#122 Three Ways To Become A Better Entrepreneur And Leader

Foreign. 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 another great week. I don't know if you can tell my voice is a little bit scratchy. I spent the last week just connecting with people, networking with people, just spending a lot of time talking to a ton of people at a conference called Business Mastery. I spent about a. It's about five days just really dedicated to learning about how to be a better entrepreneur, how to be a better leader, how to be a better manager when it comes to my businesses, and it really translates a lot to life as well. Many of you know I've been part of a lot of these conferences in the past, and in fact, this is my fourth Business Mastery conference, and I know I've gotten a ton of questions about it. And then people keep saying, why do you keep going? Why do you keep going to these events? Why do you keep going to these conferences? And I really tell them, number one, repetition is the key. Because, I mean, you could hear one thing, I don't know how many of you have gone to a conference and you walk out and you're like, you know, you have so many ideas spinning or so many different concepts, so many different people, and there's no way to obviously implement everything, and you're definitely going to forget something. So going back reminds you of what's going on, helps you focus on the key stuff. And honestly, every time I go, I'm at a different place in my life, in my business. And so certain things resonate me with me in a certain way. It's kind of like when, you know, you went to medical conferences when you were in medical school, residency, fellowship, as an attending later on. I mean, a lot of the material might be the same. Of course there's new evolving research and things like that, but in technology. But you are at a different place. And so you. The way you digest the information, what you get out of it is different. So for this week, this week's podcast, we're gonna be talking about the top three things that I learned at Business Mastery at this most recent conference. But before I do that, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this, taking the time out of your day. I know your time is the most precious thing that you can give, and to know that so many of you are investing your time, your energy for this podcast and for so many other ways. Your business, your cash flow, your life, your finances. I mean, it's really encouraging. And so whenever you share stories with me about how something that you've learned has impacted you, just want to let you know that means a lot to me. And I really appreciate all those comments, both and feedback, whether it's good and bad. Please continue to send them my way. I know I hear a lot of them, you know, through direct messages or whether it's through our Facebook group, Passive Income Deck, wherever it is. I really appreciate you and the time you're putting in, and honestly, I honor you for that. Okay, these are in no particular order, but I'm going to start with point number one. I learned this concept. What gets measured gets done, and what gets measured gets done and improved, actually. Now, many of us in our clinical lives, we, in our work, we look at numbers all day, whether it's the blood pressure, whether it's bnp. And why do we watch these things and look at these things on a serial basis? Whether it's sometimes it's several times throughout the day, sometimes it's daily, week, weekly, whatever. What's the point of measuring these things this often? And the reason why is because we want to see trends. We want to know what we're dealing with so that we can ultimately help solve whatever issues are going on that we are trying to fix. The potassium or whatever it is. It tells us what needs to, you know, what we need to focus on and what interventions we need to take and whether those interventions are working. And we're so good at that in our daily clinical lives. But I'm wondering how many of us that translate that to our lives outside of medicine, for example, like your finances. Now, I know many of us look at our bank account numbers once in a while, see what's in there. But how many of us track how things are actually going? Meaning that from week to week, month to month, you know, is our cash flow improving, is our income increasing versus our expenses? Are you tracking that on a regular basis now? I'll be honest with you. Most of the time, I never used to do that. I never used to think about how the trends are. I just knew that, you know, if I had money in there and it was positive, then I was doing okay. And how many of us track our net worth, all the assets that we have, the liabilities? You look at all your investments, how are they all doing versus your liabilities, your debt, how many of us are actually looking at this on a consistent basis. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not great at this. And for so long, I had so many excuses as to why I had a tough time doing this, whether it took too much time to do it. I didn't know how to set it up correctly. Should I do it on Excel? Should I do it on a personal, like, app or program? Like, you know, like personal capital or whatever it might be? I had some excuses for why I wouldn't do it. But I noticed once I started watching these things, on whether it was like a weekly, monthly, quarterly, even half yearly, every six months, I started seeing trends and I started seeing how things were going in the right direction or maybe not in the right direction. And I knew what I needed to fix or at least work on. And once I started doing that, I started noticing vast improvement in certain areas, especially when it came to my expenses, that I would focus on it. And it was top of mind. And actually, the most important thing that I used to track was the amount of passive