165: Surround Yourself with Success featuring the Power Group

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, you are in for such a treat for this episode. It is an episode that I recorded with three of my really close entrepreneur friends, they’re all physicians, and who are now entrepreneurs. And originally it was recorded for Leti and Kenji’s podcast. But I asked her if we could get the audio to have on my podcast because it really, really highlights the importance of who you surround yourself with.

Now, I’ve talked about me being in masterminds before and I’m always sharing all the conferences that I go to, and so this conversation really, really highlights how valuable they are, not just from a business perspective but also from a life quality perspective and how just one conversation can really change literally everything.

And so there’s a saying that I think Tony Robbins said, which is proximity is power. You may have also heard the phrase about you are the average net worth of the people around you. And even putting money aside, who you surround yourself with is so important because they affect your beliefs, right? And so if you’re always around people who are complaining, you’re going to have a very different perspective on life.

Now, at the time that I’m recording this particular intro, because this episode was recorded almost a month ago with my crew, registration for the 2024 Live Wealthy Conference, AKA Money and Wellness Conference for Women Physicians, is open for registration. Now, at the time of this recording it is more than half sold out and we have very limited spots left.

It’s going to be relatively intimate because I chose a location that can only accommodate so many people. It’s at the luxurious Miraval Resort and Spa in Tucson, Arizona, which is about two hours away from Phoenix. And in case you’re not familiar, it is an all-inclusive resort. So your hotel fee includes all meals, all non-alcoholic drinks, all snacks and access to lots of activities like yoga and meditation and hiking, et cetera.

There are some paid activities and of course there is a spa. And one thing that you may not know about Miraval is that your nightly rate, besides including all the things I just mentioned, also includes a spa credit, about $175 a day. So what that means is you’re basically being forced to actually relax, meaning you are going to have to take a massage or a facial or pay extra to have a premium experience with the activities.

And so that’s one of the reasons why I chose this location, because I really want you to not just go there for learning and your personal growth and development and all the conversations you’re going to have that I know will be so valuable and you’re going to make new connections, meet new friends while being in an environment that really is committed to your wellness. That’s one of Miraval’s core values or mission, whatever you want to call it. It is designed for wellness.

And the people you’re going to hear about on this podcast, I’ve had them all on the podcast before as individuals. So Peter, Leti and Sunny are speakers at the conference. We’re going to cover not just money topics, but also topics that are really critical for your life happiness. Literally like how to have amazing relationships.

Relationships are probably the most important thing in our lives in terms of how it affects the quality and happiness of our lives. You may be familiar with the Harvard Happiness Study, and so it showed that the number one indicator of “being happy” with your life is having high quality relationships. So that’s just one example.

So we’re going to link in the show notes how to learn more about the conference, but the easiest way is to go to wealthymommd.com, that’s my main website. And you’re going to see a link way up top, a banner that will take you to the conference website.

And so if you’re thinking about going I really, really, encourage you to register because, like I said, at the time of this recording it is almost sold out and it’s just going to be closer to that by the time this episode comes out.

All right, here’s my conversation with my crew.

Leti: So welcome to another episode of The Doctors Building Wealth Podcast. Today, Kenji and I have such a treat for you. We have some of our best friends here and also business owners. And they’ve been with us since the beginning of Semi-Retired MD and have made such a difference in our lives and guiding us through this process of building this business.

So we have Dr. Bonnie Koo, Dr. Sunny Smith and Dr. Peter Kim. Hi guys, maybe we’ll start with Peter, can you introduce yourself to everybody and tell them a little bit about who you are?

Peter: Sure. Hey, everyone out there listening, this is Peter Kim. I am the founder and creator of a brand called Passive Income MD. This is, again, I’m an anesthesiologist by training. I live in Southern California and I love talking about multiple streams of income.

Sunny: My name is Dr. Sunny Smith, I’m a family physician by training. And I am the founder and CEO of a company called Empowering Women Physicians, and we are arguably the largest or most comprehensive collaborative coaching program for women physicians. And we have the most impactful or effective physician wellness data that exists. So it’s an incredibly meaningful line of work to support other physicians in this business.

Bonnie: Hi, everyone, I’m Bonnie Koo. I’m a dermatologist by training and my business is called Wealthy Mom MD and my coaching programs basically help predominantly women physicians to work on their money and really help them start living the life they want now versus waiting for the money to come in before they can do that.

Leti: Hi, everyone, I’m Leti and this is Kenji. And we’re both hospitalist physicians by training and we run Semi-Retired MD and we train physicians how to create a source of income by using rental real estate, both long term rentals and short term rentals to be able to build lives they love.

Okay, guys, I wanted to start out with our origin stories. So I don’t know if there’s anyone who wants to start and kind of tell your version of what happened, and then we can go around and add in the things that we remember about the experience.

Peter: What are we talking about origin stories, like of our lives, of our businesses, how we met?

Kenji: Getting together. Origin of us getting together.

Leti: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: Okay, all right.

Leti: How did it happen for you, Peter?

