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.