209: Relax, Learn, Grow: Highlights from My Conference Journey

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. So I recently came back, at least at the time of this recording, from two weeks in the Caribbean and I wanted to tell you all about it because what was different about this trip is, first, I attended four conferences/retreats and I attended as an attendee. 

I mostly travel to conferences as a speaker and I honestly can’t remember the last time I was just an attendee. And it was wonderful not to be a speaker, because when you’re speaking it’s like you can’t really relax until your talk is done and you kind of have that on your mind. And so it was just really nice to be able to participate and to get my learning on. 

So the first conference I went to was called the Prosperity Conference, and it was hosted by my friends, Leti and Kenji. You may know them as the duo behind Semi Retired MD, many of you have taken their courses on real estate. And so they had their first conference and it was on health, wealth, and relationships. And obviously there was some real estate in there, but it really was covering a large variety of topics. 

Now, the one that I specifically wanted to talk a bit about was we had a fascinating talk on AI, and I wanted to talk a bit about AI. And I think I’m going to do an episode just talking about how you can use AI, specifically things like Chat GPT or Gemini. Most of you kind of know what Chat GPT is, it’s by a company called Open AI, but there are other companies that provide AI, and Gemini is by Google. 

Personally, I’m a little surprised that Gemini isn’t sort of the end all be all, because you would think with Google kind of having access to all that data would be really good at it, but I heard it still has a long way to go. But what I have heard is that Gemini is a bit better in terms of writing and crafting emails. And so I’ll talk a bit about, in another episode, how we’ve been using it in our business and some ways that you can use it for those of you who don’t have a business, because I think it’s going to be a game changer.

Now, like I said, we already use it inside my business to help with customer support emails and give us ideas for all sorts of various things, including marketing. But he showed us a way to prompt it, and what that means is that the more information you give Chat GPT, the better the answers will be. So the example that he showed us was he basically had it write a book, create the marketing plan, create sample testimonials. I mean, it was ridiculous what it was able to do with very specific prompting. 

And so, like I said, I’m not going to go into the details, but what it really showed me was just how important it is for all of you listening to really learn about AI, because it is going to, well, I think already is becoming a part of our lives. Maybe not directly right now, but if you’re a physician listening, you may know that there’s lots of AI scribes available and it’s really going to change the way we practice medicine, whether you like that or not, but it’s coming. It’s already coming. It’s already here. And I just want to encourage you to get on board with it, learn as much as you can. 

Now, a few episodes ago, I posted my talk from the first Money and Wellness Conference. And if you haven’t listened to it, I really encourage you to do so because I talk about how important it is now more than ever to really develop skill sets that are portable. And besides your ability to be a doctor, because people are upset that medicine is being taken over by XYZ and how we’re being replaced by PAs and mid-levels. 

But I will tell you that we really need to take matters into our own hands. It’s really important to take responsibility for our lives, and learning how to use AI is going to be part of it. 

Now, I’ve been meeting a lot of physicians that have created their own telehealth platforms. I think that definitely is the wave of the future. And that does require a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, but I think it’s something that all of you should consider if you’ve ever considered opening your own practice. Depending on what you do, I’m just guessing that certain specialties aren’t really amenable to an online platform. 

But I just really want to encourage you to learn more about it. I don’t quite have a resource for you to learn more about it, but I know there are, someone told me there’s courses on how to prompt it. 

But the main take home message that I wanted to say about that talk was just, if you have children who are a little bit older, like high school or college, they really need to learn how to use it. It’s going to be a great skill set that’s marketable. So I know they have courses available. They even have conferences. So that’s something I’m even thinking about for my bonus son who’s 17.

Okay, so that conference was in Puerto Rico. And I got to see, like I said, my good friends, Leti and Kenji, and my friend Sonny were there. And then Sonny had a retreat for her empowering women physicians coaching group. And I guess I’m a, she calls me an alumni because I was one of her one-on-one clients. 

And this retreat was mainly for her alumni to get together and to sort of share things. And what was great about it for me was I got to see a lot of friends and reconnect with them. And I brought Matt and Jack for that part of the trip. And so after the EWP retreat, Matt and Jack went home and then I moved on to the British Virgin islands. 

And specifically we were at a private Island called Buck Island called Aerial, A-E-R-I-A-L. And it’s a privately owned Island and Sonny had identified it. She was introduced to it through a friend who knew the owner, and myself, Sonny, and a few other physician entrepreneurs, including Leti went there. And we went there specifically, well, not just to relax, but also to mastermind, and I’ll tell you what that means in a second. 

And this was a beautiful place. And we really had the privilege to actually spend some time with Brittany, who’s the owner. And she is a female entrepreneur and she’s on the younger side and her story is amazing. She is so purpose-driven and it really just made me think like, it’s not that you have to be as purpose-driven as her. 

Like she really has a vision for how she wants to use money for a great cause. She’s really passionate about sex trafficking and child trafficking, and so she has a foundation to help catch these bad people, basically. And so she shared a bit about how her foundation has really helped in that effort and told us her story. How she came to be where she is now and basically how she became so wealthy. 