Peter: How did it happen for me? Well, like I said, I had heard of Bonnie before. I think one by one, I think I’ll just – What I remember, I’ll tell you of how I met each person here. Leti and Kenji, I think I remember an email that came in one day from, it might have been Kenji or Leti, I don’t remember, just wanting to connect with me online.

At that time, I was a few years into Passive Income MD and I remember somebody – I should bring that email up, that would be cool. I bet you there’s somewhere I could search that. And it talks about how you guys are interested in investing in real estate or you’d been investing in real estate, you wanted to share your story or something to that effect and wanted to connect.

And so I remember thinking that, you know, you guys were living in Hawaii at the time. Somehow the conversation came up that you guys were in Hawaii, I was going to be in Hawaii in a month or two, or whatever it was. And I said, we should get together. And we did. Somehow we made it happen, I don’t know. I was on vacation with my family, and usually on those vacations it’s kind of hectic and crazy.

But you guys, we all happened to be on the same island of Hawaii. And you guys joined me and my wife. It was the four of us and we just had acai bowls. You guys brought me some acai bowls, I still remember that, sitting there at Turtle Bay up on the north shore. And we just talked about life, about business, about real estate, all of these things, and about what you guys were hoping to build at that time. And I got really excited by it.

And again, one thing led to another and you guys said, hey, we’re coming to LA ultimately, again, the conversation was probably longer, but we’re coming to LA in a couple of months for a Tony Robbins event and you should come with us. And I remember thinking, absolutely not. That’s not something I’m interested in at all.

Something happened a couple of days before and I said, you know what? I should do this. And I showed up at this event, hung out with you guys, and I don’t know how Bonnie, how did you hear that we were coming to this event? At least I was going, I don’t know how you heard that. But you were like, “I have this other friend that’s going, she’s my coach.”

Bonnie: Sunny, right?

Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you were like, “This is my coach,” or something like that, I remember. “Her name is Sunny Smith, you should try to meet up with her.” And so I still remember, I was like, “Yeah, yeah, we should connect.” And you connected us through that. That’s where I met Sunny. I had met you already, Bonnie, because we had been to some events together, I think in the financial blogging world. And then we took a picture together. You remember that, guys?

Bonnie: Yeah.

Leti: We’ll have to put it up. We’ll have to put it up for this video.

Peter: Yeah, we acted all silly and crazy in front of this Firewalker sign. And I felt like that’s when, Bonnie, you weren’t there in person but you were there in spirit because we talked about you a lot. All good things. But it was all of us together and that’s kind of where everything started.

I mean, maybe you guys can add some color to that, because my memory is not always the best. So what do you guys remember?

Leti: Well, I remember actually meeting Bonnie first, because Bonnie reached out to me and asked if we would be willing to do a guest post for her and we were talking about real estate. And so that’s how that whole relationship with Bonnie started when we were still in Hawaii.

And then for you, Peter, Kenji was online and he was like, “I think this guy, Peter, he’s just really cool. I can just sense his vibe. He’s not like a lot of the other ones. He’s just very, very approachable. Maybe I’m going to reach out to him.” And so you reached out to Peter, right?

Kenji: That’s right. Yeah, I emailed him. And, like you said, you could probably pull up that email. And yeah, and then it just so happened we just met up a couple of months later, is what I remember as well. So yeah, your recollection is pretty good. That’s pretty much what I remember as well. Not much more than that.

Leti: Yeah. And I think Sunny, yeah, we met at UPW through Bonnie just connecting us all. I think Bonnie wrote to Peter to find Sunny, and Peter was like, “Hey, we’ve got to go find this person, Sunny.”

And, Peter, we invited you. So I just wanted to kind of bring that up, it’s like we invited you to a random conference and you said yes. And I think that you see a lot of themes of just saying yes, how it can bring up so many cool opportunities in relationships. So maybe, Sunny?

Peter: Yeah. And, Sunny, I think you said yes, as well, right? But your story getting there was kind of a big deal. There was a lot going on for you.

Sunny: Yeah. So I mean, I entered into the circle in that I was doing physician wellness coaching, right? And Bonnie had reached out and I was her coach at the time. And I had gone to an Orange County Women in Medicine event. I mean, it was a normal CME type event. And the initial people who were there that were on the stage said, “What’s your advice for women physicians who want to get ahead?”

And the first person, they were all leaders, the first person was like, “Get a coach.” And I was like, “What?” I’m sitting in the audience, like a new coach, how are these women physicians saying get a coach? I feel like such an outsider because nobody was talking about coaching, I thought, at that time. And then the second person said get a coach. And then the third person was like, get a coach. I was like, what the hell is happening?

And then someone from the audience got up and said, “How would I find a coach?” And so I went up to the mic and I was like, “I’m a coach.” And so anyway, this is how I ended up at the Tony Robbins event, because then someone who was in the audience came up to me and she said, “You’re a coach, do you follow Tony Robbins? You have to go to his stuff. He has this event coming up, it’ll change your life. It changed my life. It saved my marriage. It’s life changing, you have to go.”

