A High-Income Earner’s Perspective on Building Wealth and Passive Investing – Dr. Pranay Parikh

Dr. Pranay Parikh  00:00

The money that you’re making from passive real estate from syndication, it’s money in your pocket. And it’s tax deferred, meaning that you’re not really paying taxes on those returns until it sells. So if people invest in stock, it’s like a dividend stock. So tax benefits, cashflow, diversification,

 

Greg Lyons  00:17

welcome to the passive income brothers podcast.

 

Tim Lyons  00:20

Here we take the fear out of real estate investing using real life stories of everyday successful investors. Let’s go. Welcome to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. My name is Tim Lyons and today I’m joined by none other than my brother Greg, how you doing today, buddy?

 

Greg Lyons  00:34

Tim, I’m doing great recording this towards the end of the year and 2022 is kind of going by the wayside. We’re into 2023. And I’m just thankful for where we are and all the things that we have. And this is going to come out in 2023. But today’s guest is going to really kind of help you kind of get inspired. And I’m really excited about today’s conversation.

 

Tim Lyons  00:57

So yeah, I think today’s guest is going to bring the heat and we’re going to need that because as we come into the new year, people have a lot of goals, right? They have a lot of annual goals, they feel really good New Year’s Eve, they got the list out right they start hitting the gym pretty hard for the first like two weeks. And then by the third week of January, everybody’s kind of like fallen by the wayside. So this guest right here is going to be special because of his productivity of his entrepreneurship of his wearing many hats of his crushing goal. So without further ado, I want to bring to you Dr. Pranay Parikh doing per day.

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  01:30

Hey, super excited to be here. Awesome. So per day,

 

Tim Lyons  01:35

I have heard your story a bunch of times, it really hits home for me, but I want you to take a couple minutes and kind of tell people we’re gonna just start off because you’re the third or fourth maybe physician that we’ve had on the show. And I always think it’s so interesting that in my mind growing up, doctors had it all they had the nice cars, they had the good jobs, solid, you know, futures. And when I hear these stories, I’m always so fascinated to hear what was the turning point and how you got into real estate. So why don’t you take it away? Yeah,

