Episode 01 - The Three Dynamic T’s of Success with Dr. Wing Lim
Sep 30, 2022
Episode Notes
Kevin Mailo, one of the co-founders of Physician Empowerment, talks with fellow co-founder Dr. Wing Lim about wealth mindsets. They explore not just financial health, but personal and practice-oriented wealth habits that lead to greater well-being and sustainable growth.
Dr. Wing Lim, founder of Synergy Wellness, references a wakeup call he received from his mentor, Dr. George, in the form of the question “How would you like to make 100% of one person versus 1% of 100 people?”. This led Dr. Lim to what he calls a “brain decompression” that has informed the wealth mindset journey he’s been on ever since.
In this episode, Kevin Mailo and Wing Lim discuss a 100 year old concept called The Three Dynamic T's of Success, which they currently host a masterclass on. The three T’s are time, talent, and treasure, and Wing Lim breaks down how each T is key to success. If you can learn to manage time, talent - people, teams, other people’s talent - and treasure/money, you will have tapped into an endless source of wealth from which your success can be fuelled. Dr. Lim shares his personal insights on exactly how the three T’s have made the difference for him.
About Dr. Wing Lim
Dr. Wing Lim completed his Medical Degree at the University of Alberta in 1991 & Family Medicine Residency in 1993. Later he qualified for the FCFP designation in 2005 & 2019. His practice is focused on preventive health & Geriatric Home Visits, for which he received the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005. Apart from his clinical & teaching roles, Dr. Lim has extensive experience in Practice Management and Business Development. He co-launched the Sherwood Park Primary Care Network in 2007 (currently 90+ physician members). In 2009, he founded the Synergy Medical Clinic, which grew from 12 to 37 physicians over the following ten years, serving a panel of 50,000+ patients. He also co-developed the Synergy Wellness Centre, a 75,000 sq ft integrated medical-professional destination providing 55+ medical modalities by various specialties & allied health professionals, with over 500,000 patient encounters annually. He is currently co-developing a 165-bed Senior retirement facility with the provision of comprehensive care from independent, active living to secured Dementia care. Dr. Lim is passionate in sharing his extensive knowledge & experience (both clinical & business) with others in various settings, from his clinic mentoring younger colleagues, to churches, senior groups, ethnic functions, radio broadcasts, retreats, seminars and national conferences.
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin
Wing Lim, BMSc, MD, CCFP, FCFP: website | linkedin
Transcript
Kevin Mailo
Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, and you're listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At Physician Empowerment, we're focused on transforming the lives of Canadian physicians through education and finance, practice transformation, wellness, and leadership. After you've listened to today's episode, I encourage you to visit us at physempowerment.ca - that's P H Y S empowerment.ca - to learn more about the many resources we have to help you make that change in your own life, practice, and personal finances. Now on to today's episode.
Kevin Mailo
Hi, I'm Kevin Mailo, one of the co-founders of Physician Empowerment. Tonight we're hosting a webinar. It's a beautiful summer evening out there. And I'm not going to keep this too long, because I'm headed off for some water skiing for the first time this year, yeah, so I'm really happy about that. And I'm very happy to have my fellow co-founder here as well, Dr. Wing Lim. And tonight what we're going to be talking about, Wing and I are going to be discussing wealth mindsets. I think this is such an important topic for physicians, because many of us have access to knowledge, many of us have access to credit, we have high incomes to invest, but one of the things that, you know, I found over this journey of educating physicians in finance is that there's a lot of facts, knowledge, and information out there in the world - we can go on the internet and find that very easily - but wisdom and experience are in short supply. And so we try to hit to some of these deeper notes by covering some of these more profound topics. And one of the ones that we want to discuss, and only in brief, because there are entire books written about this, is the notion of wealth mentalities. And I'm interviewing Wing today, because it's really exciting to hear his journey. And if you want, you can go back to one of our founding episodes to hear Wing's entire origin story. But in brief, you know, Wing, you started out as a family doctor in general practice in the early 90s, kind of doing it all - hospital-based, clinic-based, psychotherapy, delivering babies, you did it all. Why don't you tell us just the start, the first question I got for you is just tell us a little bit about your journey.
Wing Lim
Yeah. So I'm a U of A grad, graduated a long time ago, early 90s. Yes, that was a time when practices were given away because people were leaving the province, there was a guy called Ralph Klein - those who called it the Ralphonomic Days for those who knew about Alberta - and I lost 98% of my classmates to US, so I was the two percent who stayed behind. Anyways, practices were given away, but I was crazy enough to have actually bought a practice with money that haven't got. So it was a solo practice and there is a built in lab. Those days, you can still have a lab in your clinic, believe it or not. And I have an X-Ray clinic next to me, so I'm running like a mini emergency department. I loved it, so bought it, ran it, 100 percent ownership, and my wife gave up her career. And so we built a clinic together at 100 hours per week. So that was the starting point.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, so that's a lot. So you're working these long hours, you're struggling to balance tax payments, overhead, your time, you've got a young family, you're in the thick of it. And let's flash forward to where you're at now, you know, as a family physician with a great practice still, but you also are a real estate developer, having originated over $100 million in new developments. And, you know, take us through the couple of the highlights on that journey. And obviously, that's not going to be the whole journey. But take us through some of the points where your mind changed, right. There's something about you along that journey that changed.
