#158 6 Financial Habits for Successful Wealth Builders

Everyone, we're going to be talking about the six financial habits of successful wealth builders. I know you're all going to want to learn about this, so stay tuned. Enjoy. 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. All right. I know this is a topic that relates to everyone. Everyone wants to be wealthy. And I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about time really being intentional about having that control over what they can do with their life, who they can do it with, and how much fun and happiness they have along with it. When I think about wealthy people, I think about people who have that control. I don't think about people that just have a lot of money. There's definitely people out there who have a lot of money but are absolutely miserable. And those are people that I don't consider to be wealthy. Those are definitely people that I don't want to model myself after. And I'm assuming that if you're listening to this, you're kind of on the same page with me. Go ahead and nod yes, if so. If you're watching this, listening to this, knowing that wealthy means being happy, being content, and having a lot of gratitude about the amount of money that you have, the type of relationships you have in your life, and the control over your time which allows you to do all these things that you want to do. Now, I know what you're thinking. How can I be wealthy in today's world? People talk about financial freedom all the time, but few people actually know how to make it happen. But I can tell you one thing that I've learned, it's that success leaves clues. What does that mean? That if you find people that are successful and in achieving what you want, at least parts of it, right, they might not be completely, you know, they might not be complete models of exactly how you want to live your life. Well, there's a part of their life that maybe that you find successful, but there must be clues there for how to actually recreate that, how to follow their footsteps. And actually, it'd be really powerful for you to figure out what are some of those steps? What have they used, what resources, what steps have they taken? What kind of mindset do they have to achieve what they achieve? And trust me, you can get there a lot faster than if you can find People who've been there, done that, and you can, you know, learn from their mistakes and figure out how to accelerate your way there. In fact, leverage their growth, their experience, their knowledge, their connections, their resources to help you get where you want to be. That's the key. And here's what I've noticed for people that I want to model my life. They didn't get there in terms of wealth control over their time by following the traditional approach. What I mean by the traditional approach is working your butt off for 20, 30 years, giving all of that time, especially when you're young and healthy, so that you can have money later on in retirement. Those are not the people that I want to model. I want to enjoy my life now when I'm in my prime in terms of health, income, ability, when my kids are young in the house, I have my friends around me. I want to be able to enjoy this time now instead of waiting for it 20, 30 years down the road when something that might not even come. I learned a lot of these concepts from books like Rich Dad, Poor dad, the Four Hour Work Week, Die With Zero. I just learned about that whole concept of making money work for you, creating passive income, creating multiple streams of income so you can live your life how you want. It was a novel thinking for me because it's not something that we grew up with. It's not something that we are trained to learn about, especially in our medical training. We probably learned exactly the opposite of all of that, right? Think about your typical career arc for a physician. My father was a physician. We had some physicians in our family and things were different back then. Maybe the market for physicians, the way they were compensated, the way the medical system was at that time, maybe it made more sense for them. But in today's world, I absolutely believe you can't follow the same model and expect the same results they had 20 to 30 years ago. Hey everyone, I want to share a super exciting announcement. We have a brand new deal that just opened up with Ascent Equity Group, which I'm a co founder at. Now this is a multifamily syndication deal called the Encanto and, and I think it's perfect for this exact market. It's a class A, A location in Goodyear, Arizona where properties are booming. Now we have another investment in that region that's doing extremely well. Now you might be stressed about inflation, interest rates and recession and wonder if now is the right time. So I highly encourage you to go to ascentequitygroup.com deal so you can see why this is a diamond in the rough deal that you don't want to miss. Get all the information at a Center. Equity group.com steel Again, that's ascent a s c n t equity group.com steel. All right, now let's get back to the show. So I think a lot about creating wealth. Again, not the monetary part of wealth, that's part of it. But again, living that life that I can be happy about, that I can be fulfilled about and feel grateful about at the end of the day. So today I'm going to explore the best advice that I can give for building wealth. So. So here's my first bit of advice. Think intentionally about where you invest. I know that many of us think about the concept of investing. We get tips and tricks from here, this blog, this podcast, maybe from our financial advisor. But I want to ask you this question. Why do you invest where you do? Whether it's in the stock market, real estate, different alternative investments, why do you do it? I think everyone's looking for that magic strategy, but ultimately people need to figure out what are they doing all of this for