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  02:06

so you know, like many people, I always wanted to be a doctor, and actually even started before I was born. So my dad’s parents always wanted him to be a doctor, and he was scared of blood. Or he would faint if he saw any blood. And he promised his parents that his kids would go into medicine. And fortunately, actually, both my brother and I are doctors. He’s in ER, I’m in medicine. And that’s something I’ve always wanted to do. But I had a lot of other interests. My dad is an engineer, but he owns an ice cream store now. And that’s what he does. He owns limos, he owned condos, he’s kind of all over the place. And that’s where I was all over the place. And when you get into med school, they want you to be well rounded, right? Place, forts, do all this other stuff. But after you get into medicine, they squeeze all that stuff out of you. I remember when I was in residency, and I walked by a hallway that had a bunch of art that they’re showing, I was like, Hey, this is really cool, who gets to decide who the artists are like, I’d love to do that. Back in medical school, when I didn’t have much money, and I wanted to do charity work, just do an art show. So not my own art, but I would curate art. And then we donate a lot of the proceeds to charity and I wouldn’t take a cut or anything. It was just fun to set that up. So I was like, Hey, can I do some of this art stuff? And they said, No, your medicine can’t do anything else outside of medicine. But when I graduated, I did other stuff. And almost to a detriment, I actually tried to do further training. And my director looked at my CV and he’s like, Yeah, you know, the CV doesn’t look like someone that’s only interested in this and nothing else. But what I’ve seen that happens is that people are 510 1520 years out of their training, and now they realize they don’t have anything else when they retire. They’re depressed. And that’s why your A lot of times you see these doctors that are still practicing in their 70s now because they need the money because they don’t have anything else to do. That’s their identity. Right? Yeah, it’s their identity. And I knew I didn’t want to be that I wanted to have a diversification. No, we always talk about diversification and assets in investments. But what about your identity? You know, I’m a husband, I’m a father. I’m an art lover, fitness fanatic, you know, a lot of this other stuff and because my identity is so diversified, if something happened in medicine, you know, for example, you may have heard this, that medicine is very secure, right? My dad told me go into medicine, people are always gonna get sick, you’re always going to be taking care of them. But during COVID We realize that at least certain doctors, we don’t necessarily need them all the time. So the surgeons anesthesiologist, because they weren’t doing elective cases, you know, stuff that could wait. They were getting furloughed and laid off. You know, you can’t really furlough your mortgage payment, you know, your car payment and all that stuff. So a lot of people are now realizing that secure, you know, w two isn’t that secure as a thought, right? But I knew when I first graduated, that I didn’t want to wait 30 years, I had already waited one set of 30 years, I didn’t want to wait another three decades to enjoy my life. You know, I wanted to enjoy part of it. And so I looked around, it was a stock market, which I still don’t really understand it, you know, people talk to me about underwriting and stuff. But how many times have you read a prospectus on a mutual fund? You know, like, are you really doing your due diligence on that stuff. And I looked around and I thought, where’s my competitive advantage. And fortunately, at the time, I was dating someone, and her sister was real estate agent, so and a good one at that. So we, she helped me find my first four unit. And I thought, This is it, I’m going to buy one property a year, we’re gonna retire in 10 years, very reasonable. But I realized that my first property was a home run. And I spent hundreds of hours looking for the next one, I just couldn’t find it. I’m in Los Angeles. And it’s like, starting at a much more difficult level, if I want everything local. That’s when I found passive real estate, I was like, Hey, this is cool, like someone else is gonna do all this work. And I get to just go to work and do what I’m good at, while someone else will do the real estate. But at the time, and this was five years ago, there wasn’t your podcasts, there wasn’t all these other podcasts, and books and all this, the hands off investor wasn’t out there. And so there wasn’t much education. And I have a background in education. So my partner and I, Dr. Peter Kim, we created a course we’ve thought we were done. We thought taught 1000s of people how to do this, just like your podcast is educating people. You’re like, Okay, guys, now, you know, guys and gals, now you know how to do it, and you can go out. But a lot of the doctors came to us, they’re like, yeah, now we understand how to do we realize that we don’t have the time to do and you guys, the creators, you’re already investing in deals, why don’t you just let us come together in those deals, and we can get better terms, we get better deals more access. And that’s what we did our very first deal as a cent equity group was a fund of funds, we were 3 million of a very large $200 million deal. But over time, we’ve been able to take down hold deals together and we kind of throw our weight around a little bit.

 

Greg Lyons  07:27

That’s really cool. And you know, what’s interesting is identity plays so much in all of us, right? And when you meet someone, you ask them their name, but then your really your next question is, what do you do? And a lot of times like that identity is kind of what defines us good or bad. But it doesn’t have to be the whole story. And Tim and I have switched from firefighter and er, nurse and basketball coach to real estate investors and capital raisers. So there is a way to shift and pivot and you could do it at the same time. And I think you were very good at kind of really honing in on your entrepreneurial spirit. And that’s really interesting that you didn’t have to quit your job to start something new. You kept your job, but your entrepreneurial journey and spirit was alive, kind of what outside of starting the course kind of what different ways have you gone on in your entrepreneurial life.

