How Physicians Can Build Wealth Beyond Their W-2 Income

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (00:00)
it does take a lot of a mindset shift to be like, okay, what is the why? Why am I doing this? What is it getting me? And that can really build a flame in order to get people to take action to really build their wealth.

Quentin (01:48)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. And listen, if you ever need some coaching when it comes to money, I think you might want to tune in. This lady expertise in coaching people when it comes to money and their lifestyle, specifically physicians, but I know she’s going to say some things that’s really going to help you out. And so I am so excited.

for you all to hear from Ms. Elisa Chiang Ms. Elisa, how you doing today, ma’am?

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (02:24)
doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

Quentin (02:26)
No, absolutely. So glad you’re here. Thank you for being here. And listen, I’m the type, I like to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you can give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got to the place where you are now. We love origin stories. And then tell them where you are in the world. People love to know where you are geographically, just in case if they even like, Hey, you know, I can do something with her, partner with her. And so what you’re doing, your origin story and where you are.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (02:44)
Thank

.

Quentin (02:55)
Miss El isa, you have the floor, OK.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (02:56)
All right, that’s a lot. So I am,

I’m a life and money coach for physicians. I’m also a practicing ocular plastic surgeon, which is an eyelid specialist. I specifically do surgery of the eyelids and around the eyes. And as a life and money coach for physicians, I really help physicians work on having a great life, essentially. It’s a lot of training and a lot of hardship, honestly, to become a physician. And the healthcare space is…

really been hard on physicians and it’s just getting harder and harder. And so a lot of physicians want to leverage their income in order to truly create wealth, right? And creating wealth isn’t about the money you make, it’s about the money you keep, the money you invest, and having your money make money for you so that you don’t always have to work for money, that you’re not always trading your time for money. Because really as physicians, we’re trading our time for money. And at some point, you know,

Like everyone, we get tired. We want to build and enjoy life. want to build. I mean, for me personally, I love to travel. I want to spend my time traveling. Of course, we want to build to spend time with family. Like during our physician training and residency and fellowship, like we had to make a lot of sacrifices, you know, not be able to attend family events or weddings and.

Once we get through all that, we want to build and enjoy those things and enjoy the life that we work so hard to achieve. So part of that gets into investing. And then a lot of physicians are really interested in real estate investing because when you have a high W-2 income, you don’t have a lot of tax advantages. And real estate investing gives a ton of tax advantages. So that’s also a reason why physicians really are often interested in investing in real estate.

Quentin (04:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (04:34)
And so a little bit about my origin story. So I actually really got interested in investing. While I was in med school, I did an MD PhD program, a joint program called the MSTP Medical Science Training Program. So that was actually eight years. And during that time, during my graduate school years, my brother-in-law actually introduced me to rich dad, poor dad, Robert Kiyosaki. And I just ate that up.

I started reading like all the books in the series and

As a grad student, I started looking at investing in real estate. I actually ended up buying a foreclosed house, rehabbing it and flipping it and made some real, I mean, a lot of money for when I was a grad student. So then I did it again. But there was a lot of risk and anxiety with that. didn’t have much money. And so I was thinking, okay, when I’m a doctor, I’m gonna really do the real estate investing. I’ll have lots of capital.

And I went ahead, finished my medical training, and during residency and fellowship, I didn’t really do any real estate investing. You’re just working so hard during that time. Just surviving and eating and sleeping is enough. But yeah, once I started actually making money as a physician, I started getting back into real estate investing. I have owned long-term rentals, short-term rentals. I started investing in syndication projects.

And then during the pandemic, I learned about coaching and I just found, know, there were, mean, the pandemic was a weird thing. It was a healthcare crisis where I knew physicians who were getting furloughed, who were getting, who were having to work without pay or who were losing their jobs during a healthcare crisis. It was crazy. And so this is where a lot of physicians realized like, yeah, I need to not just rely on my physician income. I need other assets.

they’re going to help provide me income. so people really got interested in real estate investing. And that’s, and again, I also learned about coaching at that time and I realized just how much coaching can help you flip that mindset in order to, know, physicians are typically very risk averse, right? Like we don’t want complications. We don’t want anything going wrong with our patients. And so when you look at real estate investing, a lot of physicians will be like, that’s too risky to me. Or, you know, that classic, like, I don’t want to deal with someone calling about their toilet type of situation.

