Side hustles for doctors, professionals, entrepreneurship

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we're talking to a lot of people, we're doing interviews and this is going to be a new interview. We're speaking with Pranay Parikh and this is going to be once again, somebody's got a little bit different take on how they approach things and his focus is from MD as in medical doctor to entrepreneur. So side hustles for doctors, professionals of that sort. And he's got a really good view of what we do with time and how we invest in ourselves and our families and our lives and making sure that the why that we choose is the why that we pursue. And so we're going to talk about that and we're going to get to know him where he comes from and why would you even go from an MD to a side hustle? Some people think that, hey, if you've made it our way, the doctor, you are done. You don't need to worry about anything else. But I think you're going to find out that it's not quite what it's all built up to be. And it is something that once again, where there is definitely a niche there that can be taken care of. And that's exactly what Pranay does. All right. Today we're speaking with Pranay Parikh. This is going to be a little different. A lot of times we think of entrepreneurs from our point of view. We typically are talking entrepreneurs that come out of the development and technology side. He actually focuses on entrepreneurs that come out of the medical doctor, the MD side has a podcast related to that. And we're going to talk about doctors and business and his backstory, which is, I think you're going to find to be a pretty interesting one. But rather than steal your thunder, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little about yourself and how you got here. Yeah, so I'm Pranay Parikh. I'm a hospitalist. That means I see patients in the hospital. I'm a medical doctor. And you know, I've always been into business or really not really business, but starting starting something that solves problems, you know, and when I was younger, my parents, they had a limo service, they had condos. Now they own an ice cream store. My dad's actually his his background's in electrical engineering. So he's been in a lot of different stuff for myself. You know, I've been in medicine, but I used to be a marine ocean biologist. You should be a biochemist. I was kind of all over the place and just have had varied interests. And to get into medicine, you often need to have, you know, a full CV. You need to have a lot of different interests. But once you get into medicine, it kind of beat everything else out of you. So then once you've done, you'll only have medicine, which is a good thing. But it's also, you know, you need to diversify your identity, just like you diversify your income. And if anything happens in medicine, so, for example, you know, during COVID time, a lot of specialties got furloughed because we weren't doing surgeries. We weren't doing these procedures, you know. And if you're sitting at home, one, you got to worry about the money. How are you going to pay for rent and mortgage? But two, like, what do you do with yourself all day if you've done nothing but medicine? So I really approach entrepreneurship as trying to solve interesting problems. And then if you do that and you help people, the money will come, you know. And so that's kind of how I've gone about things. I've seen a lot of problems that I saw, you know, there wasn't a great way for people to invest in real estate in large apartment complexes. And I thought people weren't doing it in the way that I'd want to do it. So we started a company. And then I realized that in education, there was a missing piece in the education for that real estate. So we created a course. And now I have a podcast because I feel that doctors, because of their experience, just make really good entrepreneurs. But they don't they feel that they don't have the skills to do it. That's interesting. I guess we'll start with that one is why? Because I think a lot of people see doctors as being the tip. That's like the smartest person in the room. You know, every every parent like I love for my daughter to marry a doctor or a lawyer, you know, like doctor is right up there. What is it that with a doctor makes them think that they don't have those skills to be able to get into it? I think the biggest thing is being risk averse. And that's a good thing for a doctor. Right. A 95 percent survival rate for surgery sucks. Right. You know, even a 99 percent. You want a ninety nine point nine nine nine. Right. You want your ability to survive a surgery just to be almost 100 percent, if not 100 percent. So you also don't want your doctor in trying these new treatments and surgeries and techniques if they haven't been proven with evidence. Right. We do these double blinded random. Uh, uh, tests and studies because we really want to know if something works. Right. And I'm sure your listeners have heard of the placebo effect. They've done studies. Well, it literally will tell people this is a sugar pill and it is a sugar pill and it still shows effect 30 percent. You know, our mind is just so strong at working and taking things. If you just give someone like a white M&M that doesn't have the M on it and be like, yeah, this is cold medicine. All of a sudden, my cough just got so much better. It just tells us how powerful our mind is. You know, and so. Or doctors and kind of alongside that, right, you believe that I'm a one trick pony, you know, and all I know is medicine. You know, you'd be surprised how often someone comes to me and be like, oh, hey, Pranay, I'm just a doctor and then I'll see their email and there'll be like micro hand surgeon at Harvard. You know, I was like, you are probably 10 times smarter than I am. You know, you've learned these skills and a lot of it is actually most of it. Ninety ninety five percent