And I was like, “I don’t know.” I mean, I’d known of one set of coaching skills and tools and they were incredibly effective for me and my clients. But I was like, “I don’t know about that.” I just had suspicion. And so notice the story is like Peter was like, “I don’t know. No, that’s not for me.” Right? Like that thought at first, that’s not for me. That’s not who I am. I’m a traditional physician, right? I was an academic physician.

And so in particular because it was match day, it was like literally match day. Exactly match day. And so since I was a formal medical student advisor and an academic community director, it was my job to be at match day and to stand with my students when they opened their envelopes, celebrate with their families, the news comes, all this stuff.

And so this woman kept texting me and texting me and texting me telling me I had to go. And I was like, “Who is this crazy stranger? And why does she keep telling me I have to go to some big event in Los Angeles?” I lived in San Diego. So then Peter Kim texts me and says, “Hey, I hear you know Bonnie,” and he texted me a picture of himself. And he said, “I’m here in Los Angeles. This is what I look like. Come and meet me.”

And I was like, “Well, okay.” So that was the day before match day. So I drove up there, we sort of met each other, like said hellos. There was a Firewalker event that turned out went on until like two o’clock in the morning and the whole time all I’m thinking while people are chanting is, what the hell is happening here? Have I gotten into a cult? What is this? It feels insane the first time.

And I was like, I need to get back to match day. I can’t just stay here and chant and wait to walk on fire. So I left and it was the middle of the night when I was driving home. I went to match day, I had to decide if I was going to go back. I took pictures with my students.

That was March 2019, so this ended up being the crew that sort of moving forward were COVID residents and all of this stuff. But I had to decide whether I would go back or not. And there were some people still scrambling that day. And so in the end, I got another text message from you guys and I was like, “All right. I mean, what’s the difference? Nobody’s really working today anyway after match day.”

So I went back and I remember taking calls about scrambling people from the LA Convention Center and then going in and being back in the cult. But the truth is, and I didn’t think we had that much in common, honestly. I was very skeptical. I was like, these are physician finance people, I run a free clinic. I’m the opposite of finance.

And then we went to lunch, Kenji and Leti, and we sat together and I saw, oh, you’re approaching physician finance through a different lens, through financial freedom. You get to choose how you spend your life. And that is what matters.

That’s what we were all trying to get at was, like how Bonnie said she teaches women physicians to live the lives they want now and not wait till they hit financial independence number. And Peter also, you know, passive income so that people could do what they want and not wait for a certain time. And you also taught people to leverage that. And I thought I would never do any of that finance stuff. I would never do real estate, I would never.

And then I just think we all saw we had a lot more in common than I think any of us ever would have anticipated. And it was a very transformational weekend. I think we all left changed and all left connected to each other in a very unique way. And Bonnie was the ultimate connector for all of us.

Leti: Right, and so I really want to highlight that. Bonnie, you’re the person who went and found each of us separately.

Sunny: Yes.

Leti: So how did you do that? So if people want to know like, how do you bring together groups, how did you go and find each of us?

Bonnie: That’s a good question. I want to say a little bit about how Sunny said she was skeptical because I did like a personal development conference when I was like 23. And I heard about it through a friend and I thought she was crazy. So it’s like you hear a similar theme. I was like, she’s nuts. It was right after 911, I was living in New York City.

And the reason why I ended up doing it was not because I thought what she said was sound. It was because I was studying for the MCAT. She said, you’re going to get a higher score if you do this.

Leti: I’m in, I’m in.

Bonnie: I was like, sign me up.

Leti: I want to do dermatology, I’m going to need all the help I could get.

Bonnie: So it’s just funny how that’s what got me in. And I say that because when I saw that Sunny was offering coaching in a Facebook group, I didn’t have to be sold on coaching. I already knew what it was. And I also knew that it wasn’t cheap if you wanted your own coach.

So when she was offering free coaching, I was like, holy cow. Basically, I was like, yes, I’m going to do this. I can’t believe it’s free. Because I remember wanting to hire someone when I was in my 20s and it was just cost prohibitive for me at the time. So that’s how Sunny and I met.

And then I think I met Peter before because we were in the financial blogging world. I think we met in person at the first White Coat Investor. And you were just coming out, because I knew who you were enough to meet you versus like, I don’t know who Passive Income MD was, right?

Peter: Yeah, can we clarify that? Okay, just clarify a little bit.

Kenji: You revealed your identity.

Peter: I was anonymous on the blog and I was revealing my identity on it.

Sunny: And I want to say, Peter, just for a second I want to put in, because again, I ran a free clinic. And so the fact that you were so humble that you wanted to help other physicians and were anonymously helping other physicians as Passive Income MD, and it wasn’t about your ego. It wasn’t about you.

And only after a long period of time of helping people you went through that transformation, and deciding to put your name out there and deciding to come forward with who you were. That actually meant a lot to me. It was endearing. It told me something about your character.