Wing Lim
Yeah, I think point number one is going to the school of hard knocks. You got hit by the upside of the head really fast. At least at my med school at U of A, there was one hour of teaching on health economics that is not about your personal health economics, it was about the hospital budget, provincial budget, bored to death, that kind of stuff. So personal finance budget, how you bill, we didn't even know we have to save money for tax. So that was first smack on the head. And then very soon we got evicted. The landlord took over and doubled our rent, we went to court, lost. So we spend my firstborn child - he's 25 now - so anyway, so we spent the first Christmas at a construction site because we get evicted right around Christmas. So that was another smack on the head. So we're running as hard as we could and then we're stuck and kids were coming. We got three kids within each 18-19 months apart, right? So my wife cannot work as hard. I cannot work as hard. So how are we going to do that when we keep trading time for money, and feel like I'm on a treadmill and running faster and faster like a stress test, the way booze protocol, I'm ready to fall off. So that was a wake up call, rude awakening, and then a critical mentor. They say when the student's ready the teacher shows up. So my mentor, Dr. George - you know, he's still a friend of mine, now he's in his 80s - and Dr. George asked me a critical question that decompressed my mind. And he said that he asked me 'Wing, how would you like to make 100% of one person versus 1% of 100 people?' I said can you repeat the question, George? I'd done very well at 100% of one person at 100 hours per week, and I'm going nowhere, right? Everything I went to school for I was doing, and I thought I should be actualized, I should be happy. But I got stuck. And the just trading time for money thing is not working out. So when he asked 1% of 100 people, that decompressed my brain and that is like an airbag in the car when this deployed. You cannot push it back. So I have been decompressed since I've been thinking about 1% 100 since, and it's a 20-some year journey.
Kevin Mailo
So again, one of the learnings in your journey as you develop this wealth mentality, and I should share with everybody that when you have been a personal mentor to me in this space, that I was on that hamster wheel over five years ago when we met - six years ago, now, when we met - trading time for money, exhausted, working long hours, and asking myself, 'Where am I really headed in life?'. And, you know, I was a bold dreamer, you know, and that's partly why I founded Physician Empowerment, but struggling with the concrete, the ingredients that I needed to get where I was going. So you talk about taking 1% from people, but that sounds like team building to me. Tell me about a little bit of the team building journey that you've gone on, because you started out in solo practice, now you're part of a large group practice, that's practice transformation. We teach that in our small groups, but just give us a little bit of a teaser as to what that means for you.
Wing Lim
Solo practice means you do everything by yourself. If you got to do it, do it yourself, right? So we always have that mentality that we do it ourselves. And that's got to change, right? Everyone learns to leverage, learn to exceed yourself, that you got to decompress and learn how to work with other people. So then I worked at create a multidisciplinary clinic, we ended with six physicians, and then I was ready to give up my practice, I was so burned out with the provincial health care, yada, yada. And then I went to a conference, came out, I dug my residency dream, I said 'I want to build a wellness Wellness Center', and fast forward about 10 years, 11 years ago we build this giant clinic, 75,000 square foot Wellness Center at the clinic. My family medicine clinic as the anchor tenant. So right now I have 30-some colleagues. It is one of the largest clinics in the province and we do a panel size about 50-60,000 patients, which is half of the county. And the building serves about 2000 clients a day, like with all the paramedical and medical services.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. Because you have a whole bunch of specialists there, as well as, you know, pharmacists, chiropractic, physio, all of that.
Wing Lim
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. So very comprehensive. So this is living a dream for you.
Wing Lim
It is living a dream. Yes. And it's not just my dream, people embrace it. Now it's a lot of people's dream come true. Lots of people's dream practice come true.
Kevin Mailo
It's a shared dream. Yeah. And I remember you talking about how important it's been for you to ensure that every physician within your group feels cared for and valued, right? That the strength of the clinic depends on the well-being of every individual physician.
Wing Lim
Correct. Yeah, exactly. You would only win if everybody wins, right? That's the big win. And that's one of the transformation of the thinking. Right?
Kevin Mailo
Let me just segue into what that is. That's a wealth mentality. That's the idea that the more generous we are with the people in our lives, with our communities, in terms of our time, our expertise, and even our money, the more that comes back to us, right? Because people want to join with someone who radiates that, and so it's that prosperity mentality, right? Like, because we're in a group practice doesn't mean that we're taking from one another here, that we're reducing one another's billings or increasing one another's overhead, that we can actually come together, and in more practical terms, boost revenue, and reduce relative overhead, in addition to delivering better practice, or better medicine in our practices, and delivering better care for our communities. And I'll just put a little plug there because Synergy Medical sees both. I work in the hospital as an ER doctor, you know, a few blocks away from Synergy, and it sees 10 times more patients per day than my entire hospital. You know, so it really speaks to what you've built, Wing.
Wing Lim
Well thank you. And part of the learning is to learn to think outside of the box. I think we went to school to be the best we could be professionally. Since pre-med days, we study for ourselves, we get a good GPA, get a good MCAT score, get in, and then you learn and you always for yourself is just one off, right? But when you go into the real world, you got to drop that thinking and do team play. In fact, I came across a concept that is 100 years old. And in a masterclass we're actually diving into this, and this is called The Three Dynamic T's. The Three Dynamic T's of Success. So in the real world to have professional success, it's not just your GPA or how smart you are, how special you are, it's about three dynamic T's and the first T is time, the second T is talent, and the third T is treasure. So when you manage these three T's, then you and your team will be unstoppable. So a masterclass is going to go through a lot of this in depth thing, so we invite everybody to check us out on masterclass which is a 12 month program. You start the one on time. So if you can manage time, manage talents - which is people and teams, other people's talents - and you can manage treasure - which is money - then you would truly be successful. In fact even when you work for fee for service, calculation model, or a fixed budget, or you work for public health, each enterprise, whether it's public or private, to be successful, these three dynamic t's need to be worked on.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. And this really speaks to another core physician empowerment concept called 'you is the most important investment'. And really what that is, is the idea that, you know, your practice, your financial stability, your personal well-being, depends on constantly investing in yourself as an individual, right? That it is not about just endless personal sacrifice, but that we are, you know, focusing on our well-being in terms of, you know, sleep, exercise, eating right, and maintaining healthy relationships. And this is something that, you know, we pay a lot of lip service to within the profession, but be mindful that as fee-for-service earners, the vast majority of us, or at least al of us trade time for money in our clinical work, the importance of being able to stay in this not as a sprint, but as a marathon. And so time is a key component to that. And even being able to outsource, being able to trust professionals in our financial and practice lives, so that we are focusing on the most important tasks, I have found to be personally transformative along that journey. When you talk about that T. Do you want to talk about talent as it relates to delegation and outsourcing, Wing, because I think that's another important topic. And if I can be blunt - and, you know, we try to be straight here on Physician Empowerment - let me be blunt, many physicians struggle with micromanaging. I certainly have done it over the years, right? So we have this mentality of, well, if I want it done, I gotta do it myself. And I'm gonna do it properly. And that means it's going to be me. And let me be the first to say, that is exactly what I want out of my surgeon. If somebody is cutting me open, I want to make sure that my bowels are getting sewn up extremely meticulously, right. And same goes with, you know, when I'm caring for critically ill patients and these sorts of things. But as we zoom the lens out a little bit, and look at how our clinics function, how our hospitals function, how our financial lives function in terms of, you know, whether it's real estate, or investing in the markets, that micromanaging can really trip us up. And it's not only in terms of not reaching our financial goals, or our practice goals, but even in terms of our well-being. That there is a limit to how much any one person can micromanage before they start to really hit the wall and become exhausted. So tell me a little bit about that, then, Wing. Talk to me about that second T, talent, as it relates to delegation and outsourcing.