of it is just believing that you can do it. Right. And quick story. I I was in China with my wife. My wife is Chinese and we were eating seafood. And she's like, oh, hey, want to try it? A snail. And I was like, no, gross. And she shoves it in my mouth and I was like, oh, wow, this is really good. And now I love escargot. It was just getting over that belief that they're not delicious. Right. And almost being forced to do that. And so for doctors, it's the same way as just believing like, hey, I know you're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you've studied for 35 years to do one thing. But actually, 90 percent of those skills that you learned are directly transferable to entrepreneurship. It's just you have to believe that you can do more than what you're doing right now. That's interesting, because I find a lot of there's a lot of people out there that they box themselves in by that as they've got a set of skills. They've got a lot that they've done and a lot of experience, but they don't think of it outside of whatever their their job or their title or their role was. And particularly when you look at people that, you know, and we've seen a lot of that with COVID that force that did force a lot of people to change how they looked at stuff, to change their approach and even change careers in some cases. And you'd see these people bemoaning it and saying, I don't know how to do this. And you look at their their resume, you look at their CV and you're like, I don't know what you can't do. I can look at all of these things that you've done and there's so many different places you can apply your skills. You should be able to pick pretty much whatever you want. So it's interesting that doctors fall under that, too, even though everybody, like I said, there's that there's that typically that persona or that, you know, that assumption that if you're a doctor, you're really smart and you can do all of these things. And and particularly in television, a lot of times you see that there's I mean, you've got the the skilled surgeon, but then there's always that the drama side of like, you know, house or some of those words. It's a lot of problem solving anyways. And I think it really is. I mean, that's that seems to me when you mention problem solver, I think that is your your key as a doctor. I mean, yeah, you've got your procedures and your your standards, but a lot of it comes down to, OK, somebody comes to you and they say, I don't feel well. Your problem is figure out what it is and then then how can you treat it? So I would think that would be something that they would, you know, would appeal to every doctor. Rob, one clarification on the point you made. So you're right. That is that's most people. Ninety nine percent of people are boxing themselves into that. So if you can really if you can just get over yourself, right, then you're better than you're so much ahead of everyone else. Right. And I feel that all the time. You know, I my my business partner asked me to give a talk about imposter syndrome. And I was like, yeah, you know, Peter, I really, really don't think I can do that. He's like, oh, that's it. Yeah. That's the spirit. Right. I was like, no, I really I'm not kidding. I really don't feel like I can do this. But imposter syndrome is something that we all face. Right. There was a speech of one of the doctors, the UN doctors. Right. So pretty much as high as you can get. And right before her speech, she's like, yeah, I don't feel like I can do this. You know, she's in a room full of PhDs. So if someone at that level can feel that way. Right. And I think one small mindset switch is just assume that is your that is your base case. That's that's what you're going to feel. Right. If you go into something knowing you're going to feel like that, you can go and expect it. Right. Just like there was a famous writer who talked about like he was asked about writer's block and he's a found writer. Right. Wrote like 20 books. He's like, when I go to writing, I assume my base case is that I'm going to have writer's block. That's my every day. So when it comes, I expect it to be there and I'm able to figure out how to do it. You know, if you go in expecting to write this beautiful manuscript, you're going to be very sorely disappointed. Yeah, it goes back to I think a lot of these it is it's that, you know, every journey starts with that first step. It's just taking that step and say, hey, like, you know, you don't like snails, just try it. You know, just I guess we're you know, a lot of us were raised that, you know, I remember, you know, as a kid, we like, I'm not going to like that. And, you know, mom or dad is like, just try it. Just try this. We think you're going to like it. And maybe you don't. But the more that you get out there and give those things a shot, it's amazing how often people say, oh, hey, this is something I really enjoy. And this is something I really want to do. And I'm wondering how that. How did that go with you as sort of like, you know, your journey? So you find yourself that you've gone through all this work, you had all that, all of those interests beaten out of you. Was there like a step or a first thing that sort of like nudged you to say, hey, I want to go, you know, reach out into this entrepreneurial space? So was it something that was always there or was it was where you sort of like you woke up one day and said, you know, I've I've lost something that that I wanted and I want to regain that. Yeah. And you know, it's not all positive. So I when I was in my training, I was in a hallway and I saw I trained at USC and there was a bunch of art on the wall. And I was talking to my director and I was like, hey, I saw a bunch of art on the wall. Could I be on that committee that like picks the art? It's it's a nonpaid committee. And he's like, yeah, you know, aren't you trying to get into fellowship, which is