And so

it does take a lot of a mindset shift to be like, okay, what is the why? Why am I doing this? What is it getting me? And that can really build a flame in order to get people to take action to really build their wealth.

and location. So I live in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. I was actually born and raised here. I left for undergrad. I went to the California Institute of Technology or Caltech in Pasadena, California. Loved California, but really high cost of living. Ended up back in Cleveland for my MD, PhD at Case Western Reserve. ⁓ Moved around for fellowship, went to Chicago for, did my residency in ⁓ Northwestern, then went up to Milwaukee for fellowship.

ended up with my first job in Virginia, then came back to Cleveland.

Quentin (08:39)
I love it. Thank you, Mr. Elisa. Thank you. Thank you for the journey. Thank you for letting us into your world. What you do kind of leading up to how you got to doing what you do. And I absolutely love it. And as you was talking, I was actively listening. Listening, I was actually writing things down. And so I’m going say some of the things that you said. And I’m saying it for a reason because I’m asking a question. And so born and raised in Cleveland, you’re a plastic surgeon, money coach.

And the space can be challenging for physicians. talk, you know, you talked about that thing. It’s it’s just challenged for physicians period. And so, but you love traveling, got interested in investing while you was in med school. But you, you know, didn’t do much investing while you was going through your, I think it’s called the residency. Did I get that right? ⁓ But you bought your first foreclose, how, how made a lot of money on that.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (09:29)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Quentin (09:36)
got back in the real estate after becoming a doctor. And you talked about just the difference of going through different mindset, mindset shifts throughout the journey. So this is what I always say. I say destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning no matter what we go through in life, we build to the moments to where we are now. It builds our mindset, it builds our character. It has a way of just shaping.

Like you talked about the why. I know for sure this is why I do what I do because the journey has taught me what my why is.

So I would love to know throughout your journey, what has this journey taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, resilience, humbleness, what humility, what has this journey taught you about you?

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (10:54)
Well, I think discipline is something I’ve inherently had and kind of needed in order to go through my position journey. I think this process has really taught me risk assessment and the fact that like everything is risky, right? Like in the end, keeping your money in a bank account is also risky because you’ve got inflation risk. The fact that your money is not really growing at a point where it’s really going to feed you. mean,

the amount of money you would need to have in a bank account, even a high yield savings account, is huge in order to, if you want that to really, you know, kind of pay for a nice lifestyle, so to speak. And, you know, there are times like right now interest rates not so bad, like, I don’t know, 3.6 % in your typical, you know, high yield savings account. But I remember a time where like 1 % was the most you could get from a bank account. And so you really need to embrace all the different risks and understand risk such that

Yeah, if you’re not investing in at least, you know, low cost index funds so that you’re really growing the money that you have, like you are going to probably end up working forever.

Quentin (12:01)
Mm, mm, so well, thank Thank you. And I love how you said the discipline was inherent, but there’s still just different things that you learned along the way. And I love that. You know, I always tell people at the core of your business.

you know, being an entrepreneur at your business is you. You’re at the core of what you do. And so always making sure that your mindset is clear, you’re clear about your why. Knowing like what your superpowers are, what’s the tools that you pull from, the resources that you pull from, the power you forward is always a good thing. And so I appreciate you answering that question and reflecting with me. I thank you so much. ⁓ Let me ask you this. What is your next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next?

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (12:42)
So I think the goal is always like, how do I make, I enjoy my current life. Is this what I want to keep doing? Like what is the next stage? Where do I want to pursue growth? Where do I wanna let things go? How much do I wanna work versus play? As a physician, we’re kind of taught to keep achieving, get that next award, get that next, what’s your next goal? What are you reaching for? And sometimes,

Quentin (12:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (13:12)
you know, what you’re reaching for might just be like more time with family, more time to travel, right? Because it’s not all about these extrinsic goals per se. I mean, of course, I think growth is kind of one of the things that we all, by having that, that gives a sense of fulfillment and purpose in our life. But that growth doesn’t always have to be something where it’s extrinsic, where you’re looking at other people kind of being like, wow, I can’t believe you did that or achieved that.

Quentin (13:15)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. We determine our own success. Our success is not determined by others. We determine our own success. And so I love how you just hinted to it. Success could be just more time with the family. Me and my wife, have a saying where we say, your presence is a present. You being here, present.

is a present in itself. And so sometimes it’s spending time with a family. Sometimes there is a certain dollar amount. Sometimes it’s peace and tranquility because all your life you never had peace. Now you can have peace. Maybe that determines how success look, right? And so I absolutely love it. Absolutely. I’m going to ask you this word. I always ask people this word. And so I want to get your perspective on what you hear when I say this word. When I say the word relationship, what comes to mind for you?

