ER Doctor Cut Her Shifts in Half (Without Losing Income)

The practice of medicine started changing before my eyes and we were brought over.

We changed hands multiple times with different private equity groups.

And at some point our hours were getting cut.

They were firing hardworking doctors.

And I thought to myself, and this is truly the origin story, I thought to myself, I don't have job security.

And you think that someone like me, and I'm truly, I'm so grateful for the opportunity, but we save lives.

And to think that I could be cut, I could be canned, whatever that looked like, I just started thinking I wanted to take that responsibility into my own hands.

And so that's how real estate investing came about.

I truly was in the beginning a passive investor.

I was looking for ways to shelter some cash and to watch it grow.

So not in my savings account, not in a high yield savings account that would get capital gains tax and then I would barely make anything but really thinking about different asset classes, different opportunities.

Welcome to Truly Passive Income.

I'm Neal Henderson.

And I'm Clint Harris.

And our guest today is Dr. Nkim Izamama.

She's a emergency room physician turned real estate investor and entrepreneur.

She's the founder and CEO of Phoenix Capital Investments where she helps high achieving professionals, especially physicians, build passive income through multifamily real estate.

Her path grew out of seeing firsthand how unstable even a high income medical career can be and how little training professionals receive around wealth ownership and long term freedom.

Today she still practices medicine while leading a real estate platform rooted in conservative underwriting, investor alignment and education.

Her work also extends beyond investing through My Expansive Life where she focuses on mindset, purpose and, and designing a life with more control over time and choices.

Dr. Nkim, we're very excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for being with us.

How are you?

I'm wonderful.

Had a great day, worked late last night, but here today, and it's the beauty of kind of being able to manage both.

And I'm grateful for it.

So I'm excited to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

And I can't wait to jump in and have a really solid, wonderful conversation.

Well, you're still, now you're still an ER physician.

You're still working on the er.

I am.

It has gone down.

It has, it has decreased.

And that's the beauty of having options and having choices.

So I used to be a doctor that worked 18, 19 shifts in the ER and that has changed and that now that looks like eight or a little bit more or less if I want.

So I'm grateful for that opportunity isn't.

Optionality, an amazing thing.

We just, we literally just had this conversation in our last episode.

We did.

Well, listen, especially after working late last night, we appreciate you being here.

Of course I'm not surprised to hear you cheerful and happy and excited.

Especially when you focus on mindset purpose and designing a life with more control.

So tell us a little bit about that.

You know, I always love when we find the white coat professionals, the healers that also have, they're multifaceted, right.

And you have the business acumen that goes with real estate.

And for you, you have a purpose driven and a mindfulness that I think is bringing very unique value.

And the beautiful thing about that is that you're combining them all into one.

So tell us a little bit about your journey and where this all came from and how it blossomed into what it is.

I started with, I was in the ER full time and the practice of medicine started changing before my eyes and we were brought over, we changed hands multiple times with different private equity groups and at some point and our hours were getting cut, they were firing hardworking doctors.

And I thought to myself, and this is truly the origin story, I thought to myself, I don't have job security and you think that someone like me, and I'm truly, I'm so grateful for the opportunity.

But like we saved lives and to think that I tomorrow I could be cut, I could be canned, whatever that looked like.

I just started thinking I wanted to take that responsibility into my own hands.

And so that's how real estate investing came about.

I truly was in the beginning a passive investor.

I was looking for ways to shelter some cash to and to watch it grow.

So not in my savings account, not in a high yield savings account that would get capital gains tax and then I would barely make anything but really thinking about different asset classes, different opportunities.

And I really did research and studied a lot of true wealth is steeped in real estate, it's steeped in land ownership.

And you learn that you know everyone, basic human need is housing.

And so how do we play a part in that?

And so that's really how it started.

I started investing and then I saw an opportunity.

We were not at the seat, us healthcare professionals, we worked hard, but then we handed money to someone else to do it for us.

And I thought, why can't we get a seat at the table?

Why can't we come together and buy these income producing assets, real estate, apartments, why can we come together?

I'll figure out the management aspect.

You know, we'll figure out property management, asset management, thinking through like lending and all these things.

But we have the capital, we have disposable income.

