MBA2599 Extended Interview: Yuri Elkaim- From Professional Soccer Player to Multi-Million Dollar Business Coach. How To Get Unstuck & Grow Your Business.

Ever wondered how someone goes from being a holistic nutritionist, pro athlete, and best-selling author to a multimillion-dollar business coach? And all while overcoming personal health struggles? It’s a seriously inspiring journey. In this interview, Omar dives into the story of Yuri Elkaim, the founder of Healthpreneur. Yuri shares how his unique background and challenges helped shape his strategies, letting him guide businesses to grow from six to seven figures. He’s all about breaking through barriers, really understanding clients, and building businesses that thrive. Ready for some game-changing advice? Just hit that play button at the top of the page to get started. It’s packed with practical tips and insights to help turn your business dreams into a reality! Visit Yuri's website: Healthpreneur®Follow Yuri on Instagram: @healthpreneurWatch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed

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• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yuri Elkheim is a registered holistic nutritionist, is a New York Times bestselling author, he's a fitness expert, former professional athlete, and the founder and CEO of Healthpreneur.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Yuri Elkheim.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Learning the art of influence and persuasion of sales, most entrepreneurs, regardless of their industry, will tell you that sales is one of the most important skills you can develop.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  What was one of the most unconventional pieces of advice that you've received in your journey in entrepreneurship?

• 1:37Speaker 03

  I used to work with Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. He didn't say this to me directly, but I was obviously in a workshop with him and said...

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm Omar Zenhome, your host. And once a month on this podcast, we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise a great mind sharing their journey to success, how they did it, and how you could do it too. Sometimes we'll bring on an accomplished entrepreneur, a bestselling author, maybe an incredible athlete. Today, we have somebody... Who is all three? Yuri Elkaim is a New York Times bestselling author, a former professional athlete, was a professional soccer player, and a renowned business strategist, and now the founder and CEO of Healthpreneur. He helps health professionals go from six to seven figures and beyond. Today, we discuss his journey. We talk about how, from a young age,

• 2:32Speaker 00

  he started playing soccer and became a pro in his twenties. How, from a young age, he realized even though he's an athlete, he's actually not that healthy because he started losing his hair due to an autoimmune disease. This kind of like jolted him into action and got him to think seriously about what is healthy, really? And it became his life's work. What I love about Yuri is that he's just really genuine in the way he helps others. And you could tell in today's conversation that he's really coming from a place of wanting to help you get better. He cuts through the BS and kind of tells you, "Hey, don't do all this stuff. This is the stuff that works." And this is what I love about today's episode, today's lesson, I say. But he really is able to teach us

• 3:16Speaker 00

  the gems that he picked up along the way. Not only did he build his empire, but along the way, he's helped over 50,000 people to get better and to get healthier. His bestselling books and his wisdom has been shared on Dr. Oz, on the TV show The Doctors. And he's not just all talk. He's built multiple businesses. One, he's sold after building for 13 years. And today, he's got a multimillion-dollar business helping health professionals grow their business. Healthpreneur, which we'll talk about in the chat. So, without further ado, we're going to jump into the conversation with Yuri Elkaim. You're going to absolutely love this one. Let's get into it. Yuri, so good to have you on the show. I heard about you for many years.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  I was glad to see your name in my inbox when we kind of lined you up for this talk. You know, when we hear about people, when we know them online, we Google them, we see their websites, we kind of understand what they do and what they're about. But what I want to kind of start with is, what are some of the things from maybe your childhood, from you growing up, your household, that kind of really influenced who you are as a person today and even as an entrepreneur?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, thanks again for having me Omar. This is a pleasure to be here. So I'd say like, you know, one of the things that's maybe a lot of people don't know that I don't share publicly is the fact that my parents divorced when I was a young age. So I was maybe 10 or 11 when they divorced. Obviously it happens to, you know, a lot of people, but I think what was interesting is that my mom was in corporate and my dad was an entrepreneur. So my dad had a retail shop. My mom worked for Exxon and Pureloy. She did the corporate travel for like the chairman and stuff. And it's just very interesting growing up with two very different personalities from that perspective. And I saw from my mom, I'm like, I never, never want to be in situations where it's like, my manager is such a, you know what, and like dealing with that stuff, politics of the corporate world, but also seeing my dad, for the most part, a solopreneur. He ran his own retail store,

• 5:11Speaker 03

  but he was in the store. Like he didn't trust anyone to really handle his affairs. And obviously at the time, a lot of it was cash, right? So he actually would have, you know, I remember two people that he eventually employed and then they fell apart because, you know, people were paying for a suit, you know, $2,000 cash and the cash is not accounted for. And then there's all this stuff and he was working seven days a week, right? So I never really didn't see him that much. So growing up, I saw those two perspectives. And I remember like, sometimes our best role models are negative role models. And for me, both of my parents were negative role models. And I say that in the nicest way possible. Like I learned a lot about entrepreneurship from my dad. And I was like, I never want to have that. I want to have a business that works for me, that I don't have to be there 24/7 and I want to help a lot of people. And at the same time,

• 5:56Speaker 03

  seeing what my mom went through was a blessing because I'm like, I would never want to work in a cubicle, never work at that kind of company. And so that was a really big blessing for me growing up. And then like during that journey, my big passion from a young age was to play pro soccer. So that was my obsession while I was in my teenage years. That was it. Like I had nothing else in my life other than play pro soccer. So until 19, that's all I did was train, play, eat, sleep soccer, turn down jobs, turn down all sorts of stuff, family trips. Like I remember my mom and brother went to Cuba for a week. I'm like, no, I have a tournament this weekend. I'm staying home. We lost 10-0 in the first match and we were done. But like, those are the sacrifices that when you want to pursue stuff. So I was very driven as a young kid, very like laser focused on achieving that objective. And I was able to do that for a number of years in my early twenties.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  And, you know, I've taken that same kind of focus and drive into a lot of other aspects of my life. It's also a common theme I've noticed with a lot of other athletes. It's like they take that drive and that ambition from whether it was high school, college, pro level, and it just translates into other areas of life. Like when you have the bug, you have the bug. Like it's like, it's, it's just the mindset. And it's always a pleasure to, to connect with people at that and, and work with them as clients. So that was, you know, very formative growing up between that, like the sport and then my parents. I ended up losing all my hair to an autoimmune condition when I was just about seventeen years old. And that was a real big like kick in the ass, like whoa, what like, what just happened? There was an autoimmune called alopecia. And that really sent me on a trajectory of like, okay, cool.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Let's figure out why this happened. And it's one of the best things that ever happened for me because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if that hadn't happened. So those are kind of like three big scenarios, I guess, or, or things that, that shaped me growing up for sure.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Uh, were, what, any of your parents immigrants?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  So my dad is Moroccan, my mom was Danish. They actually met, so they lived in Paris for seven years just before I was born. And I was like, I was joking with them, like, you know, it would have made my life soccer wise a lot easier if you like had me in France. But, um, so they were, yeah, so they both had immigrated to Canada and then they lived in Toronto and that's where I grew up.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  The reason why I ask is because both my parents are immigrants. They immigrated from Egypt. And it's almost identical situation where my dad was the kind of the risk taker and my mom was more of the conservative, like, let's make sure there's food on the table. Let's make sure our bills are paid, all that kind of stuff. And it's interesting because people will immigrate to a new country, they'll see new opportunity and two people can have different reactions. Some will be like, okay, this is great. Let's make sure that we don't lose it. And the other person might be like, oh, look at all these opportunities. Let's, let's jump after every single thing we see. Did you see that dynamic growing up and do you feel like that may be a reason why they weren't compatible?