And so I think when people are looking for other people and how do you know who’s a good character, it’s what you do when people don’t know who you are and people aren’t watching that tells a lot about you and your values. And so I knew kind of right away that this was going to be a safe space to be in. So go ahead, Bonnie, with your story.

Bonnie: Yeah, and then we met again at another conference, Fin Con, and I forget what year that was. And that’s actually when we had a conversation that I mention all the time to people, I think it was around the time when I was like, do I keep doing this blog? It was kind of fun. It was making a few thousand dollars, that was cute, right?

And then I was like, should I do this business? And I was working with Sunny at the time. And that’s when you said go big or go home. And you didn’t say in a mean way or provocative, you were just like make a decision, go big or go home. And it was just very matter of fact the way you said it and I was like I don’t know. And then that’s when I decided with Sunny to pursue it.

And then with Leti and Kenji, I do remember you writing me a guest post. So the question is how did I – I must have heard about your blog somehow, I don’t remember. What I do remember is being on my bed in Philadelphia and us having our first phone conversation. I forget what year, but I remember where I was, which is kind of random, right?

Leti: I do too. I remember I was sitting at the table talking to Bonnie:

Sunny: Oh my gosh.

Leti: Yeah, talking to Bonnie because she was such a big name. She was Miss Bonnie and I was so excited to get to talk to her. It was really pivotal for me. I mean, it was a big deal.

Bonnie: Yeah, I think this was before, yeah, before you had courses and stuff. The blog was just a blog. I don’t know what your origin story is in terms of how your blog started. So, I think I met all of you around the same time. And yeah, I do remember telling you all like, “Oh, Sunny will be there.” And I think I remember saying, she’s really tall. That might help find her, because obviously, there’s thousands of people at this conference, right?

Sunny: Yeah, that was 2018 when we all met you. And then in 2019 we met each other.

Peter: Yeah, somehow we all ended up on a text thread together at that time. I think that’s how.

Sunny: After this event, then we decided that.

Peter: Was it after the event?

Sunny: Yeah, well, I mean, we decided to call ourselves the power group, if we’re being transparent. I don’t know where that came from. I have no idea.

Bonnie: I think it was me.

Sunny: See, there you go. There’s always a ringleader.

Bonnie: Well, you can name a group chat and I thought at least we should just have a name.

Sunny: Yeah. If you notice, Bonnie was the ringleader the whole time, of everything. She met us all individually, she put together the text thread, she gave it a name that she remembers, right?

Leti: Yeah, and I want to point out also how each of us, just by saying something along the journey has totally transformed what the other person did. Because Peter transformed what Bonnie did. But Bonnie was the person who brought courses to us and said, “Hey, you should do a course. I’m doing a course.” Right?

And so that totally changed what we were doing because we had met Sunny, we thought we were going to do a coaching program. And then Bonnie said a course, and we changed.

Sunny: And I’m the one who taught Bonnie how to do courses because I had become a coach and then I had also, one of my coach friends had said, “Hey, have you heard of James Wedmore? He has this program called Business By Design.” I went and did that. And so I was like, hey, he has this program called Monetize Before You Make it. I asked him, “Can I share it with my client, Bonnie, because I think she could make a course and teach women physicians this?”

And so like the interweave, interweb or like cross pollination of people who have similar interests, it’s like this is what I’m doing. What are you doing? How can we make this better? How can we all help each other out, right? And even though you’re all in the financial space, none of you were like, well, someone might sign up for Bonnie’s course and not mine, or Peter’s and not mine, right? There was none of that.

In fact, I have to say if we put together a list of people who’ve been in all of our programs, that list would not be small. Right?

Bonnie: Yeah, there’s definitely like a Venn diagram where they all overlap.

Sunny: Yes. But I think that’s one thing that’s beautiful, is none of us feel significant competition with the other people. We’re always truly trying to help the other people and know that there’s not a fixed pie.

Bonnie: Yes.

Peter: And people should know that we get together and actually are pretty transparent about our businesses. We share a lot of the challenges, struggles with our businesses particularly, obviously our successes. But we’re all like, every time we meet, we’re trying to share what’s working well and some of the challenges we have. And the cool thing is we all are getting our information not actually from the same place.

Like you guys have done Keith Cunningham, you guys have done all this, like you guys are going to your own masterminds. And everybody’s doing their own masterminds. Some of the things we do together, but a lot of things we’re doing is we’re all pursuing our own education on our own, and then we’re bringing it back to everyone else and kind of condensing it down and giving the best stuff, which I think has been a really fun part. Everybody is contributing to everybody’s education and helping each other. So I know I’ve learned a lot from you guys.

Sunny: I mean Peter even, because I’m a little disorganized, and so Peter even told me who his CEO was, or his COO, his fractional COO and we shared a COO for like six months.

Peter: How did that turn out?

Sunny: I mean she got so much organization and structure in my business, she really did. I mean, I went from a one woman show with one VA to a company with that woman. And I learned about culture and fit, and she wasn’t the right culture fit for me. But I learned a lot because, like when you’re saying we help each other, we really, really help each other. And we really do go into very different spaces.