What does it look like when we bring it all together?

And my idea behind that was from a pain point and a struggle.

I wanted job security, I wanted financial freedom, at least starting to learn what that meant.

I want to be able to be in the hospital, love medicine, but that, that not be my only source of income, right?

Especially because we're high income earners.

How do we diversify?

How do we split that money, right?

How do we let that money work for us?

So that when I travel, right, I don't, I know I'm covered.

Or when I'm in the er, right, I'm like, okay, my money's working for me here, here, here, here, that.

And I knew real estate needed to be one of the main vehicles.

And when I started doing that, right, there was limiting beliefs and mindsets that I needed to squash, right?

Like all I did was medical school.

How can I, how can I look to an investor and say, bring in $500,000, let's go buy a property.

That's not our minimum investment.

But yes, physicians, healthcare professionals, busy professionals invest that much or more.

And how could I tell them that?

And so I had to realize that, yes, I'm a doctor, yes, I'm a woman, but I'm also a real estate investor.

I took the classes, I did, I learned, I learned how to underwrite.

Like I, I thought Excel was just like box, box, box.

And I learned how to underwrite large deals, you know, using different models really to underwrite and to make assumptions.

I did all of that.

And so I needed to own that and be able to come to the table and say, yes, I, I have learned, you know, how to manage this asset.

I've learned how to acquire, I've learned how to build.

So all of that, there was the mindset work that needed to happen, there was the, there was the like limiting beliefs that I needed to let go of.

And so that's where real estate, medicine and my expansive life all tied together.

Love that.

It, it's one of those things where I think a lot of people in your position don't take that step because they're a high income earner.

A lot of times it just makes sense to keep the main thing.

The main thing, if you're going to end up being a landlord or just owning rental property or plunging toilets, now you've just created a job for yourself that you can hire somebody else to do for a fraction of what your hourly rate is because of your extensive knowledge.

So there's a right and a wrong way to do this.

Most of the time people are doing it wrong.

And at the end of the day, the better use of their time is to keep the main thing, the main thing to be a healer, to take care of people and to park your capital with somebody else.

You have to have time, experience and money to have success.

But you don't have to have all three of those.

If you take your capital, you partner with somebody else's time and experience that can get you there.

For a lot of people, they don't have the time, the energy or the commitment or the love of the game, whatever you want to call it, to take that extra step.

And you're one of those few people that did.

But you have to be very careful about the way that you're doing it and that you're not creating another job and that it creates optionality.

If you do it right, it can create an off ramp from a busy life that maybe you don't want to take that off ramp now, maybe you want to take it 10 or 20 years from now, but it's there.

If you're not careful, you can create another job for yourself that's not paying as much as if you just picked up an extra shift or two.

So there's a, you got to be careful about that.

And then you're creating an educational platform and guiding other people through that.

So what was that experience like?

And then you, you've, you stepped into multifamily, which is honestly kind of the, it's, it's the low hanging fruit to step into syndication, especially over the last 10 years.

And I think you're very wise.

I know that you exercise some patience and you sat on some sidelines when some people didn't.

And I think in retrospect, some of them wish that they should have.

But tell me about the first types of deals that you did then and the first types of deals that you're doing now just so we can kind of understand the trajectory.

Okay, great.

Really good question and thank you for allowing me to share that.

So you are right.

In the beginning, so when interest rates were beautiful and they looked great, there were a lot of people who were buying, you know, buying bridge debt.

And so that was like it wasn't fixed and so it could go up and.

But that was the opportunity to buy you know to buy lower.

And so I wasn't, we weren't winning any deals.

A lot of our underwriting, I'm more of a conservative underwriter.

So you know, my rent growth assumptions look like maybe.01% and not 10%.

And so a lot of those deals were, I lost them.

I didn't for at least a year, maybe a year and a half, I did not.

We didn't acquire anything.

We just stood on the sidelines.

But what I did during that time was I educated my investors and I said, let us, you know, we'll find the right deals.

But at that time, I continued to underwrite deals, I continued to put in offers, just not winning anything.

But I kept the fundamentals the same.

So we, you know, we wanted to buy low.

We wanted it to be cash flowing from the get go.

