Dr. Shelley Meyer: Hi and welcome to the Dr. Shelly Meyer YouTube channel and the women in medicine be the change podcast I’m so excited to have Dr. Nancy Huynh here and we are going to talk about her path from ophthalmology to real estate investing and how you know much success she’s there and resources and how that has really um helped her you know branch out so Dr. Huynh it’s so great for you to be here can you tell us a little bit about your story it’s such a unique kind of background going from ophthalmology to real estate investing
Dr. Nancy Huynh: yeah thanks for having me shelly first of all it’s a pleasure to be here with your audience um so just in a nutshell my story started off like many of your audience um went straight through college through med school through training and we all kind of have that idea that once we finish training where we’ve had it made we’re going to earn that big income we’re going to be that big attending and life is all good we got married so I went through all that I did all that trained at the top programs and finally got to it when I got to it I really enjoyed what I was doing but as I was practicing more and more through the years I found out hmm this wasn’t quite what I signed up for um the practice and the business of medicine and the system was not really what I had expected I thought it was going to be all roses and unicorns truthfully and just the lack of autonomy with administrators insurance companies the government telling you how you should practice and what you should prescribe and then I also realized that my job my secure job as a doctor I was told all along everyone’s going to need health care don’t worry this is the most stable job it wasn’t quite as secure because I was just one email away from people saying um yeah so I just thought that my medicine and my career medicine wasn’t as secure because I was literally one email away from saying hey your salary is being cut 20% because of leadership changes or the reimbursements for your services for your surgery is going to be cut because the insurance company or the government decides that it’s just not worth it as much and that’s when I was like this doesn’t seem very right to me I got to figure out a different way and be more in control at least of that aspect so I dug deeper um and really found out that there were these other investments outside of what I was doing with the stock market 41ks which was what I was doing just dumping money in there hoping and praying that it’ll be there when I’m 60 something and retiring and I found there was this whole different path and that was real estate for me um through this vehicle and that’s how I kind of transitioned into that and it’s been powerful because it’s really given me passive income and the choice to practice how I want to and just more freedom to explore all these other aspects of myself that I didn’t even know right um because you’re when you’re in training you kind of have your blinders on so just been able to explore all these other aspects of me that I never discovered before
Dr. Shelley Meyer: yeah I mean I talked to so many women about burnout and just the state of medicine not only for women physicians but for males as well and that we just have this lack of autonomy lack of control like you were just referencing and I think to find other ways that don’t necessarily mean that we have to quit medicine that we can kind of parallel with and have that security I think that’s essential and just to have that mindset of that freedom because we don’t want to feel like we’re under the thumb of some of insurance companies or whoever’s the boss I don’t know who’s the boss anymore but um you know it is really key so first of all did you have some experiences of some kind of burnout in your past?
Dr. Nancy Huynh: I wouldn’t necessarily say burnout but I definitely felt like it was becoming a grind right um because literally I felt like I was just a little machine on a runway and I was running in and out between patients every 15 to 20 minutes and I couldn’t really practice the way I want to and I just felt like a number because the metrics that they pull we’re just you know you solve this amount of patience and it doesn’t really reflect the quality of care exactly yeah so I just really felt like I’m just a machine in this cog wheel and I don’t want to be that and I was wanting right yeah and I really felt frustrated particularly with the administrators who have no medical degree have never stepped foot in the clinic or the or saying you got to see more patients you got to be more productive when they know nothing about it
Dr. Shelley Meyer: right and if they really look at I mean everybody knows this in medicine but if you really look at the outcomes they’re not you know time with patients is a better outcome right but they’re not valuing that at all so anyway we
Dr. Nancy Huynh: yeah another story
Dr. Shelley Meyer: right we’ll talk about hope instead of something that control over right so then how did you start to dip your toes into real estate?
