306. Surround Yourself with Positive People: The #1 Mindset Hack for Continued Passion & Drive with Dame Dr. Hoa Nguyen

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm so happy you're here. Happiness solved is the place where we explore everything you need to become the best possible version of you. This is Sandee Sgarlata. And today I've got some exciting news for our dedicated listeners.

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We've just launched our exclusive members only portal. This is your ticket to a world of additional content designed to deepen your understanding and engagement with the happiness solved mission. To learn more about all of the exciting benefits, stay tuned until the end of the episode, where I will explain in greater detail. For those interested now, head over to happinesssolved dot supercast.com. Today is another amazing conversation, so let's get started.

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Hello. It's such a pleasure to be seeing you again. I know we met, well, I think for the second time, actually, in December at Bill Walsh's event in Las Vegas. It's so great to see you. How's everything going?

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It's going great. Great to see you again, Sandy. Yes, so great to see you. You've got such an interesting background, and I've heard bits and pieces of it, and I really want to hear it from you and for the audience. You're an optometrist, big real estate investor, and just really incredible background because of the, you know, immigrating into the United States.

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And I'd love to have you share your story with our audience. No, absolutely. Thank you. You know, my parents left Vietnam after the war, and so my dad actually was the one who rescued about 35 people on a wooden boat. My mom was pregnant with me at the time, and so I was born in the refugee camp in the Philippines and moved around to a lot of different places before we moved to the US when I was about eight and a half years old.

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And so I went from up north all the way down, and so I was, like, in 13 different schools before we landed in New Orleans, and that was the fifth grade. And so when people ask me, where are you from? I claim New Orleans. But I've been around so many different places. And so growing up in New Orleans was, you know, a little trailer, very humble beginnings, $3,000 trailer my parents purchased.

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But it was our first home, you know, and a very rough area of New Orleans. And my dad passed away really young, and so learning how to work at a very young age. By ten, I was already working in the family business with my mom, and so became a really young entrepreneur early on. And so work ethic was very ingrained at a young age. But, you know, my mom was never allowed to go to school as a woman, being in Vietnam.

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And so, you know, I academically really wanted to pursue that american dream, and so I worked really hard, went to school, worked, you know, was the first one in my family to be able to go to college and become a doctor, you know. And so pursuing to become a doctor was a big milestone for me. And I met my husband now of, you know, we've been together for 19 years, but we met in optometry school, and our dream was always to, you know, be able to have our own private practices. And so, you know, we've been able to have two private practices here in Dallas. I live here past 18 years and built two successful practices here and really worked hard.

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You talk about hustling and grinding and coming out with an immense amount of student loan debt, but the journey really pivoted into real estate only because we had our daughter and we were trying to figure out ways to find not just financial freedom, but time freedom so that I could be able to be a mom. And I love doing a lot of charity work and traveling the world, but when you're busy and you have two full time practices, that's almost impossible to really, for sure, you know? And so real estate investing was a way for us to be able to also have means of additional income for us to kind of free of some time and be able to travel and spend more time with our daughter. And that's kind of how that transition happened. Wow.

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Wow. That's incredible. And you hear so many stories like yours, and at the end of the day, our families all immigrated to this country, some before, others, like my father's family was here right around the civil war, but my mom's side came over in the 1920s. So we've been here for a while, but we're all have those stories of how our grandparents or our parents or many times I've talked to many people who themselves immigrated and have these amazing stories of resilience. What do you think that has done for you in terms of being so successful in your business?

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Like, what is there? Is there one thing that. That you could share with the audience that helps you to keep going, that to keep striving? Because at the end of the day, it's not easy being an entrepreneur. Right.

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So it's a lot easier. It's a lot easier said than done, right? Absolutely. You know, and especially being an entrepreneur, you really work more than when you work for someone else. Right.

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But you're working towards your own dreams, right? And so, so for me, I've always had the mentality of, you know, I don't know if you've ever heard of the saying kanai, but it's constant and never ending improvement. And that's in all different areas of my life that contribute, and it's a domino effect. And so I work heavily on self development. I work heavily on, you know, and it translates into my business world.