Wing Lim
The micromanagement, I think, it's our trademark. If you looked up the dictionary, you see our pictures in there. And the micromanagement thing, other than just being super focused on success, and no error, no mistake, we are a very mistake-adverse culture because if we make mistakes people die, people suffer, and we lose our license, potentially, we get complaints, blah, blah, blah. So we're very mistake-oriented culture, so we don't trust people. But it's a micromanagement issue. It's an issue, like you need to see a therapist, right, and it's a mistrust. The lack of ability to trust others. And I think the many more years we stay in tertiary care, the more we do that. So the first thing is to undo some thinking deep down, you give yourself permissions, right, I've learned a long time ago, if you give yourself some permissions, you can actually learn to decompress and learn and grow. And first thing was, I'm not the smartest guy, right? And I think as a family physician, as a primary care provider, it's easy for me to do because I always refer. But even specialists, they specialized and when people would always refer out they would say, 'this is not my field', right? So I'm not, I don't need to be the smartest guy, I'm not the smartest guy. So there are lots of talents out there. There's an ancient Chinese saying, "Three people walking, two of them are my teachers". Okay, this is actually a saying from Confucius. And he's not confused. Right? And so that is social, we can learn from everyone, every member on the team. So thinking change number one for talent, is 'I'm not it', right? I need other people that grows, if I'm not the smartest one, I need other people that grows to the next phase, which is called interdependence, right? We've become from dependence to independence, and then now interdependence. And I think that is a breakthrough. It's easier said than done, but we got to lean on it. And healthcare is morphing, man. Right? If you look at how we do things in hospital, we have robotic arms now, I mean, the people from third world with a surgeon here working with a surgeon there, right? Like, we're changing. We've been expected to work with a paramedical professionals, you know their MPs writing orders right next to you.
Kevin Mailo
Our MPs at the hospital are phenomenal. Phenomenal. I feel very privileged to be working with our MPs, because I feel like they helped create one of the best emergency departments in the country. And again, that was a process of learning to work, you know, in an interdisciplinary mindset, and learning to let go a little bit. And it's been just great.
Wing Lim
Yeah, exactly. And once you respect people for what they are contributing, even down to the most, quote, junior person.... I think we have this elitism that's another one we need to fight against. These are cocooning off the shelf, one of which, that leads to pride and arrogance, honestly, is that elitism, right? Like I'm holier than thou and smarter than thou, I belong to the smartest group, I think the sooner we break away from that, and we say, hey, we need each other, the sooner you respect the talent. And the talent is in things that you might not think is important clinically, but it's very, very important. And one example was there was a study going around with complication rates in ICU. They found that the ICU, the highest performing ICUs across the country with the lowest complication rate, come from one single parameter, how easy it is for the lowest ranking person with these knowledge, how easy it is for that person to say, 'Hey, I think we got a problem'. And the ICU group that had even the janitor or anybody, right, supportive staff, will say, 'Hey, I think we got a problem'. If the team listens to that angle, they have the best safety and the least amount of complication.
Kevin Mailo
You have that parallel in the airline industry, where everyone is empowered to speak up and errors, when they are caught, are actually celebrated. And I think that's very powerful. So let's just shift a little bit here, staying on this second T talent. Talk to us about our financial lives, like another one that I see physicians do, I mean, I see physicians not wanting to pay an accountant, they do their own accounting. I see physicians who do their own bookkeeping, which is just, I feel like, overwhelming for me. I see physicians trying to manage their portfolios, talk to us about that, right? Because I see the whole spread. And it's not just about making gains financially, and managing that other T treasury. But it's about, like, our well-being. I mean, for myself personally, working, you know, a 10 hour shift in the emerg, coming home and trying to stare at my books, trying to pick stocks, feels absolutely overwhelming. And I'm certain I would screw that up a whole bunch. And then the couple of times that I've tried it, I have screwed up massively and learned my lesson. So I outsource, right, I have professionals that manage real estate for me, bookkeeping, accounting, and my equities. So talk to us about that in our financial lives, that micromanaging, because I think that's another big one.
Wing Lim
So the T that's talent in the personal finance and corporate finance world is even more pertinent, because you cannot do it all. Right, so the DIY mentality, it goes right back to the mentality that I made, I'm the smartest one I can't trust anyone. Right? And if you want to be that special, you are guaranteed to be small. The S is not Superman, it's like you are super small. So you got to trust me when, if you become a specialist and okay I DIY and do all those do stocks or do crypto, good for you, it becomes a habit, a hobby, good for you. And we're not knocking anybody. But it's a team sport, right? We went to school to play solitaire, but then when we graduate, this is a team sport, right? And so you need to learn how to do a team. And so in finance, more importantly, it's a team sport. You need team members, each with their strength. They don't have to be perfect, right? You have the accountant, you have the lawyer, you have a bean counter, you have a guy who... it's just like Dorothy going to see the Wizard of Oz. She's got all these characters that each have their defects, one has no courage, one has no heart, one has no brain, right? And so these actually, I have been taught, that puts it into all your consultants.