And it was real estate, but it was her willingness to meet people and to basically be like, I want to learn from you. I will work for you for almost free. And how she had no money, but she figured it out. And her drive and passion was just so, so impressive. And it really made me think about sort of what vision I have and where I want to take my company. 

And so then the rest of the time we masterminded and you spend time with other entrepreneurs and you help each other out. It’s not like there’s one head figure or business person who’s teaching and leading. It’s a really collaborative thing. It can be led by an expert. The whole point of masterminds is to mastermind with other people. 

And so what we all did is we kind of all went in front of our group. We were kind of in this amazing, beautiful setting on the beach and we were sitting on a couch and then someone else had to sit up front and basically present, I guess you could say a problem or a situation that they needed help with, right? 

And so I think five of us went up, I went up. And just to give you a preview, I am working on a business program, maybe there’ll be some masterminding involved. But it’s really meant for me to teach online business owners, specifically coaches and course creators, where I will be teaching you how to run a business smoothly. 

Specifically all the things, business operations, understand your business finances, things like metrics, how to hire a VA, how to organize your business, like what are the systems you need, how to create SOPs and basically get your business in order and clean because if you don’t have this figured out, as you grow and scale your business you’re basically going to scale a mess. And it’s a lot less painful when you know how to do that and you know how to train and onboard them properly. 

And so that is something I am working on. I don’t know when it’s going to start or where I’m going to offer it. My guess is it wouldn’t start until August. So keep that in mind. And one of the things I am thinking about is that if you do join the first group, we will do a special extra day in Hawaii at my second Money and Wellness Conference, that’s going to be February 20th to 23rd. 

And you probably know that that’s happening. And I just want to let you know that you definitely want to join the wait list for that conference. Go to wealthymommd.com/conference and join the wait list. Joining the wait list is well, first of all, two things. One is you’re going to get $500 off and you really want to save your spot ASAP because we have a room block at the Four Seasons at basically 50% off. So it’s a very significant discount, okay? 

I don’t know, I want to say at least 10 rooms are gone, maybe 15, possibly more because we’ve already had 24 people sign up from the previous conference. And I think we have about 40 rooms. Now, you’re not required to stay there. So you don’t have to stay there obviously, but if you do and you want to take advantage of this 50% off room block, then you definitely want to save your spot in the first few days starting May 29th. 

And again, you have to be on the waitlist to get the invitation to join or register, I should say. So that’s wealthymommd.com/conference. 

So yeah, when I offer this business thing, I don’t even have a name yet, but it’s going to be six months and we’ll do an extra day in Hawaii and we’ll meet and we’ll talk about your businesses and what you want to work on. 

Okay, so that was an amazing experience. Got to spend time with amazing women, got to be on an amazing beach, eat good food, and just have a lot of fun with lots of other activities. So it was just a really nourishing time. 

Now, after that I flew to the Bahamas and my family met me there. And there’s no direct flight from the British Virgin islands to the Bahamas, so I had to fly to Miami and then Miami to Bahamas. Anyone familiar with the Miami airport, it is a bear of an airport. And I don’t know why it’s so hard to navigate, I feel like it’s just not very well organized and there – 

Anyway, I don’t want to complain too much, but it was a little stressful, even though I had a pretty long connection time to just figure out where I needed to go. 

Now, we stayed at Atlantis and the reason why I was there was it was for the Eckard Enterprises Partner Conference. Now, Eckard Enterprises is a company that invests in mineral rights and a bunch of other things as well, but sort of their flagship in terms of how most people end up working with them initially is to invest in mineral rights. 

Now I’m not going to give specific details about it, I’m probably going to have, I’m not quite sure if it’s going to be Troy or David on my podcast to talk more about it. And some of my clients have invested with them and have been really happy. 

I will say that they’re a pretty extraordinary company in terms of transparency and customer service. And that’s always important to me and I only like to recommend companies like that, that honestly that I’ve personally invested with and that I believe are good companies and will do good by you. 

So this conference is something they’ve started doing a few years ago and only their investors, and they call their investors partners, are invited. And it was basically, I think it was two or three days of programming to kind of talk more about what’s going on in their business, but also to educate us. 

And so the second day that I attended was amazing. They had all these different experts in different parts of finances and kind of gave us an overview of what’s going on with the economy where they see things going and just presenting some really amazing data that you wouldn’t really get in any sort of regular financial education because it’s kind of like, this is what’s happening now, these are the things you want to think about. 

And so some of the stuff he said I actually have heard before, but like through friends though. And it was good to kind of hear it from some expert and be able to ask questions. And so one of the things that I want to talk to you about, and if you’re on my email list you got an email about this other day, is that basically there are cycles and there’s economic cycles and there’s social cycles and that we’re sort of on this end of a cycle. 

And it’s not a good part of the cycle to be in. It’s kind of like the decline. And I don’t mean like everything’s going to go to crap, but there are cyclical things that have repeated multiple times in history. And sort of what’s going on in the political climate, et cetera, like these have all been predicted based on the past. And so I found that fascinating in itself. 