And so that was the things that I made sure that no matter what, right, it needed to pencil, it needed to make sense.

My investors want cash flow from day one.

So I wasn't looking at deals where like it would cash flow year four, right.

It was like, okay, money coming in first quarter after the first full financial.

What does that look like?

And so we sat on the sidelines for a while.

But in that time, right, my, my plan was I would educate, I would let them know what I continued to do.

So if, if we made it to best and final, I would let them know.

If we lost a deal, I would let them know.

I'd say these are the reasons why, but also right, park their money.

And when the time came right, what ended up happening was a lot of deals, all those bridge debt that was bought, a lot of deals started failing.

And who had capital ready to deploy when interest rates shot up.

That was a sweet spot where you could still buy.

Now sellers, the idea that sellers thought that they could charge a premium, that started to go down.

And so as the prices started going down with interest rates going up, there was still a sweet spot that if the deal made sense, we could buy.

And so that was a time that we decided to pounce.

We had capital on the side ready to go.

And for deals that made sense, we started acquiring some of the deals where, you know, loan assumption deals.

So that means that like they bought five years ago and their interest rates were still great, but they were fixed.

So then we were able to buy that and maybe we added a little bit of loan on top of that, you know, at a rate of like 6% or something.

But blended came out to like still like low fours, which still made the deal Work.

We were looking at making sure that we bought below replacement cost and so it cost less to buy than to build.

So we were thinking about all of this stuff and still went in with the idea.

The one thing, I will be honest, that changed a little bit in the business plan and the thinking was value add was still our basis.

But we started learning that because rent growth, so rent growth is like how much we think rent is going to grow organically.

We were not matching that.

And so we started doing less value add and we started maybe looking to buy a little bit newer properties that still had a different type of value add component.

So maybe tech packages, so.

So the idea of how we bought changed a little bit as the market shifted.

So I would say those some of the things that we did, but because of the amount of due diligence and the sitting that we did, right, it built investor trust.

And so when we were ready to say, okay, this is a deal, this is all the due diligence I've done, right, we are ready to go.

And another thing that I did, right, I actually brought investors into our due diligence process.

So for a small committed group of people, right, if they wanted to come see the property, if they wanted to, you know, kind of walk through that.

And like you said, you said something before the show started or maybe when we were talking and you said nothing is truly passive.

You still need to do education, like, you still need to know where, you still need to vet the operators, you still need to know where your money is going because this is your hard earned dollar.

You work till 2am in the morning and it's important.

So we did that.

We also brought investors into our story.

And I think that was very important.

But those are some of the things that I did four years ago versus now.

So, you know, I mean, a lot of what I wanted to sort of get you, you sort of said that explain the time period we're talking about because it, it is that that heavy value, not heavy value, that value add multifamily was like the sort of gold standard of real estate syndication for the last, let's say eight years.

That was kind of like, that was, you know, the sort of garden variety thing.

And obviously that's become harder to hit.

And now we're, we're starting to see some deals that are in some distress.

And so now there's maybe some deals that are sort of popping up where, yeah, you're able to buy a distressed property for a discount.

But again, you're, you know, you have to be careful, like you've alluded to, that your assumptions can't be those same massive rent pops that you used to get from, you know, going through and spending $5,000 a unit to, to upgrade, you know, the, upgrade the fixtures and the, the granite countertops and things like that.

You're having to be more strategic around.

Walk me through, like what that looks like, what it is that you're looking for because you said you're not looking at, you know, 5, 3 to 5% rent growth, you're looking at more like 0 to 1%.

Good question.

So from a rent.

So you said two things.

One of our properties that we acquired last year was a, not a distress from kind of an acquisition standpoint, but more from a financial standpoint.

So it was a distressed property and they weren't able to meet to meet their debt.

And so we were able to acquire that.

So that's one strategy right now where again, you have the, you have the capital to be able to do this, you have the right structure and we're able to buy.

So that's one aspect.

Another aspect is again, right, the idea of like when I say our rent growth strategy, right, it looks like in a five year span, maybe zero, just depending on what the market is doing.

And it's also very market specific.

Right.

So what's happening in Georgia is different from what's happening in the Midwest.

Right.

