Prane Parikh: MD to Entrepreneur, Side Hustles, and Real Estate

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 coming back through talking to some people and just hanging out, having some interviews and discussions and learning a ton. This episode we are in part two of our discussion with Prane Parikh, easier for him to say it than myself. And we're going to continue talking about this whole concept of MD to entrepreneur about side hustles launched by doctors. And I think you learned quite a bit last time from his experience and where he's gone and how he's got there. And we're going to continue that discussion and how he uses a lot of what he's learned, and a lot of his experience to build success and how he has his sort of coaching approach to other doctors, helping them out in a consulting sense and taking what he's learned, applying it to others and helping them find a way to be happy as well. But I don't want to take away from his time. So let's get back to our conversation with Prane. It's always good to get that extra set of eyes. And when you've got family members right there, they care. And it's somebody that you care about. Obviously you respect them. So it's always good to hear what their perspective is. And sometimes it is something, particularly it's unique because they know you and they know the situation. And so they can even help see where maybe you've got a blinders on or something like that where it's like, hey, you've done this before. Shift your perspective a little bit. And suddenly some things open up. It's similar, like you said, instead of just when one door closes and another opens, if you're sitting there on the floor moping about it, you're going to miss it. Also, sometimes it closes in your focus on that closed door too much where somebody says, hey, turn around, there's an open one right behind you. Yeah. And the secondary benefit is maybe if they realize like you're working on something really heavy, it'll give you some more benefit of the doubt. You know, and but it's all about that communication, right, to have that over communication, especially with your family members, to have them understand. Right. You could be dealing with the most difficult thing in the world. And I think the generation above us was like, oh, you know, I don't want to I don't want to worry them or, you know, I don't want to concern them. I'll just deal with this. I'll just suffer myself. But people want to be involved. I see this a lot with medical problems. Right. So someone will have some type of medical diagnosis, but not want to feel like they're burdening people with it. You know, and I see it the other way around where someone is elderly and their daughter is taking care of them and the daughter doesn't want to burden the older person that has a medical problem with knowing what it is. But, you know, I think these days just communication like we're all stronger than we think we are. And everyone is suffering by themselves if we if we kind of have a chasm between each people. Very good point. That's a good piece of bit of wisdom there. And I do. I think we see a lot of that where we we hold too much in and we think we're doing it for other people and it actually ends up sort of hurting that instead where either they could help us or sometimes they want to. You know, they that's how letting them in allows them to be more a part of that and to connect deeper and to feel closer to you with that. The same could be said for your employees. Right. If you're dealing with some major issue at work, get everyone involved. Right. You hired your employees for a certain reason, for their skills, you know, and hopefully you've been hiring people over time smarter than you and your business has been growing. So include them. You know, if you're dealing with some major setback, talk to them, you know, and have that transparency so they understand that, you know, maybe that bonus that they were supposed to get might be smaller than they're expecting. But now they have understanding and ownership in the issue. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that I've always been a fan of the honesty policy there and very much, like you said, is you hire them for a reason. You didn't bring them in so that you could just tell them what to do. That's you know, that's what robots are for. Basically, you brought them in and they've got experience. They've got a different point of view. And why not make the most of them? Well, you know, open that up, give them opportunity to grow beyond whatever it is that you whatever you brought them in for, you're hoping they're going to get better. They're going to it's like it's like a sports team. You don't bring in a bunch of rookies and say, OK, I want you to be rookies the rest of your career. I want you to grow. And so you're going to become veterans and all stars and stuff like that. You want that with your employees as well. And cut them loose a little bit. Give them some some freedom to go be all that they can be. And then it's a win win in that situation. Yeah, from what from what I've been seeing, modern parenting and modern leadership, they're really kind of coalescing together in, you know, in the olden times, there'd be more of kind of the strong leader, right? The strong leader that tells everyone to do what to do. But now I think in both parenting and leadership, people are starting to realize that it's it's more of a team sport, right? You're yeah, you are the manager or you're the coach, but you got to do the coaching, right? And then let them go out and play. And I think the same is for employees. And it's great because now we're seeing that and really letting people blossom and letting kids blossom. And I think that goes back to where we started is and I think that's why there is more people, especially in the last five or 10 years, it feels like there's been a a groundswell of entrepreneurialism, entrepreneurism again, which if you go, I mean, historically, I guess it sort of ebbs and flows, but it seems like it is again been one of these where there's a there's been a a lot of extra talk about that, a lot of more a lot more interest