• 8:42Speaker 03

  I think it was more cultural that they weren't compatible. Well, it was interesting, like in terms of risk, my mom was very. And I actually adopted this to my dismay for a long time was she racked everything up on credit cards and debt. So we take a trip or we do something and it was all paid for by credit. And so even subconsciously up until my probably early thirties, that's a lot of how I lived as well. So I I accumulated a lot of debt over the years because I didn't know how to manage money. I didn't understand it properly. And that was kind of part of my money blueprint for a very, very long time. It was never really about like, we can't afford this or like, we have to like be frugal. It was more about we'll just do this and then it just so happens it was all on credit and so forth.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  My dad was interesting was because his, his business at the time, this is back in the early nineties, mid nineties, when people still use cash, like he used to have like stacks of cash in his place and like he'd keep it under his mattress like, like people do. And I just remember him counting bills on the bed like, and we would talk about this, right? And we talk about money very, very matter of fact. And from him, like what I really appreciated was, and I think to be honest, this is where a lot of my mindset came from with this stuff is there was never lack, it was always, you know, you can create whatever you want. There's more than enough this amount, like this abundance mentality that he had, even though like,

• 10:09Speaker 03

  what's interesting is I remember having a conversation with him last year. I never asked him this question. I said, what was your revenue in the business at like when you were at the height of it?

• 10:16Speaker 00

  What a tough question to ask your parent.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, he said it was like two million. I'm like, really? Two shit? That's it?

• 10:22Speaker 00

  In the nineties, that's, I mean, for a small business, not bad.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm thinking like, you know, in terms of like where my level is at this point in my life. And it's just like, at the time, you're like, oh my God, like you look up to your parents in such a way. But anyways, it was just cool to just kind of like see that perspective of like, here's the cash, that that mindset of, you know, when you sell stuff and help people out, like you get this in return and then just seeing, you know, the dichotomy with my mom a little bit. I don't know how much of it was. Risk tolerance versus risk aversion. I think they're honestly both very similar from that perspective. They would just do stuff. It's just my mom happened to work in credit. My dad was a little more cash based, I think.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  I think that's interesting what you mentioned about like this moment. We all have this moment as entrepreneurs where somebody opens up this window or like, oh, anything's possible. Like, oh, like I can do what I want. I can make more money. I can, I can be free of, you know, maybe my location or my time or whatever it might be. What was that moment for you? Was it that moment when you saw your dad counting the cash on the bed? Was it, you know, a chance where you thought, oh, I become a pro soccer player. Maybe I could do other things too.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  I don't know. I think there was many moments. So I remember around like 10, 12, 13, some of that neighborhood, I would just go knocking door to door. And I would shine people's shoes. I would like tape my shoe polish and like shine their shoes. Cause at the time I wanted like baseball and hockey cards. Like that was my big thing at the time. So I had like boxes and I'd like document how much they were worth and, and all that stuff. So I'd, I'd look, okay, if I want to make 40 bucks to go buy some cards, how many shoes do I have to shine? So I'd go knock doors. I would wash cars in the winter time. I'd shovel snow. So that was kind of my first foray into entrepreneurship. And then I think it really started hitting me. My first job was actually selling appliances. When I was 17 years old at Future Shop, which was then bought by Best Buy.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  So I was a 17 year old kid selling washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwaves and vacuums to families. And it was very interesting because it's, it doesn't really, it's like, well, how does this even make sense? But it was really cool because I remember the commissions on some of those. I mean, if you're selling five appliances to a family, I remember days where I was making like three, $4,000 in commission. And I'm like, this is amazing. And then there were days that were obviously, you know, less so. But I love that feeling of like, hold on, you're telling me that if I can skill up and help people make a good decision for themselves and get paid this, then like, I'm like, I'm never going to work for, for like hourly wages ever again.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  And that was, that was awesome. I also had a couple of gigs as a bartender. And I remember leaving some nights like $700 cash. I was like, this is incredible. However, you get home at four in the morning, you smell like smoke because this is when they could smoke in the bars and restaurants still. And after doing that for a summer, I was like, I don't know if I really want to keep doing this. But I, I, I think those experiences helped me recognize that I could get paid based on performance and outcomes as opposed to how much time I put in. I've always been very, like, I can tolerate a huge amount of risk, much more than I think a lot of people.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  For me, to have a fixed salary, like even if it was a hundred and fifty thousand, like whatever number, like if I knew this is the most I could ever make, I could not even live like that, to be honest. I would rather know every single day that I can make nothing, but the ceiling was like limitless. And that's driven me my whole life. I'm like, I never want anyone to put a cap on what's possible for me. And this is also why I stopped playing pro soccer. Because my fate was not in my hands. I was like at the mercy of my agents and other club presidents and like you're literally like a pawn being, you know, moved all over the place.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, an asset for the club, yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. Like you're essentially like a glorified employee. And I'm like, that's when I started to recognize for me, freedom in the sense of choice, like doing what I want, when I want, with whom I want, wherever I want, like that's the most important thing to me. Like I could care less about the money. It's like, I want to have the choice to, to do what I want. And I think that became a very big driving force for everything else afterwards.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  I think we have that in common for sure. I, I have a huge yearning for autonomy. I hate being told what to do. From a young age, I just always, I, I just have a hard time with that. And I'm happy to be poor till I, and, and get to do what I want, right? And then obviously, you know, that's not gonna last forever. You're gonna have some ambition to start growing. But I, I love the fact that you've tried so many different things. You know, I speak to a lot of young people about, you know, they ask me for advice on a startup business. How, how do you, how do I know if it's gonna work, all this stuff? And even my own family members, like my nieces and nephews, and the question I ask them is like, how do you know if you like pineapple? And they're like, oh, I don't know, I just try it. And it's like, okay, exactly. You have to try. And I love the fact that sometimes you try things and you figure out, okay, I definitely don't want to do that. I don't want to bartend, right?