further training? Like, I don't think they want to see you on this committee. I think they want to look at your application and think that you don't want to do anything else but practices for the rest of your life. And lo and behold, I applied and I didn't get in twice. And they were like, yeah, you know, your CV doesn't look like this is all you care about. I was like, you're right. I care about a lot of stuff. So I had that interest and maybe it hurt me a little bit in terms of where I could have gotten in medicine. But I I was willing to sacrifice that, you know, to get to where I want to be and to kind of be a full person. You know, I have a lot of people reach out to me in their 30s, 40s and 50s kind of later in their life. And they're like, yeah, all I have is medicine. I made good money, but I don't have anything else. And of course, you can always start now, but they wish they had started so much longer ago. Yeah, there's a I've seen that in a couple of careers with people that are, you know, they get to a certain point where you not necessarily age out, but you do get to a point where you've sort of either plateaued or you've gotten bored or you some of them is they're getting into retirement and they realize that I can retire it. You know, sometimes, you know, mid 50s or 60. And I've got a whole life ahead and I've I'm used to working. I don't want to stop. So I want a second career. And it's amazing how often people look back and say, you know, I had all this time that I could have adjusted my hobbies or something like that and really started into these other things. And I just I didn't for whatever reason. And I think that's again, that's one of those where it's like it's there's no no time like today to say, hey, I'm going to go try this out for a little bit. I do want to swing back. So. Yeah, you you weren't focused enough, we'll say, to go down that path. But now I'm looking back, does that really seem and you really see that as a negative or more of a it was a decision you made that actually worked to your advantage because you are doing more of what what you want to do. A lot of people think that they want to do this certain route and they want a certain goal. So my goal was to have freedom. It was to spend a lot of time with my family. It was to have children. It was to live the life I want and make the impact I wanted. And I'm honestly I'm doing that right now. And had I done that further training, I would have just graduated this past July. And maybe I would have got married. I definitely wouldn't have had kids. And it's. A lot of my life would have been put on hold. Right. And yeah, it would have been cool to do some of that training. It was intensive care, which is fun. But it's something that you're setting yourself up for the rest of your life. And this for me personally, now I realize that wasn't necessarily where I want it to be. So, you know, it was a blessing in disguise. And I, you know, I'm a little hard headed, so I had to get that blessing twice by applying. I was really set on not meeting my my own goals, you know. But at the time, I didn't really think that far ahead. I was thinking, hey, it'd be cool to have these extra letters behind my name. And help these people and get gain these skills. And honestly, I think I would have been pretty much just as happy. Well, probably a little bit less because I'm really appreciative of my family and the time I have and impact I've been able to make. But I'd probably be still pretty happy, I think. But it was a blessing in disguise. And I think a lot of my journey. So, for example, when I applied to residency, I didn't get my first choice. I actually got my ninth choice, which is most people get their top three. And so I could have been sad, I could have been depressed. And I was a little bit, you know, but I was lucky that I got a spot at all. Right. People that don't get any spot. And I decided after moping around for two weeks, I decided that I'm going to just work hard. You know, maybe I could turn something out of this. I ended up getting a 98th percentile on this test. And I actually after a year, I transferred from this middle of nowhere, East Coast to Los Angeles, of all places. And literally the very first night I was there, I met my wife, which kind of sucked because I wasn't able to date around. But it worked out, you know. And so there's a lot of times, you know, and it's cliche, super cliche, but it's, you know, one door closes, another opens. But it's also, are you willing to, are you looking for that second door? And I think that's a part of that cliche that gets left out. You know, if you close one door and you're just on the floor crying or, you know, you're out partying or something, then you might not see that other opportunity that opens up. Oh, I agree. That's one thing. I'm not sure dating is all it's made out to be. I think you may have one big on that one. And it was interesting as you're talking about your schooling and sort of your goals and that, that's very much the sort of thing I ran into as I was 18, coming out of high school, was looking at a military academy. And at that point for I wanted to go be a pilot and go be a fighter pilot and all that. And it was going to be a 12 year commitment. I was going to have school and then, you know, military, which basically once you're that far into the military, you might as well be career. And I'm starting here at 18 saying, I don't know if I want that to be. I don't know if I'm ready to make that kind of commitment at this point. I like I want to try things like what if I don't like this stuff like that, that sometimes we're better off. Some people know they like that's what I want to do. That's my favorite thing. That's where I want to be. You know, God bless you. But for the rest of us, you know, it's like, hey, I want to like see what's out there first and figure out exactly what I want to end up with. And