and what are they trying to accomplish and achieve. And when you invest, what are you learning from it if things don't go well? So I want you to think about your current portfolio right now of investments. What are the different things you invest in? Again, whether it's the stock market, your retirement for 1k, whether you're investing real estate, what kind of real estate you're investing in, whether it's active ownership of your own properties, whether it's investing in syndications and funds, are you investing in debt? Are you investing in mineral rights? Different types of alternative investments? Are you angel investing, meaning that you're investing in other companies, kind of like a venture capitalist. Are these investments actually helping you get closer to your goals? If your goal, like mine, is to live an intentional life right now where you can really take control of your time, are your investments helping you get there? When I looked at my investments about 10 years ago, I realized that my current trajectory wasn't going to help me get where I wanted to be, especially when it came to investments. I was just putting money away in my retirement account, and when I actually took a look at it, I realized that is not going to help me live that intentional life that I want. And it wasn't going to let me cut back on some of my nights and weekends to spend more time with my family. I realized that the only way for me that was only going to be possible by really investing in things that created cash flow today. Now, I've talked about it quite a bit. What's investing, and I think this is for everyone. Investing is taking today's cash flow and trading it for the future cash flow. What I mean by that is that you invest your money today because you're making money. What do you do with that money? You're trading that money today to get cash flow and in the future. And for you, are you deciding that you want to take this cash flow two years from now, three years from now, or at least start it two or three or four or five years from now? Or are you deciding that you're going to take that cash flow when you're 60 plus years old? For many of us, I would assume that listening for many of you that are listening to this, I assume that you're taking today's cash flow, investing it, and saying that you want to start taking that cash flow when you're 60, 65 plus. Now, there's nothing wrong with that if that's your goal and that's your intention. But if your goal is to take advantage of your time now, or at least start doing it while your children are young, while your health is good, your families are, then maybe those type of investments aren't going to help you get where you want to be. Successful wealthy people understand that your investments, your capital, your time, whatever it is, they're all finite resources. And you only have so much of it when you put it in one place, that's an opportunity cost, meaning that you put it in one place, you can't use it for other things. You have to figure out how to prioritize those and put those in places that will create the greatest gain for you. The they'll help you get where you want to be. One of those things that don't people don't think about in terms of investment, it's not just money investment, it's in terms of time investment. How are you investing your time to get you where you want to be? Are you investing most of your time in a job in a position that's going to suck up 60, 80 hours of your work week and not help you get closer to where you want to be? Or are you investing your time in educating yourself? Right, we'll talk a little bit about this at the end of this talk. But educating yourself, putting into investments of your time and energy that will create greater returns later on, meaning that you invest in your time and your money into things that buy your time back. For example, you know, I've talked about investing in VAs, investing in other services that will create some more efficiencies for yourself in today's world. Are you investing in AI artificial intelligence? Because so much of what we can do can be actually tasked out to some sort of AI platform company person that knows how to run AI to buy some of your time back. And that's something that's a big strategy of mine. But we'll talk about that in future episodes. How to use AI to maximize your return on your time and investment. Hey everyone, wanted to tell you about FlipMD. It's a competitive marketplace where physicians can source and secure consulting side gigs. Jobs come from a broad range of clients across all major industries who are looking for medical experts in their field like you and me. Now, FlipMD allows physicians to pick and choose the consulting work that fits their schedule and their interests so you can continue to provide quality patient care while exploring new opportunities. And here's the coolest part. You get to set the parameters for your work, including an hourly rate. So join the thousands of physicians who are diversifying their income streams and expanding their careers with FlipMD. With FlipMD, you can pick up consulting work whenever you're available, try out a non clinical career, or even do something completely outside of the realm of patient care. It's a centralized source of well paying side gigs that will help you build your physician brand. Join now and see why new physicians are joining every day. Visit flip-md.com again. That's flip-md.com now back to our show. Tip number two. Wealthy people have multiple streams of income. Now you've probably heard that millionaires have seven streams of income. I don't think that seven is necessarily a magic number, but it's an aspirational number. They notice that the more people have in terms of diverse income streams, the more likely they're able to create scalable leveraged income for themselves. I think, I think today's economy, with everything seemingly a little crazy out there, is more