• 15:28Speaker 00

  But I like this idea of like making sales and actually making more money, the better I do. I like this kind of concept. This is really good advice if you're, you know, under thirty even, you know, and you haven't really explored different jobs, different ideas, different ventures, different ways of life. It's gonna inform you and you get to learn a little bit more about yourself, what you love, what you don't love. So thanks for sharing that. That's a, that's a huge point. You know, health and wellness has been pretty much part of your life, all your life, right? You know, played professional soccer, you know, and you would think that, you know, as somebody who committed their, their time and their energy and everything and said no

• 16:07Speaker 00

  to, you know, Cuban vacations from the age of ten into your twenties playing soccer, it must have been pretty shocking for you to hear that there's something about you that's unhealthy and you're losing your hair, right? Like, I'm an athlete. What are you talking about? All I do is exercise and, you know, watch what I do and all that kind of stuff. So tell me a little bit about like that experience did for you in terms of like, I can do all the right things and still something can happen.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's like you do the best you can with what you know at the time. So for me, I thought I was, I was fit, but I didn't know the distinction between fit and not healthy. So I was like, oh, I can, I can run and I can play on a soccer pitch, but apparently I'm not really healthy. And it's like health and fitness are not the same.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  I want you to just, sorry, but like, what's the difference? Like, most people think of somebody who exercises every day, you know, they gotta be healthy.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's a marker of health for sure. But, you know, if you look under the hood, someone could have like high inflammatory markers or they can be way too acidic or in my case, like the thing is, when you're a teenager, you can get away with like grand theft auto. Like you can eat whatever you want, you can do whatever you want and your body's like bouncing back. And I remember when I was coaching with the men's soccer program at the University of Toronto, that which was my, my alma mater, I remember working with these guys and like there was a McDonald's across from the stadium. And I, when I was their age, I would go to McDonald's before a game. Like, I'm like, this, this was the level of like, I didn't know anything about nutrition. I thought I could just do that because it didn't hinder my performance.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  And then sort of see like from, from their perspective, like, oh yeah, they're coming into practice with gummy bears and like eating all sorts of junk. So, you know, that stuff you can get away with for a moment, but it catches up with you. For me, it caught up with me a lot sooner than most people. And I think part of that was because my body was just a toxic wasteland from a very young age. I had a lot of antibiotics when I was young, vaccinations, the whole bit. So I had this like perfect storm. And I guess based on my constitution, maybe my, my immune system was just like, dude, like this is, this is too much. So in my case, I didn't, on the surface, I wasn't aware of it. But when I started to learn about this stuff, so I, I lost my head at seventeen, we started going to all sorts of doctors and

• 18:23Speaker 03

  specialists, no one really had any answers. And then eight years later, when I finished playing soccer, I came back and went to school for nutrition. So I actually did my undergrad in kinesiology, but I was playing pro soccer. And just to give you a sense of like how much I didn't know, I would play, uh, we'd have a game on the weekend. I'd start my day with three Nutella crepes. Like that was my pre-match meal was three crepes with Nutella. I'm thinking like, this is normal. I'm like, maybe if I have all this Nutella, it'd be good for me. Every single day when I was living in France where I was playing, I'd have a whole baguette. I'd like, be like pasta, cream sauces, all this kind of stuff. It was, it wasn't even a thought. And I'm like, wow. But what was interesting that I only realized when I was

• 19:04Speaker 03

  about twenty five, uh, when I went back to school for nutrition was like, oh, so a lot of these foods may have been part of the problem. And then I started to reckon as, as I started making changes to my diet, I started having way more energy. For me, that was the biggest shift, like honestly, in my life, because for what I didn't realize up until that point was I was sleeping fifty percent of my life, like twelve hours a day between nighttime and maybe a two hour nap. I remember like when I was at the University of Toronto, I remember as a student, I would go study after school, I'd go to the library and I, every single time I'd fall asleep in, in the cubicle as I'm studying. And I remember like drool on

• 19:47Speaker 03

  my notes and stuff like that. And I think back to that, I'm like, man. I was just exhausted all the time and I I later realized, at least in my case, that fatigue, like that level of fatigue, and I thought it was just because I was active, but the reality is my body was just fighting all this stuff all the time. So it started to recognize that low energy in that fashion is a warning sign that something far more dangerous is brewing underneath the surface. And I had no clue about that until I started to learn about how the body works and nutrition and physiology. And when I cleaned things up, not only did I re-grow my hair in the space of about two to three months, but my energy in about seven days, I was bouncing out of bed after six hours of sleep. And it was almost like I was in a different universe.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I was like, what, where am I? Like, this is crazy. And that was such an eye-opening experience for me that I just had to start sharing this. And I wrote my first book that eventually became a published book, but nine years later, in the back of nutrition school. Like, I'm literally in the back of class writing this out, because I'm like, I don't know what this is gonna look like, but I have to start sharing this to people, because it transformed me in such a huge way. And at that time, I'm like, I played pro soccer. I went to one of the top 20 schools in the world for kinesiology. If I didn't know this stuff, like, eight billion other people don't. And that became a really big, kind of fire under my butt to want to share everything I possibly knew.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  That's incredible. It sounds very much like you're passionate about this topic because it affected you personally. But you're not only, you know, passionate about health, you're also passionate about helping people that are in the health industry. You know, your business healthpreneur helps coach people that are in businesses that deal with health, trainers, nutritionists, people that are even in, you know, the natural sciences, all that kind of stuff. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone because it's helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course, Nicole's family is Italian, and I'd love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade.

• 21:54Speaker 00

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• 23:57Speaker 00

  One of the things I want to talk about is I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs that are in the health industry and I feel like there's like a common thread where they're all kind of struggling around the six-figure mark, where they just have a hard time breaking through. I want to ask you, what is the common thread do you find when you work with these professionals? Why are they hitting that ceiling? Is it something that they believe? Is it something that they're not doing? What's happening here?

• 24:23Speaker 03

  So zero to one is very hard. And I say zero to one is like, it can be zero to 100,000, zero to a million. Peter Thiel has a great book called Zero to One and he's like one of the co-founders of PayPal. But the idea is like, the hard part about that journey is that there's, you have to learn everything. It took me seven years to make my first million dollars in business. And then when I started Healthpreneur, I made my first million in this business in seven weeks. And that's because I had 13 years of experience prior to that and I had skills and so forth. The challenge is like when you're starting, you have to, you have to learn everything. I mean, you have to learn about sales and marketing. You have to learn about, in some cases online, you have to learn about the tech, even though it's maybe not the most important thing, you still have to learn the basics.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  I remember when I was first started my business online in 2005, sending out email newsletters and it was like, the subject line was "April Newsletter." I'm like, I would never send out an email subject like that. But at the time, you don't know. Actually, my best subject line of all time was if you ever forget to put a subject line in, sometimes it says like brackets, "No subject." That's like the best opener of all time. So the challenge is you have to learn all these skills and it's like learning a foreign language. And at the same time, you have to develop as an individual tremendously. Because the thing that business, it's like a magnifying glass on your own shit. Like if you have limiting beliefs or you have a fear of putting yourself out there or you don't want to send too many emails or post too often, all of these are going