that's where I think that's one of the benefits of just having any kind of entrepreneurial spirit and in that that decision to go do a side hustle of any kind, because you can do something very different. Like you could you could say, you know what? I'm very happy and comfortable as as an M.D., but I want to go be an art critic. And so I'm going to start a side hustle where I'm doing a lot of art history and stuff like that. And it allows you to, you know, to scratch that itch and also see if if maybe that's where you want to go. And since that is sort of in a sense, that's a path you took. How was your yeah, you're like you're you're you've worked all real hard and you've gotten to this this day job. And so as you started to transition out, what was the talk us a little bit through that transitioning process as you went from a day job into a new career, you know, a new job, a new career into that entrepreneurial side. So it's actually not really a day job. I work nights and so I've been working nights in medicine, and that's why I've been able to put in so much work on my side gig as a day job. So, you know, for example, it's eleven here in Los Angeles, a little bit past eleven. If I was working on day job, no way would I be able to do a podcast in the middle of the day. So that's been that's been how I've been able to do so much, you know, and really spread things out. You know, so, you know, podcasts are great, but they don't much they don't make much money in the beginning. And so I've been able to do that and something that I'm passionate about and start all these other businesses and close businesses that don't work because I have this almost golden parachute of medicine. So I can pick up more shifts or go down, you know, and over time, I've gone down on my shifts. But that flexibility of having a day job, quote unquote, has given me a lot of flexibility to really try, you know, so I almost call I almost say it's like I'm my own rich parents. You know, because a lot of these a lot of these people with silver spoons, they're able to be successful. And I really think because they can take bigger risks than we can. You can take a risk where you'll be completely bankrupt, but you'll have someone else that will step in, you know, like your parents. Well, I do the same thing, you know, my podcast, for example, could completely fail and I can cover the costs, you know, and so I can kind of bankroll myself. So it gives me a lot more opportunity to take risks and to try a business that potentially will make zero money. But that also means I sacrifice some of the time that I spend on my business. But, you know, at nighttime, usually not in the winter, but usually in the nighttime, it's not as busy. So I have time to kind of double dip a little bit. So how do you that's a that's a good transition. And then with that extra time commitment that you've got, you know, from your podcast and your other businesses, how do you look at that? And especially because you obviously enjoy your family and everything. And, you know, just in case your wife's listening, obviously, you know, loving husband and all that kind of stuff. How do you how do you look at balancing your work and life and family and getting, you know, especially when you've got that drive? Because obviously you do is that that work that work is not just work for work's sake, but that solving problem thing is something that obviously drives you. How do you find balance among all those? Well, Rob, if you figure it out, I hope you tell me. I think I think it's trying to figure it out and having someone, you know, the most important business relationship you can have is the one with your spouse, you know, wife or husband, whoever. But that is so important to have to know that you are working for the family's best interests. But they have permission to pull you back if you were, you know, because it's so easy to get forgotten. And this is something that my dad always did. So my dad, you know, we had a very successful middle, maybe even middle high, middle class life, which they never let me know. I always had to fight tooth and nail for any video game or anything I wanted. But, you know, we had done pretty well because my dad had invested in himself in the businesses, but he was never there. You know, and it's very traditional for his generation, you know, and especially for South Asian immigrants. You know, they just work really hard. I went to University of California and helped me through med school. So very, very fortunate in that sense. But, you know, kids, kids, they don't really care about all that stuff, right? They want they want their dad. And so it's very, very easy to forget that along the way, because you know that even if 100 percent there's alignment that you do in everything for your family, spending time with your family is more than alignment. So I give her permission to any time she feels that I'm not spending enough time with them to to call me back, you know, to call me out on that. So plus. Schedule your time with your family, just like you do anything else for four to about 7 p.m. is like dedicated family time for me, dedicated, you know, not spend time with them throughout the day because I work from home, but four to seven. Nothing else, you know, no phones and laptops. You know, we're playing, we're doing all this stuff. I always give them a bath, you know, put them to sleep and that stuff. So, you know, and of course, we all wish we had more than three hours, but that's hopefully going to grow over time with the businesses taking off and stuff. But schedule time, you know, that's sacred time on the calendar, just like any other business and something you don't miss. You know, my business partner today, we have to talk taxes because we pay way too much in taxes. And so we have to talk to our accountant, all three of us. Very important conversation. But it was at three o'clock