income that I received on a monthly basis. Obviously, you all know I'm a big fan of passive income. And at the end of the day, what would you get on a monthly basis? That amount that you get can start to really replace your income and replace your clinical time or whatever it might be, really allow you to buy your time back. So if you're not tracking that on a monthly basis, you don't know how it's going. You don't know if it's doing better, you don't know if it's growing, you don't know the amount, you don't know how much time you could buy back. I mean, the thing I think about is, you know, I have a lot of friends that are actually trying to really work on getting healthy and fit. And they have certain markers that they follow to check and measure to make sure they're doing well. Usually it has to do with their weight or has to do with how much they can lift or has to do with. They take pictures and they kind of see their body in terms of transformation over time. All of these things are ways to measure yourself. And it really keeps you on the right track, and it, again, helps you know that you're doing the right things. So really, when it comes to your passive income, when it comes to your finances, when it comes to your net worth, I'm going to challenge you. If you are not measuring these things on a consistent basis, then you're probably not going to know what to improve on. And it's not going to help you accelerate to get you where you want to be. And again, I'm the first one to admit I oftentimes have challenges when it comes to this. This is why I wrote this down as a number one point. For me to know that, hey, if I want to get certain things done, I need to find a way to track it, to follow it. Okay, on to point number two. When you ask a better question, you get a better answer. Let me say that once again. When you ask a better question, you get a better answer. So what do I mean by that? I mean, I've learned that one of the big challenges for me is time management. I want to be a physician. I want to be a business person. I want to be a good father, I want to be a good husband, I want to be a good friend. I want to do all these activities. And it always feels like I don't have enough time for all of these things. Sometimes even just I don't have energy for all these things. And I know I tell myself all the time, like, why is time management so hard? I mean, that's what I would always tell myself. Why is it so hard to find the time and energy to do all these things? And I started realizing how I feel when I ask that question. It makes me feel like I can't do it. Like, it makes me feel a little bit hopeless, makes me feel tired, makes me feel like I'm not making the progress that I want. And something that I was challenged to do at this conference in particular was to change and reframe the question, to really come up with a little bit more of an empowering type question that can allow me to be a little bit more resourceful and figure out actually how to improve the situation. So, for example, in my situation with this whole time management, instead of saying, why is time management so hard? You know, why can't I get everything done that I want to do? I started asking the opposite, which is, how can I do this? How can I find the time? Or what systems can I put in place so that I can get everything done that I want to do? You know, when I started asking that question, I started thinking about systems, I started thinking about resources. Then it started going to what. What books can I read? What coach can I hire? What discussion do I need to have with my wife, for example, to help set all of these things up? And honestly, it got me a lot more excited. I started feeling empowered that I know I can make this happen that I can make change, that I can make some tweaks, that I can be resourceful to figure it ultimately out? And I realized that I'm probably doing this with so many areas of my life. I don't know if you're doing that as well. For example, in the beginning, it was like, why can't I create more passive income? Or why am I working so hard or doing these type of things? But instead, I started to reframe that question and say, you know, how can I create more passive income in a way that's enjoyable for. For me? How can I do it in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm putting so many things at risk, but I can really enjoy and do well? How can I work my schedule so I work enough to be happy as a doctor, feel like I keep my skills sharp, but really have the freedom to do all these other things with my life? And so that is one of the key points that I took away. It was a great reminder. I've heard it before. But I realized there's so many questions that I'm asking myself that aren't helping really drive the results that I want. And so now I'm learning to catch myself in that moment and try to ask a better question. And now we're on to point three. I hope those first two points are helpful, and if so, I think point three will definitely help you out, because it's helped me out. Point three is, in any situation when you want something, the best thing to do is really start with the what and the why and not jump straight to the how. There's something called the tyranny of how. I don't know if you ever heard of that concept, and I heard a lot about it at this conference, but many of us, we might have these great IDE ideas or maybe even great desires. Like, I want to do this. I want to take three months off to travel every year. I want to live in Europe for, you know, two months this year, this summer or something like that. We might have all these great ideas. I want to buy real estate. I want to invest in a syndication or fund because I want to make passive income. And we have all these ideas, but what do we all do? And this is, I think, normal human nature. And I do this all