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And as an entrepreneur, I think that's very important, you know, that you can. I'm always a long lifetime learner. I get excited, I get passionate and kind of discovering what's the next version of me? What's the next level of me inside? What are some skill sets and passions I haven't quite discovered yet?

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So I'm always curious. And that's why I love to get into so many different ecosystems and meeting so many different people, not just here, but around the world. And that's part of why I love the passion to travel is because you start to unveil so much more outside of our bubble of what we're accustomed to. And knowing is like, man, I keep discovering how little I know, right? And the more there is.

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And so it keeps it exciting for me, you know? And as an entrepreneur, that's something that I take into. I translate from my outside world of when I travel, but that translates into my business of me growing individually, my mindset growing, right. My heart growing, my mission of why I'm doing what I'm doing grows. And so my drive is, it ignites my feel and my passion to want to work harder and do even more, you know?

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Wow, I can just feel your energy. Like, even though we're, you know, thousands of miles away. You're in Dallas, I'm in DC, metro area. I can still feel your passion and your energy, and that's so incredible. And I want to circle back to something that you said because I think it's really, it's very profound and yet it's so simple.

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And that is, you want to see the next version of yourself. You said something to that effect. Because I think that so often, so many people just get stuck, and this is the way I'm always going to be. And I know working with young athletes as their sports psychology coach, for lack of a better term, it's so interesting because they're like, oh, so what I know now isn't how it always has to be. And I'm like, no, no, you can change your mindset.

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And so often they're not introduced to that concept, right. Until they take that course or whatever. And we know that success is 80% mindset, 20% tactics, right? So what is the best mindset hack, if you will, that you have found that really helps you stay going every single day because like we said, you know, it's every day you got to start over and you've got to keep that drive going, right. You know, for me, like the mindset at a very young age, you know, I, I read this book called a man's search for meaning in the fifth grade, right?

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But because back then, I didn't have a role model, per se. My role model was my mom, right, just working hard, but I didn't have role models and we didn't have the Internet and we didn't have all the fancy things that we now have today. But mindset was the biggest thing that kept my grit and through hard times and even till this day. And what I do a lot of is I do a lot of celebrating and reflection. I'm big on gratitude and perspective and at a very young age when I had absolutely nothing and through not just financial hardships, but a lot of other hardships, right, but what always kept me going from the past and what keeps me going till the day today, even through the most challenging times, right, is I always do reflection and celebration, gratitude, right.

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I journal heavily, right? Everything in my mind and my heart goes on paper and I bring. I'm a big believer in the power of manifestation, right? And I think that every time there's a challenge, I come out stronger and there's a better version and next level of me, right. And so I embrace challenges and I know that that's part of the journey, right.

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And so I don't feel like if I'm cruising along and everything is going too easy, I know that I'm not pushing beyond my comfort zone, right? I know I'm not really growing to the next level, and so I embrace that and I expect it. But there, are there hard times and days where it's like, man, do I want to give up? Absolutely. I have days and moments where I'm like, man, it's some tough times, but I know there's light at the end of the tunnel, right?

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And a big part of the mindset is not just reflecting. I change my environment. I'm very, very invested in surrounding myself in the right group of people. And I think that network of people who you surround yourself with, I remove all toxic people as much as I can, negative and toxic people out of my world. And my inner circle, and I purposely and intentionally find people and have that positive abundance mindset.

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And I think that's been the biggest contributor for me, to continue to have that passion, drive and positivity. Right? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Again, you said so many incredible things first, and I say this all the time, in order to grow, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

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Right. That was incredible. And then the next thing you said that was really awesome is celebrating your wins. And I think that that needs to be really highlighted because so often, especially as women, we focus on what we didn't do. Right.

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Because we have these big lists. I didn't get this done. I didn't get this done and instead switched the dialogue to, look what I did accomplish. Right. I know I had to do that with myself yesterday because it was Sunday and I wanted to work and I didn't feel like it, and I allowed myself not to work, and I was like, well, you know, I got three loads of laundry done.

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Yes.