And in terms of finances and the economy, what I really took away is that things are changing rapidly. And my little spiel about AI earlier is just part of it, like things are changing so, so rapidly. The job market’s going to change rapidly because AI will replace certain types of jobs. And because the US has printed so much money and with inflation, there’s just a lot of downstream effects. 

And so what I really took away is that it’s really more important than ever to have your money in diverse investments and not just the stock market. And I see so much of that education out there saying, set it and forget it. Invest in the stock market, max out your retirement accounts and you will be fine. I actually think that’s dangerous. 

Now, I’m not a financial advisor. And so this is not specific advice, but I will tell you that all of my rich friends do not have all their money in the stock market. In fact, I would say that’s probably on the smaller side of their portfolio. And a lot of it’s in real estate, all different types of real estate. When people say real estate, they think of owning homes, et cetera, and that could be part of it, but there’s so many different ways to invest in real estate. 

Now, Eckard Enterprises, you could think of it as real estate. And so just to give you an overview of what mineral rights means is when you own land or like a single family home, you kind of own what’s above ground. With mineral rights, you own below ground, and so you actually get to own physical land and you have the rights below for mining basically. 

And it’s something you can leave to your children and it just continues to pay out. And I think that’s really the difference here, right? Because when you invest in the stock market in a retirement account, you know, you are putting money in its pre-tax, which is fantastic. It is growing pre-tax, again, fantastic. 

But then ultimately you have to sell it and you withdraw. And you may have heard of the 4% rule where you can withdraw 4% and you probably won’t run out of money. At least it’s highly, highly unlikely, but you have to wait until you retire in order to get that 4% payout, you know what I mean? Whereas when you invest in other types of investments like mineral rights, you actually get paid pretty quickly and maybe like 10% a year that you get paid consistently. 

Now sometimes they’re monthly, sometimes they’re quarterly, but do you see the difference? Like you don’t have to wait 30 years. And they’re all affected differently in terms of how the economy is doing. And so again, the bottom line is it’s important to have your money in different places. I’ve invested in one deal with them. 

And a lot of people, and maybe you, you might be thinking I would love to invest in something else, but I don’t have the capital. And one way to get capital is actually inside your retirement account. Now you need to have either a solo 401k for the most part. Now, very few employer sponsored plans will let you do a self-directed 401k. It’s pretty unusual. So you probably don’t have access to this. 

But self-directed means, basically it’s a way for you to invest in these passive investments with the money inside your retirement account. So my 401k is self-directed and it’s invested in syndications and I participated recently in a land deal where I’m part of owning a piece of land and it doesn’t pay out until the land is sold, but we’re planning to exit within two or three years. So I’m definitely interested to see how that deal goes. 

If you have a Roth IRA, that’s actually something you can convert into a self-directed IRA. And so most of you probably have a Roth IRA that’s not tied to your employer at all. And so I’m actually looking into possibly converting my Roth IRA into a self-directed one so I have money to invest into some deals. 

And again, just thinking a lot about my finances holistically, I’m going to have to sit down and take a look at where our money is invested and basically make some decisions, or maybe not, but just take a look and be like, do we like how we’re investing the money? Do we feel that this is going to help us reach our goals? 

Because what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it is going to be informed and predicated by what your ultimate goal and vision is. Do you see what I’m saying? And so that’s one of the reasons why in my course, Money for Women Physicians, that we actually just wrapped up about a month ago and we won’t be offering again until the fall, for those of you interested. 

We’ve gotten some emails asking when the next cohort starts and it’ll probably be the end of September. The first thing we do is what is your intention? What is the vision that you have? Because ultimately money is a means to that, right? It’s like you’re not just trying to make and have more money just to have more, it’s to facilitate the vision you have. 

What I mean by vision is it doesn’t have to be this crazy thing like you want to solve world hunger. What I really mean is what do you want your life to look like? If you have a family, what do you want your family’s life to look like? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to be able to do and how much money would you need to achieve that, right? And so that’s what I mean by intention. 

And of course, some of you in my program also might have a practice or another type of business, and so if you do have one also just as important to think about what is the vision, what do you see as the outcome of that business? 

So again, I’m going to have someone from Eckard on the podcast soon and we’ll probably do a live sort of webinar type thing. And so we have a call with DLP Capital and they are a company that offers private REITs. And I really encourage all of you to learn as much as you can about all of these different types of things. 

Now, obviously, I’m introducing you to these companies that I believe are doing good, are doing a great job and are honest and trustworthy. And I usually have some sort of financial relationship with them, but you can watch the replay, just email us if you haven’t signed up for it already at support at wealthymommd.com. We’ll probably be sending out an email with the replay, so if you’re on my email list, we will be sending that out. 

But again, I’ll be scheduling something soon with Eckard Enterprises so you can learn more about mineral rights, why it’s something you might want to consider and just how it works and just being introduced to that company. 

All right, well, that’s all I have for you. And maybe I’ll see you at a conference this fall.

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