I love entrepreneurial success stories! Today I’ll be interviewing my friend Ron Douglas who found a cooking niche that was all but untapped.  And he’s not a trained chef by any means!

You’ll discover how he came up with this brilliant idea and wrote “America’s Most Wanted Recipes” which started as an eBook and became a New York Times Best Seller, selling 1.5 million copies to date.  But he didn’t just rest on his laurels – he developed an entire community around his love of cooking which brings in 7 figures annually.

And he now hosts an annual training conference called WebinarCon, the premier networking and educational event for online presentations,  which brings together the top online marketers and entrepreneurs in the industry, which has become another million dollar business for him.  Prepare to be inspired!

WebinarCon 2022 – Save $1500 with Early Bird Registration

https://www.webinarcon.com/early

Ron Douglas’ Website

https://www.rondouglas.com

Transcript:

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. I’m super excited to have on the call. What I consider one of the OGs or involved in internet marketing back in the day. And we’ve been friends for often our many years. We would see each other at different conferences. And I said, Ron, I need to get you on.

This call because you have such an inspirational story. He’s a former wall street, financial analyst who got an MBA. And before realizing he was miserable in the corporate world. And one more time to spend with his family. He started becoming started doing entrepreneur stuff back in the late nineties, started marketing products as early as 2001.

Because he found a niche that he was really, he found a niche that people would want the information that this niche provided. And that was in the recipe arena in, into cooking. And he self published a cookbook called America’s most wanted recipes that became a New York times best seller.

Since then, he’s done such an enormous amount of things from creating information, products and courses. And now he has. A seminar, a program called webinar con we’re gonna find out more about it. That’s coming at the, in the fall of this year. So I’d like to welcome to the program. Ron Douglas, Ron, how are you doing?

Ron Douglas: Doing great. Thank you, Dr. Mike, it’s always great to be with you. Thank you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I consider you the OGs because we go to these different conferences and we see these let’s say, younger marketers, younger millennials, and they. What I’ve found at least some of the ones that I go to is they’re not necessarily entrepreneurial they’re working for a company or, getting involved in the tech space.

And I think there’s something really maybe I’m romanticizing it a bit about, but those days when we had, we were creating products and courses and just life caution to the wind sometimes and launching the, these big projects. I want to take it back to the late nineties. We talked about it in your bio.

You were in wall street. And then tell me about how you were disenchanted by the corporate world. Because on our program, we have a lot of doctors and healthcare professionals. They’re making good money, but they’re not necessarily excited about the job. And they’re looking for other ways to generate revenue.

One of them in particular is developing your own online business. So let’s talk about it. How did you get started?

Ron Douglas: Yeah, man, the old days back in the late nineties, early two thousands, man, I missed those days too. There was no social media. There was no easy way to find customers. There was no Google.

There was no YouTube and, and we just really had each other, we had online communities like the warrior forum and we had places where our audience would hang out and we’d be able to tap into those audiences. But the good thing, like traffic was a lot cheap. Back then. And then you had people that had traffic already that you could get to be affiliates of yours and promote your product.

And it’s just a matter, it was just a matter of finding a product that sold, but the numbers back then were a lot less. Like I look at the the NBA. I know you’re a fellow NBA fan. You look at some of the salaries that these players are getting in 50 million a year to, come off the bench seems to miss a lot of shot Russell, Westbrook’s getting 47 million and he can’t, he’s shooting 18% from three.

So it’s like Westbrook . Yeah. Westbrook. Yeah. You don’t let him hear you say that. So it’s… the numbers like back then, we were just trying to get… if we can get just $10,000 a month, like I remember Jeff Walker, his claim, the fame he’s like known for the product launch formula. But prior to that, his claim, the fame was, he was Jeff six and seven.

So he had did six figures and seven days, and that blew everybody away. And that was his kind of tagline. So the numbers were a lot less the opportunity was a lot less and than it is now. So someone getting in the game now. You have a huge opportunity and it’s easy to find your marketplace. They’re all hanging out on Facebook or on, on YouTube or on Twitter or on these different places.

So you could target right into that marketplace. There’s so many communities and so many people, the opportunities are so much bigger now, but yeah, I got started, I was started out just selling. How to make money online products. And I wasn’t really making a whole lot of money online and that didn’t work out too well.

So I was really looking for something. I was an affiliate on this network called Click Bank. Click Bank is a marketplace where you could find different products to promote, or you could list your product for sale and affiliates that want to promote, wanna find a product to promote, can find you and get what’s called an affiliate link.

Where they can get a commission for promoting your product. And it’s mostly digital products on there, some supplements, but some of these products are doing $40,000 a day. Like these guys are a huge billion dollar network. So I was a click bank affiliate promoting other people’s products. And I was just looking for something to promote.

So I was interested in cooking. So I was like, what can I promote outside of make money online? What can I do? So I did some research and I started to find out that people were always looking for these recipes for their favorite restaurant dishes, like chain restaurants, the popular ones, red lobster, olive garden, cheesecake factory, KFC, all these places.

And then I started doing additional research and a lot of people had published their version of different recipes. And then I did even more research and I found that there’s no real copy. On recipes. You could take, literally take a recipe, try it out, change, switch up some ingredients, and then it becomes your recipe or change the wording.

And, as long as you, you could put your own spin on it and not use someone’s word for word recipe, then recipe is no copyright. So started doing research and I said, okay, this will be a great little niche to create a little ebook about and sell it on ClickBank. And that’s what I did. And I was working at JP Morgan chase at the time.

And one day I just logged in and then it was like, looked at my email account. It was like sale sell. I’m like, oh my God, people are buying this thing. And it was awful. It was… Mike. When I tell you it was awful, it was God awful. It had the sales page had Microsoft clip art on it. As graphics, it was done in front page.

The ebook cover looked real like ghetto the whole thing. And I had no idea, but I was charging $20 for this thing. And people were buying it because it was the angle. It was the offer. People wanted to know how to make secret restaurant recipes. And I had a book with 19 recipes in it for 20 books and it just started selling and then other sites were promoting.

Sending me traffic and I was getting sales and I’m like, wow, I’m onto something. A light bulb went off. And I just started focusing on my time on building that up. I create turned it into a real self-published cookbook, started selling it on Amazon, added like a hundred recipes to it and, hired some outside chefs, to come in.

I started building an email list off of that, built this big community. And by 2004, I was making more from that than I was making from my job. And then I start now, I was always like heavy networking with different marketers, trying to learn what they were doing. And then Tom bill, a fellow friend of ours, he exposed me to the idea that he put the seed.

He planted the seed to say, this is much bigger. And little eBooks on ClickBank are selling this on Amazon. You can actually get some, get publicity from this. At the time he was working with Jim Kelly, the former football player, and he was helping him get marketing and publicity and stuff.

And he told me that and light bulb went off and I’m like, wow. So I hired a publicist. The publicist went out, the publicist introduced me to a literary agent, ended up getting my first. TV interview on Fox business. And this was in 2000. I remember that. Yeah, 2008. And they ran with the story former wall street guy.

By that time I got laid off. I got laid off in 2007, I guess they figured out I had another gig or whatever. And they said former wall street guy leaves his job on wall street to pursue his passion of cooking. And I wasn’t a cook or anything. I was a, just an online,

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I was gonna ask you what you’re passionate about.

Ron Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. So I had started taking cooking lessons just so I wouldn’t embarrass myself on television. So I got that TV interview and we parlayed that into a book proposal. I hire a literary agent, ended up getting a book deal with Simon and shoes to do two books, six figure advance from that. And long story short that took off, I’ve done six books with Simon Schuster got two more book deals from them.

And collectively we sold over 1.5 million copies. Of that wow. Book series. And then from there, naturally people wanted to know like, how did you do this? So I started actually teaching what I did, teaching people how to self-publish teaching people how to get publicity, teaching people, how to build an audience online.

And then I started doing webinars and actually made more teaching what I know and coaching people than from actually doing it. And I made, a lot of money doing, I still get royalty checks from that. So that’s the short version of long story.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I love that. One thing you mentioned is you weren’t a cook. You were. Passionate about it. So how did you how did you get your first recipes? Were you, did you find stuff online and then had your own take on it? Were you experimenting at home and try to figure out the Colonel Sanders secrets?

Ron Douglas: Yeah, the Colonel Sanders one really took off. Yeah. That was the one I spent the most time on.

I had bunch of different versions of it and. As I mentioned, people were researching these and publishing their results online and these like little message boards and whatnot. So I would just take their results as a base and then say, okay, maybe it needs more of this, less of that.

Me and my wife were just in the kitchen doing that, but not all the recipes we did, we’ve published hundreds of recipes. So not all of them were that process. Some of them would just, research and having some chefs help us out test it out for us and things like that.

When you decided to… You had a conversation with Tom, be I’m curious as to how you decided to go legit because back in the day, I came from the Frank Kern school of creating these little niches. I created these eBooks and a whole bunch of different markets specif specifically in the dog training area.

But I never went and even thought about, going on Fox Business or CNN or wherever, what made you decide? Was it just that one conversation with Tom or did you feel that, You legitimize what you were doing in some way what triggered it? Because most people wouldn’t take it to that arena.

Yeah. Yeah. I was also at that event, I was friends with Mike and he introduced me to his publicist and the publicist was the one that convinced me, like I can get cuz he had, a lot of connections in New York city. I was living in on long island at the time and he convinced me like the media would love this story.

