited, then you can't help but be in that kind of state as well. So that's something I'm constantly doing for myself, is reevaluating. Who am I spending the most of my time with? Is it helping me get closer to where I want to be, or is it moving me away? And so I tend to spend a little less time around people that, you know, honestly, I don't want to emulate. Now, where can you find these communities? There are communities online, there are people local, there are people when you go to conferences, however you find community, I would really ask you to look at your current community, your five closest people that you spend time with. You know, are they where you want to be? Are they people that you want to emulate? Are these people that you want to spend time with and that you think that all of you can add more value to each other and help improve each other's lives and help each other get where you need to be. And lastly, I know that every point has been really important, but this one is extremely important. Try to figure out how to live with an abundance mindset. Now, what does that mean? You know, most people will say you'll live either in a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset. And this is something that's not necessarily easy or intuitive to think about. But, you know, there's a certain concept that the world and the pie is only a certain size and that everybody can take from that same pie. Then it feels like the world is small, feels like resources are small, feels like your income is small, feels like your potential is small, and that you have to constantly be in competition, that you need to beat somebody, you need to, you know, somebody needs to be pushed down for you to rise. You know, that's what having the scarcity mindset is, meaning that the pie is only certain size and everybody needs to fight for that pie. Now, having the abundance mindset is more like saying that there are multiple pies out there. There are not only multiple pies, but the pie can be grown bigger. Meaning that Resources are abundant, education is abundant, investments are abundant. Meaning that you can support others and everybody can rise. You can be a resource for someone else. Well, without worrying that there will be competition for you, that they'll push you down. So I look for those type of opportunities and people who really follow that abundance mindset because it really expands your universe. And honestly, it makes you feel good about living and how life is. I don't know about you, but in your practices or in your businesses or in your investments, like, how much time are you spending looking at someone else and trying to compete against them? I don't know if you've seen those people. There are certain people out there that they really try to build themselves up by criticizing others, by knocking others down. And that reminds me of that one quote where people have said, what's the best way to have the tallest building in town? Either number one, you can go put in the work, create the most value, and you can grow the biggest building in town. Or the other thing that you can do is going around and try to knock everybody else's building down. So that's kind of emblematic of the abundance mindset, which is that grow the biggest building in town, get in there, do the work, support others, because everybody can rise, or you can go out there and try to knock everyone else down. You're going to be wasting time and you're going to be spending so much of your effort on that that you won't have time to give, to support and create. So hopefully you've seen this as a theme in what I do in our communities, that for somebody to win, it doesn't mean somebody has to lose. I think we can all find ways to grow and support and win and do well at the same time. And that's the type of community that I feel blessed has been part of my life, both in our Facebook groups, our community of people who are listening to this, and just the friends that I surrounded myself with. And that's something I've been so thankful for. As this podcast has gone on for 100 episodes. I quickly want to thank. These are Facebook names, but Kathy, Jenny, Chorito, Soojin, Al, Mri, Gabe, Liana, and Dashima. I just want to thank you guys for your support. I want to thank you for everybody who's listening to this, for their support, for sharing it with their friends, for leaving us nice reviews. We do read each one of those and we take the feedback and try to get better. So I just want to say I appreciate what you do. I hope we can continue to bring value to you on a weekly basis. Let us know how we can continue to support you, and we'll get back to normal episodes next week. Thank you so much. Let's talk again soon. Have an amazing week. Thanks. Bye. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Are you part of our community yet? Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. You can join us on our Facebook group PassiveIncome Docs, and you can always learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.