We all invest significantly in personal development and coaching and business support, and with very different spaces. And whether we want value alignment, or whether we’re looking for a certain goal or result, and then we really do try and help each other and teach each other.

Leti: Yeah, I was thinking about what allows this group to be such a really great group, and part of it is the growth. Growth mindset and also the mindset work that we’re all doing. And so if we can talk about some specific examples where somebody went and learned something or grew and was able to help you with your business.

Bonnie: Well, I think Sunny was the one who introduced the idea of doing a course. That would have never entered my mind. And you were the one who said you can sell it before you make it. And I was like, that’s crazy. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan, right? You’ve got to know what to sell. You can’t just be like, “I’m doing something, buy it.” Right?

So I remember I planned it all out. So that was definitely facilitated by you. And I guess Leti and Kenji were like, “Oh, we should do a course too.” I don’t remember exactly that conversation, but I think we would just talk about what we’re doing, what we’re up to. And if it sounded interesting like, oh, tell me more about that. What are you doing? How did you learn how to do this?

In the beginning we were all like beginners and online business, and I felt like we were all sponges. I feel like we are still sponges. The difference is that now we just have a lot more knowledge and experience under our belts. But like I did the sales page copywriting course just recently, and then I’m working with the same coach for email copy. And so I’ll definitely share what I’ve been learning. She’s so good.

And so, yeah, we’re always taking some sort of, we’re always in some kind of business, whether it’s a coaching program or to learn a specific skill, like copy, and then we could always bring that to the group.

Kenji: Yeah, I was wondering where the membership site came from, because I think at least a couple of us have done membership sites. And that’s had a significant impact on our business.

Leti: It was Bonnie:

Kenji: Was it Bonnie again? Okay.

Leti: It was Stu McLaren, Bonnie discovered Stu McLaren.

Peter: Bonnie is usually the one that goes out there first, like meets all the right resources, tries it out, tells us all about it. And then many of us, then we’ll try it. I feel like Bonnie is the first one, always.

Sunny: Well, and then when she does, literally, and then she becomes everyone’s case study, right? She became like Amy Porterfield’s case study, Stu McLaren’s case study. I met Stu, who teaches about memberships, at James’s event. That one that I had told Bonnie about.

But again, like a lot of people hear about things, but I think what’s remarkable and exceptional about everyone in this group is we don’t just hear about things, we enroll in things and attend things and listen to things with the intent to take action.

And so whether she goes in with the intention or not, she’s like, I’m going to be everyone’s star student. I’m going to be a testimonial, because I’m going to apply this work. Otherwise, why did I enroll in the program? You know, if you don’t want the result, don’t enroll in the program, don’t waste the thousands of dollars. And so I just think that that’s a characteristic, right? That it’s no accident. And it’s replicable. And I think the same with each one of the people here.

Bonnie: That’s what I was going to say. We all take action on things that we’ve learned. We’re not just sitting around. I think I learned from you, Peter, like I saw you give a talk. And I say it over and over again, a lot of us think knowledge equals power, but it’s knowledge plus action equals power. I use that line all the time because it’s so true, right?

Peter: I made that up, guys. I made that up.

Sunny: You made that up?

Leti: That’s Tony Robbins.

Peter: I made that up, I just want to let you know.

Bonnie: No, but it’s so true.

Sunny: Sorry, I was just going to say that I think another thing that I got from Peter that’s a saying is like, what if it’s the third time that it works out? He said that in real estate to one of my clients, he was also one of your clients as well. But it’s knowing knowledge plus action equals power, and then knowing it’s probably going to be the third time that you actually get it right.

It gets you out of the perfectionism and trying to get it right the first time because it’s like you have to experiment the first time and the second time to have enough experience under your belt to get it right the third time.

Leti: Yeah, I’ve got to say Peter is, in my opinion, like an incredible salesperson. Like when I watch his webinars, I’m watching and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’ve got to learn from Peter. I’ve got to learn from Peter. I want to be like Peter when I grow up.” Right? So each of us have built skills in certain areas that we can model off of each other. And it’s just so great to be able to learn from watching you guys kick ass in your businesses too, like the actual practice of it.

Sunny: I think it’s that we actually care, though. Because if you think of Peter, when you say he’s a good salesperson, I don’t even think of Peter as a good salesperson per se. What I say is he cares about people. He’s everyone’s best friend. He genuinely likes them. You know, like I genuinely like Peter, and all of you do as well. So there’s that.

It’s not transactional, it’s relational. And having a real relationship with people really matters because they’ll forget what you say and did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. That’s Maya Angelou, right?

Bonnie: Well a good example of that is I was just at my 15 year med school reunion, which kind of blew my mind, like it’s been 15 years? And I was telling them, we were all just talking about money because they were asking me what I was doing and we were talking about real estate.

And I mentioned your name, I told them about the conference. And then my friend Jessica, who I introduced to you when she took your syndication course, she’s like, “Oh my God, I love Peter. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to meet him. I can’t wait to hang out with him.” And I feel like people say that a lot about you.