when and his it's his daughter's birthday. And I was like, yeah, you have to be there. Like this is regardless of how important this conversation is, we'll we'll change it. We'll move it around. But you can't miss this. And, you know, like kids, they don't naturally keep track. You know, they don't literally keep track, but they keep track of this stuff on the inside. Right. Every birthday you miss every one of these things that you pick them over, you know, it's like it's a checkmark, you know, and which column has more. And it's not, you know, this is 51 percent. This is 49. It better be like 75, 25, because otherwise you're losing. So I think it's really important, you know, dedicated time on the calendar if you're a calendar person. But if you're not a calendar person, you need to be a calendar person. That's the only way you're going to be successful. And to, you know, having a rule, a rule that if I'm picking between family and something else, you always pick family. Oh, and then just makes life easy. Right. Then you're not every time it's not this torture. And everyone knows everyone like everyone when you're. When you're either the boss, especially when you're the boss, I know this is harder when you're an employee, but when you're the boss, be like, yeah, this is family time, you know, and people will work around you. You know, you can't do it all the time, but if you have the choice, you should try to do it. That's interesting. I don't know. I've sometimes found it's harder when you're the boss to do that, is that, you know, it's like, all right, you know, I got to take this time out. But I think it's such a good example when you're the boss is it says, hey, you know, family comes first. And if you take a two o'clock meeting time, you say, I'm sorry, I can't do it because I got to go do something with my kids. Then everybody else says, oh, OK, then that's acceptable now. And so that you set that tone. And then I think it may and it doesn't I think it makes for a healthier organization as well. So you do better in business because you don't have that, you know, that that personal life stuff that that drags you down. Instead, you're happy. Well, you know, happy wife, happy life. They used to say it is it's very much as if you're if your home life is happy. It's going to make you a lot better as a, you know, professionally and whatever you're driving. Yeah. As a boss, Rob, though, but, you know, if you missed an hour, you know, maybe you're listening to the recording right at eight p.m. after your kids are asleep. Right. That's that's how you compensate. Right. A lot of times, you know, you catch up like as a boss, you have boss stuff. Right. One of our coaches calls it owner time or CEO time. Right. And the other thing is so my wife and I are really into fitness. So and I'm really into fitness. So I thought, OK, really like my wife most of the time. And I really like to work out. So why don't we work out together? Right. And we found so I like to weight lift, but she likes to do cardio. So we and I like cardio as well. You know, so we do cardio together. So now it's two birds, one stone. And my son's only 19 months. But in the future, we're going to have something called CEO time where I bring problems that I have at work. They're going to try to solve them. You know, they say that most kids are geniuses before age five. You know, like another thing we beat out of them. Right. So you might actually even have something interesting and interesting perspective, but you get to do stuff and you get to think about stuff. And kids love doing anything you're doing. Right. Our my son takes we got him like this little baby mop. And it's like a human sized mop, just baby sized. And he just goes and takes it everywhere. And we're like, who did he see that from? Because I never mop, but you just must have done it at some point. And he has this like a little like Swiffer thing. We even got him a little like baby Dyson and loves putting that around. You know. So how do you get them involved in stuff that you're already doing? And then you're able to most double dip a little bit. Right. And make sure you're actually involving them, not just being like, oh, hey, daddy's working on this thing, go work in that corner. You know, be like, hey, here we're all working together. You know, I talked to my wife about issues that I have at work and she helps me. Well, most of the time just bed, but sometimes she'll be like, oh, why don't you think about this way? You know, and she adds an interesting perspective that maybe I'm too much in the business to think about. And we will pause there and we'll come back next episode and continue our discussion with Pranay. I think you found already this was a little bit different from maybe what you would expect. I know it was for me. It turned out to be a very entertaining discussion. Learned a lot. And it was through the entire episode or the entire discussion, not just part one. So, yes, you have more coming in part two. A lot more to learn, a lot more really interesting insight that we get. And of course, as usual, we'll wrap that up and we will continue our discussions as we go on through a couple more interviews and are sort of slogging our way. We are almost there, going to wrap up a season and then we will see where we go from there. But we are not done yet. We have more than a few excellent guests still coming along. Much like Pranay, they're going to give you a very different perspective. And that is always key for us in learning is to get a little bit different view. And suddenly that can open some things up for us. But that being said, it's time for you to open up your day and go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.develop-a-noor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer, and we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. 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