Dr. Nancy Huynh: I literally got educated um read books listened to podcasts sought out mentors and people who have done it before and said how can I do this and what education do I need to do because I always advise people before you start anything just get a basic understanding of what you’re getting yourself into so once I felt pretty comfortable with that I built up a team and um started putting in offers and I got an offer a duplex and right in my backyard in Atlanta and off to the races I went so really just getting educated and taking action
Dr. Shelley Meyer: yes that’s key and so you um are doing multi-family investing now you’re doing that so that means the duplex but beyond that as well bigger kind of investments can you tell us about those
Dr. Nancy Huynh: absolutely so I started off real estate by buying my own property so the single families duplexes smaller multi-family triplexes and even with a property manager it was taking quite a bit of my time because if you think about it you got to look at the property you got to research it you got to put in the offer and if you get rejected you got to say do I have to counter offer and even if you get accepted you got to arrange for the inspection negotiate close and as a mom and as a doctor I was already busy enough as is so I just felt like is this really worth it for you know a couple hundred dollars in cash flow um so I started looking at different ways that people invest and I discovered real estate syndications I had never heard of that term and basically it’s passive investing and what it is that investors or people pull together their money to purchase a larger property like an apartment or a hotel you could purchase anything through a syndication but I’ve I purchased you know I was familiar with residential living you know um spaces so I focus on apartments because I think it’s really a great asset class and then I started passively investing and I was like this is like awesome because literally I was yeah I was getting the benefits of owning real estate but didn’t have to deal with all the hassles of being a landlord you know even if I had a property manager they still call you like the roof’s leaking do you want to approve this work order um and then you’re personally liable because your name is on the loan if something happens to the tenant on the property you know even if you put in an LLC it’s still kind of under you so with syndication you don’t have to deal with all that and I found it very powerful and I got better if not greater returns you know equal if not better returns compared to my active property so I’ve kind of shifted my portfolio towards the path of investing
Dr. Shelley Meyer: that’s great I mean I we have my husband was raised in kind of real estate like as far as in bed but not in the syndication way but in you know uh buying home his parents they were always moving because they would love it and you know rent it out so we already had that going on and then he um sold a couple places so that we could buy the building that I have my practice in and so it’s an old house it’s really cute and we rent out space but we’re landlords and that’s hard you know and he also does some property management he’s a teacher but he does property management for management for friends and I see how many calls he gets on the weekends on the evenings and you know he does at small scale but as physicians like we just don’t have the time to do that we don’t have the time to be
Dr. Nancy Huynh: right as physicians you also I think you also have to think about shelly um you’re the time of your you know the value of your time right because if you’re spending all that time dealing with that even with property managers is that really worth it you know versus a syndication yes I have to do the upfront work that might take a couple of hours but it’s said and done so if you compare the two I just really found I just I don’t have to just look at the numbers I have to really look at what is the value of my time and that’s really how I made that decision to go a little bit more passive route
Dr. Shelley Meyer: okay I can imagine some people might be thinking do you have to have a huge amount of money to do something like this
Dr. Nancy Huynh: absolutely not so some of my properties that I’ve put down payments on are a lot more than the minimum investments for these deals so the minimum investment amount varies but typically the minimum is about 50k some of them are like a 100k and some even more but I would say the range is about 50 to 100 is the minimum
Dr. Shelley Meyer: and then you’re just part of the team and you’re not really managing correct that’s correct?
