Episode 43: Up To Code
Apr 7, 2022
You can save on expenses initially. But you could also miss out on never actually learning the skills that you may need down the road in the future. Right. And you may not have this opportunity again, to build the network that you would need to help you.

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Hi, I'm Dr. Melva you're board-certified radiation oncologist, and serial entrepreneur and investor. Welcome to the 1% code podcast. I help top income earners create multiple streams of income to support the career they love or the one they want to love. Learn more on the 1% code podcast. Hello. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the 1% code podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Melva board-certified radiation oncologist, serial entrepreneur investor, franchise owner, and I help physician entrepreneurs who are struggling to grow additional income streams, navvy entrepreneurship and scale their. So today, I want you to talk to you about being up to code and what do I mean by that?

So those of you who have listened to the 1% code, and you've heard me talk about my husband and I are real estate investors. Yes, we are working on a commercial reason. Project right now. And we're working with inspectors and talking about codes and compliance. And as a physician, I talk about codes just did BLS.

They have this RQI where there's a mannequin and you have to do it every 30 days. Now, American red cross, he came up with this. So the word code is, is quite familiar. So it's career and entrepreneur journey that this comes up, this concept of being up to code. And I've thought about this theme, it's doing it right in the beginning.

That's important. And it's the concept of laying the proper framework. It's a solid foundation. So when we think about building a house, we start with the foundation and the framework, right. And when we think about a business, whether it's. Starting or growing your business, scaling your business. It's all about the strategy and the roadmap.

So as my husband, I were talking earlier today and let me just share this story with you. I thought about, you know, let's, let's talk about this on the next podcast episode, you know, being up to code and what does that really mean as entrepreneurs and being in the 1%. Or those of us who are aspiring to be in the 1%, if you're still in the workforce and you haven't made that leap yet completely to your life of freedom.

So we were talking about this commercial rehab. And for those of you who haven't heard, the one we've had, we've owned this property for a while. And right now we're working on the apartments that are upstairs and the electrical portion. So my husband was in the building and the city inspector did a pop up because we have an open permit.

So with the open permit, for those of you who have not done a commercial property or had permits or done real estate investing for that matter, great stream of income, if you're working on your multiple streams of income that we talk about here at the 1% code, often when you have an open permit, inspectors are able to come on the property unannounced.

So the electrical inspector came by and we're just now in the beginning phases of. This electrical work and we're at the phase for the Ruffin. So running the wires, placing the panel boxes and there were about seven single efficiency apartments on the second level of this commercial building in downtown where the Hampton roads, Virginia area.

So my husband was actually downstairs and he had the doors open. He was waiting for the crew to come in the building. I think he was doing some more kind of cleaning up. And he heard someone call out. He thought it was part of the crew and then it was the inspector. So he said it was, it was a really cool guy.It was a great interaction. Thank goodness. And it's an older historical unit. And he was saying how the inspector was pointing out. Some things. Even though I had gone through the city engineer, the plans, and then the architect and it all been signed off. The inspector was saying this was quote, not up to code.

And he was mentioning a couple of things on the outside of the building that would need to be rerun. And in the long run, it brought up in our conversation. There's two entrepreneurs talking about this. Like immediately we see dollar signs, right? Just like more money. The more you say, not up to code or things that need to change, you see money in a couple of different ways.

And I kind of wanted to share that perspective with you today. And, and have you think through this, or I'd love to hear your thoughts around this in the long run. If you're not up to code in the beginning. So, so we're going back to the solid foundation. It will cost you more money in the end if it's not done properly upfront.

So being up to code and having in this example, Commercial property, which you don't have, that you really don't have an option. Okay. If you're doing everything, you know, above board getting permits correctly, which I encourage. Okay. That's how we want to do things. Cause we don't want buildings blowing up, falling down.

Especially if you're working on bridges, right. That'd be bad. So if you're, if you're going through the proper channels and proper process, you don't really have a choice because it has to pass inspection for safety reasons. And if you're not in you're in some other situation where you do have a choice, you know, it's your choice.

And hopefully you're going to choose wisely, especially if you're one of my, my listeners. But the point is it's going to cost you more money in the long run. If you don't set it up properly, but where I'm going with this is that in those times that you do have a chance to choose, it can also cost you money upfront.

If you don't know, or you don't have a situation where you have to have, or you're forced to have an inspector come to let you know that it's not up to code. So this really brought up to me or. The thought where I think a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck for one of two reasons. One is that. When you're new or you're green, and let's say you're going into a new space or a new vertical, let's say you're getting into real estate investing for the first time.

Maybe short-term rentals Airbnb market, or you're getting into the rental market, or you're starting a coaching business or high ticket coaching business. Right. Let's say you're a physician and you've decided that you want to be a high ticket coach, right? Maybe there's some things that you don't know how to discern, if you're up to code and you don't have an inspector that's coming in to let you know that it can cost you a lot of money in the beginning because of the mistakes that you've made.

Right. Because you don't know how to qualify that. So that just, I think that's important to know that. So how, how do you avoid those? You know, one of those ways is that it's your circle. And this is why I bring this up a lot. You have to have that community for masterminding and support and accountability because when you discuss the issues that you're going through, people who are, even if they're one step ahead of you, they're going to be able to add that perspective to help you, you know, much like an inspector to say, Hey, this, you know, this building is older and you have the wires outside the building.

No, and this nail was going through and there's water and this could cause an electrical fire or whatever, you know, and it's going to cost us money down the line and they may have missed it at the city level. And your architect may not have seen it, but we're the last. No sign of defense, right? So that's what people in your entrepreneurial journey can do.