Kevin Mailo
To come back to your point, when this bit on an element of humility, I'll just share one personal story that actually came from today. And you helped me with this. I have a property that I can't sell, I can't rent, and so I'm putting it on AirBNB and I've hired a company to do that. I outsourced. And it's eye-watering, they need a $45,000 check to get the house ready, you know, to stage it, to furnish it, everything. And, you know, I'm so tempted to just like move funds from my PC, pay myself that $45,000, and then write the check off to this company. And I paused and I phoned my accountant. I rarely rarely have any answers in this space, I only have questions. But I'm thankfully very fortunate in that I'm ready to ask questions, even the so called dumb ones, and I just go ahead and ask him, I said, 'Is that smart?' Or should I be loaning money from my PC, or should I be using a line of credit? And he said based on, you know, the nature of the purchases and the property and everything else, line of credit. Wow, wow, right? Huge saving 1000s of dollars right there, huge pressure off me, I'm so happy I did that, maybe, you know, 100 bucks for that phone call, worth every penny of it, right? And so that's a growth for me, right? That's, you know, learning to be humble enough to ask questions. Understanding that I don't have the answers. And we actually do this in practice. When I'm in the emergency department, I feel like I'm in over my head, I pick up the phone and call a consultant. You know, we've got a patient in front of us in clinic, we refer on to a consultant. I mean, you mentioned that earlier, Wing, but it's important to think about that in terms of our financial lives as well, which I think is so powerful. So that was, like, actually today, off went the check.
Wing Lim
You shared and you demonstrated that you actually picked a team member that is valuable. Right? So, but if you didn't pick the right team member, you won't have got that answer. So part of this talent thing is you become a talent agent. Right? People ask me, 'How do you do such big projects?' I said, 'Oh, it's easy. I chum around people who are smarter than me.' Right? If your why is big enough, the house will come to you. I'm not good at engineering at all, right? One day I found myself in a room with 18 engineers around me and 2 architects building this big senior project that is today worth $52 million that we just launched last year, right? So here's the brightest engineering minds in the city, and they're circling around me asking me questions. Well, I chum around with people who are way smarter than me. So when you put the right team together, so it's a talent show where you hunt for the talent, and you hunt for the right talent for the right thing. And then you're going to win, you're going to win because you got the best team, you got the A Team. I'm dating myself with The A Team, Mr. T.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, but it's true. And, you know, like, certainly this AirBNB thing that I'm doing, it is not cheap. I am paying a lot upfront, and I'm paying a lot for management fees, but I am so much happier. Number one, I know it's going to work far better than if I did it myself. And number two, more importantly, I am happier. Because I do not want to be going and trying to turn over a space and micromanage cleaners and everything else, right? It's about our personal well-being along this financial journey that is not simply about getting to a certain number, a certain net worth, a certain cash flow. It's really about building a financial plan that works in our personal lives. That works with our practice lives. I think that's so important. So important.
Wing Lim
Exactly. The other example is, tying the three T's together, is if you DIY everything yourself, you're gonna miss some advice, and tax is single handedly the biggest expense in our life. And if you don't get the right tax advice or, worse, get the wrong advice, you could be wasting a lot of money. I spent the time, sought out a smart guy in insurance and in tax, and I went home and ran it by my team and I saved about $350,000 in tax based on that one piece of advice.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, that is exactly it. And you know what, we have seen that on our Physician Empowerment conferences, people come up and they go, 'Oh, my goodness, I wish I knew this 20 years ago'. And it's never too late. Right? Like that's the most amazing thing about anything in life - any stage, anything in life, is that nothing is ever too late. So if you have those kinds of questions, start asking them, start going to people, start building that team, begin now. It can be so powerfully transformative. And I have missed out on far more deals than I had been part of. And that's okay, because guess what, Warren Buffett didn't buy Walmart, didn't buy Amazon, and he's doing just fine, right? So it is never too late to be okay. And better than okay, it is never too late to thrive in our financial lives and in our practice lives. Tomorrow is always a new day.
Wing Lim
So more important than the actual talent that we thought we need to possess, is to ask the question why? And ask the right questions. What questions are we supposed to ask? Now interestingly, the word knowledge, which is a Greek word, but in Chinese the word knowledge is actually two characters: learn, ask. So knowledge in Chinese thinking is 'learn to ask questions'. So that the more knowledge you got, that means that the more questions you learn to ask, you just ask smarter questions. So what we hope to empower people at Physician Empowerment, it's a peer to peer empowerment process, is to empower you to ask better questions to your own team. How do we assemble the right team, keep asking questions, and in doing that you have an enlightened path. Right? And then you can reach your own goal, which is different than mine or yours, right?
Kevin Mailo
I love that. I absolutely love that, Wing. So I think we're going to actually start winding it down. We don't want to make these too heavy. We don't make these too long. And I'll just share a little bit of my own wellness with those that might be a little bit late joining, is that I'm about to go waterskiing, and it's a beautiful summer night, and I'm not going to miss that. Anyhow, being out on the lake, on the boat, it's going to be great. So we are going to wind it down here. I've really, really, really loved this. I'm always inspired when we talk like this, because it's these bigger questions, right? It's learning to take risk. It's learning to ask the big questions, why. It's learning to be humble enough to reach out to people in our practice lives, in our financial lives, that are going to help us soar. That it doesn't have to be a one person show. So we have quite a few people who've joined us in the webinar. And I'll just put it out there briefly for anyone that wants to ask questions, go ahead and type them into the chat. But otherwise, I'm also just happy to wind it down. Because this was great. And this is only a start of what we're going to be covering in this area because there's so much... you know what, when I reflect on practice success or financial success, it's about grit. And this is some of the process of building grit, just that inner toughness, that inner resiliency to keep going when you feel like giving up. And so I'd invite anyone who's interested, just reach out to us, go on the website or sign up for emails, but like we are super accessible, you reach out to us over email, phone. And if you want to know more about our masterclass or conferences, we're always happy to talk about them. But at any rate, I think I'm gonna wrap it up there. And I really want to thank everyone for joining tonight. And Wing, I really want to thank you, again, for just sharing so much wisdom.