And so you.

That I, we also take that into consideration.

But so looking at what, and also even looking at like the areas we buy, what absorption looks like, so like how much is coming in versus how much is, you know, getting absorbed in the market, how many, you know, rents are, how many apartments are being taken up.

Also looking at a lot of market research has been done in that where are jobs opening, you know, where are people moving to?

Those are some of the things that you look at from a market analysis standpoint on where we're buying.

So that's one.

And then from the rent growth perspective right now, again, it's not 10, 15% in a five year span.

It maybe looks like from an organic rent growth perspective, it looks like maybe 0 to 3%.

And then you add to that forced appreciation.

So you add, and that's where the, that's where the renovations come in.

So that's like in the right market, looking like, like a full tech package, smart everything.

And in that we are saving money because we're saving on cost of utility.

Just thinking through, right, from a back end standpoint, but also the residents are happy in the right properties.

We are still able to do renovation.

Now the strategy to that is maybe we don't do renovations year zero to nine months or year zero to one year.

Right.

It looks like maybe we go in, we optimize the property from an operational standpoint, we decrease expenses, we look at other place, other ways that we can get other income to grow.

Right.

And as we're doing that, right, we are ramping up for some sort of value add structure strategy that could start year, maybe year one that could start maybe, maybe 15 months in from acquisition.

So we, we focus on again, right, decreasing expenses with our property management team, optimizing income and then focus on organic rent growth as we ramp up to now start adding inorganic rent growth by doing our value add strategy.

That is what the picture now looks like from a standpoint.

But knowing that we still want to be cash flowing, we still want to be cash flowing day zero.

So that, and I say this, some of our investors, they really want cash flow.

So if we can.

And these are who.

So as you're thinking, repeat investors, right?

Repeat investors.

You don't have to sell to them when they already see the product working.

So they're like, okay, this deal is working.

I'm getting cash flow in three or four months.

When I say, hey, we have another deal, like we won the offer, they're like, yes, let me pull together some more money.

Because this is a true viable option.

I'm seeing results.

So I hope in a roundabout way that answered your question, but that is a strategy.

Got it.

You glossed over something there that I want to.

I'll give a quick example.

And then I want to dig in on something because I think we blew over it and there's some real value there.

We have a. Technically one of our competitors, but a friend of ours named Brian Smith tells a story about how he teaches his kids about the, the value of the net operating income approach to, to commercial real estate that he takes.

He took them to a Walmart parking lot or a grocery store parking lot and had them get out of the car and walk around until they found a dollar in change.

And I'm sure they were hot and sweaty and didn't want to do it anymore and came back and he's like, they were like, okay, here's a dollar.

And he, he gave them the example of, like, you look at this, you just worked and you just got a dollar.

But here's the reality.

If you are able, let's say you have a commercial property and you are able to increase the net operating income on that property by $1 a month at a 5 cap, which is where the market was at the time, that actually increases the value of the property by $240.

Right.

And that's $240 that you could.

The day that you sign a lease and somebody gives you an extra $1 in net operating income per month, the bank will let you borrow against that $240,000 in value that created, which means if you increase the net operating income by a thousand dollars, it created $240,000 worth in value, or 10,000 was 2.4 million.

It's a multiplier.

That's the value of the cap rate and the net operating income approach that comes with commercial real estate and all.

The focus is typically on, well, how do we pump the rents up?

How do we get these people to pay more?

But the reality is there's more than one way to affect the net operating income.

And it's what you said, you said the first thing we do is operational turnaround.

You've got forced appreciation, of course, hopefully we have natural appreciation, but you've got forced depreciation and you have operational turnaround.

Sometimes when you are going into this property just by metering the water separately, putting in a technology package, having them pay for Internet individually or cable or whatever, the different convenience fees that you may be able to put in there, just taking utilities and breaking them out and metering them individually, that is lowering the overall expenses, even if the rent doesn't go up.

But you're able to minimize those expenses through operational efficiencies or whatever they may be.

Every dollar, your net operating is calculated as your gross potential rental income minus your expenses, not including the debt service.

And if those expenses shrink, it leaves an extra dollar for noi.

And that NOI hits a cap rate multiplier, and that drastically increases the value of the property.