the time. The very next thing that we do very, very quickly, because we are problem solvers, is we jump to, how can this happen? And then it becomes really overwhelming. Like, you have this idea, and then all of a sudden you think, well, I mean, to do that, I'd have to, you know, put money at risk. I got to go talk to these people, I got to put the money, I got to find a good deal, I got to get started. You know, if I want to live abroad, I've got to, you know, what happens to my kids, school or what happens with work. I got to figure that out. How much money would it take? I got to find a good place. And a lot of us jump to all those hows real quick. And so what happens to that idea? That idea gets squashed, it gets put away. Nothing ever happens. You don't take action on it. And again, I'm exactly the same way. I mean, the way many of you might understand this is that, you know, we all decided at some point that we wanted to be a doctor or high income professional. Your job, whatever it might be, whatever in your career, it is like you made a decision at some point that you were gonna go for it. And so to use the example of being a doctor, you know, many of us said, all right, I want to be a doctor. And what we did was we figured out why that was important to us. Like, you know, whether you said it out loud or not, you wanted to help people, you wanted to live a good life is important to you. Like, we all did that and somehow we figured it out. What we didn't do, and I will tell you, is that when we decided to be a doctor, we didn't sit there and write out all of the reasons why, number one, it wouldn't work. Number two, all of the things that it took, you know, would take to be a doctor. For example, I want to be a doctor. We didn't jump to, well, I got to go through training, I got to go through residency, I got to move to another country, another state. I have to score this on my MCAT. I got to get these CMEs. I got to talk to this advisor and get a letter of recommendation, you know, that might not work. Then I got to find a job and apply and then I've got to take off time and pay for this. Like, we didn't go to all of that, because if you did, I promise you, it would feel extremely overwhelming and none of us would be here today if that was our main focus. Somehow we were able to decide first what we wanted, which was to be a doctor. And then, number two, we had this really strong passion for it, this strong drive, and that led us to figuring it out along the way. We didn't know the whole path, but all along the way, because we knew what we wanted, why we wanted it. We figured out who to talk to, what are the resources, how hard we had to work, you know. So to tell you another story is that when I first wanted to start investing in real estate, I'll tell you, when I first heard those stories, I actually felt really overwhelmed. I didn't know where to get started. And I don't know if many of you feel like that. I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know how to, you know, to invest in real estate, what books should I read and all that stuff. And so I'll be honest, for a while, I did nothing. But what happened was that I happened to decide to go to one of these meetups. And when I went to one of these meetups, I started talking to people and they were telling me, you know, how they got started. And there's so many different people, they got started so many different ways, and all of them had achieved something. And every single one of them said, you just gotta get started. And so I made a decision at that point. Again, I don't know all the details. I don't know how to make it all happen, but I'm just gonna get started. I'm gonna put money down, I'm gonna find an investment, I'm gonna make it happen within a week or whatever it was. And I made that decision and I realized I'm gonna make a step till I figured out exactly what I wanted and how to get there. And trust me, I made a ton of mistakes, but actually getting started and not worrying about all the little details about how have really served me well and allowed me to get where I wanna be. So for many of you, I talked to you on, you know, through comments, DMs, whether it's on our Facebook group, and so many of you are, you know, have these goals about income goals or real estate goals or whatever it might be. So I'm going to encourage you right now and have you really free frame your questions, which was point number two, figure out what are the right questions you need to ask to get done. You know, are you clear on your. What are you clear on your. Why have you written all these things down at the end of the day? What resources are out there to help you get where you want to be? Because I promise you, they are all out there. And it's a matter of you being resourceful and figure out figuring out how to find those things. And again, I struggle with these things daily, especially the measuring part. I'M not necessarily the most detail oriented person, I'd say, and so spending time to do that can be a challenge and a struggle. But again, if I'm going to ask myself a better question, it's how can I figure out a system so that I can measure all the things that are really important to me? Because I know that that will ultimately help me get where I want to be. So I hope this has been helpful. Those are the top three things that I learned from this most recent conference. I'm glad I got it out of my head. I'm glad that you're listening. Thank you so much. Even just talking about it with you has really helped me cement these things and I think it'll hopefully it'll serve me well and I'll walk away with this conference knowing what I need to do to take myself to the next level. Thanks everyone. Have an amazing week and let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. 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