in it, because people say, hey, I'm I'm not a one trick pony. I can do other things. I can solve other problems. And so let me see where I can take that skill and where I can go, you know, do it into a side hustle or or another business. And it leads me right into one of the things that you mentioned is is having multiple businesses. And I think you even recommend, you know, having more than one as you as you're sort of trying stuff out. So where what's your thought behind that? And why do you recommend that? I think. And my my thoughts on this has evolved over time. I think you can be part of multiple businesses, but I think to be successful, you can only lead one business, you know, and I would have pointed to Elon Musk as an exception to this role. But I think we're seeing that evolve over time. And it's just so difficult to be so involved in multiple businesses unless you have someone under you that's really taking lead. You know, so for the most part, the real estate business is what I'm in charge of. So I'm the president working on growing that, creating the culture, hiring and so on. The podcast, you know, it's fortunately it's like a solopreneur. It's not, you know, it's not that busy. But if that did start to become busy, I'd probably need to hire someone to be in charge of that, because I think I can only do one thing and one thing properly. It's easy to kind of jump on a podcast and guest on someone or even interview someone. But the rest of it is difficult, you know, and especially if I if it starts catching, catching success, then I think I would really need someone to really focus on that, you know, and obviously I could do it, but then I think my other business would suffer. And I think you have to really focus. And this is something that I've evolved because before I was in charge of multiple businesses, but they were all, you know, they all were kind of floundering a little bit. They they saw some success, but really to take it to the next level and to have happy employees, to to really accomplish our mission, I had to pick, you know, I had to pick and I picked the real estate. Yeah, that's that's good to hear, because that's I think there are situations where you have overlap in your business and podcast is one of those because you can have a business and your podcast can be part of your sales and marketing and talking and even learning about that business. But it goes back, you know, if you can double dip and you've got a couple different businesses that you can you can sort of work them, then it helps. But yeah, I think there's a it just feels like there's that's what I've run into is it feels like there comes a point where it's like if you want to really grow this thing, you really need to focus on it and make it your primary and really a lot of your everything needs to flow into that. Yeah, it's that if you've got something else that's going to be backburnered, at least, you know, and sometimes you can do that. You keep some stuff on the back burner and you just touch it occasionally and let it keep going. But really, the stuff that you're growing is going to be the stuff that you're focused on. And if you get to if you try to go in two different directions, they end up competing with each other. It's just like it goes back to any other bit. You know, it's like you're focused too much on career. Your family is going to suffer if you focus entirely on your family, then maybe your career suffers and you can go back and forth. So you can have a yeah, you can have a period where you're really focused on your career and you're really like studying and knocking out degrees or certifications or adding customers. And then maybe somebody you have somebody sick in your family and you have to spend a lot of time taking care of them. And you're you know, then you're like, OK, I'm going to let the the jobs going to hang out for a little bit and I'm going to go focus on the family. Totally, totally. And it kind of boils down to what do you want? You know, what do you want long term? And is it just to start multiple businesses to say you're in charge of them? That's fun. It's exciting because starting a business, at least for me, is very exciting, you know, and getting it about 25 percent done, you know, and creating revenue. But then that it stalls. Right. And a lot of times then I'll just start a new business and get it to that level and then it'll stall again. So I really did some introspection and I thought, you know, what do I really want? I want this to really make an impact to help doctors become financially free. And so to do that, I want to create the best real estate company out there, not just the best one for doctors, but the best one for everyone. And to do that, to do that properly, I would really have to give it all my time. So basically, I work full time for the real estate company and medicine is my side gig now. But that's the way you go. I think it is, you know, it's always good to be able to hold on to that, that, you know, your safety, your, you know, your your rich parents a little bit there just because like, OK, I've got that. I can, you know, that was a nice safety net and to be able to push off that, which you can take a lot. Like I said, you can take a lot of risk, but it minimizes it because you really you've got such a safety net that it's not really risk. It's you know, you can you risk it all and you know, you're safe because you can still you're going to fall into what you know, what you're comfortable with anyways. And one counterpoint for so, for example, recently I had this position and it's this administration, administrative position at my job. And because economy and all that stuff, that that position is getting terminated. So I still I'm going to practice as a doctor, but that position really focused on education is going away. And that got the kick in the butt that I needed to create a course that I'm planning on creating in the next month. So for some people, you need that kick in the butt. You know, a lot of times you'll hear about people losing their job and going and finally doing that thing that they've wanted to do. So I think it