So I just took a blind leap of faith, paid him, let him do his thing. And he started giving me all these interviews. So just a matter of knowing it was possible. And then when the opportunity arose saying yes to it, and then just, sometimes when you’re ex in the room with people doing things that you want to do, opportunities like that come up and it just expands your mind.

That’s why I do my own events now. Like people come to my events. Find different opportunities and make deals and their mind get exp expand minds, get expanded to what’s possible and just creates an environment where, forest is a certain amount of success afterwards. So someone who’s listening to this program, they’re saying, Hey, that sounds great, Ron you stumbled onto a niche.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: You were lucky because you found them something that’s untapped and today there’s so many niches that, that are already exhausted and they’re already being fulfilled. What would you say to someone like that?

Ron Douglas: I would say that you’re not really understanding how big the marketplace is and how big the opportunity is.

They’re a lot of niches, but they’re not, it can’t be enough sellers to saturate it. Cause here’s the thing, if you say you want, you’re an expert in something, and you’re looking at all these other experts and they’re selling their products. Once you start putting your expertise out there, first of all, there are a lot of people that never seen those guys or just didn’t, they didn’t resonate with those folks, but they might like you and your personality and like your, what you’re offering and you’re offering how you’re positioning things in your brand.

So you could build your own tribe of people that are connected. With you no matter who else is out there selling, and it’s never enough sellers to fulfill this huge trend of people, looking for online education, looking for products, looking for an expert to help them achieve their goals, looking for solutions to their problems.

So the other thing I would say is most people are afraid to put their product out there, put themselves out there, put their information out there to stake their claim as an expert in something. So that just gives you an advantage. If it’s wide open, if you’re willing to do it because most people won’t, right.

It creates a natural barrier of entry for people doing that. So if you really believe, and really I got someone once told me, like you, if you have something that can help people. Every day that you don’t put it out, you’re being selfish. You owe it to those people to offer that help, to put your stuff out there, to make a difference in people’s lives.

If you genuinely have a solution that can help people. So it’s the way I look at it and it’s just, put it out there and the people that like you will like you and buy your products!

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And like it yourself. I like to say if you. If you wanna go into this niche, you should be comfortable getting on stage, and talking about that niche, and then you took it to the nth degree you got on, for millions of people can see you, but even then you had some kind of reservations. You said you took some cooking lessons why don’t you you expand on that? Yeah. Yeah.

Ron Douglas: Yeah. They told me I had a live cooking demonstration on Wendy Williams. Yeah. and I was like, oh my God, I’m gonna get embarrassed if I don’t have my stuff together. So I just, prepared. I had the opportunity. I said yes, but I made sure I prepared for it, by taking some cooking lessons by practicing ahead of time, things like that. So you don’t wanna just go in there blind, you wanna say yes, but give yourself an opportunity to prepare.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So tell me, what’s a typical day. You don’t have you don’t working for anybody else.

You’re your own boss? Sometimes I hate my boss because I love my boss. Cause I’m my own boss. How does that work for you? And you had mentioned that this business help put your kids through college and living the lifestyle that you’re leading.

Ron Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. Typical day is I usually generally work from maybe 8 to about 3 or 4. And I just try to focus on working, offer a to-do list of things I need to get done. I have several different companies going on. One is a startup right now that I’m trying to get off the ground.

So that’s taking up some of my time. Another one is the webinar con event. Where I mentioned alluded to earlier where all the webinar people come and that, that really heats up as we get closer to the event, date November, but right now we’re selling sponsorships. So I have my partners on that and, it takes a certain amount of discipline and you really have to be focused on, setting a goal and saying, I’m gonna take these steps to get it.

I’m gonna work through this checklist. I usually try to make a checklist the night before of what I want to get done. I try to knock it out and then I go reward myself. I go for a run or I go to the gym or go get some food or go get, hang out with my wife or something like that. But it’s a lot different than working in a corporate type of environment or working in a nine to five where, you have that accountability there, like having your own boss, you have to be accountable to yourself.

So I’m also, I have some assistants that work with me and I’m always Making sure that I have them doing something. So I’m not just paying them for nothing. So that keeps me, with something on the, to do list that needs to get done as well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I’ve been there and done that with an assistant. So they’re like, okay, now what else can I get her to do? \

Ron Douglas: And having partners works too, like having partners that you keep each other accountable and focused on certain. And I like what I do. It’s just, it’s fun. I’m building stuff. I’m my own boss.

And, it’s a fun thing. It’s like kind of building a Treehouse, when you’re building a Treehouse, you’re not really counting the hours, you’re just looking at it. And at the end of it, you see this thing you created and it’s just a good feeling. So I do that over and over again.

I’m building, treehouses, I’m building, different products. I’m doing online events, like summits and different things like that. So it. It’s, it’s always something new and exciting and webinars too. Give me a certain amount of, doing a webinar online, having an audience that’s there to listen to you and being able to give value and sell something right in front of that audience, where they vote, they vote to say, I like you, they vote with their wallets, right? At the end of that presentation, you see a bunch of people buying and, it feels great to be able to just create something out of thin air, like create an information product just off of the knowledge that you have and record videos and put it in a members area and selling people, access, selling logins to it.

And then they like your presentation and like what you’re selling and see how it can help. See, they see how it can help them. And then they buy. It’s wow that worked. I just created something from nothing. So it’s a good feeling always to do.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about a webinar as a sales tool. I’ve been involved in business for a long time. We’re using webinars, at the beginning early, I would say, 2008, 2009, 2010 doing really well with webinars and then. My perception or maybe other perceptions, other people’s perception, webinars was dead. People say you can no long lo longer do them. What is the status of webinars today?

Obviously you have an event called Webinar Concierge. You’re obviously, still feel that it’s an important tool. Talk about that.

Ron Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. The people that were saying webinars were dead, were doing webinars over and over again, and more and more webinars were coming on the market being presented to the same people.

So we’re people were still making money with it, but not as much money as before cuz these folks, the same little pocket of customers were getting saturated with seeing the same type of sales presentations. And originally they thought a webinar was gonna be this. Where they were gonna learn X, Y, Z.

And it was gonna be transformative and all that stuff. And then they were like all of these webinars, they’re teaching a little bit, but then they’re pitching their offers. So that audience got jaded, but the Internet’s a big place, and there’s people out there now, like webinars are still doing well because there’s people out there like my partner with webinar called Onyx, Andal just bringing new blood into the marketplace, running a tremendous amount of ads, mass market, just bringing new people in.

So there’s more people than ever. And, webinar is just a meeting room, a online meeting room. So people saying webinars are dead. That would be just like saying, selling from the stage is dead. Like it’s not, it’s just a tool for delivering your message and your offer.

It’s nothing more than that. So a webinar can never be dead. Webinar is just a tool to get people in a room to listen to you. What’s always gonna be alive, is The message that the people that you’re targeting the offer, how you can help people, people are still buying information products like the e-learning market.

For instance, I think it’s already a scheduled to be a billion dollar a day market. So it’s huge out there. So I don’t think webinar is a debtor. I don’t think they can be dead. It’s just a matter. What are you selling? How are you positioning it? How you are you actually helping people and do people have a good experience on your webinar if they do they’ll come back.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So you’ve got webinar con coming in November. Tell us what was the Genesis of this this seminar and what can we hope to expect if we would like to attend to this.

Ron Douglas: Yeah. So webinar con actually bought the domain webinar con.com in 2017 and sat on the idea. I was becoming a webinar expert that was like my wheelhouse doing webinars.

And webinars were an easy way to get people to promote you, right? Because people are willing to promote a presentation because they can position it to their audiences, not just another sales pitch. This is a presentation with these experts coming on to teach you X, Y, Z. So it’s much easier to get someone to promote your webinar usually than to say, just send your customers to my sales page and, we’ll make money that way.

So it’s webinars a scene still seeing as a content event, if you do it right. And if you market it… that was one of my things. I would get people to promote my webinar and I would give them a commission and I became good at doing that. And I would take some of that money reinvested into ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, and, I had, what’s called an evergreen webinar that would play just in time, every 15 or 30 minutes, and people could watch the on-dem presentation.

And that was like my sales system that was going on and I got pretty good at. And I started teaching people how to do it, started doing like little mastermind events. So we would piggyback off of other events, like the big event in San Diego, Traffic And Conversion summit, their event would be like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

We would come in, do a weekend prior to that, like the weekend before and have our mastermind event because we knew a lot of people were gonna be there and they could come to our mastermind event. So we would piggyback off of big events and do it that way. And I was teaching webinars and traffic. And then they made a post one day. He has this big thing called the learn center in Maryland 26,000 square foot facility where I’ve been there. yeah, but in an event room it’s huge. He could fit like 125 people in this event room. So he made a post saying that asking if anyone wanted to rent out his event room.

To do an event. And I was just getting no on it, getting in good with him. And I said, sure, I’d love to do an event there. And he’s what kind of event? And I was like I do these masterminds, weekend masterminds, teaching people, webinars. He’s oh, I love webinars. I made a lot of money with webinars, you.

And he said Andy has song also approached me with that potential idea of doing a webinar. And Andy was brokering webinars. So he was the guy that would match people up. Like you promote his webinar, he’ll promote your webinar. You both make money. I’ll take, he takes a commission, like a referral fee from both sides.

So usually 10% from both sides. So that was his business. So I approached Andy and I was friends with Andy because he had brokered a few of my webinars and I said, Hey, you wanna partner up and do this. He was like, sure. Let’s do it. So we approached on with the idea. How much is it two nights at your place?