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Absolutely. Got to celebrate all the small wins. Right? Right, exactly. Let's shift our focus a minute to money mindset, because I know that you and your husband have created a very large real estate portfolio.

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I remember hearing the number, but I'm not going to misquote it, but I just remember hearing it at Bill Walsh. They were talking about you. I think you may have been called on stage, or maybe you were on a panel. I think you're on a panel. I was on a panel.

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Right. That's right. That's what it was. And having that healthy money mindset is really important. And sometimes it can be very hard when you come from such humble beginnings.

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I know for me, coming from humble beginnings myself, you know, there's been a lot of blocks, money blocks that I've had to work through.

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What are some of the things that you do to help open that up, especially when it comes to manifesting? Because that's what it boils down to. Right. Like attracts like. Absolutely.

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You know, money mindset at a young age, you know, because I was introduced in the entrepreneurial world, and as I continue to grow my business and the money mindset around it is, there's that abundance mindset. I don't feel like that by me making more, someone's making less. Right. And my mindset around money is the more that I have, the more that I can give. And because what fuels me is my passion to travel and do a lot of my philanthropy work, I know that the more that I am able to grow my businesses, it means that I'm serving more patients or I'm serving more investors or I'm serving more residents or whatever, I'm doing this, I am impacting that, but that also funnels to be able to do more mission work and travel.

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Right. And so in that mindset, it allows me to not have complacency because it's easy to get to a certain point or feel like that you can't make anymore, that you're kind of capped at a certain amount because in school you're kind of taught, like, to have a job. We're not really taught entrepreneurship and we're not taught about financial literacy and the money mindset, but that's one of the big things for me, and that's why I continually grow and I invest heavily in masterminds and specialized knowledge. And I think specialized knowledge is the reason why our money has been able to expand. Not only are we putting ourselves around the right people in the ecosystems, but we're investing in the right mentors and coaches who are in the specialized lanes that we can actually partner with.

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And I always talk about relationship capital because that relationship capital is going to be the driver for you to be able to leverage that experience, resource and knowledge, to be able to then collaborate and really build multiple streams of income. And so it's not just you do it yourself mentality when you really want to expand and scale and grow your businesses. It's all about teams, meaningful relationships and collaboration. I love that because it's an abundance mentality. Yeah.

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And I've learned I can pick up very quickly when you're communicating with someone, whether they have that abundance mentality or the lack of abundance. That lack mentality. And like you, I choose to just surround myself with people that have that abundance mentality because we can help each other. We can all help each other grow. Yeah, absolutely.

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I love that. I love that. So with your real estate, if there's somebody that wants to get into real estate investments, what do you say? Because I know you've done a lot of various types of investments in real estate. What is your suggestion for anybody that's looking like, where do you start?

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Like, where's the best place to start if you want to go down that path? You know, real estate is such a vast lane of different assets. Right. And so when you're learning, whether you're learning single family, whether it's, you know, short term rental, long term rental flipping, or you're doing larger properties, like we're doing apartments, and what we do specifically is called apartment syndications or, you're doing hotel, it doesn't matter what asset class you have to go to a group or a mentor or coach who specializes in the lane of the real estate investing you want to do, because a single family home investing group who does flipping or wholesaling is going to be a totally different group of knowledge base and how they do business compared to someone who's doing commercial retail, office space, multifamily, things like that. And so when somebody gets, you know, there's local meetups, there's lots of boot camps, you know, there's coaches and mentors for the specialized lane that you're in.

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And so that's why I invest in people who specifically do exactly what I want to do. Right. If I learn apartment investing, I'm going to go find someone who successfully has a good track record already is pursuing that, and that's who I'm going to go leverage to partner with them or to go into a meetup where they do education. There's a lot of education webinars. Like, we specialize in the lane for multifamily.

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And so that's the type of things that we go to, networking events. We have masterminds, we have coaches. Like, we coach and mentor in those lanes, too, but that's specifically so if someone's doing wholesaling, I can't help them. I don't know anything about that. Right.