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  08:29

So one of the best things to do is create an audience. And that’s exactly what you two are doing with this podcast. But Gone are the days where you can build some amazing product service. And people come and find you. Those days are gone. We’re so inundated with good stuff. It’s hard to find a great not even talking about the crappy, right and talking about the good stuff. But if you really want to stick out you have to go and create a brand. How are you putting good stuff into the world without trying to sell something right away? Right? Do you have a podcast? You have a blog? Do you have a YouTube? Right? Do you have a newsletter? There’s a lot of great ways. In medicine. A lot of people think you learn from someone up top like this celebrity doctor or something. But you know, chances are they’ve probably haven’t done bedside medicine in a while. Usually who you learn from are your colleagues, your co residents, your co students, someone that’s just taking the class that you are about to take, right? That knowledge is there. So a lot of people and probably a lot of people in your audience that are like ah, I don’t know if I have anything to teach people. There is no doubt in my mind that you do. No doubt you’ve listened to a couple episodes of this podcast. And you already know more than like 80% of people out there right? And I know that’s why you guys are doing this to educate people to help people and your listeners can do the same thing right and then you get known for something right? I am known as the real estate doctor at my hospital, actually at the all the hospitals I work at But that was even before I did all this, I had one property. And I just became known as the real estate person. So then people came to me. And then now they come to me and I raise big apartment complexes, 300 400 units. But it’s all started with having a reason for people come to me and me providing value, right? I’m assuming you have value to provide people you do, right? You listen to a couple. In the beginning. I didn’t know that my stuff, my partner gave me a chance. And he let me be a moderator on one of his Facebook groups. And people would ask a question, I would Google it, you don’t, I would Google it. And I will look it up, I would do all the reading. Because other people were too busy to do that. There’s this website called, let me Google that for you. And it’s called, because you’ll just put it in there. And it’ll make a little video where it literally shows them going to Google and doing that. So if my brother sends me ask me a question, I’ll be like, let me Google this for you. But people have value in that it’s not just being able to look things up. Because if you were to look up a medical diagnosis, for example, on Google, compared to me on Google, like we’d have vastly different results, right? And then not only that, I’d be able to look through the crap, and figure out what is actually useful. And what is it like, for example, whenever my cousins or family members, they’re like, Okay, which of these three cancers do you think I have? Because I have a headache online, it always makes you think you have something really serious, right? And that’s, that’s what they do. But for example, us when we’re looking at real estate, we’re like, Okay, this is a good deal, or this is good data. And I think being able to provide that resource, it’s just a lot more value, I will tell you, you’re listening to you know, a lot more than you think. And that information is a lot more valuable than you do

 

Tim Lyons  11:55

it 100% I can totally, you know, resonate with everything you just said, because I still work as a lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department, and I’m now a retired ER nurse, I was an ER nurse for nine years, and I was punching the clock W to land, right, and my wife popped out three kids and time became very valuable, right. And all of a sudden, you get into a different space. And I would listen to podcasts, YouTube, ended up getting coaching and mentorship and going to meetups. And before long, in a very, very short amount of time, I was able to hold a conversation with brokers with the lenders with investor I couldn’t even imagine I had these insane limiting beliefs. I can’t do that spreadsheets are for Wall Street type of guys, like with finance, degrees from Wharton, like that’s not for me, right. And it took me a little while it took me even with a coach like to get over to get over my limiting beliefs, my imposter syndrome. I was one time on a call, when not one time just happened to be a couple of times, where I’d be on a call with a high net worth individual and they’re like, dude, they’re like, how do you know all this? Like, I’m 30 years older than you. I’ve been practicing surgery for three decades before you even born and financial guy never said one word to me about any of this and my tax guy forget about it. He he wouldn’t know what 1031 You know, slap in the face, like, so. It’s true, right? My focus was on real estate and specifically commercial multifamily Self Storage industrial like that’s where I was fascinated. After I got started with three family and decided that I hated being the landlord. I hated getting the phone call. I dreaded getting the text messages. It was 30 minutes there. 30 minutes back, right? 30 minutes out the property. 30 minutes of Home Depot before you know it, your whole day is shot. Your wife, my wife would be like, Dude, I thought this was a passive income opportunity. And all of a sudden, like this has become a full time job for you. And I’m like I know. So let’s make the pivot here. Right. So now you do a four Plex right? You can’t find it or the one because barrier to entry in the LA market, I assume is pretty high for small multifamily at that. And now you pivot into passive investing, you start to get educated you join forces with somebody else, which I love. Because at the end of the day, Greg and I always talk like this, we say, it’s so much more fun investing with friends, right? We heard a speaker one time talking about going shopping with friends. It’s so much more fun, right? Like the girls go out they go shopping. But the same thing applies to investing with friends, right? You’re you’re in this shared experience. You’re kind of doing it together. So So you guys have built a community. You guys have built an education platform. You guys got a course you really focused on the medical profession. But take us through that like why passive investing? What are some of the benefits that you talk to your investors about? What kind of questions do they ask you in return and how does your community and your education platform feed into it?