important than ever to figure out how to create other income streams that creates that diversification that we love to talk about. It can help weather economic downturns. Whatever might happen in your job might happen. Whatever in your personal life is able to help you weather these things. Because we all know that setbacks do happen. Meaning that whether those again happen in your job, in your personal life and, and the people that can quickly pick themselves up or maybe not, are not affected as much by these setbacks. These obstacles are people that are able to grow more wealth and build more time, freedom for themselves. So, yes, we're in a position right now where we have good incomes from our jobs for the most part. Right. We're able to create that income. But how are you using that, funneling that to create other income streams and other opportunities? Are you looking out there? If you look right now at your income streams, and I used to do this especially early on on my blog and platform, especially that I used to look at all of my income streams and figure out what percentage of it came from my day job, what percentage of it came from passive income opportunities like real estate or investing in other businesses. So what's that for you? That might start with just doing a quick inventory of figuring out how much of your income comes from your day job. Is it 100%, 75%? And I would venture to say the lower, I venture to say the lower percentage that is, especially for your day job, the more secure you're going to feel because if something dries up in that area, you have other income streams to, to back you up. Now, what are some of these income streams? It might be starting a business, might be investing in real estate, investing in the syndication. It might be developing a product or an invention or maybe even coming up with a new service. I have a ton of examples and I have interviews, whether it's through our Leverage your Growth Summit or even here on this podcast of people who have figured out how to create all these new ventures for themselves. They've used their medical knowledge, all the skills that they built within medicine, which again, we have a ton of. They've been able to take all that and become coaches, entrepreneurs, business people, inventors, expert witnesses, whatever it is. They've been able to figure out other ways to utilize and leverage what they already have. The goal is to create ultimate security for yourself. It's to create that diversified portfolio that over time can weather any sort of economic situation for you. You probably heard of the holy grail of investing I mentioned before. For Ray Dalio, successful and famous, a wealth manager talks about having many, many 10 to 15 uncorrelated assets or uncorrelated streams of income, which can create ultimate wealth over time. It mitigates risk, but then also creates smooth returns for you. All right, tip number three, utilize debt or figure out how to utilize debt to make money, more money for yourself, for doctors. Debt is a big part of our lives. Pretty much most of us listening to this have taken on student loans and that thing has grown over time in terms of how much people carry. The average medical student carries home hundreds and Hundreds of thousands of student loans by the time they get out of their medical school. So we know how important debt plays in terms of a role in our lives. Many of us out there have mortgages. Raise your hand if you do. We know how it can change the way we live, ultimately because of debt. Now, establishing and developing a healthy mindset toward debt and figure out how to utilize that debt to your advantage will create significant wealth for you in the future. It helps to start out by understanding what, what is good debt and bad debt. I would simply say, and I've done this previous episodes, bad debt is debt that actually takes from you and becomes a liability and burden in your life. Good debt is debt that you use that you can leverage to create more wealth for yourself, to help you out to build higher returns and grow your assets. So this might mean that you come up with a plan to pay off high interest debt, like credit card debt, and then figuring out how to minimize current debt that you have. Maybe it's your mortgage, maybe it's your student loans, figuring out how to consolidate that, figuring out how to refinance. I know that this time, right now it's high interest, but in the future, high interest rates might come down and you might figure out how to decrease your debt burden in terms of your payments and to figure out how to reduce your debt burning again by refinancing, consolidating, whatever it might be. Then it's also about figuring out how to use that debt to create income, generating assets or finance business ventures to create more income. I think a lot of people are scared of debt, and there are certain platforms that make you completely scared and paralyzed by debt. But I absolutely believe that those who know how to utilize debt get there faster, get where they want to be in terms of accomplishing their goals, in terms of accomplishing time, freedom, whatever it is, by the use of debt, using it smartly, mitigating the risk. For example, I've talked about this before, is that I have student loan debt and I still carry that student loan debt. It's at a very low interest rate. And so I've decided to keep that. But what I've done is instead of paying that off, which I could absolutely do, I've taken that, I've used it to invest in things that produce cash flow. Now at the end of the day, that cash flowing investment helps to pay off that debt. So what I've done is leverage debt to pay for my other debt. And so it becomes this really powerful thing where again, my investments are paying off my debt and creating greater future returns for myself. Obviously there are people who are investing in real estate and investing in real estate, you're