#246 My Journey to Financial Freedom

Hey, everyone. Hope you've had another great week. I realized it's been a while since I've shared my story, from how I went from feeling stuck financially and in my career to achieving financial freedom through multiple streams of income. So I wanted to share that with you and some lessons I've learned along the way. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Now, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably on the same journey that I'm on. Some of you are ahead of me, some of you are behind me. But either way, we're on the same path mean that I think we're all looking for the same thing. We just want to live a good life. We want to live a life where it's intentional in terms of how we spend our time, our energy, our money. We want to do things that are meaningful, things that we're passionate about, that we're able to spend the time with people that we love to doing the things that we absolutely love. And we're all just trying to figure that out. And I know for many of us, we felt like being a physician, going through this whole path would get us to that promised land. I know it was for me. And my medical journey wasn't necessarily the most. I went to college, took off a few years to do some research to beef up my resume before I applied to med school, got into medical school, got into residency, and I've talked about that whole journey. Then I did a fellowship in OB anesthesia, something I was extremely passionate about, and I got a job. And when I got that job, just like many other people, I thought I was completely set. This is what I've been working towards my entire life. And things will be perfect from now on, financially, in my career, in my relationships, in my life, everything would be pretty much like I wanted. And I hoped earlier on I didn't need to think about anything else. This was gonna be the path, and I was set and I worked so hard to achieve it, and I was good to go. Now the issue came a few years into becoming a partner at my job, which again, I thought was a moment. I was again where something that was promised to me as a partner didn't come through that affected my time at work. It meant that I'll be working more nights and weekends. It also meant that my income wasn't going to be Where I thought it was what I was essentially relying on for long term security. And I only had that one stream of income just working as a doctor, like many of you do, and I thought that was completely secure. After this situation and many other things that have happened afterwards, it made me really realize that life in medicine, that security in medicine is not actually what it's all cracked up to be. Things have changed politically, things have changed in regulation, things have changed with administration. The way medicine is has completely changed. And I think all of us will probably be able to admit that it's not necessarily for the better. Now. I've seen some changes over the last few years where physicians have really started to advocate for themselves, but especially 10 years ago, you never heard about anything like that. I realized that if I wanted to have more control over my time, my financial future, then I needed to figure that out on my own. Nobody was going to do that for me. Now, that's not a fun realization. When you think your whole path is set for you, you're gonna live a great life, from then on, that certainty is there. But when things get shaken, when your foundation is shaken, you realize, I've gotta figure this out. There's a lot more uncertainty than I thought. I need to take on new challenges. Then everything needs to shift. What else was I gonna be able to figure out? Did I need to find another job? Did I need to figure out another way to create income through investing? What if I made a mistake? So what I started by doing was that I started talking to as many people as possible who had actually achieved some of the things that I wanted to achieve. There's this old saying that you never want to take advice from someone you don't want to be like. And so the opposite is true. You want to take advice from people who are where you want to be in some aspect of their lives. Now there's probably nobody out there who you want to be exactly like. You might want to emulate certain aspects of their life. If they're a physician and live and seem to really do well financially, but live a great, balanced life with their family, those are the people that you want to talk to. There's this whole concept that success leaves clues that there are breadcrumbs that they leave behind which you can learn from. And so that's exactly what I did. I started talking to physicians who seemed to have it figured out, whatever that it was. And it turned out after talking to so many of them, that many of them were investing in real estate, that many of them had figured out how to create other streams of income outside of medicine so they could really change their life in medicine and shape it how they wanted. Now, all of their paths weren't smooth and easy, and all of them. I started asking them about the risks. Were you fearful? Were you worried that you lose all your money? How did you get past that? How did you mitigate that? And I kept hearing the same thing over and over again. You're gonna make mistakes. It's gonna happen just like you did when you were starting in residency, when you were learning how to be your. Whatever your field is. If I'm an anesthesiologist. And I knew that I was gonna blow some IVs along the way, have some challenges with some central lines, have some difficult innovations, but I was going to learn from it and get better each time. And they related that to me in a medical term that I really understood. And instead of just being fearful about what could happen, I started realizing that those things were necessary to help me get where I wanted to be, to be financially free, to have that independence, to do what I wanted with my time. And so I was able to see the bigger picture. So with little to no knowledge, I just started investing in real estate. I started looking for different opportunities, and I figured out what risk I could