So the first and easiest way you can typically increase that value is exactly what you said.

If there's any expenses you can get down, it is oftentimes faster and easier than fighting every tenant to increase their rents by 25, 50, 100 bucks a month.

That oftentime is going to come.

But so Many people over the last five to 10 years had a model of, we're going to buy this B or C class multifamily property, we're going to increase the rents.

That's going to make the value go up by 30%, and then we're going to sell it and everybody's going to payday.

And that's great.

But at the end of the day, you're making the assumption that the rent always goes up.

And even recently, even places like Austin, Texas, we have seen examples where the rent doesn't always go up.

And if that's the only tool you have in your tool belt, it can leave you exposed when that tool suddenly doesn't work anymore.

So I would assume that's probably a lesson that you came from underwriting hundreds and hundreds of deals and operating how the value is dictated by the noi.

And the NOI is not just a reflection on rent going up.

It also can be a reflection on expenses going down.

And if you find your inability to raise those rents because of the market and people, your competition around you is cutting rates, try to fill their occupancy, that's still something that you have in your bag as a veteran move because you understand the underwriting and how that value is created.

Is that something that you think that one of the things you picked up from just so much time, underwriting properties.

A hundred percent, 100%.

Like, you said it so well.

It really is.

We are playing the game or strategically figuring out what's going to work.

And that takes time and that takes experience.

But you are right.

In the beginning, it is thinking, how can we decrease expenses?

It's almost easier.

It's.

I don't want to say it's the easier, but like, from an operational standpoint, as an even building relationships with our property management team, they know that is the one thing that we're going in.

And so when we get.

When we get a sample T12, right.

So when we're buying and we start getting, you know, the financials for the last 12 months, right, we immediately start looking at the expenses and we're like, okay, this admin looks different, right?

And think about economies of scale.

A lot of the markets that we.

A lot of the properties that we buy in Georgia, right?

And so now thinking about, like admin cost going down, even thinking about payroll, so hiring staff across multiple properties, thinking through, like, what we would have done from a construction standpoint, you know, going out and hiring and getting bids, maybe we hire in house now and they're able to do some of that work across multiple properties?

So it's really, the strategy is nuanced, but it is so important to think about it because like you said, this is how we're increasing the value of the property.

And it's these small tweaks.

They're not major, but they are.

They make such an astronomical difference in how you manage a property, in how you grow the property and how you increase the value.

Love that last follow up question for me and then we'll move on to another subject.

But do you guys utilize cost segregation studies and accelerated depreciation?

And what is your, what does your typical exit look like?

So great question.

100%.

In every deal that we do, we do cost segregation.

And it is.

And that's another thing.

We are talking to high net worth investors.

And one of the things that a lot of us struggle with is tax burden.

Right.

And so this is one way, yes, it's offsetting, it's paper losses that are offsetting your passive income.

But the more you invest, the more you build that.

This is truly like you can really gain from this, from a tax strategy.

So that is very, very, very important on every single deal that we go in, that we go into.

And our investors know that they look Forward to their K1s every year.

And it's growing, it's stacking on that.

So that's very.

From a tax strategy standpoint, there is no reason why you shouldn't be doing bonus depreciation.

There's no reason why you should be looking at properties that are not doing cost segregation.

It's just so beneficial for, for superficial, for the investors, like they win at the end of the day.

And one of the things, you know, one of the beauties of investing in real estate is using it as a tax strategy.

Yep, I love that.

And then typical exit is four to five year hold.

And then it says liquidation with a recapture.

Yep, that is typical strategy.

So hold five years, we tell, you know, just, just in case we say five to seven.

But really plan is five years is kind of what we look towards and push towards.

Yes.

10:31 Exchange or no?

Because it's so many, so hard with so many different investors.

Are you doing a drop and swap?

How are you doing that?

Good question.

It just depends, right?

And so we, we will always try to have that opportunity available for investors.

But with depreciation, right, you are ending up maybe like our last deal, just depending on tax, you know, kind of depending on your, your individual tax strategy.

Right.

We were getting about 45% depreciation on our property.

Right.

And so being able to offset that, again at the end, capital gains is less.