also depends on your personality. For some people, you have to just make a clean break. And for those people, it's good to do it. And maybe work a bit harder, create this nest egg and then just quit. And so it would really depend on your personality. I'm somewhere in the middle. And this idea for this course really just came out of nowhere because of and it was a couple thousand bucks. It wasn't this huge amount of money that I'm losing, but I've wanted to create something and I love courses. I've probably taken like 10 or 15 of them. And it's so great in a couple of hours, you can learn a whole new topic, a couple hours of video and faster if you two X or three X the speed. So you've got to just take a second. Think, think about what you want in the future and what what how do you react to things? You know, now in the beginning of the year, a lot of people are thinking about habits. You should know yourself. How how do you react well to things? You know, what are you interested in and what works for you? You know, don't try to go with the grain instead of against it. Yeah, that's something every year have the towards the end of the year. There's always this like retrospective of, OK, how did I do? And we talk about this a lot in the podcast. It's you know, what was it we wanted to get done that we got done? What didn't we get done? What is the stuff that we never started? And then, you know, with that is look at it each year. What can I say? What did I how did I grow? What is it that I've now realized I like to do? Maybe there's some things I realize I don't like to do. And it doesn't hurt to occasionally do that. That sort of retrospective of that, that deep dive into yourself and say, OK, why? Why is it that I always, you know, I get 25 percent into a company and then I'm like, all right, ready to move on to something else and working with that instead of saying, OK, I am never going to start another company again. I'm going to finish this and take it on is how do I work with that and make it so that I'm happy? But then I'm also working to my strengths. And maybe that's where you find, you know, that's part of hiring. So I'm not going to be like, OK, I'm going to start another company. You know, that's part of hiring. Hire the people that that offset that and say, hey, I know. Here's my strengths. Here's my weaknesses. I'm going to go get some people. They're going to fill in those weakness sides and allow us as an as a group or an organization to benefit from all of our various strengths. I recently took a Colby test and it showed that my what they call a quick start is a 10 out of 10. So that means I get an idea and I want to start it right away. And the opposite, it's not a 10 is the best kind of thing. The opposite is zero, where it's called stabilize, where you take an idea and you stabilize it and you get it going. So, for example, in a family, you'll have maybe the grandparents started this business and got it to a couple million dollars. And then you have the the grandchildren. They're able to take that million dollars and make it 10 million or 100 million. You know, and so there are people with different skills. So you're 100 percent right. Either you hire them or in the starting, maybe it's a strategic partnership. Right. You find a partner, a co-founder that is complementary to who you are. Yeah, that's I think that's important. A lot of those relationships, especially in business, is to find where you where the complementary skills are and not only skills, but I guess your attributes and your desires. So because we're getting I don't want to get too deep in this too far. And it used up too much of your time. I do want to ask. One of the questions that often comes up is, what would you do different? And it's interesting listening to you because it feels like a lot of what you've done is you've sort of adjusted as you went. And so I'm going to tweak it a little bit. And not only what would you do differently, but more. Take out the things where you just it took you a little longer to learn something than you wish you had. But really looking back, you know, if maybe maybe it's nothing. But what would you have done differently if you look back that, you know, wasn't simply, oh, I wish I'd learned this a little quicker. As I mentioned earlier, I'm pretty hardheaded. And so a lot of times I have to learn the wrong way of doing things until I do it right. So and it's kind of a cop out answer, but it would be nothing because I'm super happy. And I struggle a lot. I wish I got it got rid of all that struggle. And I actually talked to a lot of people that are professional speakers and almost all of them have some stories, some story of tragedy, you know, trauma. And they live through it. And now they have this amazing story to speak to talk about. But a lot of people want to get to where they are on all these stages in front of tens of thousands of people. But they don't want to put in that work. They don't want to go through a story. They don't want to lose an arm. They don't want to lose a spouse. And so all those struggles, all that pain, I had to go through it to get to where I am. You know, and there's, you know, like I said, hard headed. I'm probably still going to make a lot of mistakes in the near future. And our future to get to where I am. So I think what I would have done differently, I think I would spend some more time on myself. And so I have been trying to incorporate some of that back in. So I had bought this PlayStation and anyone that has tried to buy a PlayStation know it's been crazy for the past, like, three years to find one. I finally got one. And then it was just sitting in my box for six months, like unopened. And I love video games, but it was just things would always come up. So now I dedicate a little bit of time to not use my brain, turn it off for a little bit and just play some video games, you know. And funny thing, a lot of times while I'm doing that, I'll have some epiphany or I'll have some great idea about a problem that I'm working on. So I think intentional slacking off, I would do that because I did suck off. I suck off all the time, but I