able to maximize your returns by using leverage. Obviously you have to use that smartly because it can be double edged sword, but it allows you to multiply your returns and get to help you get there faster. You just have to understand how to mitigate risk in that scenario. And that's absolutely possible. By being part of communities like this, I'm sure you've learned quite a bit and we continue to talk about this on this platform. Okay? You can't win without tip number four. You've got to know your numbers. Now, how many of you right now, off the top of your head, know your basic assets and liabilities? How many of you know your income and then your expenses? Now, most of us don't remember this off top of my head, I'll be honest with you, I probably don't know it as well either. But what I do is every month I go back and I take a look at it in a deeper level. I look at it every single quarter. What I mean by that is I have a list of all my assets and liabilities, meaning that I know how much I'm making and how much I'm producing every month and what I have in terms of my net worth. And then I know on the other side, what's my debt, what's my, what are my expenses that are taking away from that. And I'm tracking it and I'm making sure that I'm moving in the right direction. How can you know you're getting closer to your goals if you don't track it? So I'm sure many of you exercise. You know, what if you didn't know how much you're lifting, if you're trying to gain strength and you didn't know that you're actually moving towards the right direction, if you're trying to maybe do a 5k in a certain amount of time, how can you know that you're getting better and faster if you're not measuring that time in terms of your goals? Many of you are flying absolutely blind and don't have a good grasp of your numbers and liabilities. And don't feel bad about that because I was there too. Figure out a way to develop and maintain your personal scorecard and just make it a habit. Maybe every single month you just look at your income, expenses, maybe you look at your assets, liabilities, assets, meaning like your investments, things that create more income for yourself or increase Your net worth like your home, maybe investment properties, other investments that you might have. And then look at your expenses. What's taking away from that? What are you spending your money on? Without knowing some of that, you can't really put that all into perspective and actually utilize those to help you get where you want to be. If you need help in that, find a mentor, find a friend, find an advisor, your CPA maybe that can help you put all this in perspective. Now this can be as simple as putting it on Excel spreadsheet. There are platforms out there for you that can help you manage a lot of this, but really it comes out to you doing it, putting in the work. Spending an hour or two every single month again is one hour to my every two months at the least case, can you commit to doing once? Doing once every quarter, just doing a quick scorecard for yourself to see where you're at and making sure you get where you want to be. And if you're not, you can course correct, meaning that you can play with your expenses, you can play with your investments to figure out I'm getting closer. And the only way to do that again is to have a scorecard to know your numbers and make sure that you're making progress. Tip number five is to develop a growth mindset. When you what is a growth mindset? I can tell you what it is. I mean, it's the key to building wealth and achieving financial success. It means focusing on opportunities for growth rather than limitations like focusing on that and being willing to take calculated risks. Like one key aspect of a growth mindset, it's the willingness to take action, embrace failure as a learning opportunity. Now, growth mindset gives one the ability to learn to get up, dust yourselves off and keep going. Now I mentioned it involves the willingness to take calculated risks. I'm not talking about risks that are going to put your entire family at risk. We are physicians and we do risk benefit ratios all the time and we act according to that. In this scenario it's the same. We take risks that we know have a tremendous benefit with less downside. That might involve investing in a new venture that you know that you can control and do well. That might mean negotiating a better pay or moving to a job with a higher pay potential. Maybe it's developing a new product or service and trying that out on the side of the while you still have your day job. Developing a growth mindset. It's about seeing opportunities again where other people see limitations, right? To take action to help you get where you want to be. To always want to do more, to be willing to go outside your comfort zone, knowing that that's the only way to get where you want to be. For me, that's how I got into real estate. I don't know about you, but that's not something that I was comfortable growing up with. It really wasn't a part of my family life growing up, or a part of my medical education. But I decided that I needed to do more in terms of creating more income for myself so I could have that financial freedom. Well, I heard about this thing called real estate investing. Other people were doing it, and I saw it was possible. So at least it opened up the opportunities for me in terms of my mind. I saw it, and I didn't jump necessarily to that place immediately where I thought, well, it's not for me. I decided to seek it out, to try to figure out what it was all about, to see how it might fit into my life. And ultimately, I decided to take a risk. Now, it was a small amount of risk initially, one that I knew that I could bounce back from, and I knew that if whatever happened, I would learn from that experience. And that's what I did. Luckily, that experience worked out well. Early on. It was a good time in the market. I made