So it's just, it's really investor specific.

I can tell you.

I know some investors who are ready to make their money and then be like, I did this, I'm taking my money.

But there's some who are like, you know what, I don't need this right now.

This is part of my growth strategy.

So as we are, we're constantly looking for, we're constantly looking for deals.

We just closed a deal two weeks ago.

And so the next one, we're looking for the next one don't have anything yet.

But that is definitely a strategy that have used in the past and plan to use.

So, you know, a lot of your investors are physicians who trust you because you've got a lot of shared experience.

How does that shared experience change the way that you communicate risk and expectations and patience during what is a pretty challenging market now?

Okay, this is a really good question.

And I come from a place of gratitude because truly my investors trust me.

Some of them invest.

I have investors, and I do not condone this, who don't even read the PPM and who say, I trust you, I want to invest.

Let's do this together.

So I'm so grateful for that and I don't take that lightly.

In that same vein, and that's in context, I'm.

It's the more reason why I'm very conservative with my deals.

So because I know these.

You know my investors personally?

Yes.

I have over a hundred investors.

I still know them.

Like, I know their stories.

I know kind of like I just know what they're doing, how they're using their money, what they want to do.

And so I don't take that for granted.

And so I don't.

I get a lot of deals sent to me, a lot of deals, and I turned down probably 90% of them because it just, it doesn't pencil.

And I will not invest in a bad deal because of that.

Now the second question, and the second part answer to your question is transparency.

Now, this is so important.

So good, bad, ugly.

My investors know about it.

We have monthly communications with our investors and we have quarterly calls.

So, you know, you know, like if we change property management team, you know, if our occupancy is at this, you know, our strategy for increasing occupancy if vacancy drops to this.

These are the things we're doing.

This is our five plan KPI strategy for our property management team.

We meet with them on a weekly basis.

When we first acquire the property, we meet with our property management team on a weekly basis.

The asset management team meets meets weekly.

And so they are privy to all of that information.

If anything happens on the property, good, bad or ugly, they know about it.

So it's not.

I don't hide.

I don't only share good information.

I share, I also share the bad.

Like so if something happens, right?

Pausing distribution.

This is the reason why with, even when we are thinking about it, this is what we're doing to avoid it.

Like no matter what, right?

Communication is so important and I, you know when we'll have quarterly calls, that's the one thing my investors say thank you so much for.

Thank you so much for.

I, I'm always hearing from you.

We send out and also messaging, it's just like, hey, a quick text, how are you doing?

How are things going?

Have you received your K1?

Just, just to make it feel like we're part of something.

And when you do that, and you do that well, your next deal, you don't have to sell.

You just put out a message and say, we won another deal.

I have a webinar, come join.

And they're like, yes, I want to be a part of that.

So I think the biggest thing I'll say is trust and transparency.

If you can do that.

Well, people are just looking.

There's so much, there is so much capital out there.

They are just looking for the right person, the right group, the right team to park their money and to watch it grow.

So many physicians are realists too.

Like they just want to know that they can handle it.

They can handle it.

Just give them the information so they can make the best decision for either the patient, for themselves or for the group, whatever it may be.

They just need the information.

At the end of the day, if you sugarcoat your symptoms, it does not help your long term health with your physician.

So I completely agree.

Honesty, transparency, no matter what that looks like.

And sometimes that's a rougher conversation, but having those conversations builds credibility.

I want to shift a little bit here because on this podcast we do talk a lot about real estate.

We talk about a lot of other things too, but we talk a lot about real estate.

We talk about a lot about underwriting and operations and net operating income and everything else.

But I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about purpose and what that means for you, because I know that you have a focus on you.

You know, you talk about investing through my expansive life where you focus on mindset, purpose and designing a life with more control over time and choices.

And I really don't want to spin this into, like a pitch for why you should invest in real estate.

I am more curious to know what, what does purpose mean to you?

Like, what does that conversation look like?

And I'm sure it looks different to every individual person, but like the concept of purpose and how you decide what that is for your wife and the, your, your, your life, your wife, your spouse, your partner, your husband, the people that you care about in your life.

What's the conversation of how you decide what that purpose is for you and how you pursue it.

I love this.