Wing Lim
Well, thank you. It's always fun and we hope to see more of everyone. Thanks.
Kevin Mailo
Thank you so much for listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. If you're ready to take those next steps in transforming your practice, finances, or personal well being, then come and join us at physempowerment.ca - P H Y S empowerment.ca - to learn more about how we can help. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with a colleague or friend and head over to Apple podcasts to give us a five star rating and review. If you've got feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episode topics, we'd love to hear from you. If you want to join us and be interviewed and share some of your story, we'd absolutely love that as well. Please send me an email at [email protected]. Thank you again for listening. Bye.
Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, and you're listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At Physician Empowerment, we're focused on transforming the lives of Canadian physicians through education and finance, practice transformation, wellness, and leadership. After you've listened to today's episode, I encourage you to visit us at physempowerment.ca - that's P H Y S empowerment.ca - to learn more about the many resources we have to help you make that change in your own life, practice, and personal finances. Now on to today's episode.
Kevin Mailo
Hi, I'm Kevin Mailo, one of the co-founders of Physician Empowerment. Tonight we're hosting a webinar. It's a beautiful summer evening out there. And I'm not going to keep this too long, because I'm headed off for some water skiing for the first time this year, yeah, so I'm really happy about that. And I'm very happy to have my fellow co-founder here as well, Dr. Wing Lim. And tonight what we're going to be talking about, Wing and I are going to be discussing wealth mindsets. I think this is such an important topic for physicians, because many of us have access to knowledge, many of us have access to credit, we have high incomes to invest, but one of the things that, you know, I found over this journey of educating physicians in finance is that there's a lot of facts, knowledge, and information out there in the world - we can go on the internet and find that very easily - but wisdom and experience are in short supply. And so we try to hit to some of these deeper notes by covering some of these more profound topics. And one of the ones that we want to discuss, and only in brief, because there are entire books written about this, is the notion of wealth mentalities. And I'm interviewing Wing today, because it's really exciting to hear his journey. And if you want, you can go back to one of our founding episodes to hear Wing's entire origin story. But in brief, you know, Wing, you started out as a family doctor in general practice in the early 90s, kind of doing it all - hospital-based, clinic-based, psychotherapy, delivering babies, you did it all. Why don't you tell us just the start, the first question I got for you is just tell us a little bit about your journey.
Wing Lim
Yeah. So I'm a U of A grad, graduated a long time ago, early 90s. Yes, that was a time when practices were given away because people were leaving the province, there was a guy called Ralph Klein - those who called it the Ralphonomic Days for those who knew about Alberta - and I lost 98% of my classmates to US, so I was the two percent who stayed behind. Anyways, practices were given away, but I was crazy enough to have actually bought a practice with money that haven't got. So it was a solo practice and there is a built in lab. Those days, you can still have a lab in your clinic, believe it or not. And I have an X-Ray clinic next to me, so I'm running like a mini emergency department. I loved it, so bought it, ran it, 100 percent ownership, and my wife gave up her career. And so we built a clinic together at 100 hours per week. So that was the starting point.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, so that's a lot. So you're working these long hours, you're struggling to balance tax payments, overhead, your time, you've got a young family, you're in the thick of it. And let's flash forward to where you're at now, you know, as a family physician with a great practice still, but you also are a real estate developer, having originated over $100 million in new developments. And, you know, take us through the couple of the highlights on that journey. And obviously, that's not going to be the whole journey. But take us through some of the points where your mind changed, right. There's something about you along that journey that changed.
Wing Lim
Yeah, I think point number one is going to the school of hard knocks. You got hit by the upside of the head really fast. At least at my med school at U of A, there was one hour of teaching on health economics that is not about your personal health economics, it was about the hospital budget, provincial budget, bored to death, that kind of stuff. So personal finance budget, how you bill, we didn't even know we have to save money for tax. So that was first smack on the head. And then very soon we got evicted. The landlord took over and doubled our rent, we went to court, lost. So we spend my firstborn child - he's 25 now - so anyway, so we spent the first Christmas at a construction site because we get evicted right around Christmas. So that was another smack on the head. So we're running as hard as we could and then we're stuck and kids were coming. We got three kids within each 18-19 months apart, right? So my wife cannot work as hard. I cannot work as hard. So how are we going to do that when we keep trading time for money, and feel like I'm on a treadmill and running faster and faster like a stress test, the way booze protocol, I'm ready to fall off. So that was a wake up call, rude awakening, and then a critical mentor. They say when the student's ready the teacher shows up. So my mentor, Dr. George - you know, he's still a friend of mine, now he's in his 80s - and Dr. George asked me a critical question that decompressed my mind. And he said that he asked me 'Wing, how would you like to make 100% of one person versus 1% of 100 people?' I said can you repeat the question, George? I'd done very well at 100% of one person at 100 hours per week, and I'm going nowhere, right? Everything I went to school for I was doing, and I thought I should be actualized, I should be happy. But I got stuck. And the just trading time for money thing is not working out. So when he asked 1% of 100 people, that decompressed my brain and that is like an airbag in the car when this deployed. You cannot push it back. So I have been decompressed since I've been thinking about 1% 100 since, and it's a 20-some year journey.