• 25:53Speaker 03

  to get magnified and you spend so much time in your head and doubt and worry. You go through this whole emotional roller coaster and it's a really tough journey from zero to one. And I think trying to bring all that together and honestly, in a lot of cases, for most businesses, you know, you might be by yourself from zero to 250,000 revenue. And maybe you have an assistant, maybe you have someone else as you grow from there. But a lot of it is like, man, you just got to do everything. And I think it's really hard. So you're kind of like sweeping the floors, painting the walls. Like the analogy that I give... Because I love aviation is you're the CEO of the airline, you're the pilot, you're the flight attendant, you're the maintenance crew, and you're the person who's like welcoming the airplane back into the gate.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  You're doing all of it and it's like, it's incredible. And that's why I think so few businesses statistically last beyond five years. So fundamentally, I think it's a skill gap. Like, there's two big things. One is if we're super busy doing all this stuff and we're not where we want to be is we're doing the wrong stuff. And that's usually a reflection of the fact that we don't know what to do instead, or we don't have the right skills. And if we can start to get mentorship and guidance to be like, okay, well, what do I do? How do I do it properly? And then do it over and over and over again to build the skill. That's how we can start to move forward a lot faster.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  I definitely agree that one of the cheat codes to get some traction, to get beyond a barrier is to get help from somebody who's done it before. Like, a lot of people resist this. They think that having a coach or getting a mentor or something like that is for people that are weak or people that can't figure it out on their own or whatever it might be. But I've, I was one of those people, honestly. And then about a decade ago, I realized, why am I doing this on hard mode? Like, why don't I just ask for some help? And, you know, this person's a few steps ahead of me. Let me, you know, get on a call with them. You know, let me hire this person for a few hours, whatever. And it's incredible because you're in the weeds in your business, as you know, and it's so hard for you to ask yourself the right questions.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  And it's good just to have somebody outside of you to be like, have you thought about this? And it's like, oh, well, actually I didn't. So what are some of the like primary questions you like to ask your like maybe a new client, a new entrepreneur that you meet maybe at a conference or something like, hey, I'm really struggling, Yuri. My business is doing X, Y, Z. What are some of the questions you like to ask first?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  So kind of piggybacking on your previous question, I think one of the biggest things that I see that's difficult is product market fit, right? So someone has an idea, whether it's a course or a coaching offer or whatever. To make that work, like you have to give it time and some people jump ship too soon because it's a little bit difficult. Your business wants boring, but you as an individual want novelty. And that's kind of the thing as an entrepreneur, it's like the very thing that is our superpower also becomes our Achilles heel. We want all this change and new things to be exciting. It's like get a hobby if you want exciting. Like your business should be very boring and do the same thing over and over again. So I think part of the issue is when I'm talking to someone, I just, I want to get a sense of their business.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  And as soon as they start using plural around things like program or course, I have a couple of courses or I have a couple of programs, right away, I'm like, I know you're struggling. Because very few people that I know who've achieved massive success have done so by doing, like offering 10 courses. It's, and this was the mistake that I made when I came online is like, I was just creating new stuff all the time. With Healthpreneur, we did one, we had one offer for seven years. That was it. Cause I learned the mistakes of complexity. So when I'm talking with someone, I want to get a sense of, okay, naturally, like, you know, what you do, who you serve, et cetera. A lot of times because I'm helping health professionals, it's like, yeah, like, you know, I help, I'm a naturopath. I help a lot of different things.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  I'm like, okay, now I'm starting to piece the picture together. They're not a specialist. So generally in a brick and mortar, for instance, people will fall into their lap from word of mouth, foot traffic, et cetera. But when you come online, you don't have the luxury, like no one knows you exist. So you have to really narrow down to become a specialist in one specific condition, whether it's migraines or IBS or acne or whatever it is. Because now you can actually proactively market yourself with a message that pierces through the noise. And now you get seen as the expert in that one area. And then also on the delivery, it makes it a lot easier. So that's one of the biggest things I find in conversations is a lot of people are generalists, at least in this, in our space, health experts.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  But the other thing too is a lot of people, especially now, so when I came online in 2005, I started off, my goal was to live the laptop lifestyle, sell eBooks, forty seven bucks, chill by the pool. It didn't happen. And it still doesn't happen. I see a lot of people talk about passive income. You know, they're busy with something, they want to create a second source of income. And I'm like, passive income, hush mark? Just to be clear, this is not like some little side hustle. This is like a major endeavor. This is like bringing a child into the world. There's no like passive child rearing. And I think there's this mindset around, oh, I can just do some stuff online, like put up a course, sell it for two hundred bucks. Yeah, people will definitely go to my website and hit the

• 31:05Speaker 03

  buy now button. No, it's not gonna happen. It's very, very hard, even if people knew who you were, to get the vast majority of people to go to your website, watch, like, go through a sales page and click the buy now button, unless you have a tremendous amount of trust with your audience, like the percentage of convergence is going to be in the neighborhood of one to three percent. And then obviously you have other, you know, strategies like webinars, like you know, and different things like that. But I, I think a lot of people just don't even understand what they're getting into. They think it's gonna be a lot easier than it really is. And I tell people, I'm like, building an online business is one of the most challenging types of business you can build. Because no one knows you exist, you have to stand out amongst the noise, there's a tremendous

• 31:49Speaker 03

  lack of trust in the marketplace right now. And have fun with that. With that said, you can crack the code for sure. And it will be the most worthwhile thing you ever do. Because if you want time and location freedom, if you want autonomy, there's nothing else that can provide that in this type of format. But it's hard. And so I think just resetting expectations is what I end up doing for a lot of people is, you know, through questioning, just getting to recognize that like, it would just be a lot easier to just keep seeing patients all day long. Like, I mean, why even do this? Right? Like, really getting to question their motivations, because they have to have that motivation, because there will be moments, many moments where you're like, why am I doing this? This is too hard.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  This, like, I'm just gonna throw in the towel. But in those moments, you want to give up, you have to remember why you started. And I think if you're just after passive income, it's not gonna happen.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  I love that you mentioned this whole myth of passive income because I recently went to a conference, really amazing conference, but the majority of the audience were kind of digital nomad, people chasing that passive income.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  And I was just having side conversations with them. I was trying to actually just gather intel to know how to tweak my talk that I'll be giving later in the day. And what I just kind of wanted to say to them is like, instead of you just like living this lifestyle where like you're struggling financially, you're trying, you're moving to a country so the cost of living is much cheaper, you're missing your family and friends, or you're not really like winning in your business. Why don't you just like take it seriously, work hard, and then not work for six weeks out of the year and enjoy the beach?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  How about that idea?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could, I mean, how many, how many people do we know like have moved to Bali to live like the digital nomad lifestyle, right? Or like, go to New York, raise your standards.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Yeah, exactly.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Or Sydney, or wherever.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  And that's why I did, I moved to New York when I became a full-time entrepreneur, not because I was like, oh, this is where I'm gonna make all the money. I just knew everybody was chasing their dream in New York and I wanted to be around that energy. I wanted to be a part of that scene. I knew I was gonna meet some people that are doing interesting things. I was so poor in New York. Like, I was going to wine and cheese events just to, you know, have dinner, right? But I got so much other pieces of value from that experience. So I love the fact that you're questioning this kind of idea and giving them some other things to consider. Because you're going to spend the time anyway to build the business. You're gonna make the effort. You're gonna go through the whole emotional anguish of it all.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  You might as well go all in. Why are you trying to like make this, you know, happen with like 10 hours of work a week? You know, like, it doesn't really compute in the real world. And I love the idea of focus, just focusing on one product. We've heard so many stories, you know, Steve Jobs cutting all the, you know, Apple products when he came back to Apple and all that. But it allows you to really create a better valuable product when you just have one to focus on, which is a great tip. I love that.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  But again, I share a lot of this because I made so many mistakes. Like when I was, I didn't know better when I started my business. I thought, well, if I could create a lot of stuff that will cast a wider net and more people would want it. Only to realize that when you have a hundred SKUs, whether it was courses, supplements, or whatever that we had, you can't optimize all that stuff. And it's like, you're not going to help everyone anyways. So like, you might as well focus on one thing and drill as deep as you possibly can. And again, in our space, I was telling my clients on Monday, as an example, like, there's 33 million Americans who suffer with migraines, like, several times a week. You couldn't even live 10 lifetimes and serve half of them. Like, the markets that our people are serving are so big that even if they just did one thing to that one single target market,