don't do it with intention. I'll be doing something, I'll get distracted, I'll be on Reddit for a couple hours. And that is not intentional. And what I realized for myself is if you're doing one thing, you're slacking off shouldn't be that same thing. So for example, I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of reading for, I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of writing. So if you're slacking off, you shouldn't do the same thing. You shouldn't be reading more, even if it's funny stuff or if it's the news or whatever. Because it tires out your brain, right? If you're lifting up a bunch of stuff, and then you're using it again, if you're working out and you're lifting up a bunch of heavy stuff from the floor, and then you go play with your kid and you're lifting him off the floor who is super heavy, you're tired, you're more tired, right? So it's the same thing. If I'm reading for work, maybe I'll watch a video for fun. Like watching a lot of random YouTube, like there's this dude that does talks about weird fruit. He flies over the world and tastes all this weird fruit. It's kind of cool. Or I was watching a video on how they make dams, just because dams are really interesting. And so I try to switch it up. So I think being a little bit more intentional with my time off, which is a little ironic or seems counterintuitive. But yeah, I think that's what I would do. Well, and it follows with the idea of scheduling family time. It seems like it's counterintuitive to say, hey, you need to schedule that, but because that's a business thing, that's not a family thing. But those things, especially as life blurs together, it's important to do that. And I love your analogy there of, hey, if you're doing the same thing and you do that for fun, then you're probably going to still wear yourself out in the same way. You're not going to get that same recharging of it. It's something I've run into as well, because I find myself doing things a lot and I'll do the same thing where it's like, I went back to just reading for fun, like fiction reading. And one of the books that sort of kicked me in the butt is I bought it literally decades before. Pages are yellowed. It's been so long. And I brought it brand new. I was like, hey, I'm going to read it. And I hadn't cracked it open. And finally I say, you know what? I used to do this all the time. I'm going to go back and do that and take just a little bit of time out every day. And I love it as the idea of intentional slacking, because it's real easy to get sidetracked by stuff and then get done and go, where did that time go? I spent all that time flipping through Facebook stories or something like that, that I would rather not have done that. There are better ways for me to slack off. Yeah. And it's giving yourself and you have something to look forward to. Right. Uh, so it's, it's really going in the way that your brain works. Uh, in, you know, um, if you do a lot of reading, which I'm sure you do, uh, then maybe an audio book would make a ton of sense. And it's so it's a little bit different than what you normally do. A lot of those audio books, they're actually, they're fully produced, you know, so some of these, they'll have multiple voices. Uh, some of them will have a full orchestra. So it's really cool. Uh, so, you know, potential something that you can do on your off time and it's something to look forward to. Uh, and you know, one thing that I learned recently, uh, it's called a temptation bundling. So something that you love to do, attach it to something that you want to do, but haven't done. So, uh, working out is a big one. So this lady, a psychologist, every time she would, uh, she would only listen to audio books, fiction audio books, when she would work out. So, you know, she'd be in the middle of the hunger games and, uh, be like, oh, man, I can't wait to know what happens next. So she would look forward to working out because she would want to know, and she'd be there. She'd be working out and just have a blast, you know, and it totally changed her mindset in terms of her habits. So, um, you know, the working out is easy, but try to combine that, you know, so you only read news while you're drinking a smoothie or something healthy or something, you know? So it's combining something and, you know, don't, uh, don't combine like, uh, uh, reading the news with smoking, not something bad, but, you know, something that you enjoy doing that's not a vice and, uh, that you, a new habit you want to pick up. That's a great idea. I had not heard of the phrase, uh, temptation bundling, but that's, I really liked that because that's, I've always tried to do that is that, you know, that risk and that reward, you know, sort of carrot and stick kind of approach has always worked. It always works for me. I've always found ways to, you know, to combine the two and then realize there was a term for it. So that's awesome. Um, I guess we've talked a lot about, we've talked a little bit about your podcast. So for anybody that's, that's listened to you now and said, you know, one, Hey, I would really like to get into this whole real estate thing. That sounds like something that would be a great way to go. What's a great way for them to get ahold of you and, and particularly your, what now is your, you know, your, I guess it's your day job since we know what your night job is for your primary job. What's a way for them to get ahold of you and maybe take advantage of, of, of that business. So quickly, I bought some real estate right out of residency and it was great, you know, great returns. And, but I realized that it's just a lot of work and being landlord sucks. I actually hate even being my own landlord. I hate owning my house because anytime something goes wrong, I wish I could call someone and they'd fix it for me. And as you can imagine being someone else, landlord is much worse than that because I take care of my house pretty well. And so I looked for a way to invest in real estate without actually being a landlord. And that's where I found syndication. It's basically you as a company, you come together with a bunch of people and