Kevin Mailo
So again, one of the learnings in your journey as you develop this wealth mentality, and I should share with everybody that when you have been a personal mentor to me in this space, that I was on that hamster wheel over five years ago when we met - six years ago, now, when we met - trading time for money, exhausted, working long hours, and asking myself, 'Where am I really headed in life?'. And, you know, I was a bold dreamer, you know, and that's partly why I founded Physician Empowerment, but struggling with the concrete, the ingredients that I needed to get where I was going. So you talk about taking 1% from people, but that sounds like team building to me. Tell me about a little bit of the team building journey that you've gone on, because you started out in solo practice, now you're part of a large group practice, that's practice transformation. We teach that in our small groups, but just give us a little bit of a teaser as to what that means for you.
Wing Lim
Solo practice means you do everything by yourself. If you got to do it, do it yourself, right? So we always have that mentality that we do it ourselves. And that's got to change, right? Everyone learns to leverage, learn to exceed yourself, that you got to decompress and learn how to work with other people. So then I worked at create a multidisciplinary clinic, we ended with six physicians, and then I was ready to give up my practice, I was so burned out with the provincial health care, yada, yada. And then I went to a conference, came out, I dug my residency dream, I said 'I want to build a wellness Wellness Center', and fast forward about 10 years, 11 years ago we build this giant clinic, 75,000 square foot Wellness Center at the clinic. My family medicine clinic as the anchor tenant. So right now I have 30-some colleagues. It is one of the largest clinics in the province and we do a panel size about 50-60,000 patients, which is half of the county. And the building serves about 2000 clients a day, like with all the paramedical and medical services.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. Because you have a whole bunch of specialists there, as well as, you know, pharmacists, chiropractic, physio, all of that.
Wing Lim
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. So very comprehensive. So this is living a dream for you.
Wing Lim
It is living a dream. Yes. And it's not just my dream, people embrace it. Now it's a lot of people's dream come true. Lots of people's dream practice come true.
Kevin Mailo
It's a shared dream. Yeah. And I remember you talking about how important it's been for you to ensure that every physician within your group feels cared for and valued, right? That the strength of the clinic depends on the well-being of every individual physician.
Wing Lim
Correct. Yeah, exactly. You would only win if everybody wins, right? That's the big win. And that's one of the transformation of the thinking. Right?
Kevin Mailo
Let me just segue into what that is. That's a wealth mentality. That's the idea that the more generous we are with the people in our lives, with our communities, in terms of our time, our expertise, and even our money, the more that comes back to us, right? Because people want to join with someone who radiates that, and so it's that prosperity mentality, right? Like, because we're in a group practice doesn't mean that we're taking from one another here, that we're reducing one another's billings or increasing one another's overhead, that we can actually come together, and in more practical terms, boost revenue, and reduce relative overhead, in addition to delivering better practice, or better medicine in our practices, and delivering better care for our communities. And I'll just put a little plug there because Synergy Medical sees both. I work in the hospital as an ER doctor, you know, a few blocks away from Synergy, and it sees 10 times more patients per day than my entire hospital. You know, so it really speaks to what you've built, Wing.
Wing Lim
Well thank you. And part of the learning is to learn to think outside of the box. I think we went to school to be the best we could be professionally. Since pre-med days, we study for ourselves, we get a good GPA, get a good MCAT score, get in, and then you learn and you always for yourself is just one off, right? But when you go into the real world, you got to drop that thinking and do team play. In fact, I came across a concept that is 100 years old. And in a masterclass we're actually diving into this, and this is called The Three Dynamic T's. The Three Dynamic T's of Success. So in the real world to have professional success, it's not just your GPA or how smart you are, how special you are, it's about three dynamic T's and the first T is time, the second T is talent, and the third T is treasure. So when you manage these three T's, then you and your team will be unstoppable. So a masterclass is going to go through a lot of this in depth thing, so we invite everybody to check us out on masterclass which is a 12 month program. You start the one on time. So if you can manage time, manage talents - which is people and teams, other people's talents - and you can manage treasure - which is money - then you would truly be successful. In fact even when you work for fee for service, calculation model, or a fixed budget, or you work for public health, each enterprise, whether it's public or private, to be successful, these three dynamic t's need to be worked on.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah. And this really speaks to another core physician empowerment concept called 'you is the most important investment'. And really what that is, is the idea that, you know, your practice, your financial stability, your personal well-being, depends on constantly investing in yourself as an individual, right? That it is not about just endless personal sacrifice, but that we are, you know, focusing on our well-being in terms of, you know, sleep, exercise, eating right, and maintaining healthy relationships. And this is something that, you know, we pay a lot of lip service to within the profession, but be mindful that as fee-for-service earners, the vast majority of us, or at least al of us trade time for money in our clinical work, the importance of being able to stay in this not as a sprint, but as a marathon. And so time is a key component to that. And even being able to outsource, being able to trust professionals in our financial and practice lives, so that we are focusing on the most important tasks, I have found to be personally transformative along that journey. When you talk about that T. Do you want to talk about talent as it relates to delegation and outsourcing, Wing, because I think that's another important topic. And if I can be blunt - and, you know, we try to be straight here on Physician Empowerment - let me be blunt, many physicians struggle with micromanaging. I certainly have done it over the years, right? So we have this mentality of, well, if I want it done, I gotta do it myself. And I'm gonna do it properly. And that means it's going to be me. And let me be the first to say, that is exactly what I want out of my surgeon. If somebody is cutting me open, I want to make sure that my bowels are getting sewn up extremely meticulously, right. And same goes with, you know, when I'm caring for critically ill patients and these sorts of things. But as we zoom the lens out a little bit, and look at how our clinics function, how our hospitals function, how our financial lives function in terms of, you know, whether it's real estate, or investing in the markets, that micromanaging can really trip us up. And it's not only in terms of not reaching our financial goals, or our practice goals, but even in terms of our well-being. That there is a limit to how much any one person can micromanage before they start to really hit the wall and become exhausted. So tell me a little bit about that, then, Wing. Talk to me about that second T, talent, as it relates to delegation and outsourcing.