Two days he was like… 25 grand or something like, whoa, dude. so it was more than we were looking to pay. So we were like, we’re all friends here, but honestly that was more than we were looking to pay. He was like here’s what I’ll do. I like it so much. I’ll partner with you guys on it.

And that became, and I was like let’s name it… webinarcon already have the domain. And they loved it. And that became the first webinar con. So we were able to do that event six days before the building shut down, like literally 20, 26 days before the building shut down for the pandemic. And we squeezed it in and it was a great success.

We had a whole lot of cause. The topic of webinars, it attracts high level people. Because most people, like I mentioned are afraid to put the, put themselves out there to speak to a group of people, to come on a webinar and present, or to speak from a stage it’s like a huge fear that people have.

But the people that do that are usually high level people. So we started getting all these high level people signing up for webinar con. They came to the event and it became the event for webinar marketers and the event that you go to, where there’s all high level people like you don’t have to, worry about.

Finding the people you wanna talk to, they’re all there for you. And they’re all interested in doing deals and webinars and topics. And we have great speakers. It’s no, it’s a no pitch event, just all content. And it’s a $5,000 event, but we have people that come there and make deals and product launches off of those deals.

And, make Joel Peterson’s a fellow friend of. You can ask Joel, he’s like literally made a million over a million dollars off of the people that the contacts he met at webinar con we have several stories like that. And we have scores of people that have made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There’s people that are making more off the event than we do. And it feels good to bring them together like that. So that’s webinar con it’s an event where you learn about webinars. It’s an event where we have some facilitated networking components to it, where we can match you up with the people you want to meet.

You can do deals. If you’re an agency, you run an agency like an ad agency, you can come find clients, different things like that. So everybody has a benefit from it and it makes the, amount that they pay for the ticket. And it’s all, it’s a small event. It’s like a hundred to 150. We’re respecting 150 people this year.

We keep it intimate and we keep it just high level people.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And what are the dates and where do they go and find out more information.

Ron Douglas: It’s November 18th through the 20th. If you’re watching this, I don’t know when you’ll be watching this, but right now we actually have an early bird page set up. If you go to webinarcon.com, you can just put your name on the waiting list, but if you want to get the early bird offer, it’s actually $1,500 off. You can go to webinarcon.com and you could see all the details and get your early bird ticket for $1,500 off.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: That’s obviously it sounds like it’s great. It’s for it’s for high end marketers, right? Is that would be the best candidate for someone to come like this.

Ron Douglas: Yeah.High end marketers, anyone, looking to learn webinars on a high level, like we’re just looking for high level people. You don’t necessarily have to be a marketer.

You could actually find someone there that’s a marketer that maybe you wanna partner with to do your marketing. There’s people like that, agencies like that there, just someone that just looking to get themselves out there to reach a market of people to build their tribe, to, help people on a higher level.

People that are professionals would be great, have something to share. We don’t frown on anybody, but those are the type of people that usually come to webinar.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And do you have to be a Celtic fan or a Laker fan? .

Ron Douglas: You gotta be a Knicks fan that narrows a like thousand unfortunate people.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: That’s wonderful. Thanks Ron. Again also, you’ve got your website too. Ron douglas.com, where they can find out more information about your courses. You do a lot in terms of tell me about other stuff that you teach. You. You talk a lot about information products, correct?

Ron Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. We teach how to do online courses, how to put that together.

That’s like we do these private trainings for that. If anybody’s interested, you could reach out to me. We do coaching for that as well. I’m actually rolling out a new program called course agents. So course agents is gonna be the call center for people who sell courses. So we’re gonna have people that do live chat, people that pick up the phone and take orders right over the phone.

Most people. Or just selling online and missing out on a huge opportunity. Cuz some folks just wanna talk to somebody over the phone and some folks that they see a phone number and it legitimizes what you’re doing. So we’re offering these type of call center and VA services specifically for the course market at the course agents that’s actually launching in another two weeks or so.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So I’m looking forward to that. All right. You’re here to hear first. Thanks Ron. I know you’re busy. You got lot of. Lot of lot of businesses. You gotta ride lot of fingers in lots of different jars. Thank you again. Is there any last minute thoughts before we end the call?

Ron Douglas: I just wanna say thank you. And guys watching this, you should be encouraged. You guys are following Dr. Mike, this guy’s a legend. I know he is very humble, but Mike, Dr. Mike was one of the people I followed when I first got started. He was one of the big gurus. And he’s found his niche with you guys now and helping you guys.

So you guys are doing the right thing and just stick with it. The market is huge. It’s bigger than you think it is. And if you want to get involved just one step at a time. If you put three things on a list and knock those things out every day, that’s 90 things done every month and you’re on your way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Ron, thank you so much. Thanks everybody for listening. As Ron says, you have ups and downs as an entrepreneur, you’ll have great days and you’ll have kind of sucky days, but as long as you do something, get your goals accomplished and keep moving forward.

Many doctors want to get started in coaching but feels they’re not ready, or its more of a labor of love and it won’t generate enough income.  Not the case with this doctor!

Dr. Junaid Niazi is a board-certified internist and pediatrician who stumbled onto a niche which wasn’t being met:  Helping doctors become more productive in their charting.  You’ll learn his journey and how he regularly sells out his group coaching program called Charting Conquered that helps physicians complete their charting at work and to date has helped over 100 physicians reclaim their time at home for themselves.  

Dr. Niazi is also a physician life coach and an entrepreneur via his business Prosperous Life MD, where he blogs and coaches physicians on all things wellness, productivity, finances, and careers.  This was a fun interview and I think you’ll get a lot out of it!

Dr. Junaid Niazi’s website – Prosperous Life MD
https://wwww.prosperouslifemd.com

Dr. Junaid Niazi’s Physician Coaches Profile:
https://www.physiciancoaches.com/coaching-category/junaid-niazi

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Transcript:

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another addition of Bootstrap MD. I have been hunting this band for the last, I would say three to six months. And I finally got him on the program and someone I wanted to interview for quite some time. I have a site called Physician Coaches.com, and he is part of the of the Physician Coaches program. I’ve been able to work with him and I his coaching business his grown leaps and bounds. He’s a board certified internist and pediatrician who works as a primary care physician for a large healthcare organization in the upper Midwest. He part of his time, he spent as an information services, medical director, we’re on optimizing the electronic medical record.

And we’ll see why that’s important as we talk about what his expertise is. He does this to help for patient care. And for physicians did his undergrad at rice university, me school at Baylor and residency at the University of Minnesota. He’s married to a pediatrician and has two rambunctious toddlers in addition to those roles, which I think you’ll get me very interested in.

He’s a physician life coach and an entrepreneur. Via his business, The Prosperous Life MD, where he blogs and coaches, physicians on all things of wellness, productivity, finances, and careers, but you may know him best because he has a group coaching program called charting conquer that helps physicians complete their charting at work.

And to date has helped over a hundred doctors reclaim their time at home for themselves. So I like to welcome to the program, Dr. Junaid Niazi. Junaid, how you doing my friend?

Junaid Niazi MD: I’m doing very well, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thanks. Thanks. It’s summertime right now at the time of recording in Minneapolis is where you’re from.

Junaid Niazi MD: Yep.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I’ve been there a few times, but surprisingly it gets a little hot in humid, right?

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah, it is. It has been high eighties to low triple digits at times. And the humidity has been killing us the last couple of weeks.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, but then in a few months you’ll all go underground and we don’t see it for the next several months, right?

Yes. Yes. We hibernate. We hibernate.

So Junaid, it’s true. I’ve been hunting you down because you’ve got a great story that I think could be very inspirational. You’ve been very successful. I’ve seen, and it, maybe we can talk about, what you’re doing and what learned to look like it’s up to you, but first of all you, you graduated you became an internist and you got involved in the system. What led you to think about other sources of income or other career choices? What led you down that path?

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah, no great question. So during residency I got caught up with the physician finance blog sphere and, the one of the big things that came out of that was the financial independence retire early movement.

I just figured I’ll make a good income as a physician even if in primary care. And as long as I do, if I’m wise with my money and do the right things, I’ll be able to retire earlier and be able to, do all the things that I want to do, but it became pretty apparent after I finished my training and got into the real world and my first attending job.

I was starting to burn out and mostly from the systems issues involving medicine cuz as we’re gonna touch upon a little bit later, I figured out the charting and clinic workflow stuff. So that wasn’t necessarily burning me out. It was all those other things, all the other barriers to being able to care for the patient in front of me, be it insurance companies or pharmacy benefit managers or any number of third party intermediaries. And that was starting to wear on me and was very draining. I started questioning the length of duration of a career in practicing medicine, full time. Now thankfully I was able to offset part of it pretty early on with a role in my, within my organization as one of the outpatient what are called information services, medical directors, as you mentioned in, in the intro.

And basically we use that at my organization and we try to help make epic work a little better for end users, including physicians as well as drive better, safer patient care. Now I men, I referenced the physician financial blogosphere, a couple of key folks there, namely Dr. Peter Kim, and Dr. Bonnie who really started talking a lot about mindset and coaching and that kind of, peaked my interest. And I started looking into that a little bit more. I subsequently stumbled across the life coach school podcast by a coach Brooke Castillo. And I started to undertake some self coaching.