Sunny: Mm-hmm.

Peter: By the way, Bonnie came over to my house recently and I brought her to a little picnic. We were having a little picnic outside for the neighborhood people. And then I was introducing her and then somebody was like, “Wait a minute, you’re Bonnie Koo? I’ve read your book. I’ve done this.” And it’s amazing to see the influence. I didn’t even, again, I never talked about Bonnie to my neighbor who happens to be a physician.

But it’s just really cool to see the impact that all of you have made. All your names come up when I talk to people in the space, whether they’re in real estate or not. Just kind of influencing, you know, the influence that you’ve had on them has been amazing.

And I will say, all of you have had an influence on me, obviously, in so many different ways. But one of the biggest ways is definitely how much you guys are all willing to invest in yourselves. Like the whole education aspect, learning more, masterminds, coaches. You’re not just telling people and creating these things for other people, you’re doing it yourself, too.

And so the amount of like, you stretch my mind to like what’s, I’d say what’s possible in that sense, what is reasonable, I guess. Being in my world I’m like, “Oh, I don’t want to pay that much,” because I’m more worried about the cost versus the benefit, right? The cost versus the return on investment. And what you guys have really taught me is that it’s not about how much you spend on it, it’s what you get out of it in terms of value.

And now I’m able to see these things in terms of that light. It’s not like, oh, how much I’m going to spend, you know? It’s more like, what am I going to get out of this? And so now, obviously, I mean, we’re all spending significant amounts of money on our own education, masterminds, coaching, all of it, but it’s created amazing returns for all of us. And I think we can all probably say the return on investment has been not small, but humongous, right?

And so that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t seen each of you kind of invest in yourselves. And that’s allowed me to do that, for sure.

Sunny: And when I was doing this, at first, I was the literal only physician I knew doing this, right? Like my initial coach training was $18,000. And everyone thought I was completely insane. And then once I got around people who really, again, invested in themselves, in this work, and whether it’s a training, a certificate, a program, a course.

And then I had just decided from the get go, like, from the jump I had heard, because I’d read Grant Cardone’s book, 10x. I just decided, I’m like, I get 10x out of everything. And my first offer to Bonnie was I guarantee you’ll 10x your money. So pay me this and I guarantee 10x your money or I’ll give it back.

And so I just had that thought for myself, and I still have it, and I know it seems extreme. And there’s another book coming out soon that’s called 10x is easier than 2x by Benjamin Hardy, the guy who wrote The Gap and The Gain, a good book for everybody to read. But really, even if you knew, if you decided ahead of time you were going to 2x or 3x or 5x, there isn’t –Peter’s Passive Income MD, I mean, I gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars for syndications. I’m not expecting 2x or 3x or 5x or 10x, right?

So I do think it’s been helpful to see other physicians doing this too. And again, not at all to be self-serving or salesy, my life, as you all know I’m going through a really hard time right now. My life is so much better. My mind is so much better. My ability to cope is so much better. My perspective is so much better by purposely surrounding myself with people who think that our life experience matters.

Because let me tell you, physicians are not accustomed to thinking that their experience of this life matters. They just sacrifice themselves and sacrifice themselves and sacrifice themselves. And it’s like, what if all these rules were made up? And what if you didn’t have to play by their rules? What rules would you play by?

And so I think the people who immerse themselves in mindset work start to realize we really can make up our own rules. And we can still work as physicians or we can work part time or we can do all these other things. But we really do get to play by our terms.

Kenji: Wow, that’s one of the best things, is that we get free coaching from Sunny.

Sunny: I mean, you’re already doing this, but I’m just saying when you talk about ROI there is a literal, you can look at my whatever, social security statements or whatever, there is a literal ROI. But what’s more important, and you guys know that I’m speaking my absolute truth here, because money solves problems that money can solve.

And then you’re left with the real work, which is like, what is this life really about? And what is your experience of this life? So let’s get everybody who’s listening, because you guys are financial people, so let’s all get them to the point where they know they have enough money that money is not a worry anymore. And then again, what are you really doing with this life? It’s a profound place to be and reflect on.

Leti: It is, it is. So let’s talk about going forward. I think we’ve talked a lot about the past and what made us such a good fit for each other in terms of mindset and how we’ve been kind of going so far. Going forward what kind of things would you like to see changed or added about what we’re doing now? Just for people to be able to model like, okay, I see how they got together, I see how it’s worked so far. What do you want for the future?

Bonnie: Are you talking about in the context of our group specifically or our businesses?

Leti: Mm-hmm.

Bonnie: Okay. Well, one thing I realized is peer masterminds, I think there’s pros and cons, right? It’s really easy for a peer mastermind to just kind of be like, well, I’m not paying for it, it doesn’t matter. And I think our group has been different because I’ve been in peer masterminds or attempted where there’s just no buy-in, whereas ours kind of came organically.