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  14:52

I recently sent out an email talking about breakfast. Remember the commercials in the 80s and 90s talking about a cup Please eat breakfast. It’s like, literally this bowl of sugar. And then everything else is healthy on the right vegetables and some fruit and some orange juice. But I think that’s how we need to look at our investments. So you need to have a well diversified portfolio. And you know, I’ve been saying this for years, but I think it’s especially true this year, right? Everyone had What’s that perfect portfolio right? 6040, stocks and bonds, and you increase the bonds as you get older. Right now, they’re both down 25%, depending on what you bought, right? And so bonds aren’t necessarily safe. Our real estate, it’s still doing well. I mean, there, there are some challenges, right interest rates, supply chain and that stuff, but it’s still still doing well, we’re still sending out distributions for most of our deals. And I think, to have really good portfolio really need to have at least a little bit of real estate in it. A lot of people say 10 to 20%. Well, that’s not to say that active real estate is not great, because I’ve seen tremendous wealth creating it. But to do it, well, you really do have to treat it like a job like a job you need to hire. Right? You need to have a team, you need to do marketing, and you need to have acquisition, honestly, like if someone had created a cent before me, I want to just invest it in them. It’s a lot of work, we somehow found a way to do passive real estate actively. It is a lot of work. We’re you know, our team is growing. But so there’s so there’s diversification, right? Diversification is great. There is tax benefits, right? Because you can put money into the stock market. And let’s say it’s up, it’s doing well, right. And you 401 K, you’re not paying taxes on that, but can’t enjoy the fruits of your labor till you’re 65. Right. The nice thing about the money that you’re making from passive real estate from syndications is that it’s money in your pocket. And it’s tax deferred, meaning that you’re not really paying taxes on those returns until it sells and I’ll talk about that in a second. So if people invest in stock, it’s like a dividend stock, right? But dividend stocks, which throw off a couple percent here and there, they get taxed at your your highest tax bracket, right. So for us 37 and a half percent. That sucks. And if you’re in California, like me, it’s like 50%, right? So I don’t like dividend stocks, even though I like cash flow. Cash flow is something that I could actually change my life over, like you’ve retired, you pick up less shifts, like that’s something that I can eat, I can eat cashflow, right, I can go on vacation. But these distributions or dividends, if you want to save from passive real estate, you don’t pay taxes, because you have something called depreciation. Basically, it’s a paper loss. And supposedly by the government, your real estate depreciates in value. We all know that’s not true because it appreciates. But the tax code is written by people that own property. And this is a little racist, but they actually only wanted people who own property to vote in the beginning. So it’s very favorable to people that own property, right. And even though it’s called passive real estate, you own a percentage it in the real estate, just like if you would have bought it yourself. So that is nice, but But you know, that tax that you have to pay on sale, you can make that go further, you can defer that again, and some of our deals will tend to do one. So we tend to do one all as a group. But we have the option to buy people out. So maybe after a couple of 1030 ones, you’re like, Yeah, you know, I’m ready to pay some taxes, we can buy you out, and you get that option. So it’s nice to be able to decide, yeah, I want to tend to do one or don’t. So tax benefits. Cash flow, diversification.

 

Greg Lyons  19:01

Yeah, a lot of times we find that you have to meet investors where they are so many investors are in different seasons of their life. And if one of the syndication sells and they have college tuition coming up, they might want to take their money out of the real estate investment. Others who may have kids out of college and are just looking for cash flow, they may want a 1031 their money and keep receiving even more cash flow. So it’s really just it’s all about timing, and meeting investors where they are is really important. You talk a lot about time management. And I think that that’s the one resource that they’re not making any more of time and we can earn more money, we can do a bunch of things, but time is so very important, and how productive you are with that time. Whether you become an active investor or you start a side hustle, whatever you want to do with that time being productive is the most important. You do a lot of talking about that on your website and blogs. If you could just A minute on for our listeners about productivity and time management, from your perspective,

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  20:04

one thing to really do, here’s an exercise to do, and it is eye opening. For a week, get a journal, and every 15 minutes, whenever you change something, you’re going to do write it down. So hey, I’m on this podcast for an hour, right? And then I switch to something else, then I switch to something else. And then I’m gonna go watch some TV, I actually don’t watch TV.

