#105 Be Proactive in Creating Passive Income

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're having a great week. Quick shout out to people that are listening to this in their cars. Whether you're listening to it, like back and forth from work or whether you're picking up your kids, whatever it might be, you're taking this time to invest in yourself and you're spending with me. So I don't take that lightly. So thank you so much for listening. This week's episode, we're going to be talking about a topic that's not actually easy for me to talk about just because I haven't been this way my whole life. I'm still not this way in many way in respects. But we're going to be talking about today about being proactive, not reactive when it comes to creating Passive Income. Now, I think that as a profession, as physicians, high net worth individual, whatever it might be, in your profession, whatever it might be, we're awesome at tackling problems when they arrive. Like a patient comes to the ER with chest pain, you sort it out. When the appendix is inflamed, you remove it. You know, when somebody comes to you in anesthesia, when there's a problem, we're great at figuring out what to do to make it right. I mean, I know there are many of you who might be preventative medicines, physicians, but I'd say the vast majority of us, we focus on solving problems after the fact when they come to us. And honestly, that's what we do in terms of all our learning, our education, our training is for that moment to treat the acute situation. Now, it makes sense that we tend to act the same way because that's the way we've been trained and educated and what we're used to doing when it comes to our finances. And definitely when it comes to creating Passive Income, I think we often wait until there's an issue that we have to fix before we do anything about it and we're really motivated in that way. So let me know if any of these sound familiar to you. Maybe an insurance company decides that they're no longer to reimburse you for that procedure or pay you less so you know that you're going to lose a significant part of your income. Then you start looking for solutions. Maybe that's you or Maybe your practice contract, meaning the group doesn't get the contract or gets a decreased amount for the hospital and. Or it isn't renewed at all. And then you're left scrambling. So you left scrambling for another position, and then you start figuring out what to do next. Or maybe you start to experience some symptoms of burnout, and then this realization hits that you're just, like, on this big hamster wheel. Then you look for solutions to combat it, right? To solve that issue as well. So I'll be honest, all of that sounds like me and what I do for. For me, only when something happened at work where I realized I was not in control of my time, that's when I started looking for solutions. I'm just lucky it wasn't like a huge, like, terminal event, like being replaced or losing my job. For me, it was more like a warning shot. You know, a shot across the bow type thing. Like, it's kind of like having an angina, right? If you leave it unaddressed or untreated for a while, it could lead to more significant issues down the road. So. So maybe you've experienced that warning shot in your life, like you've seen a friend or a colleague or like a former residency mate like I had, where they were hit hard when their practice goes under or terms changed for them. But maybe you didn't take any steps to avoid a similar situation for you. You didn't necessarily feel like, oh, that could happen to me. I mean, I'm glad I did something when I did because we all know that in the way the world works, the way life works, new challenges, new threats always come around the corner, right? New challenges, it's not always a bad thing, but it helps you grow and makes you do different things. But honestly, it helps to have a comfortable hedge, right? To have options. Now I feel like I have a little bit more peace of mind now. That didn't come easily or without taking some risks. But for me, again, the thing that really drove me was not really the cost of what would happen if I took action. That fear I felt like doing nothing about it and ending up in a really bad situation was far worse, right? And that I was basically guaranteeing that I would not be prepared for future rough times. And I knew that there was going to be pain there in the long term if I didn't do something about it now. And so that's why I started really down that path of developing multiple streams of income. Now, at first, I'll be honest with you, it's meant, like I was spending way too much or far more energy and effort on it than it was really worth. I mean, I wasn't necessarily seeing a huge return right at the beginning that I had hoped for. However, over time, I found that all that energy and effort, it started to pay off. And I started noticing gradual increases in income and returns. And then soon, over time, when I look back, I'm actually. I realized that I was actually making far more and putting less and less effort into it. And that's like the power of passive income. Now I know, and I've met tons of others just like me who have taken those steps to really secure their financial future, to make sure that no matter what happened in medicine, that they would be set. But I also know a ton of people who haven't done anything about it. So I'm wondering, why is it so hard to be proactive in this type of situation? And I think it's really one of two reasons. For one, I think it's comfortable to stay where you're at. You have a routine. And we love consistency in our lives. Who doesn't? I mean, I think everyone needs to feel like their situation is stable, Especially since all of a sudden, medicine, it's a field where it's totally uncertain from day to day. We see things that are uncertain. Makes us feel like this life is kind of crazy. It's nice to have our financial futures in terms of our routine. It feels nice to have that stable. Or maybe it's that we fear pain, right? In the short term or long term. Like, that pain for us might be a sense of, you know, doom when it comes to losing money, or maybe a fear of failure or maybe fear of losing pride or where we're at. And that pain might keep us from moving forward. So maybe it just ends up easier or at least feels easier to just ride the waves as they come and figure it out. That is great until things really force us to change. So the thought is, you know, what's. What's better? Reactivity, like where we react to situation or being proactive. And again, all of us listening to this, I bet you you're great at dealing with problems as they arrive. I take pride in that, that I feel like I'm. I'm great in the moment under pressure or when things need to be solved in terms of problems, I'm great at that. But when it comes to our goals, like whether it's financial or for our lives, like, this type of approach can lead to a ton of problems. We're going to talk about that, okay, so number one, when a problem has reached the point when all you can do is react, it's really harder to solve the problem. I think you really, I think we all understand this, the pressure in those situations to get out of it. It's totally different than in the time leading up to it. Like, you have to fix things now. And it's so much harder to operate under those conditions. The pressure gets to you. I mean, I think that again, if you're in the medical field, you're used to acting