some real good investment decisions, especially following certain people. I was very fortunate about that. But it hasn't been perfect all along. I've had mistakes along the way that I've always been very vulnerable and actually transparent to share about. But I've learned so much from that, and I continue to pick myself up, learn to grow, and seek new opportunities. And it's really helped me break through, to get me where I want to be. Now I have those income streams from real estate. My other investments that more than cover my expenses allow me to really just live life how I want in terms of spending time with my family and to have that abundance that I've always been looking for. Again, what I've done is, I don't believe is anything special. It's just that I've been able to take these steps, look for what's possible, and be willing to take, again, a calculated risk to achieve those things. And these things grow and build on each other. All right, Lastly, I think tip number six is absolutely important that you need to become a lifelong learner if you're not already. Now, we all know how to learn. We wouldn't be where we're at if we didn't know how to study, to learn, to educate ourselves. But how many people feel like the education stalled pretty much the moment you finished residency or training. Well, you might have started to learn some things in your practice initially, but many of us kind of decided to put that on the back burner and just decided to survive, to live, to do whatever's necessary to get from day to day. How many of us continue to educate ourselves? And that's something that I've always pushed myself to do and I've been learning to do. And again, I've had mentors in the space who challenged me on this, because a lot of times, if I'm there by myself, it's very easy for me to try to find the most comfortable place to get complacent. But I've had people in my life and surrounded myself by those communities and those membership groups, those mentorships, mastermind groups that. That have continued to push me to realize that there's so much more to go in terms of educating myself to find more resources. So since then, I've taken courses again, join these groups, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube channels on a daily basis. I try to learn at least one little thing that I didn't know before. How many of those things add up if every single day you decide to learn one thing that you didn't know before in that area that would help you achieve your goals, Whether it's like real estate investing or. Or how to do better financially, how to do better with your taxes, asset protection, all of these things are areas that I'm sure all of us can learn a little bit better. And especially I need to. So every day, are you maybe learning one thing? How can we continue to cultivate that, that mindset of being a lifelong learner? And I think if all of us are honest with ourselves, we like to learn. I mean, again, we may not like to learn the things that we don't want to learn, but the things we want to learn, like, all of us probably feel motivated by that, right? We feel energized by learning something new. How was. What's the last thing you learned? And you're like, and it was a breakthrough for you, and you felt energized to learn more. All these things build on top of each other, and I hope that you can really cultivate and motivate yourself to figure out how to learn more on a daily basis. Ultimately, all of these things are probably things you know, but I try to put it in a framework for you to make it really simple, to make sure you have these things as a checklist to help you get where you want to be. We all want to be wealthy again. It's not just about money. It's not about greedy. It's about having the intentional life that we all want. Whether that means being successful in business, in our careers, in our families, in our time, being absolutely generous and giving and contributing to the world. Whatever it is for you, that's what true wealth is. My hope is that all of you are taking steps to build that legacy of wealth for yourself. And my hope is that I can support you along the way. Thanks everyone. I'm excited to tell you about PIMDCON, the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Conference happening on September 21st through 23rd. This year. As always, we're bringing together some of the smartest minds in real estate, investing and entrepreneurship to speak at this event. Now, what sets this conference apart from others goes way beyond the speakers. It's being part of the community that's created at our live events. Now, this year we're offering specific tracks focused on real estate investing or entrepreneurship acceleration so you can customize your experience and focus on what matters to you the most. Now, our expert speakers, coaches and workshops. They're going to help you gain the knowledge and confidence you need to take your next steps forward and towards achieving financial success and independence way beyond medicine. And it's not just about the information you're going to learn from the speakers. It's about the conversations you'll have with other attendees that I know will spark new ideas, inspire you to take action. So every year people leave PIM Nikon and they launch their real estate investing careers while others grow their portfolio in exponential ways. I mean, ways you wouldn't have even imagined. Now, this year is going to be no different as you leverage your big ideas to expand your vision for what's possible. So join us in person in Los Angeles on September 21st through 23rd. There's also a virtual option available for those who can come live. So don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with a community of like minded individuals and gain practical skills and knowledge to help you achieve your financial goals. Save that date September 21st to 23rd, 2023. I'll see you there. Thanks everyone. By.