I used to think that purpose was one thing.

This is who I am.

This is what I' this is the only thing that is like I.

This is the only person I can be.

That was my.

That was my story.

I moved to the US when I was young.

I went straight through school, straight through college, straight through med school, straight through residency.

Started working right away.

The only person I knew was Dr. Nkem, the physician.

That was it.

And that's what I.

That's who I thought I was going to be all my life.

I always thought, like, I would walk into the er, high five my nurses, like, we would do our thing.

That was it.

And slowly this door opened up for me, like this opportunity.

And so I started learning and understanding that purpose maybe looks different in different seasons.

And you might not only have one purpose in life, it could be a few different things.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

There is guilt that comes with saying, this is who I am.

This is the only thing I'm supposed to do.

And so when I accepted that, I think life became a little bit easier.

I was.

Was less afraid of making mistakes.

I was.

I was less afraid of leaping, I was less afraid of trying.

In medicine, life is so important that we cannot afford to fail.

But in the big life, outside of the hospital, you can test, you can try, you can put your all into something and it's okay if it doesn't work out.

You keep.

As long as you have that thing in you that says, I'm supposed to be this, I'm supposed to be that.

And so I learned that in this season of Life, I learned that how can I empower healthcare professionals?

You know, how can I figure out a way that we can build passive income together in a path to generational wealth.

And that looks different for different people.

And so I started to learn that and I started to understand that.

And I became so grateful.

In the journey of hearing people's stories, the one thing I learned is that my pain point was not unique to me.

It was to like everybody I encountered, every physician, you know, every woman, they kind of had that same thing.

And so how.

And in that, in figuring out passive income and generational wealth, it's how to live a bigger life, a life that is not just.

I wake up in the morning, I go to work, I come back, I do one thing.

On the weekend, I do two things, and then I do it all over again.

We have this one beautiful big life.

How do you live that to the fullest?

You said something earlier and you said, it's okay that they love the thing that they do, that your passion, your nine to five, whatever you want, it's okay that that's the thing that you're called to do.

But it is also okay if you have this desire in your heart to want more, to do more, to be more, to figure out freedom, whether it's travel, whether it's family, whether it's relational, whether it's to start something on the side, whether it's to go to Africa, you know, and.

Or to do medical missions, or it's to do, you know, like Christian miss.

Whatever it is, it is okay to also figure that out.

So I sum it up to say that purpose isn't one thing.

It evolves.

As you evolve, as you grow, as you learn who you are, that changes.

So in a roundabout way, I'm grateful I say that I don't take it for granted.

I'm grateful to how my life has evolved.

And I think it's because I opened my mind to an idea that my purpose is not just in the emergency room.

My purpose spans more than that.

And because I've learned that and understood that fear is something that I have squashed in order to be able to open that next door, to leap, to walk forward not knowing the end goal, but to really be immersed in the journey.

I'm going to sit here and sit with that for a second.

That's one of the best explanations of purpose I've ever heard.

And we talk about that a lot.

So really well done.

And it's such a good explanation of that.

It's not just.

It doesn't need to be some huge thing that you want to go work for Doctors Without Borders.

It can just be.

I just want to spend more time with my family and Help raise my kids and raise my son and raise him to be a good human being.

It doesn't need to be something big, but it can be if you want.

I love that.

We do need to start wrapping it up here in the interest of your time and our time.

But I did.

Before we ask our final question, I wanted to ask one because your energy seems nearly boundless.

And what I know of emergency room physicians is you have lots of free.

Time,.

But you are still a practicing emergency room physician while running a growing investment firm.

And I'm curious if there are any systems or habits that allow you to stay effective in both roles at the same time.

I have learned that in order for me to buy back my time, I've learned to build a team.

And that has been the.

One of the most successful things that I have embarked upon in this life.

I have learned to do my 20% and do that well, and I have learned to delegate the rest.

I don't do it well all the time because I'm still a type A and I think I'm the only person that can do this thing.

But I'm learning.

I'm learning to give my team freedom.

It's okay to make mistakes and grow from that.

And I have learned that when I do that, I tap into their area of genius.

They can go do their thing, and then I do my thing.

That has been the biggest.

That has been the biggest success for me.