• 35:31Speaker 03

  they could build eight and nine-figure businesses in this lifetime. But the challenge, they run into roadblocks. Like, for instance, people aren't buying their stuff, whether that's from a website, or if they're coaching and charging higher ticket and they're on the phone to people, people are saying, no, it's too expensive. And they think, well, now I have to offer something lower price to appease those people. It's like, no, you just have to skill up. So it's like, drill deep, become as good as you possibly can, do the one thing, and understand that with that one thing and that one thing alone, you have like, no idea how many millions of dollars per month you could generate from, or in the service of this market. And it's not going to come from like this and like this whole Ascension funnel

• 36:14Speaker 03

  of like $7 and tripwires and upsell flows. I did all of that in my previous business. The moment where I was like, I'm never doing this again, we had a cookbook that we were launching many years ago. And it was a free plus shipping offer. We've seen those, right? So you pay nothing except for the shipping and then you go through this whole upsell sequence. So we had nine different upsell flows. So like nine different possible pathways after checkout page. Each one had four different upsells or different variations of pricing and kind of order. And all we were trying to do was increase the average order value from $18 to $22.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  I'm like,

• 36:50Speaker 00

  What am I doing here?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  It's just crazy. I would rather build the skill of having a conversation with someone, like sell them the ultimate thing at a higher price. It's just so much easier. So just anyways, I share all this stuff from like the lessons and the mistakes and obviously the wins that I've had to hopefully, you know, help others, you know, avoid the pitfalls.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  I love it. I love it because one of the things that sells well online are like tools and strategies that just seem easy. So like the common person be like, oh, that sounds easy. I like, okay, I could do that. And we want to believe it's that easy. So therefore we buy it, right? But the truth of the matter is, is that like, it's not as simple as people are just gonna like go through and click and put in their credit card nice and easy. And the one of the things I, I like to mention to people that do believe it's that easy is how often do you actually buy these things? Like once every three years or something? It's not that common, right? So, and the reason why it's not that common is because like you mentioned, you need to build a relationship with people. You need to build trust. You need to become the expert in that niche that you're in.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  So people, when they are frustrated, they're not gonna go shopping around. They're gonna come back to you. So when it comes to that long-term thinking, how do you help an entrepreneur in your space to think, hey, you're building a brand, you're building a business that's gonna stay here for decades to come. Let's like not make, you know, short-term bets that maybe are going to hurt us later on. How do you marry that with, I gotta pay the bills?

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's what you just mentioned. I, I really do think everyone should be setting longer runways. If your goal is just focusing on what do I, what do I have to do this week to make money? You're gonna make very different decisions than I'm building an empire that's gonna last, you know, generations. So, but I get it like, cause I've been in, I've been in both sides, right? So you have to pay the bills and then maybe even as your company grows, you've got payroll and other commitments, right? It's like new levels, new devils. I do think it's a very important skill to be able to.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Create revenue for the business because revenue is like, you know, they say cash is king, whatever. Revenue, when, when a company is looking at investing in a company or an investment firm is looking at investing in a company, they won't even consider a company unless you have large revenue as a starting point, you know, before they even look at some of the other metrics. You have to become very good at generating revenue because if you are in a pinch, what can you do? Like, can you run some type of campaign? Can you pick up the phone? You have to get good, whether it's the marketing, the sales, both combined. Because if you are in a pinch, you never want to be without ideas of how you can generate revenue. That's a skill you can build and it obviously comes with time in the trenches. But if you

• 39:32Speaker 03

  don't have that time, well, you have to make up in time what you lack in skill. And if you don't have the money, you also have to make up in time what you lack in money. But honestly, when I hired my first coach, which was three years too late, it was still the best decision I ever made because like it was $18,000. That was more money than I made in my previous year in business. I didn't have the money. I took it on two credit cards. I split up the payment and I didn't know how to make, I'm like, I don't know. Like, I still remember the pit in my stomach, but I remember the voice in my head and the voice in my head was, I'm going to make this work no matter what. And it's almost like, I don't know if you've ever felt this, where you kind of like, you're going through the motions and then all of a sudden you've set a new goal, like a new objective, or you're like

• 40:15Speaker 03

  thrown into the pool and now you have to swim. And there's a whole new level of fire like inside of you that it's like, all right, this, all right, now we're going. Like it was like, we're going a little bit, but like now we're going. And I don't think a lot of people have that. I do think there's a tremendous amount of value from being in those places of desperation, because a lot of motivation and inspiration come from those times where like, I don't know how this is going to work, but I'm going to figure out a way to make it happen. So I'm not a huge fan of taking outside capital. I think it makes you lazy. I think it kills creativity. I think there's a tremendous amount of value in living poor, even as you grow, because it forces you to continually innovate and

• 40:56Speaker 03

  create. But again, without going horizontally wide, but really thinking about how do we optimize this? How do we make this better? Just as an example, we, we split tested a new pre-headline on a landing page this past week. We doubled the conversions just by changing the pre-headline. Now, if we had spread ourselves too thin by going multiple products wide, we probably would not even thought about that because now we're having to juggle all these different, different balls. So getting back to your question, you, you have to learn the skill of sales and marketing. Like you have to become good at promoting, whether it's through social or ads or, you know, email campaigns, whatever it is. The second thing, because like, again, if you're in a pinch and you can't make money,