Wing Lim
The micromanagement, I think, it's our trademark. If you looked up the dictionary, you see our pictures in there. And the micromanagement thing, other than just being super focused on success, and no error, no mistake, we are a very mistake-adverse culture because if we make mistakes people die, people suffer, and we lose our license, potentially, we get complaints, blah, blah, blah. So we're very mistake-oriented culture, so we don't trust people. But it's a micromanagement issue. It's an issue, like you need to see a therapist, right, and it's a mistrust. The lack of ability to trust others. And I think the many more years we stay in tertiary care, the more we do that. So the first thing is to undo some thinking deep down, you give yourself permissions, right, I've learned a long time ago, if you give yourself some permissions, you can actually learn to decompress and learn and grow. And first thing was, I'm not the smartest guy, right? And I think as a family physician, as a primary care provider, it's easy for me to do because I always refer. But even specialists, they specialized and when people would always refer out they would say, 'this is not my field', right? So I'm not, I don't need to be the smartest guy, I'm not the smartest guy. So there are lots of talents out there. There's an ancient Chinese saying, "Three people walking, two of them are my teachers". Okay, this is actually a saying from Confucius. And he's not confused. Right? And so that is social, we can learn from everyone, every member on the team. So thinking change number one for talent, is 'I'm not it', right? I need other people that grows, if I'm not the smartest one, I need other people that grows to the next phase, which is called interdependence, right? We've become from dependence to independence, and then now interdependence. And I think that is a breakthrough. It's easier said than done, but we got to lean on it. And healthcare is morphing, man. Right? If you look at how we do things in hospital, we have robotic arms now, I mean, the people from third world with a surgeon here working with a surgeon there, right? Like, we're changing. We've been expected to work with a paramedical professionals, you know their MPs writing orders right next to you.
Kevin Mailo
Our MPs at the hospital are phenomenal. Phenomenal. I feel very privileged to be working with our MPs, because I feel like they helped create one of the best emergency departments in the country. And again, that was a process of learning to work, you know, in an interdisciplinary mindset, and learning to let go a little bit. And it's been just great.
Wing Lim
Yeah, exactly. And once you respect people for what they are contributing, even down to the most, quote, junior person.... I think we have this elitism that's another one we need to fight against. These are cocooning off the shelf, one of which, that leads to pride and arrogance, honestly, is that elitism, right? Like I'm holier than thou and smarter than thou, I belong to the smartest group, I think the sooner we break away from that, and we say, hey, we need each other, the sooner you respect the talent. And the talent is in things that you might not think is important clinically, but it's very, very important. And one example was there was a study going around with complication rates in ICU. They found that the ICU, the highest performing ICUs across the country with the lowest complication rate, come from one single parameter, how easy it is for the lowest ranking person with these knowledge, how easy it is for that person to say, 'Hey, I think we got a problem'. And the ICU group that had even the janitor or anybody, right, supportive staff, will say, 'Hey, I think we got a problem'. If the team listens to that angle, they have the best safety and the least amount of complication.
Kevin Mailo
You have that parallel in the airline industry, where everyone is empowered to speak up and errors, when they are caught, are actually celebrated. And I think that's very powerful. So let's just shift a little bit here, staying on this second T talent. Talk to us about our financial lives, like another one that I see physicians do, I mean, I see physicians not wanting to pay an accountant, they do their own accounting. I see physicians who do their own bookkeeping, which is just, I feel like, overwhelming for me. I see physicians trying to manage their portfolios, talk to us about that, right? Because I see the whole spread. And it's not just about making gains financially, and managing that other T treasury. But it's about, like, our well-being. I mean, for myself personally, working, you know, a 10 hour shift in the emerg, coming home and trying to stare at my books, trying to pick stocks, feels absolutely overwhelming. And I'm certain I would screw that up a whole bunch. And then the couple of times that I've tried it, I have screwed up massively and learned my lesson. So I outsource, right, I have professionals that manage real estate for me, bookkeeping, accounting, and my equities. So talk to us about that in our financial lives, that micromanaging, because I think that's another big one.
Wing Lim
So the T that's talent in the personal finance and corporate finance world is even more pertinent, because you cannot do it all. Right, so the DIY mentality, it goes right back to the mentality that I made, I'm the smartest one I can't trust anyone. Right? And if you want to be that special, you are guaranteed to be small. The S is not Superman, it's like you are super small. So you got to trust me when, if you become a specialist and okay I DIY and do all those do stocks or do crypto, good for you, it becomes a habit, a hobby, good for you. And we're not knocking anybody. But it's a team sport, right? We went to school to play solitaire, but then when we graduate, this is a team sport, right? And so you need to learn how to do a team. And so in finance, more importantly, it's a team sport. You need team members, each with their strength. They don't have to be perfect, right? You have the accountant, you have the lawyer, you have a bean counter, you have a guy who... it's just like Dorothy going to see the Wizard of Oz. She's got all these characters that each have their defects, one has no courage, one has no heart, one has no brain, right? And so these actually, I have been taught, that puts it into all your consultants.
Kevin Mailo
To come back to your point, when this bit on an element of humility, I'll just share one personal story that actually came from today. And you helped me with this. I have a property that I can't sell, I can't rent, and so I'm putting it on AirBNB and I've hired a company to do that. I outsourced. And it's eye-watering, they need a $45,000 check to get the house ready, you know, to stage it, to furnish it, everything. And, you know, I'm so tempted to just like move funds from my PC, pay myself that $45,000, and then write the check off to this company. And I paused and I phoned my accountant. I rarely rarely have any answers in this space, I only have questions. But I'm thankfully very fortunate in that I'm ready to ask questions, even the so called dumb ones, and I just go ahead and ask him, I said, 'Is that smart?' Or should I be loaning money from my PC, or should I be using a line of credit? And he said based on, you know, the nature of the purchases and the property and everything else, line of credit. Wow, wow, right? Huge saving 1000s of dollars right there, huge pressure off me, I'm so happy I did that, maybe, you know, 100 bucks for that phone call, worth every penny of it, right? And so that's a growth for me, right? That's, you know, learning to be humble enough to ask questions. Understanding that I don't have the answers. And we actually do this in practice. When I'm in the emergency department, I feel like I'm in over my head, I pick up the phone and call a consultant. You know, we've got a patient in front of us in clinic, we refer on to a consultant. I mean, you mentioned that earlier, Wing, but it's important to think about that in terms of our financial lives as well, which I think is so powerful. So that was, like, actually today, off went the check.