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (14:28)
Well, relationships are really about your thoughts about anything. Your relationship with money is your thoughts about money, your relationship with your spouse or your thoughts about your spouse and what you think they think of you, not truly what they think of you, because you can’t really know what they really think of you, right?

Quentin (14:39)
Mm.

No, I love it. always say, you know, relationships are so gold. And you just talked about it’s a relationship with others and it’s the communication aspect too. Like you said, I can’t assume what you’re thinking. I mean, I could talk about it actually,

but the relationship that we have with ourselves, with others, it helps us within business because I believe that when you build a community around you, everything, ecosystem is built around you for you to thrive. And so.

where you have a healthy relationship at home, healthy relationship with your clients or customers, a healthy relationship with partners, is always an anchoring thing where you can build community around you of people that share the same mindset and ideals with you. Yeah. Let me ask you, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about?

Or is there any other words of education, inspiration or motivation? Like if you came in here with something on your mind that you think the viewer should have known or shouldn’t know, I just kind of want to open up the floor so you can deliver that message.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (16:30)
Yeah, so I guess I’d like to talk more about like what I do as a coach and why someone would want to coach, right? So typically people are familiar with like, you know, sports coaches, right? Someone to help you play golf better or play basketball better or, you know, Olympic athletes all have coaches. But working with a life coach and for me, do ⁓ specialize a lot in money and investing, but.

Quentin (16:34)
Yes.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (16:55)
know, a life coach is really to help create a better life. And that involves like the decisions you make in your life and your thought process and mindset around those decisions. So a good coach is to help you make the best decisions for you and your life. And by doing that is helping clarify your values, your wants, your whys, and also looking at how you’re thinking about things. And I talked a little bit about mindset, but really so much of our mindset, we…

have thoughts about things that we think are just actually fact, like we have told ourselves a story and we’re so deep in our story, but by having a coach actually listen to the story that you’ve been telling yourself and pointing out, well, these are the actual facts and this is just a story of how you’re thinking about it. And do you really want to think that way? Is that serving you? Because when you’re having a certain thought process, now your brain essentially looks around for every evidence to support that thought process.

And then anything that negates it, like, you know, that gets pushed aside or, or taken for granted even. And, and so when it really comes to living our best lives, a lot of times like our brain, you know, we go into survival mode and we think about all the negatives in our lives and we forget about what all the positives are. And, and there are trade-offs, right? Like you may want to spend more money, but that might mean less for investing and, you know, thinking about like,

well, you if I spend a little less now and I instead invest that money and let it grow, then I can have this much more later or the whole trading time for money. Sometimes it may not be worth working more for that extra money and instead enjoying that time. This time is really something that, you know, we all have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. We can’t really get more time. Some ways you can kind of buy time by like, you know, paying someone else to do something you would otherwise do so that frees up your time. But

in the end, we still have the same amount hours in a day and how do we want to use that to best live, know, what would be an ideal life and how close are you to that now and what can you do to get yourself closer and that ideal life like that’s going to change as the years change as you know, if you have children as they grow up, you have different stages in your life. It may be that when your children young, you want to spend more time with your children at home and maybe work less and

maybe when your children are older, then you’ll want to be more focused on either aspects of your career or aspects of investing or pushing yourself to new growth.

Quentin (19:28)
So, so well said, so well said. I mean, to me, that’s kind of like the mic drop moment. So I appreciate it. I think that was so well said. Speaking of your coaching, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you?

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (19:46)
My website is www.growyourwealthymindset.com. You can contact me off that website or you can email me at [email protected]. If you want to kind of just kind of get to know me a little bit more and learn more about investing and finances, I do host the Grow Your Wealthy Mindset podcast. It’s been about four years where I put out a new weekly episode every week.

And so I think that’s really a great resource I have out there. You can also just check out the website. I do have other resources on my website as well.

Quentin (20:24)
I love it. love it. Well, listen, let me say three things to you. Thank you for your time. You could have been anywhere in the world doing anything, but you’re here with us. I mean, you could have been in surgery, so I appreciate you that you’re here with us. Thank you for taking time out. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for your narrative. I believe our stories have a way of planting seeds in people that can literally course correct them. So I believe that you’ve given enough seeds to plant in somebody that really could change their mindset. So thank you.

Speaking of mindset, lastly, thank you for the way you think. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming through today.

Elisa Chiang, Md PhD (21:01)
Thanks so much for having me.

Quentin (21:03)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mrs. Elisa. Listen, her information is in the show notes. Get in contact with her. Check out her podcast. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mrs. Elisa. So thank you so much, ma’am. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.