• 41:36Speaker 03

  you're kind of screwed. Along those lines, I really do believe, and again, this is going to be more for, for kind of like the service-based entrepreneurs. If you can go high ticket right away, you have way more wiggle room. So if you have 10 conversations with someone over Zoom to offer a higher ticket service, like a coaching program, the likelihood that one of them will say yes, isn't too far out of like, that's kind of in the realm of possibility, even if you're not that great at sales. But to create a sales page and have the copywriting chops to even write that, and then sell something for even one one hundredth of the price and expecting 10% of people to buy that is delusional.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  It is so much easier to get better at having a conversation with someone to sell a $5,000 product or program than it is to sell a $50 product to the masses who are never going to buy. So learning the art of influence and persuasion of sales, most entrepreneurs, regardless of their industry, will tell you that sales is one of the most important skills you can develop. So I think that's where it starts. And then the second thing is doing whatever you can to think long-term, because if you think long-term, you will make better decisions and you will avoid doing things that will kill your reputation. And I mean, like, one of the superpowers that I have with Healthpreneur is I'm the only person in our space who's been around since 2005.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  I don't have negative reviews. I mean, I'm not perfect, obviously, but like, there's no nonsense all over the internet about Uriel came. Like it's, it's for the most part, very positive. That goes a very, very long way. And it takes a long time to build that, but it also takes one second to screw it all up. So when you have a longer-term horizon, so for instance, for us, we're looking to build a billion-dollar, where we want to help a billion people transform their lives. And fundamentally disrupt the sick care system and I want this company to be around beyond my lifetime. And so for the most part, I'm trying to make decisions for the future while also having the infrastructure to take care of now. It doesn't happen right away, but again,

• 43:37Speaker 03

  if the vision is longer term, generally on the average, you're making decisions that will support that vision. And also it attracts better people, it attracts better team members who eventually want to be part of that. And it also attracts better customers and clients who align with that vision or that ethos as opposed to just make money or you know, get this type of outcome. So for me, that's been my approach. And that's something I really, you know, encourage my clients to think about as well. It's like, just think about this, what this could look like five years down the road. Like, it's going to be challenging over the next couple of months, but five years, you're going to look back on this, you're like, man, what a great story this will be to tell.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  I love the fact that you mentioned, you know, this, you know, introducing this idea, why don't you get on a call with people? Why don't you do a webinar? If you do 10 conversations a week, you're going to have a healthy business just because you're going to learn more by your customers, you're going to learn what they want, you're going to learn what they need, you're going to be able to solve more problems for them. I even think if you're selling a product, even if you're selling a product, especially a high ticket product, and coaching is a great example of this. And I think the reason why, like you mentioned, the conversions are so much better than like send them to a landing page and hopefully they buy. You're building trust, you're building a chance to get to know each other in that conversation, in that 30 minutes, in that 45 minutes, where they can start to realize, okay, this person has their best interests in mind. I may want to give them a shot. And most people don't want to shop around. Most people want to just make a decision and stop

• 45:00Speaker 00

  worrying about this. And they'll just say, hey, okay, let's, let's do it and let's see what happens. So it's actually giving you a better chance. One of the things I, I believe in is that I think that some of the best people at building trust with their audience are comedians, like standup comedians. And one of, people forget that Joe Rogan is a comedian, like, he's a standup comedian and has he get Netflix specials? Because he has an audience. Netflix doesn't need to be sold on Joe Rogan. They already know he's great because they see him on his podcast all the time, right? Or, you know, Mark Maron. Mark Maron, how did he get that part in Joker? Right? He's a casino comedian, but the producers, the people that are in the industry, they know that he has an audience.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  He knows that he draws a crowd. Like, he doesn't have to prove himself anymore because he's built trust with the people that are making the decision to transact with him. So I think it's a, it's a good point. Like, we're, sometimes we just wanna be hide behind our screens and just not really interact with our customers. But you're actually making things harder for yourself. You can actually excel a lot faster if you just do the opposite and talk to as many people as possible. I love that.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  There was just a strike. I can't remember the company's name. They're a Canadian company. They started doing weighted blankets. And it was a seasonal business, which is interesting. So I remember seeing this, this interview with them a little while ago. And so they sold blankets on the internet and two co-founders, and they're talking about how, what, they just started calling all of their customers. Like, hey, what do you like? What could be better? Tell me about yourself. They called every single one of their customers. And then they developed pillows and mattresses and so forth. And they're talking about when they opened up one of their flagship stores. They actually had a, like a lineup that was like around in the shopping mall, right beside, I think it was like Casper mattresses or one of the bigger mattress companies in the mall. That store was like empty.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  And this store had like one of the biggest lineups for a new opening they'd ever seen. And a large part of their success was the fact that for a product-based business, like who goes to buy a mattress somewhere? And then the founders called them. Like, these guys, it's like, we're calling everyone. And then they were acquired by one of the biggest companies in Canada called Sleep Country Canada, bought out by them a couple of years ago. And it's just such a great example of kind of doing a little bit of a different thing than what most people do. Like, no one's too cool for school. You'll get so much intel from talking to your customers. And especially in a product-based business, which can be typically more detached. I thought it was such a beautiful journey or a beautiful example of like what can happen with that.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  I love that, man. That's a good example because there's always you can learn by just talking to your customers. Today's episode is supported by Cash App. When it comes to Bitcoin, you may be surprised to learn that it was invented way back in 2008. But you still haven't made the jump to Bitcoin yet? Cash App makes it easy. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash App, they hold real Bitcoin for you, one to one, and you can withdraw it anytime. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. No extra steps, no restrictions, just access and control when you need it. With Cash App, you can actually do that. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code BITCOIN10 when you sign up.

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• 49:22Speaker 00

  I'm on my second screen here. I'm looking at your website, healthpreneurgroup.com. I recommend those who are listening, watching, to check it out. But I want to particularly drill into, on your menu, you've got something called the Core 10. And we're not going to go through all of 10, but there's a few here I want to touch on because I think those who are listening are going to love it. And they're the 10 principles that underpin the most successful health businesses I've helped over the years, is the sub-headline here. But this applies to any business, honestly, the things that you share here. There's a few here I want to touch on. "Your success is determined by your systems," number four of 10. Tell me a little bit about that.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think realistically, your success is determined by a few more things. But generally, if you have no systems, you have no leverage, you have no predictability. Everything is relying on your time and effort and manual grind. I'll use Starbucks as an example. So Starbucks, if you go get a drink in your local town, and that's what your drink is, if you go halfway across the world and you're thinking like, hey, I'd love to have this drink, whether it's a latte or whatever it is, you're thinking to yourself, well, if you go to that cafe that I've never been to, which means increased uncertainty. And humans generally want to avoid making the wrong decision. So we look at Starbucks and like, hold on. If I go to Starbucks, even though I'm halfway across the world, I know if I order that latte, it'll be more or less the same. And that's a system, right?

