#132 4 Ways You Can Model Success

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, when we talking about a subject that I think is really important for people to understand, it's something that you've probably been naturally doing over your lifetime. But when you think about it, many of us forget to do that when it comes to some of the most important things in our lives. What am I talking about? This week we're going to be talking about what it takes to be successful. And if you want to be successful, modeling successful people is one way to do that. Now we're going to dive into that. Now, as physicians, we are no strangers to studying. I mean, we've all spent countless hours with our heads buried in books trying to absorb every last bit of knowledge in what little time we had. We are also no strangers to learning from others. In other words, we already know how to model successful people. Whether it's teachers in our medical school, our attendings, perhaps the colleagues we respect, I mean, definitely our senior residents, these kind of things. We've all spent time developing our skills under educated, experienced leaders. In fact, we've looked to these people for tons of help, advice, and guidance. And in some ways, we've tried to emulate their knowledge and success. But when it comes to reaching our ideal lives, when we want to think about where we want to be in life, how many of us even think to use that same strategy? I know I didn't, didn't come to me or naturally occur to me. I mean, over the last couple years, I'd say actually the last decade or so, I spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to be successful not only in my career, but life in general. Like, what that means for everybody is a little bit different. For me, that feeling of success really comes from setting goals, achieving them, or at least getting close to them, and then setting new goals. That whole concept of of growth really matters to me when it comes to feeling like I'm sort of success. I have some goals, but again, if I achieve those goals, just like we've talked about in podcast past, we talked about the whole arrival fell. So you feel like you're set once you get there. The truth is you never feel like you're set. You get to a new set point, a goal line, and you feel like, hey, is this all there is? And you've got to set another one quickly for you to feel like you're progressing, for you to feel like you're successful at all. Now, I've spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to do well in all of these areas. I mean, I've read so many books and listened to hours of podcasts, read a ton of blog posts. Don't get me wrong. I mean, all of this learning has really served me in a great way. It's been hugely beneficial. But eventually I realized all of that can only take me so far. In fact, I've discovered that the best way to truly accelerate how fast I achieve my goals is the same way I've worked to become a physician. The same way you probably have. Not only by studying, by eventually modeling other people who are already successful. Now, let's talk about the concept a little bit. What does it mean to model someone? I mean, at its most basic level, modeling someone means just using them as an example and imitating what they do. Now, when I realized I wanted to become an OB anesthesiologist, I didn't just want to have the title. I mean, I obviously wanted to be really good at it. So I studied, you know, the experts at placing epidurals. Those were my tendings. I learned how they, you know, did simple things. They positioned the patient, how they palpated the back, the anatomy, how they held the needle. I mean, you get the idea, right? I mean, all of those little things, all the little technical things, I learned. If you're a surgeon, you're listening out there. For someone who learned. If you learned how to do a Whipple, if you learned how to do an appendectomy laparoscopically, you probably modeled or you learned from someone who you felt did it well. Everybody might have slight variations, but eventually you took the persons, you know, the person that you thought was doing it great, and you modeled a lot of their behavior. I mean, I did the same thing. I leveraged these really experts in the field of OB anesthesia. I leveraged their experience. I learned from their mistakes, and that helped me accelerate my path to getting good and getting proficient in that field. Now, the same thing happened for me in the world of investing. Before I tried to learn how to do it myself, I was reading books, which is a great thing, educating myself, diving into as many resources as I could. But then eventually, I met other physicians who had created significant passive income for themselves through real estate. And I soaked up as Much as I could, I listened to their advice. I followed their path. I saw what kind of investments they made. I saw what kind of resources that they were using, how often they were going to look at properties, how they were figuring out how to do the proper due diligence, who they were hanging out with. All of these were questions that I was asking of these people to try to figure out if I could just do exactly the same. I realized that it just takes so much more effort to recreate the wheel when there are other people that you can just model and really use in terms of leveraging their experience and accelerate your path to get you where you want to be. Now, I love that word, leverage. Now, leverage doesn't mean taking advantage of. It means utilizing the resources that you have to have a greater effect than you would have on its own. So when you model someone, you leverage their experience, their background, all the time that they've put in, you know that you can learn from. You learn to just piggyback on top of that and find the fastest and quickest way to get where you want to be. These are some of the questions that I was asking of these people who were investing. I was asking, what did you invest in? What resources did you use to learn how to invest well in that area? What challenges did you face? What did you learn from them? What mistakes have you made? And again, what have you learned from it? And what would you do again if you were to do it all over again? I just asked these simple questions of multiple people that I thought were successful in the area where I wanted to be successful, the people who had gotten where I wanted to be, and I simply modeled them. Of course, not every method that they've used made sense for me. I would find things that would work that made sense and discard kind of the rest, utilize the stuff that's useful, and figure out other things that I didn't really think made sense, and just kind of forget about it. I decided to incorporate the parts that truly helped me get where I wanted to be. Now, I know there are people that are listening to this. They want to create multiple streams of income. They're just thinking about it. The idea and the concept sound great, but you just haven't figured out how to get started. Or maybe there are some other obstacles that are preventing you from getting started. And even more than that, this whole concept of modeling, you don't know who to model. Well, let me tell you, those people exist. They're out there. It starts with finding people in your direct community. I Found people in the hospital, you can tell who they are. You probably know exactly who they are. The ones that seem to live pretty good lives, they are happy at work, they tend to travel, do these type of things. They seem to live the life that you want. And instead of just like admiring from afar or thinking not great things about them, maybe go up and ask them how they did the things that they did. For example, how do they live the life that they live? I