well under pressure. There's like a crash. I mean, C section. I'm used to that. As an OB anesthesiologist, maybe you need to innovate somebody, you know, you act like automatically you revert to your training. It's like, it's like part of your body and mind. You just do it. Like when the trauma patient, when somebody comes in, they have to take care of a patient who's been in a really bad car accident or whatever it might be, and they jump into action. They don't really have to think about it and they just go for it. They've been trained and they're ready to go. However, we all know that this pressure, right, having this pressure at that moment, it might change the way we might have treated things or done things if the situation was less time sensitive, right? You have less time to think through all the problems. You got to go with your instinct and to come up with the best solution. Well, as a result, you usually focus on the vital stuff first and then you handle and deal with all the other things that come with it later. So this lack of time in a situation where things need to change now, it doesn't really lend itself to any sort of forethought. It doesn't let us plan for the future. And then when we get to the situation where we see physicians or these practices struggle, we end up feeling really anxious about what the future holds. So that pressure and having less time to actually come up with a good solution, that can be a problem. Number two, your most immediate need in a reactive type situation is to simply just get out of that situation. You're like looking to escape and survive and not looking for the situation where you're going to thrive most in. So instead of trying to figure out what would be best in the long run, you make decisions to avoid the most amount of short term pain. For example, let's say your group gets bought out and you lose a contract. Instead of trying to figure out your ideal work situation in life, you, since that income isn't there. You just find the next position that's open. Maybe it's not like in an ideal location, maybe it's not. But you have to solve that short term pain of not having income. So that reactionary behavior, I absolutely believe from jumping from things to things, it leads to burnout like nothing else out there. It makes us feel trapped. We're at the mercy of our own circumstance. This leads to stress and then honestly, we forget our love of medicine or our passion and why we went into things in the first place. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you look for short term fixes all the time and you're moving from short term to short term and not really figuring out what's best for you in the long term. Number three, I know that some of us feel like we thrive in that environment. But again, it's not just you that's in that situation. Oftentimes you have a family as well or other people, and it's hard for you to take action that may work out best for you and you're okay with because you have a perceived risk. You have a risk of, of other people that you're taking care of and there isn't enough room for that. I mean, how can you risk your family's wellbeing? You know, my friends and I talked about how it was easy for us to jump out of planes, for example, when we didn't have anybody else to think about. Not that that is the way situation you want to be in. But I'm just saying, like there are different decisions that we have to make now that we have other people that we are responsible for as well. So many of us, I know that feel like we can't take that risk because of all these other things we have to think about. However, in reality, risk is an absolutely important part of success for anything that you might want to do, right? But yeah, you want to minimize as much risk while maximizing gain. But that's really hard to figure out when everything is on the line and you're in that pressure situation. So in terms of being proactive, I ask people all the time and maybe you can do this exercise real quick wherever you're listening to this. Do you think that life in medicine for you it's going to be better, the same or worse than 10 years? Maybe you can think about that for yourself. Is it going to be better for you the same or worse in 10 years? Now, if you're being honest, I would say the vast majority of us will say that it's going to be worse for us. It's not because we're less passionate about taking care of people or because your skills are going to decline, or maybe that there isn't going to be new technology in medicine and that we're going to advance that, you know that's going to be there in 10 years, all of that will be there. I think it's mostly because we all see how things are going politically, regulatory wise, and the financial environment of medicine today, especially us as physicians, we know that the direction it's headed in. So I have another question for you. If you know in your mind already where things are going to be in 10 years, how many of us are actually being proactive about our lives, setting ourselves up so that when we hit that 10 year mark, we know that it's going to be there and virtually guaranteed to be there. Are we setting ourselves up for success to be there? Are we just kind of riding along the train? Some people call us like lemmings, where you're gonna just fall off the cliff eventually we'll get there. How many of us are actually being proactive for that? So ultimately I believe that the ones who are proactive, they're gonna be the ones in the best situation. Whenever that situation might be, might be 10 years for you, might be five years, might be three years down the line when things change and you have to do something about it. So rather than just being reactive, dealing with problems as they come, which you're probably very good at, things will change. If you actually turn that to being very proactive about your future. I mean, that's going to mean less stress, less anxiety, in my opinion, a better outlook for yourself and your family. So it might take a little bit more effort up front right now to create that passive income to make those investments, to learn, educate yourself and take those steps and take a small amount of risk. I get it. It can be intimidating, some scary. But I hope that you can see that it's absolutely worth it or it can be worth it as well. Now, I'm an optimist at heart, so I hope that in the future, medicine itself as a profession, especially for doctors, it's going to be in a better place. I mean, I'm optimistic about that, but at the same time, I'm not waiting around for that to happen. And I don't know if you are as well. But I'm constantly trying to be proactive to make sure that I'm prepped for whatever comes ahead, especially when it comes to income security, especially when it comes to being all those things as a doctor. So maybe you could take a moment to think. Are you being reactive or are you being proactive when it comes to creating passive income? Which side are you on? What could you be better at? How could you improve? What things could you think about? Or what steps could you take today to help yourself along that journey? So in any case, reach out anytime. We'd love to know how we can support you. Thanks for being part of our community. Have an awesome week and let's talk again soon. 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 a 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 Passive Income 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.