• 50:42Speaker 03

  There's a system, there's a process for how they make their drinks. Are they the best coffee? Probably not. But even if you look at the behind the counter, when they scoop ice, there are three different scoops. Like, light ice has a different sized scoop than normal ice. That's a very simple thought process to say, instead of us just guessing how much ice, why don't we systemize it? So across every store, light ice is filled up to whatever the level is, two ounces, three ounces. That's the level of thinking that I think most entrepreneurs can benefit from. And it's also like from a service perspective is how do we prioritize our service? And when I say service, I literally mean everything you do in your business. So if you send out an email, how do you send out an email? If you coach clients, how do you coach clients?

• 51:26Speaker 03

  If you do a group coaching call, how do you run a group coaching call? Like there are systems or processes that can be documented for how you start the Zoom meeting. Okay, start the Zoom meeting. Everyone's muted, cameras on. First thing, get everyone to share a win inside the chat. These are all systems that anyone else can then run. So like in our business, we have about 15 coaches. Aside from myself, we have about 45 coaching calls per week. I don't do all the coaching calls. I do three of them. And we have systems for how our other coaches run their calls. Now we allow them to do worth their magic, but there's also a very similar process. And what that allows me to do is step out of the business so that even if I'm on vacation

• 52:09Speaker 03

  or wherever I am, our clients don't need me. Like our clients can still make progress. So that's like an example, or like even on the acquisition front. If you're relying on DMing every single person to bring people into your world, cool, like that can work. But if you have a system, you know, for instance, in our case, we call it a perfect client pipeline. It's kind of like an automated webinar funnel. Like right now, as we're having this interview, people are watching my webinar. I'm not involved in that. I created it once, I set up the app, like the system, the, the asset itself. And now it runs on autopilot on my behalf. And that's leverage. And a lot of people, especially service-based providers, don't have the leverage. They work, they get paid for their time. If they don't work, they don't get paid and their clients or patients don't get helped.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  So systems are huge, massive.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Love it. Not only does it make a better business and help you scale and grow, it actually adds a lot of value to the business because I know this firsthand. I grew Webinar Ninja for 10 years, recently got acquired by ProProfs. But somewhere around year five, somebody gave me the advice, you need to start documenting all your procedures and systems. How do you deploy code? How do you comment code? How does your customer service agent deal with a refund? It's like, oh, okay. So like I just got some. Some of the team members to start writing down in Google Docs what they do every day. Then we refined it and we had a playbook. And then eventually before we, you know, were in due diligence and in the process of selling, you know, we documented everything, videos, text of every single procedure.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  And this allowed us to actually have a pretty strong demand on our asking price because they can just go ahead and implement all this stuff. And they don't need like a long vesting period like, oh, this is easy. You just told us exactly what to do. If I have any questions, I could just search the doc. If I don't understand how something is done, I can watch a video. It was like so easy for them. And this is a company that's acquired a lot of big companies. So they're like, this is great. Like, and it made my life so much easier because anybody who's ever sold a business knows that due diligence is like the worst process ever. And, you know, they learn about everything about your business, your underwear size, everything. Right? So, and so that made it so much easier because you're just transparently showing your business.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  So it not only makes your business run smoothly and grow and scale, but it actually you're investing in the value of the actual business when you get acquired. And we, like Rob Walling, my buddy at MicroConf says, we all sell eventually. At some point, we're going to sell that business. Can't do it forever. Another one on your core 10 that I want to get into that just hit me when I read it is you can dominate your market by being just a little bit better.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm very opinionated about this. I don't know about you Omar, but like very few businesses impress me. Like I'm talking about like airlines, hotels, restaurants, like you go to a restaurant. I remember, so I was taking my son to a soccer game a couple of weeks ago and we get out of the stadium. He wanted some food, so we go to this food truck and it's empanadas, right? So they're, they're selling empanadas and like you can see them, they're in a little heating thing in the jig. He pulls them out, puts them in a, in a bag and gives it to us. And then we obviously pay by credit card and then it's 18, 20 or 25% tip. And I'm like, are you for real? Like, I'm not tipping you anything. Like, I can't stand this, this, like, I just did the very thing that I'm just supposed to do in business and I'm expecting a 25% tip.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  I think that's an example of how like out of whack expectations have become for such low level service. That would be like me having a coaching call with all of my clients and every single time after Zoom be like, hey, do you want to leave a tip? You can leave 15 and 20, like it's just absurd.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  I'm convinced that somebody in their industry told them that was a good idea. Like, like the whole tripwire thing and like we have an online business. Somebody in like the retail business came to them and come to my event and like buy my program and told them, "Hey, just swing the iPad and you're gonna make whatever X percent every single time." And we're like, "I'm sure something happened like that."

• 56:01Speaker 03

  I don't know, like in Australia, everything is built into the price, which is nice. And tipping is not as outrageous as it is here. But that aside, the vast majority of basic service, like if you go to a restaurant, like it's just, you go to the bathroom, it's disgusting. I remember going to the grocery store the other week and I walked into the bathroom and I'm like, "This is disgusting." And I was actually, interesting kind of massage franchise thing a couple, a couple of months ago in Scottsdale. And I actually shot an Instagram story about their bathroom. I said, "This is one of the cleanest bathrooms I've ever been to." And that tells me a lot of the ownership of this place. Uh, well, I was at a donut shop in, uh, Honolulu last summer. One of the nicest bathrooms I've ever been in.

• 56:43Speaker 03

  And it's a reflection of the standard of the owner, which is a, it's a reflection of their philosophy. Like, "We give a shit." Like, "The small details matter." I think that is missing to a level that is epidemic in our society, where people are phoning it in. We get dozens upon dozens of resumes of people who plan to work with us, like team members on a weekly basis. And we have, one of the first things we have them do is a test project relative to their role. And I'd say about 70% of people who submit the test project, they literally phone it in with ChatGPT. You don't even change the formatting, like, "So ChatGPT, I can smell it." And this is like, I think, one of the biggest problems and the biggest opportunity.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Is that most people in general are very average. And their standards are low, they have a very low, like, the way they live their life. Is just like, it's so subpar. And in terms of