 

Greg Lyons  20:26

So hard. So the Add amongst us have to have multiple pens to go along with their journal, because it’s gonna be all over the place. But this is a great exercise

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  20:38

well, so one, you’re going to realize a couple of things. Really, it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be painful. But the more if you’re changing something for five minutes, but try to do it in 15 minute blocks. One thing you’re going to realize, you change what you do a lot. In medicine, we always get calls, like Timothy from nurses, and we love our nurses. But it is very distracting. And at least in the ER, everyone’s in one little kind of small area for me in medicine, I have to cover the whole hospital. So seven floors of nurses are calling me. So I heard this thing, Indian dude from the 1930s. He talked about being one pointedness he was talking about this back then that we just can’t change what we’re doing efficiently. There’s some residue of whatever we were doing into what we’re doing. So it’s just hard to go from thing to thing. And II know that right? It takes you some effort to get up to speed, whatever you’re doing, some of us are better at it, some of us are worse. So you’ll realize that you spend a lot of time switching tasks. And that’s why a lot of people will talk about time blocking, and reducing the notifications and all that stuff. But you also realize that you waste a lot of time, maybe you watch a lot of TV for me, I call it productive procrastination, I read a lot of articles, and watch a lot of like educational YouTube content, which is good, but it’s not creating. And I think the more time that we create, the closer to our goals will be so like creating a podcast, right? Reaching out to potential guests, creating a blog post sending out cold emails, that’s creating, and that’s going to be beneficial for your long term goals. Right. So having this timeout, it’s just like doing a health audit of what you eat, you realize that they’ve done studies in this, that people eat 25 to 50% more calories than they think they do when they actually start tracking their calories. But just without changing a single thing, but just keeping track of your calories, you’re gonna lose weight, because you’ll realize that like, a lot of stuff has way more calories than you think like a smoothie can have like 1200 calories, which is like half the calories that you can eat in a day. And that’s just a drink, right? So this Hi, my audit and I had someone in one of my accountability groups do the same thing. He’s like, wow, like he had hours couple hours in the week that he could spend doing on what he wanted. And it’s free time, right? If you value your time at 200 to $500 an hour, which I don’t care who you are, what you’re doing, you should minimum $200 an hour. And that’s a couple 1000 bucks a week that you just saved yourself and you could put to whatever. And even if, like me, I got a PlayStation. And recently, my goal is to play more video games because I just spent so much time on the business. Even if all you do is have more free time. That’s time you could spend with your family as time you could do something fun, not business related, like play video games or read fiction or do sports or I work out a lot but for people that are trying to work out, that’s time that you can use. That

 

Tim Lyons  23:55

is incredible. And actually before you came in entrepreneur like and I was just Tim to firefighter Tim the ER nurse, I wasn’t really into like time blocking or managing my time doing a time audit, I kind of just took life as it came to me right. But on that like journey of trying to be doing have more. That’s when I got really intentional about my time and waking up earlier and setting up my day and setting up my weeks and setting up my months and creating goals and writing them down like and sounds kind of poopoo or you know cliche when you talk about some of this stuff. And I used to think that as well. But I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t made that change. And if I hadn’t kind of been intentional with my time. I mean look, you always hear it on like or you see it on Instagram or Twitter, right? Like everybody has 168 hours a week Elon Musk does this guy does Jeff Bezos, and so does Timmy Lyons, right and like, yeah, that’s kind of cliche, but like it makes a ton of sense, right? Like everybody has to start somewhere. But what To start being more intentional with your time and more productive, things can certainly change. So when people tell me, Tim, I don’t have time to learn about what you’re doing, I don’t have time to read books, I don’t have time to take a passive income course I don’t have time to do that, well, that’s a choice, right. And if people make the choice not to do it, there’s going to be other people that make the choice to do it. So that brings me to my next thing, which is really fascinating is that, in this space, real estate investing, sometimes the word financial freedom gets like tossed around a lot. And I think that means different things, different folks. To me, it means the ability to do what I want, when I want to do it with whom I want to do it with. And that’s always been a goal of mine. But a lot of folks will say, Listen, get financial freedom through real estate investing, and then you can quit your job and live the life of your dreams like, and to me that never really hit home again, never really resonated, you know, because I love being in New York City firefighter, you might love being a physician, Greg might love being a basketball coach, maybe we don’t want to just quit our jobs. Right? So like, so how do you have conversations? Or what are your conversations look like in the medical space with physicians, surgeons, everybody about the time management aspect of being a passive investor, maybe building out that optionality that that passive income can provide them, what