Wing Lim
You shared and you demonstrated that you actually picked a team member that is valuable. Right? So, but if you didn't pick the right team member, you won't have got that answer. So part of this talent thing is you become a talent agent. Right? People ask me, 'How do you do such big projects?' I said, 'Oh, it's easy. I chum around people who are smarter than me.' Right? If your why is big enough, the house will come to you. I'm not good at engineering at all, right? One day I found myself in a room with 18 engineers around me and 2 architects building this big senior project that is today worth $52 million that we just launched last year, right? So here's the brightest engineering minds in the city, and they're circling around me asking me questions. Well, I chum around with people who are way smarter than me. So when you put the right team together, so it's a talent show where you hunt for the talent, and you hunt for the right talent for the right thing. And then you're going to win, you're going to win because you got the best team, you got the A Team. I'm dating myself with The A Team, Mr. T.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, but it's true. And, you know, like, certainly this AirBNB thing that I'm doing, it is not cheap. I am paying a lot upfront, and I'm paying a lot for management fees, but I am so much happier. Number one, I know it's going to work far better than if I did it myself. And number two, more importantly, I am happier. Because I do not want to be going and trying to turn over a space and micromanage cleaners and everything else, right? It's about our personal well-being along this financial journey that is not simply about getting to a certain number, a certain net worth, a certain cash flow. It's really about building a financial plan that works in our personal lives. That works with our practice lives. I think that's so important. So important.
Wing Lim
Exactly. The other example is, tying the three T's together, is if you DIY everything yourself, you're gonna miss some advice, and tax is single handedly the biggest expense in our life. And if you don't get the right tax advice or, worse, get the wrong advice, you could be wasting a lot of money. I spent the time, sought out a smart guy in insurance and in tax, and I went home and ran it by my team and I saved about $350,000 in tax based on that one piece of advice.
Kevin Mailo
Yeah, that is exactly it. And you know what, we have seen that on our Physician Empowerment conferences, people come up and they go, 'Oh, my goodness, I wish I knew this 20 years ago'. And it's never too late. Right? Like that's the most amazing thing about anything in life - any stage, anything in life, is that nothing is ever too late. So if you have those kinds of questions, start asking them, start going to people, start building that team, begin now. It can be so powerfully transformative. And I have missed out on far more deals than I had been part of. And that's okay, because guess what, Warren Buffett didn't buy Walmart, didn't buy Amazon, and he's doing just fine, right? So it is never too late to be okay. And better than okay, it is never too late to thrive in our financial lives and in our practice lives. Tomorrow is always a new day.
Wing Lim
So more important than the actual talent that we thought we need to possess, is to ask the question why? And ask the right questions. What questions are we supposed to ask? Now interestingly, the word knowledge, which is a Greek word, but in Chinese the word knowledge is actually two characters: learn, ask. So knowledge in Chinese thinking is 'learn to ask questions'. So that the more knowledge you got, that means that the more questions you learn to ask, you just ask smarter questions. So what we hope to empower people at Physician Empowerment, it's a peer to peer empowerment process, is to empower you to ask better questions to your own team. How do we assemble the right team, keep asking questions, and in doing that you have an enlightened path. Right? And then you can reach your own goal, which is different than mine or yours, right?
Kevin Mailo
I love that. I absolutely love that, Wing. So I think we're going to actually start winding it down. We don't want to make these too heavy. We don't make these too long. And I'll just share a little bit of my own wellness with those that might be a little bit late joining, is that I'm about to go waterskiing, and it's a beautiful summer night, and I'm not going to miss that. Anyhow, being out on the lake, on the boat, it's going to be great. So we are going to wind it down here. I've really, really, really loved this. I'm always inspired when we talk like this, because it's these bigger questions, right? It's learning to take risk. It's learning to ask the big questions, why. It's learning to be humble enough to reach out to people in our practice lives, in our financial lives, that are going to help us soar. That it doesn't have to be a one person show. So we have quite a few people who've joined us in the webinar. And I'll just put it out there briefly for anyone that wants to ask questions, go ahead and type them into the chat. But otherwise, I'm also just happy to wind it down. Because this was great. And this is only a start of what we're going to be covering in this area because there's so much... you know what, when I reflect on practice success or financial success, it's about grit. And this is some of the process of building grit, just that inner toughness, that inner resiliency to keep going when you feel like giving up. And so I'd invite anyone who's interested, just reach out to us, go on the website or sign up for emails, but like we are super accessible, you reach out to us over email, phone. And if you want to know more about our masterclass or conferences, we're always happy to talk about them. But at any rate, I think I'm gonna wrap it up there. And I really want to thank everyone for joining tonight. And Wing, I really want to thank you, again, for just sharing so much wisdom.
Wing Lim
Well, thank you. It's always fun and we hope to see more of everyone. Thanks.
Kevin Mailo
Thank you so much for listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. If you're ready to take those next steps in transforming your practice, finances, or personal well being, then come and join us at physempowerment.ca - P H Y S empowerment.ca - to learn more about how we can help. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with a colleague or friend and head over to Apple podcasts to give us a five star rating and review. If you've got feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episode topics, we'd love to hear from you. If you want to join us and be interviewed and share some of your story, we'd absolutely love that as well. Please send me an email at [email protected]. Thank you again for listening. Bye.