And what that means is you’re really trying to write down your, what your thoughts are in that moment and start to see. There are things that I’m writing down that I’m not actively bringing into my mind and reflecting on. And why is that? And a lot of our thoughts are automatic…

and a lot of our automatic thoughts that happen in the background are negatively tinged. Our brains are very negatively oriented, unfortunately. I was working on this, trying to pull these negative thoughts, pull these other thoughts and the underlying principle here.

Your thoughts end up creating your results. And if you’re having all these negative thoughts, it might be hindering you from creating the results you want in life or living the life that you want. I had some limited success with self coaching, but I was sold on the idea. And then this was early 2020, and then, COVID pandemic struck.

And I started hearing about Physician Coaches. That’s around the time I learned about you I learned about Dr. Sunny Smith. And I actually was able to join her group coaching program through, through another venue. It’s four women physicians. She let two guys in that summer. I was one of those.

And in the setting of being coached by physician coaches, surrounded by peers, that transformation of mine ex exploded. And what was really striking to me was that I felt so much better. Nothing had really changed in my life. But at that point in time, I was still feeling so much better.

And mind you, this was mid 2020. So we’re talking, we’re still in the early throes of the pandemic. Lots of uncertainty. My wife and I didn’t know if we would have jobs or month to month. We were seeing a lot of physicians lose their jobs. George Floyd was murdered about 10 blocks away from where we live. There was civil unrest. There was the government response, the civil unrest unfolding around us and to boot we had a baby in the mid midst of all that as well, or baby number two. And despite all that going on, I was doing okay and probably better than I was doing at the beginning of 2020.

So the only explanation I had is this coaching stuff is working. For me having gone through that group coaching program with Dr. Sunny Smith, I thought the next best step was to actually train as a coach. And that was again, really mostly for myself. I figured I would best learn the tools if I did the training, I could apply those to myself and yeah, I might do something with that later on, but.

As I went through the training there’s there were a lot of physicians joining me in the training. And, I’d always had a little bit of a entrepreneurial itch. You may recall in sometime in 2020, you and I had corresponded a little bit about me working as a I think it was a personal finance coach in some capacity.

And you were just trying, I remember you were challenging with some really good questions about how would I differentiate myself and things like that, which I, I actually really appreciate it at the time. And, as I was watching my colleagues get transformed by this and I was too, I was like, man, I really need to bring coaching to my colleagues, cuz this is like a burnout busting tool.

And there are very limited resources and tools for actually combating burnout. Save, time away from your, no, from the noxious stimuli that are driving your brain. Yeah. That’s what really drove me to go get certified through the life coach school.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, so interesting. You didn’t really, you just did this for yourself.

Sounds and when did you start thinking? Maybe I can create, a revenue source from this.

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. It, it was. Sh shortly after I had started the coach training, cuz part of the, you do the initial part of coach training is learning all the tools, practicing it regularly. And the second half you can go into a track which focuses on how can you.

Build a business around it. So when we had to start selecting our tracks, I was like, oh yeah, maybe I could consider doing this. Especially if I think this is a useful thing to to bring to my colleagues. In, in the late or fall of 2020, I, Filed the paperwork, got a business checking account, did all the things I had to do and launched a prosperous life MD to silence, cuz I hadn’t done any marketing or anything, but I had a website.

So I had my little corner of the internet staked out.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. So let’s talk about it. You got the website in, you’re all excited. You got probably your business entity, all that set up, you’re probably set up like your PayPal or your all that and nothing. So then what did what did you do.

Junaid Niazi MD: I probably cursed Kevin Costner under my breath because I built it and they did not in fact build a dream no I’d been interfacing again with a lot of these other coaches. We were all just really excited that we had found this tool. We were doing this work. You’re probably familiar with Dr.

Jimmy Turner. Sure physician philosopher. So he was launching his alpha coaching experience which is a physician coaching program it’s still going on actually. And he tapped me to be one of the one-on-one coaches for that. So that was my first sort of paid coaching experience. And it was through working.

With his clients and, doing some one-on-ones, but also mostly on the group coaching calls. I noticed I kept chiming in every time there was something about charting or a clinic workflow. And Jimmy actually called me out and said, you know what, Jane, you just need to do a presentation to our group.

Run a little workshop on charting efficiency. So I said, oh, okay. And that’s where my niche came from. Sometimes others can see what we’re good at. When we might not be able to recognize that as something that we can offer to others. I did that workshop the folks that attended that, some of them had some great outcomes from that.

There was a transplant and nephrologist through the next day shaved four hours off for Workday and was like, emailed me just ecstatic. And I was like, oh man maybe this is something I could do for others.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now, this is very fascinating. So you worked with Jimmy and sounds like a paid relationship, but also probably a mentor mentee relationship to some extent You were talking a lot about charting.

Now there’s some people who will say, I would like to do something like that. I need to get some credentialing or maybe I need to work for Epic for five years. What kind of background did you have that you felt that you could adequately teach on the subject?

Junaid Niazi MD: Honestly, it was just on the ground, in the trenches charting as a care physician. That was it. My, my role as a information services, medical director sounds very formal. And I get to do some really cool work, get to see how some of the things, how some of the decisions are made from epic and how organizations implement epic.

But, even having not had that experience, I had figured. The workflows and the efficiencies that I’ve done. And obviously mine are shaped by the fact I work at an organization that uses epic a lot of it are just, is just common sense skills and, working within a team, learning to delegate things like that, that are really EHR agnostic.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And the reason why I brought that up, because as is I work with coaches is that’s is often one of their stopping points. They’ll say, I can coach, but I just don’t feel ready enough. Either I need to spend, years in getting some type of certification or I need to study all the 10 top EMRs and go through their system.

And then when you find out they never launched a business. So what was that within you? There must have been something within you. Just say, you know what, I’m just gonna do it. And I’m just gonna, did you charge money at the beginning? Did you wait to see if you could get some testimonials and do some free work?

How did how did you set that up?

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. I did charge money from the beginning. I launched a beta program prior to that. I’d been releasing weekly content twice a week. I would do a blog post and then I would do a weekly update and I still I’m in people’s inboxes twice a week still, so that consistency helped.

But, I there’s a quote that Brooke Castillo the master coach under whom I trained has that says discomfort is the currency of your dreams. And it’s really stepping into that discomfort, knowing you don’t have all the answers, you don’t know how to do it. But you will figure it out.

And if you’re willing to sit with that discomfort, go through trial and tribulation on the other side of. Is something potentially amazing. And, I hear the same thing from physicians as well. Like we’re so concerned that we need to have some formal degree or credential. I know this comes up for you a lot when you’re talking to others, should I get an MBA?

Should I, if I wanna be an administrator or things like that. And I think we’re just trained to get degrees we’re like degree farming. Machines will. If there’s something else we can add after our name, we will do it. But for entrepreneurship, that’s by definition, the name of the game is, there is no necessar necessarily a there’s no manual for this.

It’s just, you go out we are inherently problem solvers and often the same thinking. That led to the problem is not gonna solve it. So we have to think a little bit out of the box. So I just said, you know what, I’m gonna offer this program. I’m gonna throw up some Facebook ads and we’ll see.

And, I think I had a niche that really hit a pain point and in some degrees, Or to some degree, I should say. I think if you can identify a pain point, speak to that pain point, sincerely, since I was again in the trenches and offer a solution and I’d offered a lot of blog post free advice, things like that previously.

So I think I’d established myself as an authority is why I was able to succeed after the beta launch that I did. I got testimonials, I got some raving fans who were able to spread the word. And then, on, on subsequent launches, there’s, there’ve been people who’ve been waiting for me to open the doors again.

So it’s, you just gotta take that first step. And that’s what I would say to all those people who say I’m not quite ready. When will you be ready? Because you’re the only one standing in the way of your own success. So let’s talk about it. So you did one on one coaching through Jimmy is that correct? Or was it also group coaching as one on one. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: One on one. Okay. Now for your charting course did you, do, did you just go straight to doing a group coaching or did you do some one on one first?

Junaid Niazi MD: I had a couple of one-on-one clients. That were mine not through the alpha coaching program.

And then I launched the group coaching program and now, I have a handful of one on one clients. Some of them are legacy clients. Otherwise. Just time constraints. It’s the group coaching.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So why did you prefer to do that? You mentioned time constraints. What else did you lend yourself to doing a group coaching or maybe there’s something in charting that it, maybe it is best taught as a group?

Junaid Niazi MD: One thing I came to notice in a lot of my clients was the, the shame they had, that they were struggling with charting and that what it meant about them as a physician and as a person. And one thing that I thought might be a good way to combat that is just to show them there’s others that are in your are in the same boat.

They’re in the same, they’re in the same shoes. And honestly, still to date, even, on my most recent call last week. People are like, I can’t believe others are going through this. This is exactly me. It’s just so validating that others are struggling with this. And I think, especially if you’re struggling with charting and you’re putting all those extra hours into work, you’re even, you’re probably even more isolated than someone who finishes their work on time or in a more timely fashion.

And so you think there’s something inherently wrong with you and just seeing that there’s other physicians in a group setting. In which you can participate as much or as little as you want, it’s on a zoom webinar style, so you can remain hidden in the back and not say a peep and still benefit from seeing others get coached.

You can pipe up in the chatter, you can come on and be coached. And I think just that, that shared experience of there’s not something wrong with me. There might be some systems issues at play. Is incredibly validating to a lot of physicians. So tested that with the group coaching initially right out of the gate.