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If someone's doing more single family, I only have one single family that I Airbnb and do short term rentals. So my experience is only off of that one home. Now, if you talk about apartments, I've got 28 apartment communities, over 7500 units. That's my bread and butter. That's my specialty lane.

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Right? And so I always say, if you're gonna go learn and you're gonna invest, especially if you're gonna go invest in hiring someone as a coach or mentor, you wanna make sure that they're actually doing well in their lane and that they have experience in their lane, right? And so there's different social media groups if you're wanting it, just like, where do I even start? You know, there's a group called biggerpockets online and there's people from all different asset classes. If you're just like, well, I don't even know what real estate space I want to go into.

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You can go into big pockets and ask questions. It's a free community and there's a lot of people who are experienced whole pitch in and then kind of tell you what event or what, you know, mastermind or mentorship programs there are available and what books and resources, because the book that you need for the real estate investing, depending on what lane you're in, is going to vary vastly. Right. There's local meetups. If you go on eventbrite and you just search the type of investing you want to do in your city, I guarantee you you'll find some local meetups and networks and groups that can give you resources that you can go hang out.

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But I would encourage with people who just want to get their feet wet and get in, but to learn and then from there find the books, but mentorships all the way. I am a big believer in collapsing the timeframe and making less mistakes. Right. I tell you that, because that can be so costly if you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. Right.

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And hoping it sticks. Yeah. So if somebody is interested in getting into the multifamily real estate industry, you mentioned that you have masterminds. Can you just share a little bit about what you have to offer if people are interested in that realm? Yeah.

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So we do free, we have a free community that they can get on. We do education webinars monthly, but for actual one on one personal coaching, we do that and we do customized coaching depending on what area and how much expertise they already have. And then we can help them get into their first deal. We can pretty much show them a to z how to do the business. Right now we do group coaching.

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If someone doesn't necessarily have the resources or time to want to do one on one personal coaching, we do group coaching where it's weekly calls as well in a group community setting. But that way we can pretty much welcome pretty much everything that I've learned in my timeframe. And they can tap into all my resources and my knowledge and all the events that I go to and what I recommend. And I bring a lot of people into groups that you're not actually, you can't just pay to get in. They're by invite only.

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And so that's a big thing once you know somebody who can get you in the door, because in this business, it's not so much what you know, it's who you know.

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It's like that in a lot of businesses. But, yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. All right, so for all the listeners out there, if you're interested in getting into the multifamily housing real estate industry, definitely reach out to doctor Waden Nguyen. And how do people get a hold of you?

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I'll make sure it's in the show notes as well. But on our website, it's passivewealth.com, and then the other website is bethewnember 23 dot, and it'll have some modules and kind of some things on the mentorship on there as well. Fantastic. Well, I will make sure that's in the show notes. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about today, Juan, that you would like to share with the audience?

00:22:33
No. I absolutely love your title of your podcast, right, of happiness resolved. And that's one of my things that Jaime and I are so passionate about, too. Asides from just people know me as the real estate gal, but honestly, one of the things that I enjoy and have loved doing ever since, especially because I joined Bill's group and it's almost been three years now being able to speak. And so I'm always happy to educate.

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Like, I love to educate, educate, educate a lot of the things that we haven't been able to learn ourselves. So everything that I've learned in my collapse timeframe from real estate, investing, entrepreneurship, just overcoming adversity, right. Having that abundance and growth mindset and how to live a happy, abundant life, like, how do you create and design and manifest the life? And you can change whatever position you're in. And I'm a big believer in that.

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Right. And so if anybody ever needs a speaker, that's something I'm passionate about. So, you know, let me know as well. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today.

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It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope to see you sometime this year at another event. I'm sure, I'm sure our paths will cross. And anyway, best of luck. Continued success for you.

00:23:57
Thank you. Thank you so much.

00:24:10
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. And as promised, I'd like to give you more details of what you can expect as a member of the happiness solved exclusive community. First, you'll have access to a treasure trove of extra podcast episodes. These episodes dive deeper into the topics we discussed, featuring additional expert interviews only found here. But that's not all.

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00:25:45
Again, I am so grateful for you, and I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care, everyone.