I think really, purposefully meeting up, like I think we all ended up meeting each other because we kind of go to the same conferences, but when was the last time we were all together? I can’t remember. It’s been a while, like, all together.

Sunny: Peter’s conference, I think.

Peter: My conference, yeah.

Sunny: Yeah.

Peter: Afterwards, my backyard, yeah. It’s been a while. It’s been a while.

Sunny: Yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah. So I think purposely doing something, maybe not just attaching to a conference, but we’ve talked about maybe planning a vacation/work thing together, right? So we can all bring our families because it’s hard to always separate from our families. So we’ve talked about Disney cruises or Greece, like I don’t remember. But I think it’s just executing it.

And I think, like Leti was in charge of getting this podcast together. So I think what it takes, and this is just for anything, is like someone’s got to kind of decide to organize something, to kind of be I guess the ringleader, right? So one of us will have to be like, “Okay, let’s look at your calendars. Let’s figure out a time to go.” I think, Peter, you said you’re going on a Disney Cruise next year. So we were like, “What date is that? Maybe we could go.”

Peter: Can we vote on that person right now? I vote Bonnie. Make it organized. We need one person, is that what you’re saying, Bonnie?

Sunny: She volunteered.

Bonnie: I’m happy to, but I think it would be really nice for us to purposefully meet in person. I think we’re pretty good about meeting periodically. I know, Leti, you’re really good about organizing that, like, hey, let’s meet up. And there’s no specific cadence. And I think that’s also nice, we’re not like, oh, we’ve got to meet on the third Wednesday of every month. It’s kind of like whenever it feels like it’s been a while we’ll kind of end up doing a Zoom call.

But yeah, I think that’s one thing I would love, is to actually meet in person where we’re not like, you know, Peter’s not running a conference, right? Because that’s obviously a huge use of his brain time and he’s got to focus on that. So whether we just stay a few extra days and maybe go to your STR in, where is it, by Coachella?

Peter: Oh, Indio? Yeah. Right, or one of their STRs or everybody has something somewhere.

Bonnie: Puerto Rico.

Sunny: We’re having a thing in Puerto Rico soon you can all come to.

Leti: As soon as I buy our Italian villa.

Sunny: Yeah.

Bonnie: Oh, yeah, yeah,

Peter: There you go.

Sunny: I think what I would say about that is that it’s my experience that Leti is the instigator for our meetups generally, and she kind of has to hunt us down. Like it’s not easy. We’re not all like, “Hey, sure, yeah, we’ll do that.” It’s like, how about this day? How about this day? How about this day? How about this day? And everybody is going somewhere all the time. We all have conferences and things we’re going to, so it’s not an easy job for you.

I’ve noticed it’s most common when, for instance, you or one of us has a significant issue. Like as Peter was saying, we really come together with like, oh, the stuff is going to hit the fan right now. We’re in it, we’re deep in it. We need some people who are physicians, who are entrepreneurs, who get what it’s like to run a sizable business and when stuff hits the fan, because it’s like the team or this or that. And so Leti, I find, is very good and persistent about getting us together.

Bonnie: Even for this, right? She was like, “Are we meeting? Are we still on?”

Sunny: And then what I think we could do better is honestly, I think we should just schedule it instead of waiting for every single time like our COO quits or whatever terrible crisis is going down. And maybe even, we could take turns, like this month you lead, next month I lead, next month, right? We could actually do that.

And then also I think the in-persons with intention to have a period of it that is mastermind I and then there will be periods where – Because even in my real, not real, but in my paid masterminds there’s the content, you know, say you’re at a thing from nine to three or whatever, nine to five and that is super important. You’re there with your notebook and all that stuff. But a lot of the learning comes from sitting by the pool and having a drink at the bar.

And so I think we could, for ourselves, do both of those things. We could have some actual content and we’re also really good at the drink at the bar. And it doesn’t have to be alcohol, right? I was at Leti’s house yesterday and it was her two year olds birthday and we had cake, then also went to the pool.

Leti: And the reason we’re in Puerto Rico is because you.

Sunny: Exactly. Exactly and you just came to visit, right? So it’s like you really do become the average of the five people. You know, before I met you guys, I had my five people and we’re basically the same person. We’re underserved medicine, family medicine, faculty members that teach. That’s who we are and we’d been best friends for 25 years. And they’re still my people, but they don’t really understand the kinds of things I have to talk about right now, right? It’s a very different world.

And so having you as some of my five people, I think, again, that just spending time with people intentionally, the things that Peter happens to talk about or that you happen to talk about because it’s part of your life, it’s not like you’re trying to teach me all the time. It’s just this is your life. And so yeah, I think structure plus the unstructured time are things that we could take turns doing. And I look forward to doing that. It’s going to be super fun.

Leti: Peter?

Peter: Yeah, I mean, I think we need to be intentional about meeting up. That’s really what it is. I think we’re all busy and I think everyone, probably everyone in their lives, they’ve realized that without setting something, especially way up in advance, it just doesn’t happen. I mean, I think like Bonnie is talking about she’s got a conference coming up. And if she doesn’t put that date down pretty soon, all of our schedules will be filled up already. I mean, it’s just the way it happens. Life happens, right? Say the date, right?