you buy a big apartment complex. So five people leave in a certain month, you're fine because you have 200 others. And so the company is called a cent equity group. And it's available for everyone, not just doctors, but you do have to be an accredited investor. So that means you make over 200,000 a year for two years or 300 as a couple. And so it's a cent equity group.com and we have a newsletter. You can click contact and I'll be happy to talk to you. Cool. All right. Any parting thoughts? I want to thank you for, I do want to thank you for your time and for coming on. This has been a great discussion and I was expecting it and you exceeded expectations. So that's always awesome. But before we go, are there any parting thoughts that you have for the for the listeners? Anything that you wanted to maybe one point you want to make sure you get across? Yeah, two. And one, the podcast, it's called From MD to Entrepreneur, talk about all things entrepreneurship and two, we especially doctors. We get into this pre formative stage where we're doing research, where it's reading a book, we'll listen to a podcast, we'll take a course, you know, so many people will be like, Oh, should I get my real estate license or should I, you know, should I get a master's in real estate? But you can learn pretty much everything you need in a book or two. And then the rest of it is just getting started. It's that 80% of stuff you can learn in a book, but like one or two books, just find out the top selling one on Amazon. Buy it, you know, don't even do that much research on it. And the rest of the 20% is by doing and specifically with real estate, but all to entrepreneurship, every setback, it's not a failure to set back every setback is a learning experience, just like every property, even if you lose money on it, it's a learning experience. So get started, give yourself say, Hey, I'm going to learn real estate, buy a book, give yourself two weeks or three weeks, something reasonable to read them. And then get started. Right? The book will tell you what to do next. And then just get started. Give yourself deadlines. Don't just flounder around, you know, and Rob, I'm going to pick on you a little bit with that book, right? You know, that book is just sitting there questioning your life actions, you know? And if you, you know, but I'm sure you had a lot more important stuff to do than read for fun. But, you know, at the time you'd be like, okay, I bought this book. And then you, you, you probably, you got probably 80% of the satisfaction, honestly, from just buying the book, right? Not, not actually reading it because you buy a book, you're, you're a book reader. Right? And so if this was like a new habit or something, you'd say, okay, I'm going to spend this time on doing this. So you have to give yourself deadlines and just get started. And we just, we research and re research, we listen to a podcast. And then at some point, you're going to hear something that negates what you learned earlier. And you're like, oh no, my whole life is crumbling apart and you'll do more research, right? Not everyone's going to agree with each other, but the sooner you start, the quicker you're going to get to where you want to be. That is, that's awesome advice. And I think that is a perfect point. So I don't, you know, don't mess it up or water it down at all. And especially for me going with your background, that is exactly the kind of advice that we expect from you to say, Hey, you know, there's only so much time you can spend thinking about it before you, like you got to get it out there and do it. If you don't, your journey will not begin until you take that first step. And so there's certain point where you got to say, okay, I'm not going to look at it anymore. I'm not going to think about it anymore. I'm going to actually start doing it. So once again, I want to thank you so much for your time. I want to thank you for, for taking a little bit of time out of your day to, to come talk with us. Great conversation. And again, just want to just promote a little bit from MD to entrepreneur. You know, if people haven't heard enough from you and like some of what you've said, get plenty more in the podcast and hopefully they'll get out there and subscribe to yours as well. And add a few listeners to you. Awesome Rob. Thanks a lot for your time. Thanks a lot. Have a, have a good rest of your day. And that will wrap it up. Want to thank Pernay for his time for some excellent insight, and you can always do that yourself. Go check out some of his links. Those will be in the show notes, check out his site, see what he's doing. Cause it may be something that applies to you, or it may be an opportunity for you to have some ideas on how you can serve a similar community. The discussions like this, where we sort of open up the doors to the niche that maybe we never considered, I often find are informative because you never know when that next new niche is around the corner. And it's something maybe now that you'll have a little bit different view and who knows what you'll stumble upon. But there are a lot of key pieces that came out of that discussion as well about focus and about balance and a lot of these other things that I think people struggle with, but I think that's a good way to start to think about other things that I think people struggle with, particularly in the side hustle entrepreneurial world where it feels like you just need to work 24-7, 367 days a year, add a couple days to the end of the year as well. And that's not always the best approach. We've seen that with a couple other interviews and it's always good to have yet another person come in and sort of confirm that just go, go, go is not necessarily going to be your route to success. But that being said, it's time to go, go, go out into your day. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, try not to work too hard and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers, the developer 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.developineur.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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