mean, you're going to find out. If you find ask those questions, you're going to find out probably some of the same answers that I found out in that situation when I wasn't happy and I wanted to kind of be in a different place, that a lot of these people were making income or creating income streams outside of medicine. Maybe many of them were outside of, you know, maybe many of them were investing in real estate. I don't know. In your community, that's what. That's the first place to start. If not, then you go online. We have tons of communities for physicians, by physicians to help people out. And they're the people that are probably the easiest to model because they understand where you're from. They're likely where you were at before they got where they wanted to be. We have Facebook groups for that. We have meetups that happen in local areas. There are conferences that take place. I would say that if you're out there looking for it, you're going to find it, I promise you. And the funny thing is, once you find one of them, you're going to find that they usually hang out in groups. And the reason why is that, you know, it goes back to a lot of things we've talked about in the past, where you are the average of the five physicians you spend the most time with. And I can't tell you how many times I have to tell that. Can't tell you how important I think that is, that your peer group, the people that you spend the time with, the mindset of these people, these people all rub off on each other. And I find that they've helped each other succeed and get where they want to be. Some of them tend to model each other in different things or they find a model that they tend to follow. So that's why whenever somebody asks me, hey, I'm thinking about doing this strategy, investing in real estate, I'll always ask them, who do you follow? Not like, who do you follow? Like they're a guru, necessarily, but who are you trying to model? And if they don't have somebody that they're trying to model. I encourage them to find that person. Maybe it's somebody they know or they know of online, but either way, model those people. I mean, something we've always done every year is something called the Leverage and Growth Summit. Maybe some of you have been part of that. The only thing we do at that summit is bring people's stories and package them into one powerful resource. We bring that to people because we want to give people a chance to find people that are successful, maybe have achieved in some area of their life something that you want to achieve, and then you can model them. We bring that story so that you can learn from them and understand them. Another podcast that I absolutely love is this. This podcast called How I Built this. It's about entrepreneurship and how, you know, they were able to get where they wanted to be in their journeys. And I always learned from so much from each episode, their stories and their journeys. And if there's something in there that I resonate with, I really try to model that, and I try to really incorporate a lot of that into my own learning, my own career, my own investing life. Now, we do that summit usually in the spring. So depending on when you're listening to this, definitely look out for that. But those models are there. And when you find that person or those people, here's what I recommend. Number one, you model their actions, meaning what do they invest in? What do they read? What do they look at? These kind of things? How do they spend their time? Like, what are those actions that they are taking? That. That really help move the needle? That's something. If you can ask them, ask them what are the big actions or maybe even small actions that have made the biggest difference for you? I would start with that. Number two, I'd go to their mindset. Now, sometimes you start with mindset, yes, but actions are a great way to start mindset. How do they think about life? How do they think about money? How do they think about family, career, medicine? I like to dig into these things because those are things that I can learn to model. I'm a big believer in that. All of these things, all of these changes, all of these actions start with a simple shift in mindset from I can't do this or I'm stuck where I am to how can I do this? To how can I make that happen? And once that shift occurs, the world kind of opens up in terms of possibilities. So what are the mindset things that people are pursuing that they're thinking that allow them to achieve success? I Think that's one of the most fascinating things. When I talk to somebody successful, it's like, how did you know that you were going to be successful? How did you make that happen? What was the leap? And usually I will tell you, it's not always that one resource or that one amazing decision. It was really had to do with a shift in their mindset that made it possible for them to do what they wanted to do. So that's something that I would definitely model. Number three, I would model their habits. I asked them, how often do you think about your investments, your business? How do you get that consistency in your life to allow you to achieve success? I asked them all about these habits. That's why I love books like the Miracle Morning where they talk about so many successful people who have taken on morning habits and what they do to visualize success, to actually work out, put themselves in the right position to make the most out of their day. That's one thing that I've really, that's one thing that I've really taken to heart, finding good habits. And I'm always struggling with that. Trust me, I'm still working on getting better habits daily. But that's something that I've really worked to model other people. And when I notice something that's a habit that seems like something that would help me out, I write that down. I try to incorporate that into my life and see if it makes sense. Number four, I try to model the peer group of the people they're hanging out with. If they are achieving success in real estate, are they hanging out with a lot of real estate people? Are they hanging out with a lot of mindset people? They hang out with a lot of doctors. Like, who is their peer group and who is helping them get where they want to be? I'll tell you, if there's somebody that's successful in any area, they've got a great peer group likely that is helping them achieve what they want to achieve. They probably are spending a lot of time with like minded people or helping them get there. So that's the other thing I would look at. How are they spending their time and who are they spending their time with? And then fifth, if you can get to it, I would ask them simply what resources they're using, what books are they reading, what blogs, podcasts, how do they consume content, how do they learn how to do the proper due diligence, what are they using to analyze deals, what are they using to help with time management and productivity? What are they investing in, who do they invest with. All of these are resources that you can get from just talking to someone, someone that you can model leverage off of their experience. That's an amazing thing. In any case, hope that was helpful in some way. My encouragement. You know, if there's something that you want to invest in by the end of the year, obviously take action, make it happen. But the one way you can really invest in yourself is obviously educate yourself, put yourself in the right community and find someone to model, if not more people to model. That will help you get where you want to be. After all, we're looking to speed up the process and do it more efficiently, make less mistakes, and hopefully this helps. You have an amazing week and let's talk again soon. Thanks. 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.