And it I think it’s one of the, one of the best aspects of it to be honest.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about charting for a bit and the importance of being efficient in your charting. For someone who struggles with this, when you were looking to, just to create a program, where do doctors go for this? What did you find any other competitors or other solutions? What else was, is out there?

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. I think if you go looking if you looked a couple of years ago, I think all you would’ve found were maybe some resources on coding specifically and things like that. And maybe there might have been some practice development folks out there more, more like consultants as far as folks who have started exploring this in terms of coaching, I know there’s a coach who trained through.

Through the life coach school who she’s Canadian and she has a program in Canada that also serves a lot of us based physicians. There’s I think Dr. Phil Boucher, I dunno if know him , he’s a pediatrician in Nebraska. He has a clinic work for workflow type program.

And then there’s a couple others coming through the pipeline that I know of that are interested in launching similar programs because none of us are gonna be able to help. All the physicians out there that need help. We all have our own unique styles and personalities. And, for physicians to have some options is only a good thing.

I think.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Oh, that’s actually pretty commendable for you. Most people wouldn’t tell you about possible competition. That’s coming out and I love that you’ve got that feeling of abundance, but so let’s so let’s talk about it. We’ve got people on the call or, gonna be watching or listening this who are, maybe wanna be a coach or are a coach.

And, we touched on how many people you’ve trained. Maybe you could share some of the numbers. How many times have you, you run… let’s talk about what the course is called, Charting Concord. It’s a how long is it? And Yeah.

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. It’s all online. Every iteration of the program’s a little different. It started out as an eight week program. And then just based on feedback, I was able to get that down to six weeks. And it used to be, you got coaching during those six weeks. As of this last launch just a couple of weeks ago.

It’s gonna be an ongoing coaching program. Most weeks of the year we have weekly, a weekly group coaching call. So it’s not time limited and that’ll be ongoing access. And there’s six core modules that are released weekly from when you join that, that cover coaching aspects of things, as well as some practical workflows.

And then, send everybody a nice workbook, so they don’t have to print off my apparently printer destroying worksheets here in ink destroying, I should say. Just so people have something tangible they can use and a reference. And, it’s set up through an online portal that’s password protected. They have access to all of that. They can listen to it when they’re driving. Same with the coaching calls. They can catch the replays and all later. Right now it’s gonna be a sort of an ongoing program, because what I realized was some folks were joining.

They were only able to make one or two of the calls and then, they would reach out and say, Hey, can I join other future calls? And I actually would open up any, if you’re, if, once you’re in the community, you always were able to access other coaching calls, but I wanted to just have something more consistent.

So folks have a call, I say every week of the year, but we take a, I’ll take off big holidays. And if I’m on vacation, so most of the weeks of the year that there’s a weekly group coaching.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: How many incarnations has it been now?

Junaid Niazi MD: Like the, just had my fourth launch that wrapped up at the end of June.

And then moving forward, I’ll continue to do some launches cuz I really think there is some strength in having a cohort of people go together. And just learning and growing together like that. But I also have folks that really want to get in between. So I think there’s I’m working on being able to have it available so people can join any time.

And then if they wanna join a cohort, they can wait for the next cohort. And I’ll probably do roughly quarterly launches for that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now it’s up to you if you wanna share numbers, if not, I will, but it’s safe to say it’s a six figure business. How much has it changed your life in any way? You got the Lamborghini now or the more diapers for the kids , or have been able to reduce your hours?

Junaid Niazi MD: Actually, one of the first things I was able to do just from coaching even just from getting coached before I formed a business, was I cut my hours down at work because I had finally was able to get off that financial independence retire, early treadmill of you.

Make hay while the sun shines and then I’ll be able to punch my ticket later. And before I’d made a dime coaching, I had put in to reduce my FTE by 20%. So I’m 0.8 in total now. So that, that was a big change. And that was a result of getting coaching. If you will. Yeah, I’ve.

You any business, there’s overhead and you reinvest a lot of the money back into the business and, Facebook ads and things like that. But, I’ve been trying to diversify my income stream. So I have my physician income, I have coaching income and I try to shuffle a lot of that income then into real estate syndications just to have a third link to a income stool.

In, in that way it’s been nice and, honestly, If things in medicine goes completely sideways, some would argue that we’re already there. It’s just nice knowing that I’ve a I’ve built up some muscle, if you will, as an entrepreneur that I know I can try things.

I’ve been able to build an online business which itself is just, it makes. It makes showing up to work a little bit different. So there’s not that I need to show up to work. It’s I am choosing to show up to work. I am choosing to continue serving my patients, working with my colleagues and taking care of people. And I think it gives you a different perspective on medicine entirely.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: What have you learned? You pretty much hit a home run. I’m gonna be honest with you because there are people who get their wrong in business for whatever reason they, they can’t get it started. It sounds like you pretty much hit a home run or at least got to second or third base on your first try.

But were there any challenges or anything that maybe surprised you when you launched your business?

Junaid Niazi MD: Oh, there have been a ton of challenges. That would be a fun podcast episode. I don’t wanna discourage anybody like I said, that, that quote I gave earlier discomfort is the currency of your dreams launching a program can be a lot of work.

And I figured out the delegation aspect on the clinical side of things, the delegation aspect with something that I consider almost more, my baby is a lot more challenging for me. And I think probably my biggest hold up and why I think maybe I’m not even more successful? If I only got a, if I only hit a infield shot to second base, instead of a home run, would be

Just that, that easing up and really being able to delegate work and focusing on my zone of genius, which would be creating the content, figuring out new ways of marketing and help just helping physicians in general.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So where is Charting Concord? What’s the plan coming out, you got anything coming exciting that five year plan, anything like that? Or just go with the flow.

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. I think my, my overall coaching platform is prosperous life MD. And I say that I like to help physicians live their most prosperous life. And people think that just means sort of money and finances and it really isn’t. I think, yeah, for me, a prosperous life is more on the…. do you have all your ducks in a row and not just financial, but your mindset, your wellbeing, your relationships, and long term? I think I, I have a lot of. Quirky knowledge on all kind, not maybe not quirky, but just on, on a lot of topics even contracts, personal finance, all kinds of stuff.

So somehow paring that into, either even just blog posts or other resources available for physicians is where I see things headed. I’m also, I’ve had success like you’ve said, launching an online business for physicians. And I think part of me is intrigued by the idea of… If I don’t have time for this at this moment, but in the future helping other physicians maybe launch their coaching businesses or things like that. So it might be programs that run in parallel with the charting program.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I have a feeling after this podcast is launched, you might get a few inquiries on your website.

Where’s the best place if somebody wanted to reach out for you, either through your charting course or your life coach, what’s the best place to, to get ahold of you?

Junaid Niazi MD: The best place is my main website for Prosperous Life MD. So that’s prosperouslifemd.com. There’s a contact form there.

You can reach out with a question. Shoots me an email. I get back to you. The nice thing about that is at the top of that page, there’s a you can take a quiz about what your charting personality is. So it’s a fun quiz to take. And at the end of it, I’ll share with you some resources that are pertain to your charting personality.

At the very least you might get a kick out of it. And you might even, you get some tips that are actionable for you to improve your clinic workflow and your efficiency.

So that website again is prosperouslifemd.com. Just

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: can you imagine would you been successful, do you think if you launched this business without the coaching, without the self coaching?

Junaid Niazi MD: I honestly don’t because, for me, Coaching really tapped into an abundance mindset that you referenced a little bit earlier, too, on, on this call and coming from a place of abundance, you’re willing to make mistakes.

You are willing to put yourself out there. You’re willing to help others without expecting anything in return. And another quote we go off of is you’ll either find success or you’ll get the lesson you need. And. If something, I try doesn’t work. I’ll iterate. And I’ll try again. If that doesn’t work.

It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing as a scientific process, right? You put out a hypothesis, you test it. If it doesn’t work, you don’t just scrap the whole thing and say, ah, science is well, some people might, but as physicians, we don’t do that. We keep iterating.

We keep trying things, push new medications, new therapy modalities, no new procedures. I think without coaching, I wouldn’t have had that mindset foundation to where I’d accept failure as part and parcel of the process. And if in fact, if you’re not failing you’re probably doing something wrong or you’re probably handcuffing yourself in some way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I think you have to fail if you want to grow. Yeah. And I see this we were physician coaching. We had a little mastermind group that we were, and you were a part of it. And what I gather from you is you’re a tester. You like to test different things to see what works and what other people have tried, because, kinda like Edison was back in the day of developing the light bulb.

He tried. You tried a hundred ways to develop the light bulb and people thought you failed 99 times. It just those are 99 ways that I’m just one step closer to success. So exactly Junaid. Thank you again. Thank you for for sharing us and, thank you for sharing your successes. And I think you’d be very inspiring to other doctors who either are coaches or wanna get into the field any last minute thoughts before we go?

Junaid Niazi MD: Yeah. A couple of things first I’ll just, if that’s all right, I’ll say, coaching right now is proliferating at an incredible rate specifically physician coaching. And in some ways it’s becoming a victim of its own success. I see on online communities, people liking it to multi-level marketing or.

Sort of scams or pyramid schemes or things like that. And, I think there are some there’s in anything there’s gonna be some bad players. Maybe they start sending you, direct messages or things like that are unsolicited. And, as coaches we talk about that, how we universally frown upon those types of practices.