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  26:20

we tell people is we want to give them choice and flexibility. Because I think the world would be a better place if all my investors stopped being doctors, you know. But what we want is we want happy doctor. So think about if you had to get surgery, and there was a surgeon that had a humongous mortgage to pay was working 612 hour shifts a week and was always on call, or you had a surgeon would work three days a week was able to go this conference that’s for his specific specialty get further training does reading all the time, it’s pretty obvious, and happy doctors make less mistakes. And so what we want to do is disconnect the money and the medical part, because then maybe you take people without insurance, or maybe you don’t have to charge as much. So what we want to do is give them that flexibility. And unfortunately, that takes money, right? So if you have this steady income from somewhere else, then maybe you can cut down I think the full time the 40 I actually don’t know anyone that works 40 hours more like 60 to 80. That’s just not sustainable. And if you’re seeing 30 Plus patients a day, it’s you just can’t practice good medicine like that. So if you’re able to cut that down to something that’s sustainable, for some people, it’s a day a week, some people it’s a couple of days a month, or other people it’s like four days a week. So if you can find that happy spot, I think the world would be a better place. And to get there, we will talk about their goals. For some people, I call it burnt to a crisp, they’re ready to get out of medicine. For them, we have to be more aggressive. And actually for them active real estate might make more sense, because they’re so burnt out that they’re willing to spend whatever sweat equity on top of the money they invest, they’re willing to put as much time as it makes sense, because this is something that’s not sustainable to them. And maybe they could come back to medicine at some later point, my partner took six months off took a sabbatical now he’s excited to go back. And that’s the type of person you want to take care of you. Someone that’s excited to be there wants to help people and the bore burned out, you get you stopped, stop having sympathy or to stop having empathy. It’s the doctor that you see that has no bedside manner, because how do you take care of someone else when you don’t even take care of yourself? So you need more, I’m not just saying that come to us will solve all your problems, right. But I think money is a big piece of that problem and that puzzle. And if we’re able to give them good safe returns risk adjusted, then it takes a lot off their plate and they’re able to get help in the other aspects that they need as well. You know, burnout

 

Greg Lyons  29:04

is real with any high performer, whether it’s physically high performing mentally high performing, when you’re a professional and you’re just like a high impact person burnouts real, it’s especially real. When I’m talking about professional baseball player, if they swing and miss a couple of times, no one really gets hurt. A doctor swings and misses a couple of times, and people get get seriously ill. So I really liked that theory of disconnecting money from medicine. That is really great. And across all of our investors, no matter what they’re involved in, we always say have a little bit of real estate, at least a little bit of real estate in your portfolio. So you’re not just have your 401k you don’t just have a stock account. You have some real estate in a well diversified manner. So that’s really good. Just to be mindful of our time here. We’re gonna move to our three questions segment and you talk to a ton of investors ers. And what do you say to someone, when they say investing in real estate is just too risky?

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  30:07

So I tell them that we are buying a real asset. A lot of people will go look at our property and be like, Yeah, I own a piece of that. That’s kind of cool. It’s kind of the only time I’ve been to my for unit other than on inspection is drive by with my parents, like I own that. It’s kind of cool, right? And you own something that’s real. And we talk about the stock market a lot. But I mean, like, a lot of times you’re owning a piece of the business, but the business can go down to zero, right? And yeah, real estate can but that’s extremely rare. Even in 2008 2009. One of the worst recessions we’ve ever seen, default rates on multifamily large multifamily 100 Plus units was a couple percent. And that’s way different than everything else, because the real estate itself is worth something, right. And then also the cash flow that you’re getting is worth something. Maybe it’s not worth what you think it’s worth, but it’s definitely worth something right. Unlike a company which, like FTX in crypto, it was potentially, you know, Lehman Brothers right, was worth a lot of money at one point. And then the next day was worth zero, right? So it’s nice to be able to invest in real assets that are giving off cashflow.

 

Tim Lyons  31:26

Awesome, man, that’s a great answer. I mean, I couldn’t agree more, right? I mean, it’s a real tangible thing. And especially with the commercial side, it’s you’re buying a stream of cash flow. So for it to go to zero, something catastrophic has to happen, in my opinion. Anyway, the second question comes from Robert Kiyosaki. And when people hear it, they can be turned off by it. They don’t know what he’s talking about. And he says that savers are losers and debtors are winners in this current inflationary environment, what does that mean to you?