They can help you be up to code. Right? So that's one of the areas that I think we can make mistakes in entrepreneurship is if we don't know how to, how to really tell if we're setting ourselves up for failure, because we just don't have that one. And then I think the second one is when exceptions are made.

And typically it's exciting when you get things where you don't have to put a lot of money up front or you don't have to follow the rules for example. And what I'm referring to is when you're grandfathered in. Right? So for example, This could happen in part of our commercial building. It's a mixed use commercial building.

Part of our building is grandfathered in based on when we got the property and what's already in operation that we don't have to redo, but it may be in our favor to redo it based on cost savings down the road for electric. Per se let's say energy efficiency and what the bills are. When we look at the bills, you know, as far as heating air, that kind of thing is if it makes more sense financially for us to redo it.

So when you get situations where your grandfather in, and there are exceptions to the rules where the rules don't apply, because you have a loophole, a legal loophole there, pros and cons that you should consider, and this should be an exercise that you do in the beginning, right? The framework, the strategy map.

So you can save on time. You can save on expenses initially, but you could also miss out on never actually learning the skills that you may need down the road in the future. Right. And you may not have this opportunity again, to build the network that you would need to help you. Right. If you don't have the same accommodations or you're not offered this grandfather clause in your next entrepreneurial journey.

And I bring this up because there's situations that I can think about as a physician where, well, the one that's coming to mind is probably not a good one to discuss on a podcast because I don't really know where you're listening to this one, but let's just say my specialty is a radiation oncologist treating prostate as a medical student, I was able to bypass.

This part of the exam quite a lot, but as a prostate specialist, it's quite frequently part of my exam. So moving along. So anyway, being up to code is something that's very important. So just to recap, one, you have to know what the codes are in, what that means, what the expectations are, what you should be on the lookout for.

You can always get help by building community, building your network, having wisdom around you. Someone mentorship experts who are at least one step ahead of you. If not more looking at the pros and cons, looking where you're going to save money, make more money where it's profitable at the beginning later, staying above board.

And if you don't have an inspector, that's part of the process finding your own inspectors, right. And in those situations where you don't have to go through the process, you know, challenge yourself and see if maybe you should just at least both of the exercise of considering that. So the other area that I think up to code comes into play as well.

You're scaling your business or growing your business in a way that you can bring in team members. And in the last episode, if you were able to listen to it, I talked about hiring and outsourcing better, and that was really all about working with other people. And when you work with other people in your business, you can grow your business, you can scale it and remove yourself.

And ultimately that's the goal because none of us want to be. Hopefully, none of us want to be working like many of us as physicians, uh, started doing everything all the time, every day, right? Like 24/ 7. That's not really the goal, hopefully. And the other is transitioning from employee to entrepreneur, being up to code.

So scaling and doing that transition, releasing and removing yourself as the primary. Being up to code. What I think of this is creating a framework, creating systems in your business, creating solid foundations with business principles that can help you to have a successful business and entrepreneur journey, creating the strategies that you will use and continue to use and continue to tweak as things change.

And your business needs change, creating relationships that will be solid, and that will grow to help support your business. I had an episode talking about figuring it out because this entrepreneur journey changes and it challenges you. And that's part of it. Having a sustainable business that works in different markets, different economies, under different political leadership.

This is part of being up to code, staying relevant so that in your entrepreneur journey, you're not guessing, but you become a problem solver, right? Looking for solutions that work for. The other thing I think about when I think about the concept of being up to code is meeting expectations and demands to stay afloat without getting discouraged, because being up to code also lends itself to disappointment inspections and rejection.

And I think that. This doesn't come up enough when we talk about entrepreneurial journeys, even as a physician, I think that we don't talk about the hard times enough, maybe in 2022, we talked about it a little bit more than maybe we did when, when I was in medical school and it was, you know, carry the weight and smile and grin and bear it.

But we have to think about the end goal and the big picture and the angle and the big picture. If yours is like mine is to find the joy and happiness and the freedom for many of us it's to spend more time with our families. It's to have passive income streams is to have multiple income streams is to have leverage it's to be able to leave a legacy it's to be able to serve in our career, but also bring in other sources of income without us being involved.

And to do that. They're going to be ups and downs. There will be challenges and we will not always be up to code on the first go. So leave room to improve. Right. So we know that as we complete this project, And as we get started on this electrical journey at our building, as I take it back to the commercial property that we were talking about, that just really set these ideas in motion for me.

And I hope this is hitting home for you. I know it may have been a little bit hard to follow as I kind of walked you through. But I know that as we go through this electrical and we go through this inspection, there will be some advice and things that we get and directives that we will not like, for example, the power company mentioned that they wanted to bring more power underground and that just screams dollar signs because historically, sometimes that means the owners of the property.

I.e: My husband and I. The, our LLC historically may have to pay for that. There are other instances you can get grant coverages and there are other instances historically where the power company is paid for that. So it's kind of like a crapshoot, right? So there are going to be uncomfortable times in your business.

Just like there will be uncomfortable times in our business and there have been on our entrepreneur journey. But again, we go back to the big picture, the end goal. And ultimately the why, why are we doing this? So I hope that this episode up to code has given you some new thoughts today. I hope you've gotten some inspiration from this, and I hope that if you were working with an inspector that you get a cool one, because I think we lucked out on this.

It sounds like the inspector that popped up today was pretty cool. And I hope he stays that way because we would like to check off the box with our electrical because this one, this one has been a long one coming. I'm Dr. Melva. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the 1% podcast. I'll see you on the next one.
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