So I would say don’t write off poaching just based on what other people have said online, or if other people are skeptic. Always healthy to have a healthy dose of skepticism with anything. But I think what you, what everyone’s gonna start seeing is coaching is gonna become more widespread at the at your employer and institutional level.

And, I have colleagues that are getting tapped to to help coach at very large institutions. And I think some of you guys are gonna start experiencing that from your own employers, offering coaching to you. And if it’s offered to you. If that’s how you first experience it, then I would encourage you to take it on.

And the last thing I just wanted say, Mike is thank you for creating this space. You’re like the OG coach and entrepreneur, you think, I forget how many years you’ve been doing this? Thanks for laying the groundwork so that and offering resources and opportunities for us to also grow and showcase our work well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you, Junaid. Thank you for sharing your story. Again, I found it very inspiring. Again, the website is prosperouslifemd.com. If you’re interested in learning more about that or his charting courses, please go out there.

He’s had, you can see all the testimonials he’s had. He’s had some great success stories and. Again, Junaid, thanks again for taking the time on your busy schedule to join us today. All right. Thank you so much, Mike. Thanks everybody. And as always if this, if you’re interested in coaching or getting coaching yourself, why not reach out to, to contact somebody, either ate or someone else, if you’re struggling, don’t just try to do it alone.

Find out someone who’s been there and done that and keep moving forward.

What is your relationship with money?  I know that sounds weird, but money is always a touchy subject, and it’s especially so when it comes to doctors. On the one hand, doctors are some of the highest-paid professionals in the country. On the other hand, we also have among the highest levels of student loan debt. And then there’s the fact that, as healers, our primary focus is on helping people, not making money.  It’s a wonder why the relationship can also be dysfunctional!

Here to help us navigate this is Dr. Elisa Chiang, an ophthalmologist, and physician life and money coach and a member of PhysicianCoaches.com. Elisa primarily works with physicians to master their money mindset so they can build wealth and practice medicine on their own terms. Elisa is here to help if you’re someone who needs help overcoming the mind blocks towards investing!

Dr. Elisa Chiang’s Website

www.GrowYourWealthyMindset.com

Dr. Elisa Chiang’s Physician Coaches Profile

https://www.physiciancoaches.com/coaching-category/elisa-chiang

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike. welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD from time to time, we love to highlight physician coaches that are in the trenches, helping our fellow doctors. And our next guest is someone that I got to finally get out, post COVID. I started going to conferences again, and we met at a conference at the white coat investor conference in.

And she’s actually one of our physician coaches and our physiciancoaches.com site. And she’s a really interesting backstory that I wanted to share with you. And I think you’ll be really inspired by her story. She’s a life and money coach. She’s also an ophthalmologist. She is a oculoplastic surgeon and she decided she wanted to become a coach to help physicians. master their money mindset so they can build wealth and practice medicine on their own terms. That will, that’s what we all want. She’s a certified coach through the life coach school and she offers one-on-one coaching on overcoming burnout, achieving new goals, understanding personal finance and overcoming the mind blocks towards investing, which I know there’s a lot of us out there.

We have these blocks that prevent us from investing in things. And you have to be ready to take a leap on those things. And she said, teach her how she was able to. Come that I want to welcome to the program. Dr. Elisa Chiang. How are you doing Elisa?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Thanks for having me. I’m doing great. I’m so happy to be here!,

Mike Woo-Ming: Did I totally butcher your name or did I get it close?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: No, you did a great job.

Mike Woo-Ming: So I’m going to talk about your journey because I think it’s always fascinating. There are some people who are listening to this are coaches already. Most of them are thinking about hiring coaches and some of, just saying maybe coaches is right for me, but they want to know more. So tell us about your story. How did you journey from being an ophthalmologist to becoming a coach and doing both things?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: I was working at a big hospital system, the only level one trauma center in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was on call 24 7 as the only oculoplastic specialist, which I agreed upon when I accepted the job. But the way my That’s supervisor wanted me to take call was not what, something we agreed upon.

So not to get into all the details, but essentially I know discussions that happen before you signed become totally forgotten. Right? Got to get it all in writing. So for me, it wasn’t really about the hours working that gave me burnout. It was really the complete loss of autonomy and, make decisions and just have control over, life.

Like I would spend a day just waiting to go to the, or, and getting. Case after case because something that’s affecting your eye or bed, doesn’t take, a gunshot wouldn’t obviously takes precedence over. No vision. Vision is very important, but life is more important and there’ll be days where I just be waiting to try to go to the oranges, get bummed after case.

And yeah, that was not how I wanted to continue spending my times. The pandemic was actually a blessing because it actually gave me more time off to think and figure out what I really wanted. And it’s also that time probably discovered coaching the leverage and growth summit, Sonny Smiths spoke at it.

And that was hosted by Peter Kim. And I’d been following Peter Kim for a long time. And that was when I first heard about coaching and she Sonny Smith had chained at the life coach school. So I started listening to life, coach school podcast, and really just got hooked. I binged it joined self coaching scholars.

And when the coach certification came up in September, I thought, wow, I’m not traveling, which is probably the biggest use of my income or, my discretionary budget. And, had a lot more time on my hands because I wasn’t getting together with people and doing a lot of social things.

So I went ahead to do the certification in order to just actually built a self-coach myself better. And I had heard other people who did the certification program. And just found a transformational because obviously it’s part of learning and being a coach, you pure coach. And so you get coached a lot and you also coach a lot.

And so you really learn how to coach yourself as well as coach. But I really just found, I love coaching. In a way I think physicians are attracted to coaching because it gives, what we are looking for in that patient doctor, patient relationship. You really also find in the coach client relationship and you can really develop very deep bonds that way and really help people.

And, I think, the idea of helping people is underlying for, most of us, most people who go to medical.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I got to know you a little bit when we went to Phoenix and from understanding, you came from a pretty academic background, straight into sciences.

And, there were a lot of doctors who come from that, they’re going straight from pre-med to med school, straight into residency, and let’s face it. They view coaching as woo or, way in opposite direction. We learn as doctors. Did you have struggles with that or was that something you embraced?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Pretty quickly, it’s funny, I tried reading quotes health books before, and the practice of gratitude and that really never. Struck a chord with me. I like never finished those books. But when I heard about the model that Brooke Castillo, uses, it really just made a lot of sense to me.

And when I really broke it down and thought about it, I was like, yeah, that really actually works. And it’s essentially a lot of like behavioral cognitive therapy. That’s in that. It wasn’t actually wooed to me the way that it was presented. So I didn’t have that dissonance when. The kind of life coaching, the life coach school does.

Mike Woo-Ming: For those who aren’t familiar with her teaching, maybe you could talk a little bit more about that.

What, in particular, in terms of the cognitive behavioral aspects of it that you could share with us?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Yeah. So there’s something we call the model and basically there are circumstances in the world and these are things we can’t change. And these are actual facts, you can go to a court of law and this would be after.

And then there’s our thoughts about those circumstances and different people are going to have different thoughts about the same circumstance. It’s our thoughts, and actually create how we feel about, all the feelings that we have and how we feel about the world. And from those feelings actually is what pushes us to take whatever actions we take.

And then that gives us the results that you know, that we see that we get. You can’t even take something like… 9/11. Most Americans would say 9/11 was a terrible strategy, but if you’re the Taliban, 9/11 was a great win. So that’s so the circumstance of 9/11, but the thought could be, it was tragic.

People die like horrible loss of life, or it could be like, “oh, this was a big win.” This was sticking it to the Americans. Like just from different views and depending on how you’re thinking about it, that, if you’re thinking like it’s a tragedy, then you might be sad or angry or, but if you’re thinking it’s a big win you’re elated, so that really makes sense.

And our brains are really wired in order to protect us from a primitive standpoint. So basically in general, we want to see pleasure, reduce pain and be as lazy as possible.

Mike Woo-Ming: So when you were in your peer coaching, how did that help you with your career? You said you suffered burnout. How did, how were you able to help turn that around?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Yeah, so it really actually got me out of my burnout. What I realized is, okay, there are circumstances, but how I’m thinking about these things at the time, everything basically went to a thought that just brought frustration. And I learned that. You can actually change your thoughts and it does take work to change those thoughts, but, I can actually modify things to be like, okay how, how can I look at the same situation and make it into something more positive or efficient?

Or what can I, what do I have control over? What can I do for a better outcome? And that really didn’t make a huge.

Mike Woo-Ming: So many of us, we do feel powerless, which is often an ingredient for anxiety and burnout. And if we were able to achieve that power, that’s just one thing that we’re where we have, we can, empower us to accomplish our goals and our dreams.

So you were, you mentioned you were your job was affected by the pandemic. They reduce your hours. How was it affected?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Yeah. So there was a time where we basically shut down and I only saw patients once or twice a week. And it was really just the patients that were deemed urgent to see.

And luckily, because I was on call 24/7. I was technically working all the time, so I didn’t get furloughed or have to use up my vacation and sick time, which other people did have to use up. But yeah, there were a few months where it was really reduced time at work. And then, eventually the clinics did reopen and it’s, at some point there was just actually a flood of patients because of all the backlog from patients not being seen for some time.

Mike Woo-Ming: So what made your decision? Now you’re getting busy, again, most of us would just go back to what we were doing. You decided to explore coaching. How were you able to do that?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: So I decided, after actually getting better and getting out of burnout I did not want to stay at that hospital.

I decided in doing the certification program, it’s six months of actual coaching training and then six months of kind of additional training, either an entrepreneurship or more coach training, depending on what you do.