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  31:55

So I think this is especially true to the last couple of years, you put your money in the bank account, and you get point 1%. Right. And that’s a as a high yield savings account, right? A couple of percent. So that is not a bad word. Debt is a tool and tools that are used well or will get you to where you want to go, tools that are used poorly. A lot of people will ask, Hey, if this real estate is so great, should I take a HELOC and invest in it? And I tell them, you know, that’s a little risky, you’re double leveraging yourself, right? And but if you have cash, then it makes a lot of sense. We have heard a lot of stuff going wrong with the crypto and the reason that crypto is failing is because a lot of these people are leveraged 10x 50x 100x. So a small movement will cause a ripple effect and lead to a ton of bankruptcies. So debt used intelligently with intention will get you a lot closer to your goals. I mean, look at all the people when they buy houses, do you really want to put down 100% Cash, right, even right now, when it’s 789 percent right now that cash in your pocket makes a lot more sense. It gives you a lot more flexibility. It takes some of the risk off the table. Right. So the bank is sheltering some of that risk as well. Right, actually a large portion of that risk a lot less than you because your equity in the deals less. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And we have to separate bad debt and good debt, bad debt, credit card debt, right? No one should be carrying a credit card balance, payday loans, all that stuff. But debt at a couple percent, even in the high single digits can make sense in the right connotation.

 

Greg Lyons  33:43

Right. No doubt, no doubt about that. Our last question, Tim, I always enjoy asking our doctor, yes, this question, because they’ve had so much schooling. Our last question comes from Jim Rohn. And he said that formal education will make you a living and self education will make you a fortune. What does that mean to you? I

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  34:05

totally agree. But the people the doctors that I know, that are the most successful are in business businesses, the way of life, real estate or something else, or maybe they own their own practice. And they employ a bunch of other doctors, right? So nothing, Harvard Business School, Yale, Wharton, none of that are going to teach you that you can take these classes on entrepreneurship, actually got my master’s degree. And then when I got it, I realized that I knew half this stuff already, because I had been doing business for five years before I got my master’s degree. And so there is point in having formal education. And I’m actually hiring a bunch of people with master’s in real estate and I was like, Yeah, this is the nice thing because they have this formal training, but I have the school of hard knocks, I learned it and there’s more risk involved, right? The real See company could fail. But I also am able to get a greater share of the results. So I think, especially doctors, when they want to do something, they’re like, Okay, let me go get a book. That makes sense. Let me go find a course do I need to go get a master’s degree, right, and they want this well worn path. But even something as old as real estate, there isn’t a well worn path, there’s a million ways to be successful at it. And the best way to do is read a little bit a book or to any book, any popular real estate book will teach you 80% of what you need to know. The rest of it is just learning, trying, having setbacks, getting up and doing it again,

 

Tim Lyons  35:43

it still drives me crazy how people will have like a major setback in their 401 K or their stock account, only to have like January 1, roll around, and their year to date is kind of reset. So like if they had a horrible year, the previous year. And now they still feel good, because they might be ahead this year. But in real estate, any sort of setback is like catastrophic to folks just unbelievable, can’t believe it. And it’s just interesting, the paradigm shift that needs to occur to really understand what you’re doing in investing. But anyway, that’s just my two cents. For an A, this has been awesome, man, I really am grateful that you’ve made the time to be on our show. If people want to reach out to you and find out more about what you and Pete are up to. How can they do that.

 

Dr. Pranay Parikh  36:26

So our website is ascent, equity group.com. And we have a bunch of resources on there, you can check out I also have my own podcast. It’s more about entrepreneurship. And that’s called from MD to entrepreneur and you can get it on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Love

 

Tim Lyons  36:45

that. Well Brene thanks so much, man. I hope 2023 is another great year for you and Peter on the ascent team. And we’re grateful to have you on and for our listeners. Thank you for spending another week with the passive income brothers and we look forward to serving you again next week. Thank you for listening to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. We would be grateful for your support of our podcast by giving our show a five star rating and review and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to take inspired action after listening to this show, so that you can start building out your passive income streams. Finally, head on over to cityside cap.com to connect with us and find out more information about how to get started passively investing in real estate