Kenji: What’s that date?

Bonnie: March 3 through 6 2024.

Kenji: There you go, good job. We’re there.

Bonnie: Yeah, I was like, “Are you guys free this date?” And not everyone knows our schedule that far in advance, but we knew for sure you didn’t have certain big things that you know you had responsibilities for. So yeah, that was also part of it, too. It’s like, okay, finding a date that would work for all of us. And I’m really hoping that you guys can all make it. So yeah, I think that, so we should probably talk offline about September.

Peter: I think it’s funny how Sunny –

Sunny: I was just going to say I’m the opposite. Yeah, Peter will be like, “I have a conference going on. It starts on Saturday, Sunny. Can you come? Are you going to come?” And I’ll be like, “Yeah.” I’m just last minute because my life has had a lot of unforeseeable events and so I needed flexibility in my life. So when Bonnie was like, March, I’m like, you could create a whole human between now and March of next year. There’s no way to actually know what’s going to happen during that time frame, but sure.

Peter: Just put it on the website, just do it. Bonnie put her name on the website, put her picture. I saw my name and picture on the website.

Bonnie: I know, Kenji, I don’t have your headshot. I’m just going to put your picture up there, Sunny.

Kenji: I’ll get it to you.

Sunny: Yeah, I’ll give you a headshot.

Bonnie: Which I wrote subject to change.

Sunny: Yeah, but it’s at Miraval, I mean, who’s not going to want to go to Miraval?

Leti: Yeah, exactly.

Sunny: Yeah.

Peter: But I’ve learned this, and I think my wife sort of reminded me of this too, is that if you don’t set even time with her, like a potential, it’s just like you’ve got to fit in the cracks, maybe. But other things keep filling it first. And so I think for us, we’ve talked about it for a while, I think you’re right, Bonnie. I think we got to just set these dates intentionally and block that off. And then that way, we can say no to other things.

Bonnie: Well, Miraval would be a great way to extend because you’re at a spa resort and it’s all inclusive. It’s like the perfect backdrop, so maybe we could talk about just adding a few extra days. Yeah, it’s probably better to do it after, right? I think so.

Sunny: Yeah. Yeah, I was actually just thinking that. We have a mastermind that was conflicting with Peter’s PIMD Con and I was like, “Oh, we’ve got to rearrange the mastermind because we’re going to PIMD Con.” So it just gives you a sense of like, we make sure that we’re at each other’s important events to support each other.

You guys were our affiliates for the first course sale. We didn’t have a huge list. You guys made all the difference in the growth, and just knowing how much of a difference you guys have made in our growth, our trajectory, just the loyalty of being there this whole time, it means so much to us. And to all of us, I think, to have this relationship where we all started from the beginning.

And we’ve all grown and grown some really remarkable businesses over time through each other helping each other, which is really, really phenomenal and beautiful. So thank you guys so much for your time. This was so amazing. Can each of you maybe tell everyone how they can get a hold of you and find you and learn more about you?

Bonnie: All right, so people can find me at Wealthy Mom MD. And so those are all my handles, Instagram, my website, my podcast, so that makes it super easy.

Sunny: People can find me at empoweringwomenphysicians.com. And they can get free resources and guides and things. Like things that I actually do with my clients, they can download them there. I would say most people, though, know me from my Facebook group, and so that is for women physicians. You have to be a woman identifying physician to get in there. And then I have a podcast of the same name, Empowering Women Physicians.

Peter: Yeah, you can find me at Passive Income MD. I blog and podcast by pretty much the same name. We have some Facebook groups. And of course, there’s the conferences that we do, PIMD Con and Leverage and Growth Summit, so look out for those. And yeah, that’s it.

Leti: And that’s where you’ll see all of us, for sure, too. You can find us at semiretiredmd.com. And we do courses, masterminds and you can find our public Facebook groups as well, Semi-Retired Physicians and Semi-Retired Professionals.

Thank you guys so much for your time. This was so much fun. And I can’t wait to get texting to you guys later today about other things and all the things we’ve been going through. It’s just really an incredible thing to have all of you in our lives. So thank you.

Peter: All right, thanks. Bye guys.

Bonnie: Thank you.

Sunny: Thank you.

I hope you loved our conversation. And I also hope you got a sense of how important these types of connections are. And they literally start from an email or seeing someone in person and how those connections over time can really affect the trajectory of your life.

Like I said before, proximity is power, the people you surround yourself with really matter. They make a profound difference in your life. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve created the Live Wealthy Conference in March 2024, because it’s hard to even capture in words the magic of being in-person, especially with other women physicians.

I think we can all agree that there is something special about being with other female physicians, we get it. So once again, go to my website, wealthymommd.com to learn more about the conference and to register. It’s March 3 to 6 at the Miraval resort in Arizona and I really hope to see you there. We’ll talk to you next week.

Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.