So to back up a little bit… I had started thinking about even before the pandemic hit, leaving the hospital and starting my own private practice, but in doing the coaching and really enjoying the coaching. And then also just thinking about the pandemic and then thinking about how much regulation there isn’t medicine. I basically thought, I think I’d rather start a coaching business and start my own private practice just in terms of like with the coaching business, there is total location freedom, and when you start a private practice, now you’re building a practice just in that area.

And now you’re still restricted to the location that you’ve started, your practice. It the overhead, obviously for coaching way less than having to get a brick and mortar lease and equipment and staff and know all that from the get-go. I didn’t want to leave medicine and starting a coaching business was also something I thought I can do kind of part-time well, if I go to working as a physician part-time whereas if I start my own private practice, that’s a full-time thing to start.

But then in the beginning you don’t necessarily have a full load of patients and but you have a lot of expenditures that you’re putting out and it’s a lot of work to get patients in the beginning and it can take quite some time to actually become established. So basically, I already had that entrepreneurial spirit.

My father is actually a business professor and my mom was an entrepreneur. She at one point that started her own computer business. It wasn’t a foreign concept to me of starting a business. And I’ve actually been investing in real estate since 2008. And, the way you invest in real estate is you really need to think of your real estate investments as a business, as well as if you’re going to be successful at.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. So let’s talk about it because you’re not only life coach, you’re also a wealth coach or a money coach. So talk about how did that shift, you mentioned you were, you did real estate A decade ago. Tell us about your cutting your financial journey as well.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: I’ve always loved money even as a kid. And I really credit my parents for kind of teaching good money habits of understanding the value of money. Understanding money comes from. No, as a kid, I did do like side jobs in order to earn money babysitting. I actually taught people how to use their computers and made $15 an hour at that, which was actually pretty good money.

But I would say I was still in that self-employed mindset as opposed to a business owner mindset as a kid and, At some point during, so I did a MD-PhD program, which is eight years. And, in retrospect, I realized that during grad school I was burning out too.

So because the MD-PhD program is on average eight years and I did in Cleveland, Ohio, which has relatively low cost of living for housing. A lot of MD-PhD students actually do purchase their own home. And I ended up purchasing the house from my parents actually because my father took a new job.

And so Kim moved out and my parents were actually getting ready to sell the house when I moved back to Cleveland to go to that school at case Western reserve university. And so I started just reading about personal finance in order to like, get the mortgage and understand all that and just really getting fascinated and reading more and more reading about investing. I started following the Motley Fool. I started investing in stocks and individual stock picking. I never did like options or like day trading, but, actually like reading business reports At some point, I read rich dad, poor dad, which then got me interested in real estate. And then by that point I was in grad school and I’m not really a happy grad student.

So I started thinking about investing. Okay. In order to try to get to financial freedom as soon as possible. So I was thinking that even before becoming a physician and actually graduating med school and so I started going to the local real estate investment groups. I actually purchased real estate courses and I flipped two houses. Got to know a lot of other people did some I had a friend that we partnered on some deals together. So yeah, I really started at the real estate investing as a grad school.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you said your first property was for your parents?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: I bought the house. I grew up in from my parents. That’s the one we ended up in.

Mike Woo-Ming: And so your parents, your tenants, are you charging rent?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: So that was our primary residence. So my father had already moved to California for his new job and my mom was getting ready to sell the house. And then we were, so I got to move home for a little bit, and live free for a little while.

And then we started looking to buy a place since we knew we were going to be there for at least eight years. And, as we were looking around, then I started discussing with my parents. No, could we work something out so we could just buy the home? It would make it so that they didn’t have to go through the hassle of actually putting the house on the market and we get to stay in the house.

So that was I wouldn’t consider that being in investment. Your primary home is a place to live, but really it’s still a liability, right? Like it costs you money every month and doesn’t bring in any money or cashflow. But that was at least the impetus to start really reading about personal finance, just the, getting the mortgage and, understanding we actually ended up getting a seven one arm.

So just understanding the different kinds of mortgages when. You know how they all work, what the library index was like, all that was like banging to me like that.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, it’s learning. I can, I never nomenclature as we do in medicine, and you have to understand all of those different temps. So you started to do flipping, you started to do some rehab. Sounds like some flipping. And then did you tell us about your real estate portfolio now? Did you increase it or you just continuing to flip or what’s it made of.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Yeah. So when I started buying it was so the flip side did I bought foreclosed houses. So bank owned, foreclosures fix the up, sold the, did it again. And and then I said it with a partner and we actually bought some houses and those were rentals. And so I helped manage, I helped her find them and manage them. Went back to med school. I actually found that I really did enjoy ophthalmology.

And so I did do residency and fellowship and I didn’t move to Chicago for residency and then Milwaukee for fellowship. So at that point I wasn’t doing any real estate investing just because now I’m in a different market. And you’re pretty busy as a resident. Chicago is a whole different price range than Cleveland.

But I always had, in the back of my mind, I would get back into it. In fact, there was a part of me that just thought, like all doctors invest in real estate because all wealthy people invest in real estate. That was the way to build wealth. I don’t know if that was just from reading that gave me that thought.

But yeah cause I didn’t really know a lot of doctors, there aren’t many doctors in my family. I only have one cousin who’s a doctor. But that’s really it. Yeah. And she actually doesn’t invest in real estate. So I don’t know why I thought all doctors investment real estate, but my first job was out in Virginia and I did actually start looking into real estate investing there.

Learning that market was like completely different. And so when that job didn’t work out, We’re turning Cleveland was one of the reasons was actually like I knew the market in Cleveland, I know the different areas and I really want to get back into the real estate investing.

And, I have some contacts who are likely still around in Cleveland and then also was, returning home. I had made friends during the MD-PhD years that were that are still in Cleveland and no, it’s a little hard to make friends in your adults. So a lot of things that were driving us to come back to Cleveland.

And so that’s where I am now. And so this is, so I do real estate invest in Cleveland. I have long-term rentals in Cleveland, and I have a short term rental in the Hocking Hills area, which is in Ohio about two and a half hours away.

Mike Woo-Ming: And do you have a game plan? Do you say, ” I’m going to get out like 180 a year, two properties a year?” Do you have any goals for that or you just see what opportunities are out there?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: I think of looking at different opportunities, looking at ways to diversify. So I also invest in syndications as well.

Mike Woo-Ming: And tell me about your syndications for those who may not know we’ve done a program, we’ve had a few people talk about syndications, but for those who don’t know, can you tell us about syndications?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: When you’ve essentially got a real estate investment. Say, if you think about a large apartment complex, like a 300 unit apartment complex, typically you don’t have just like one person owning that. It takes a lot of capital in order to do that. So you typically have, what’s called a sponsor who finds the deal and then needs to get some investors to work together in order to have the down payment and potentially money to rehab or fix up their property in order to buy.

300 unit apartment complex. So that’s what becomes the syndication. So when you invest in syndication, basically you’re investing in the company, that’s buying whatever real estate, this large real estate property. So it might not be just an apartment complex big commercial buildings or self storage or a development like building a whole bunch of, townhouses or no, any big development projects.

So these can all be syndication projects. And basically you, as an investor are investing, with the sponsor, who’s leading the deal. And and then, when you can, depending on the syndication, you may have cashflow that comes back to you paid out through the time that you’re involved in syndication.

And at some point they’re going to sell the property or refinance, and you’re going to, get back your initial investment and hopefully a good return.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you decided to teach about money mindset or a money coach. Can you tell us about what exactly is a wealth coach or a mind coach or a money coach and why should someone go out and seek these types of coaches?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: So a lot of times physicians are smart, right? Like it’s hard to get into medical school and, get, we do amazing things as physicians, but a lot of physicians really don’t. We don’t learn anything about finance and in any part of our education, right? Not in high school, not in college, not in in medical school, not in residency.

And, as we alluded to earlier finances has its own in some jargon, its own language. And so it can be really difficult to understand. And, lot of times we’ll see… talking to, someone who knows about finances or like a financial advisor, and they’ll use all these terms.

And, we, as physicians, don’t like to actually quote, “look dumb” and sometimes we’ll just agree and think okay. And we also, as physicians think, okay, like we’re the expert of our specialty. So now I’m going to go to an expert of finances and they’re going to do right for me and do.

What, what should be done. But the reality of the situation is that most financial advisors are not truly, what’s called fiduciary and doing what’s best for you. Most financial advisors are really glorified salesman of financial products. And a lot of times those are not financial products are actually good for you.

They’re ones that pay a really nice commission to the financial advisor. And I’m not saying that financial advisors are necessarily evil. And some of them really believe these products are really helpful and there are situations where the products are helpful, but I think a lot of times they get sold more to people who it’s really not that helpful.

And really, I think most physicians who do a lot better managing their money themselves, then leaving it to, a financial advisor. Or if you are going to use a financial advisor, you don’t get one that’s fee only get a plan, and then you really execute. And a lot of physicians feel like “I don’t have the time for that. I don’t have the time to learn that.” And it really doesn’t take that much time or effort to make a huge difference on your wealth and your ability to really build wealth. And so working in that money mindset, I think it’s really important to understand like, Any physician is smart enough to learn enough about their finances to manage their money, to really build wealth. Even generational wealth so that their kids and their grandkids are successful. I’m going to retain that wealth of it that is built.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah! I can give you a first example. When I graduated residency I was given two financial advisors. One was someone that, the guy ahead of me used and he seemed more interested in selling his particular product than actually helping me.