Dr. Nancy Huynh: yeah I like to um give a great analogy that I heard of how syndications work because a lot of people have never heard of this term probably you know it either yeah because when I first saw it I was like syndication what is it some Ponzi scheme multi-level marketing type of thing but this great analogy I heard is imagine an airplane ride say you’re trying to get from los Angeles to Boston you have the pilots and then you have the passengers okay you’re all trying to get to the same destination so if you want to get from los Angeles to Boston you could buy a Boeing 747 if you want you likely can’t buy that to purchase that flight so basically you get a bunch of passengers to sit in it and then the pilot flies it so there you know there’s two key players in this indication there are the general partners who are the sponsors and the limited partners so the general partners are the ones who are finding the deals finding the loan um closing on it taking out the loan managing the property afterwards and the limited partners are kind of like the passengers who just kind of sit back enjoy their meal their glass of wine watch tv snooze off um while the plants
Dr. Shelley Meyer: I want to be that person
Dr. Nancy Huynh: yeah exactly and then the pilot if there’s weather turbulence or the engine breaks down they have to deal with it you don’t know how to do it you’re not going to do it but you’re all trying to get to the same destination so I really like that analogy because it kind of illustrates you know what your role is when you’re passively investing
Dr. Shelley Meyer: awesome well tell us a little bit about how you’re now helping others learn more about this
Dr. Nancy Huynh: so when a lot of my doctor friends particularly women physicians found out I was doing real estate on the active side they were interested in getting into it because I think everyone kind of has this intrigue about real estate right so I started telling them the process I was like first you know you find um a realtor and then you find a property manager you have to do the inspection and then literally like after the third step that I tell them they’re I kind of glaze over and it’s like yeah never mind you know I’m going to get back to my kids who are screaming in the background you know um but when I discovered passive investing and started sharing that people became a lot more interested like a lot of my woman physician friends became a lot more interested because it fits our lifestyle a lot more you know we’re dealing with work busy enough as is dealing with kids at home a lot of us that we want the benefits of real estate but we really don’t want everything else associated with it so they started getting really interested in they’re like well I don’t really want to learn all this I do but I don’t want it as in deaf as you do because I get really into it um so there’s like can you guy me through it so I kind of taught them and brought some of my friends and some deals I was investing and I was like they were you know they were very grateful because they saw a different light of like hey there is this different path so I started doing that more and more individually and then finally I was just tired of repeating myself truthfully so I started putting together just some raw videos to say hey this is what it is you know and then once we hop on a call it’s a lot more fruitful because I’m not starting from the beginning and that’s kind of how um you know my current company clear vision investing started was just based out of that was literally women physicians most physicians but a lot of women physicians because I think they resonate with my story coming to me and asking like I want to do this can you help me um so that’s kind of how it all started and how I’m helping um physicians now
Dr. Shelley Meyer: so how can we and we find out more about what you’re doing and uh learn how to work with
Dr. Nancy Huynh: you could find me at my website clearvisioninvesting.com and you could also email me at Nancy at clearvisioninvesting.com and I would love to connect with anyone particularly any woman physician
Dr. Shelley Meyer: great and you said there’s some resources on your website as well
Dr. Nancy Huynh: absolutely yeah free resources on there just to learn more about what is this multi-family apartment syndication and what it’s all about and how it may or may not fit you know you’re investing goals but love to hop on a call with anyone who’s interested and just to chat and see you know how I could help them.
Dr. Shelley Meyer: awesome that sounds great well thanks so much for joining us today and sharing that because I think it anything that can provide us as women in medicine with autonomy and freedom that’s the key that’s why I keep hearing from everyone is we need more autonomy and freedom so real estate syndication is the way to do it if it’s a possibility then that’s great because like you said it’s passive and that’s all income so thanks so much and I will have all these um these contact ways to get in touch with you on the show notes for the podcast and in the um description too so everyone can find it there thanks for joining me and I will and thanks everybody else for watching and listening I hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr Nancy Huynh about learning about real estate and especially real estate syndication and how there’s a possibility for passive income and that may not be the level that you’re at right now but it’s just nice to know that there’s different ways out there to invest and to have uh build your wealth and that way that provides you more potential for freedom and autonomy in the future so if you believe in the mission that on this channel of women in medicine helping women in medicine reclaim their mental and physical health and rediscover their love of medicine through finding creative and different ways to avoid burnout and maybe expand their wealth expand their horizons as far as careers go maybe change careers then I would love it if you could join me on my patreon page and support it by becoming a patron I have different levels and different tiers there’s private groups there there’s um live streams where we can talk about some of the episodes and address your questions and then there’s also you know some private calls on certain levels in a welcome gift so if you want to help there you can do I’ll have that in the show notes um for podcast listeners and in the description for YouTube viewers and for YouTube if you want to support without joining patreon please like subscribe and share this video out and leave a comment down below that helps the channel grow and then if you’re listening to this on your favorite podcast platform please leave a review that helps others hear about the podcast and please share with your friends and family and whoever you think would benefit from this information so thanks so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you soo