bear, how much money I could put in without feeling like my financial future was in danger, Meaning that I couldn't feed my. Myself and my family, but I'd be able to learn from it. You know, we've all spent so much to invest in our education. Many physicians go out there, they want to get their MBAs, and that ends up being hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they're scared to put in $25,000 to learn about real estate investing. And I learned over time that it's an investment. I need to invest in myself, in my own knowledge, to get where I wanted to be. And once I realized that, it allowed me to make that first investment. And that first investment was a $5,000 investment. I talk about that all the time. And then it became a $25,000 investment next. And what I learned from it was that there were other ways to create income. I didn't always need to put in more time to create more income as a physician. As you know, we need to show up, we need to see patients in the clinic, we need to do the cases, we need to be there to get paid. If we go on vacation, usually it's a double whammy for a lot of people, unless you're employed but oftentimes you don't get paid for that time, and you have to spend money on your vacation, so it can really hurt. Or if you're employed, you have a certain amount of time off and you've got to ask for it. So your income is tied to the time you put in. And so I was really focused on how do I unlink that? And the way to do that is through something called passive income. I learned all about the concept. I started reading about it, started studying it. Now, with passive income, a lot of times when you look online, it seems like people are just talking about how to make money in your sleep. And I get it. Some of that is relevant, some of that makes sense. But what they don't always tell you is that it does take a fair amount of work upfront to figure out how to make this happen. It does take some mistakes. It does mean taking some steps without knowing exactly what's on the other side. But over time, it will build, it will grow, and it starts to be unlinked from the time that you put in. And that, to me, is what passive income is all about. It's not about getting rich quick. It's about building a system, a money machine in place, which will ultimately create more income for you. You can leverage it to build that financial freedom. And once you shift that mindset from trading your time for money to building assets to building money machines, then the game changes, because you start to get creative around what that looks like. It introduces you to new ideas and new concepts and new people. You start getting motivated to go to conferences, take courses, get coaching, and you start realizing the world is a lot bigger than what you see day to day. And that really happened when I started getting my first few deposits and paychecks. And I started realizing that I can do this. I've been in medicine. I've learned so much. I'm a great learner. We take risks all the time in medicine, but measured risks, and we know what those are. We can do that in investing as well, too. And little by little, it started to grow. And I was able to keep working in medicine in the meanwhile. So I had the extra added benefit of still having income, but being able to have that income funneled into other things that would grow over time. And when I was ready, I started cutting back on shifts. I didn't have to go all in right away. And little by little, started creating that freedom for me to the point where I started buying my own properties. I started investing in other people's deals. I started Businesses. I started helping other people create businesses. Of course I have this platform and this podcast which I'm so grateful for. And I started really focusing on creating communities of physicians to learn about this stuff, to help each other, to support each other on this journey. Because we all know that locally we may not have those people around us. Many people just put their head down and they try to just survive. But I wanted more and I wanted to find people who wanted more as well. And we found that through our Leveraging Growth accelerator community, through our Passive Real Estate Academy, through pimdcon, the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship conference. We've met so many people out there, probably people that are listening to this, who want to be, be in a circle of people who are thinking differently, who and who are going to help each other get to where they want to be. And yes, I've made mistakes, I've lost money in deals, I made poor decisions, but I never gave up. And it's always led to a better outcome down the line. And so I don't fear it as much knowing that it's just a step towards future success. And you probably hear that all the time. Sounds trite, sounds cliche, but yes, I've learned that failures are necessary for you to learn, to get better, to improve and, and I see them more learning opportunities. I hope you do as well. So my journey is only my journey and everyone is on a different journey to a degree. But I think we again, we all want the same thing. So if I had to sum it all up, the key steps would be to learn from others. Education and investing in that is an investment. Surround yourself with other people who are doing the same type thing or are like minded or on the same journey. Start small, but start now. Don't wait on it. You're always going to wish that you started sooner and it's okay to make mistakes. The key is to learn and adapt and we can all do that. This whole thing is a journey, meaning that you're going to learn and grow along the way. You're going to become a different person, you're going to pick up new skills. But the most important step is to get started. I'll encourage everyone listening to this. Consider this a new year, a new opportunity to reflect on where you're at and where you want to be. And hopefully we can help you or our communities can help you in some way. Please reach out, let us know. We appreciate you all. Have an amazing 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. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.