And the other one was really, it was a disguise networking opportunity. So I didn’t get the best. I didn’t get the best financials. And you talk a lot, especially on your website, going through it about the mindset. And I think for many of us too, who are physicians and especially now I know how it was for me was, usually we have a lot of loans.

And when we’re in medical schools, I remember medical lids and residency, we sign paperwork, we don’t know exactly what we’re signing, but we know that, somewhere down the line, we’re going to have to pay this off and we keep pushing it away and pushing it away. And I think too, it wasn’t until I actually like, sir, wrote down and like circle that number and made that a target to actually confront it, for me, that’s what helped me.

And I think, there’s a book out I’m reading right now called The Psychology Of Money and it’s almost all mindset. It’s almost on mindset. And I think when I work with doctors who have issues with money is they feel like they can, I work with a lot of practice owners.

They feel like I hired this person and they can deal with it. And when I’m actually understanding, like, when I find out like why their practice isn’t doing well, it’s because they’re not willing to confront. Is that just some of the things that you try to do as a money coach?

Yeah, definitely. So a lot of times people, they don’t want to look at their finances.

They just, see that they’ve got money coming in and they spend the money and. There’s at least enough money to in their bank account to actually pay for whatever they spend. But they’re not necessarily thinking long-term, they’re not necessarily thinking about like their investments and how to grow their wealth.

And what’s the best way to do that so that eventually everyone wants to retire. You may not want to retire early lifespans are becoming longer and you probably don’t want to be working when you’re a hundred. And if you’re a surgeon, you probably can’t really me safely operating when you’re a hundred.

They have pilots who have, they have to retire. I think I get 58, but for medicine, Hey, you can keep going. So I never did understand that. So talk about some of the things that you talk about as a money coach, how you help your doctor clients.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: That’s a lot of it was investing is overcoming fear, especially people who want to get into real estate investing. You look at how many people will take a real estate investing course, but then, all of them never even get through the course or if they do get through the course, they never buy that first property.

And once you get over the hurdle, the first poppy and there’s always going to be some quote failures, someplace where you lose some money or things weren’t optimal. But the more you learn, the easier it becomes to just keep doing it.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, for sure. My thing is somebody has figured it out and, you’re.

I don’t think you can be, if you want to be do well, you’d want to be the best surgeon. You need to follow and shadow gonna work on your surgeon. So if you want to study financial success is to find out people who are already successful in what they’re doing. And I think, it’s funny.

Cause when we talk about mindset, That’s usually what the part is. I don’t want, I’m not really interested in that, that I want to know about this hot new stock or this hot new cryptocurrency that everybody wants to buy and that’s going to solve my issues. Now it’s having to deal with the mindset if that crashes, or it goes down and really understanding what your risk tolerance is.

And as doctors, we’re pretty much risk averse. That’s part of what we do. The thing that’s important, for us to maintain it, just so it’s so surprising that many aren’t willing to to look at directly in the eye and feel it and say, this is what I need to work on. Do you see the same?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Yeah. And so certainly you talked about cryptocurrency or even the stock market. There are fluctuations, there are ups and downs and yes, the stock market has been doing amazingly for the last few years, but as we’ve seen recently, what goes up will come down and that’s just a natural part of the stock market, but when you think about it, you want to buy things when they’re on sale, right? Like you don’t want to pay top dollar. Like we understand this when we go buy material items, but when it comes to stocks, like just because the stock price is down, doesn’t mean the intrinsic workings of the companies that represent that stock are actually down, there’s always going to be some kind of perceived value in fluff, and then there’s the value of the company itself. And so if you can actually buy, when stocks are going down, when it goes back up and grows again, like that’s when you’re really going to, grow some more wealth cryptocurrency, lots of up and down. And so if you can stomach the ups and downs and you end up selling low and then it like, blows up and you essentially will never create wealth out.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I want to talk to you too. And I appreciate your time here. I’m curious about your your stocks investing, many of us say, we should invest in what we know.

Is that a philosophy that you do, do you do invest in stocks that you do, or do you allow to do a lot of speculation?

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: For stocks, I mostly invest just in index funds. I do have some individual stocks that I still own from back when I first started learning about investing and was reading lot of the Motley fool and actually reading like business statements. So I’ve just held on to some of those stocks. One of them being like Starbucks, which, has significantly grown since I bought it in like 2005.

Mike Woo-Ming: I invested in a company every day!

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Addictive substance, right?

Mike Woo-Ming: Yes. Yes. That’s right. It’s my… it’s my pusher so I think it really depends. On, where you are in your journey, for me, I am like, I’ve got some conservative stuff when I’ve gotten my index funds, I’ve got those that I don’t even look at them.

I look at them like once a year, and then I’ve got my, individual stocks. I tend to do more, I like, I tend to do stocks that are things that I believe in, I have a Tesla, so I support Tesla. You have Apple, I’m an Apple ecosystem. I have Apple dividends from that.

And then I just have, a small portion. I did a talk on cryptocurrency, but that’s a very small portion of what my net worth is. And, I see. I see too many doctors who want to do, like what’s the newest and hottest thing. And I think you’re just going to get wrecked after a while, unless you can tolerate those that the volatility, sure.

One crypto currency might go to the moon. It might even be in the next Ethereum Sheba, whatever it is, but for every shoe, but you knew it was there like 99 other coins that, that can wreck you. But it has to do with the mindset. Can you. How do you react to when those things go down and like you said, the often will go down even real estate.

We all know that real estate’s on a high, but we also know too that, things can level off and you may not get the returns that that you’ve had before. What are some tactics that you help your clients with in, in their mindset and.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: I think one really important thing.

When working with my clients about investing and where they want to go is really talking about their why. And if they have a really strong why that can pull them through the hard times. Especially if they’re interested in doing something like real estate investing, which while passive is really… if you’re doing direct ownership from real estate, it is nothing but passive in the beginning.

It is definitely a lot of work, especially right now, the market has been really hot. So even finding deals in may just take offer after offer. And, sometimes you just want to bite and just go for something and get it. But, you make your money when you buy.

And if you buy too high, like you’re, it’s possible to salvage that with, time and appreciation, but you really want to be smart when you buy the property and do your due diligence. And there’s a lot of upfront cost to that, right? You’re paying for inspectors or paying for other, expert opinions to come in.

We’ve got to look up all the regulations of the city that you’re investing in and those regulations can change, right? The city can pass a new ordinance, which could, really cut into your cashflow and you have to be prepared for that. And that’s why I’m got to make sure that any property you buy is positive cashflow.

And then you’re not just banking on appreciation because yes, while you’ll see appreciates over time, and it’s been appreciating a lot recently, back in 2008, there was a time where real estate really didn’t appreciate. So that primary residence I bought… I bought my home for my parents.

So we bought that in 2003, and when we sold in 2016 and basically was essentially the same value because the value had dropped in 2008 and, basically took till 2016 to level out. And then now, so 2016 is when I went to Virginia, I came back in 2019, and sadly, in those three years, that’s when all the appreciation happens.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. It tends to happen that way too. You never know. But on the other hand too, you might experience some like really big numbers just because you are more active, you are taking more of a risk and let’s say perhaps it’s indication, you could argue whether or not that is there’s always a give and take, right?

So it really comes down to, where you are and what you’re willing to. For lack of a better term stomach or what going to able to do. But for the most part, I think, the best thing to do is to do the best thing not to do is just to do nothing, because I think we all learned that, one of the most scariest things I believe in is just having one job. And I think you would agree with that as well. Yeah. That’s, for me, that’s the most scariest thing.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Because if you think about it. People feel like, oh, my physician job is secure. If you lose your physician job, like it can take quite a while to get a new one and you may have to move for that.

And maybe you’re not in a position to easily move, right? Like your spouse has a job. Your kids are in school. Your family is nearby. But you may have a non-compete and now you’ve got to drive like an hour or two hours away. To work somewhere else.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. You never know what can happen, you never know what can happen. I learned from a a hand surgeon who it was during my rotation and one night after call, he put his hand under his his bed and he ended up having a permanent nerve palsy and he could not operate. Again don’t know if you had, some type of insurance, disability, insurance, but you never know what could, what could happen.

We can walk down the street, we could get in an accident. There’s always things and that can happen. And, we’re only, don’t want to get metaphysical on this, but, we’re, we only got one time that we’re on this earth. We want to make the best of. How are we going to do it?

I think it’s through. And I think you agree through multiple streams of income, start looking at different avenues and realize, that there are no assurances in life

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: And even tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Mike Woo-Ming: Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Eliza, this has been wonderful. If somebody wanted to find more information about what you do, maybe a search for your coaching services, working with.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: So probably the best place to go is my website, which is grow your wealthy mindset.com. There, there are links to all my other social media. I have I’m on Facebook. I am on Instagram. I have a YouTube channel. And I often do webinars and even free coaching sessions. So take a look for that.

Mike Woo-Ming: Take a look at that. Thank you, Elisa. It was very illuminating. Thank you for everything that you do and keep helping more doctors out there cause we definitely need it.

Elisa Chiang MD, PhD: Thank you so much.

Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you again. And as always guys don’t stay stagnant. If you only have one income, start thinking about there’s other sources it’s investing could be real estate. It could be the stock market, whatever you deal. You need to start thinking about these things. The worst thing you can do is not do anything. It always keep moving forward.