I also try to practice deep work, and that means that I take time in my day where my phone is on, do not disturb.

I have a clock.

Please don't laugh.

I have a clock, a timer of sorts.

And I just, I said it.

And I just say, this is the time I want to sit in this office and just think, write, create.

I am a big fan of AI And I spend time just like, kind of thinking through my thoughts, ask me questions.

This is what I want to be.

Build.

This is what I would like to do.

What can that look like?

So I think building a team and really spending time really thinking about goals, plans, how to bring that to life, I think that has been really, really helpful for me.

Love that.

Love it.

Very good answer.

All right, again, for the sake of time, we'll go ahead and wrap it up begrudgingly.

I'm going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests, and that is when you're speaking with anyone interested in what you're doing.

I know you're big on education, but anyone invested with your group or potentially even just interested in Getting into real estate investing, is there any one resource, book, or educational source that you find yourself recommending more than any other?

Oh.

Oh, that's a good question.

So when I started, I read books.

When I first built out Phoenix Capital, I relied on books.

And if you look behind me, right, I've probably read, full disclosure, maybe 70% of the books behind me, I haven't read all of it.

I plan to, but I have read more in the last five years than I've probably read maybe all of my life.

And it's just because I wanted to in this.

As I.

As I grew in this area, I wanted to be.

If I spent all that time studying medicine, I wanted to be just as knowledgeable in entrepreneurship, in business, in real estate investing.

And so I took it upon myself to read books.

And I think that has been such a wonderful asset for me to help me grow.

Books on mindset, books on entrepreneurship, books on real estate investing.

All of that has been really, really beneficial for me.

And I, you know, I think about one of the books, and it was very recent, and honestly, it was Dan Martell's book, Buy Back youk Time.

Yeah, great book.

I took so many notes on that book when I read that.

As soon as I'm very, very intentional.

A friend of mine described me as a doer.

So if you tell me, nkem, do X, Y, Z to get you to A, B, C backwards, but if you do do it, I will do it.

And so when I read his book, I immediately delegated.

I immediately said, I don't need to do this anymore.

How can I buy back my time?

So that was from a mindset standpoint.

Before I embarked upon building Phoenix Capital, I had to do a lot of work in mindset because I had to be the kind of person who could have a conversation with an investor and they say, yes, I want to invest a million, I had to become that kind of person who believed that I could do that.

So in the beginning, a lot of the books I read, even before I started reading multifamily, Volume one and Volume two, I read, you know, I read books on light, like the 10 best habits you know of if you want to grow how to change your mindset.

I read books like that.

I read books like who, not how.

You know, I.

Those are the types of books that I read.

In order to realize that I could become that person that says, come partner with me.

Let's build this that I could help you.

I had to be that person who saw it first.

In order for me to have that conversation with you and say, let's partner, let's do this together.

What does it look like for me to touch the next thousand physicians, the next thousand healthcare professionals in order for us to build wealth together?

So I would say kind of in a roundabout way.

It started with books, but it really started with mindset in the beginning.

I love that very thorough and thoughtful answer.

I should have expected nothing less.

Listen, we're going to call it there.

Dr. N. Kim, thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate your time, your attitude, your energy and everything that you poured into this.

If any of our listeners want to find out more about about you or Phoenix Capital Investments, what would be the best way for them to do that?

My favorite platform, you can find me anywhere but LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is one of the best ways to connect with me.

It has been a wonderful platform that has helped me grow.

And true story, I've probably gotten maybe 30% of my investors from LinkedIn.

And so it's just a really cool platform.

It's, you know, professional platform where you can grow.

So you can find me there.

If you type my name anywhere, you'll find me.

Our website is www.phcinves1word.com and yeah, so but the easiest way to find me is on any social media platform, but preferably LinkedIn.

That's excellent.

All right, well, again, thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate you being here and we look forward to watching your continued success.

Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening and watching the Truly Passive Income podcast.

If you liked the show, if you think it would be useful for someone else, the greatest compliment that you could give us would be to share the episode.

Leave a comment down below or leave us an honest review.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let us know down below.

And remember, with truly passive income comes freedom of time, place and the freedom to pursue your higher purpose.