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just enough. Exactly. And the businesses are a representation of that. And so you as a business owner, going a little bit above, like, I'm not talking about like rolling out the red carpet. I'm talking about just being a little bit better, being a little bit more intentional. Like, you're in a category of one. Like, it's so easy because most people are just so bad.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  A few things come to mind when you, when you talk about this. First thing is, one of my favorite autobiographies is Kitchen Confidential by the late Anthony Bourdain. And he actually recommends that when you go into a restaurant, before you order, go into the bathroom. If the bathroom is not tidy and clean, don't eat there because the person doesn't take pride in the bathroom. It's, you think that, if your public bathroom is dirty, what do you think the kitchen's going to be like? So that's very interesting. The other thing is, I, I did a whole podcast episode on this topic. I highly recommend every entrepreneur to visit Japan because Japan gets this right. Their service quality is like way above the rest of the world and everything is so organized and so clean.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  I always say that the Japanese, they must think we're animals when they go visit us in our countries, you know, like they must, it's absolutely stunningly clean in the bathroom at the train station. Like, it's ridiculous how good the standard is. And it's because it's part of their culture and their pride. And the funny thing is that they also are a generous kind of society. One of the things that is kind of fascinating about Japan, I think is interesting is that they're one of the countries that when they got rich, they didn't get fat. Which is interesting, like, they still are thinking about their health, they're thinking about not overeating, thinking about the society as a whole. Anyway, my recommendation to anyone listening, go to Japan. You're going to be really, it's an educational experience for us as entrepreneurs.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  But lastly, I find that this is in everything that we do in business, that the bar is quite low and you could just do a little things to differentiate. One of the things that I did was I realized I need to be a better public speaker on stages when I go speak conferences. I got some training. I worked with Michael and Amy Pora, her whole public speaking. They're amazing. And one of the things they told me first was like, listen, you're going to make very small improvements. Because you're just getting started. But that small improvement is going to be so much better because most people are, the bar is really low. They're not used to somebody getting up on stage and being prepared and not small talking. Is it, "How's everybody doing today? Good. It's great to be here in Chicago." Like, all that is just filler. And it was just amazing when I had that first experience after being trained.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  This is like a decade ago, but it was like I being trained and then getting, getting on stage and just doing my, my set. Doing my, my, uh, my 20 minute talk.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  So many people came back to me like, "That was amazing. Like, how much training have you done? This is incredible. Who taught you how to do that?" I was just like, I didn't even feel like I was that much better, but because the bar is so low. Just doing a little bit better, like you mentioned, just a little bit better. Is it going to differentiate you? Is it going to allow people to feel like you're somebody special? It's going to make you, make it easier for the market yourself? So I, I love that. And you kind of touched on this a moment ago, and I want to get into number nine here on the list. That's on the core 10, which is business growth always follows personal growth. Talk to me about that.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, I tell people coming into work with us, I say, and working with us isn't inexpensive, but it's also not expensive relative to what they get in return. I say, even if you make zero dollars, like even if you made nothing in your first year working with us, it would still be the best investment you ever make, and I can guarantee that. And the reason I say that is because I've seen thousands of times who you become a year from now in this process. You become not just a better entrepreneur, but a better human. You'll be a better parent, a better spouse. You'll be a better communicator. You'll be a better version of yourself. You'll step into your power. You'll feel more confident in your skin, all this other stuff. And your business follows that.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  It's almost like you are the tugboat and the business is the cruise ship. And the more horsepower you can build in the, like you can put into the tugboat, the bigger the ship you can move. And so we are the tugboats and the only way we can move the ship is by becoming better as individuals. Because the business only grows to the extent that you do. And this is something else that I've. I think a lot of, I don't know if a lot of people recognize this, but some entrepreneurs, they're happy from like zero to three million, right? They're like, they like to start up and then they want to jump onto something else. But what I've recognized, and there's nothing wrong with that, but what I've recognized is like, for me personally, I do not enjoy doing that because I've recognized, I'm like, okay, I'm getting to a point, like I'm getting to my pain threshold,

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  I'm getting to my pain line, and I don't like this. Cool. So I'm gonna get rid of this and I'm gonna do something else. And then in that something else, I'm also gonna get to the same point and hit that same pain line, not growing. So I made a very conscious decision a while ago to say, you know what? I know I'm gonna hit these ceilings and I know it's me. It's 100% me. And I'm gonna work through growing through that because that's where all the opportunity is. And I tell our clients, I'm like, you people, humans are your biggest asset and/or your biggest liability. That means the clients you work with, the customers you serve, the ability to communicate with them or to understand what triggers you so you don't freak out on them, or you don't answer like an asshole, or whatever it is, or team members, the ability to have hard conversations,

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  or the inability to have hard conversations will determine how fast you grow. In my first business, we had two different people that I can think of. They were probably on our team for two years because I was avoiding having a hard conversation with them to let them go. You know, we all want to be loved by everyone and whatever. But I think I have recognized that for me, for our business to go where it wants to go, I'm like, I have to be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. And I've reframed that to be like, the more uncomfortable thing is not having a conversation because I'm gonna be more frustrated, that person's not gonna know where they stand, and performance is gonna slip. So that is probably a growth that I probably wouldn't have had if I

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  got to my pain threshold and just said, you know what? I'm gonna do something else. So that's an example of how we have to grow through this. Another great example is sales. Like, I think selling is, as I mentioned before, one of the most amazing skills we can all develop. And it's something that we help our clients with, who are health professionals, not sales professionals, very extensively, because they have this amazing ability to help people, but they can't communicate that in a way where They feel confident a lot of times to charge premium prices for a health service. And working with them and helping them really develop that skill and helping them recognize that it's them, it's not the words. Like when you present your price and then have to explain why it's priced the way it is,

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  even before the prospect said anything, what's that all about? Right? It's like, where do we have to work internally to really work through that? So you can confidently say, here's what it is and just close your mouth. And so in every aspect of your business, like your business grows to the extent that you do. And the other thing too, is that your strength will become the business's weakness. And so if you're great at marketing, your ability to find a different marketer eventually, a director, you know, whatever, will be the biggest unlock for you because you will probably want to control everything. And I say this because that's me, that has been me. Until you're able to release yourself from that position or from that role, you will

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  continue to be the bottleneck in the business in that specific department. So it always comes back to us, just so fascinating to be able to work through that. And I think other than having kids and maybe a really horrible health journey, building a business is the most incredible spiritual journey you can ever go on in terms of your own personal growth. It's just such an amazing blessing.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  It's definitely a hero's journey. That's, that's for sure. I want to wrap up with a few selfishly personal questions. I want to, some things that I want to learn, some things I want to get from Yuri in this conversation. What was one of the most unconventional pieces of advice that you've received in your journey in entrepreneurship?

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  Oh, unconventional. I used to work with Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, who's one of the most incredible humans. And I remember, he didn't say this to me directly, but I was obviously in a workshop with him and he said, in order to make more, you have to work less. And at the time I was like, Busted my chops in my business, like doing everything.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  It goes against everything that we're, we're taught. Work hard, you know, that's how you get ahead.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it was at the time, it was, it was the perfect, like where I was in the journey was perfect to work with them at that time. And it just got me thinking like, man, like, what does that even look like? And then I started to think a little bit differently over time. So I'd say that's probably one of the most pivotal, at least that I can think of. Pieces of unconventional advice.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  Love it. Do you still play soccer recreationally?

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  With my kids. For me, it's kind of like the Mercedes Benz slogan, like it's the best or nothing. I'm kind of like that with sports or soccer. I'm like, I'm not playing in a men's league with guys showing up that are a hundred pounds overweight. And they're going to tear their ACL because they're out of shape and they go for a smoke after the game. I play with the kids and thankfully they're at a level now where it's, it's a fun challenge.

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  You can give me some advice here. Okay. So I've been playing basketball my life, played pretty high level when I was in university. And I'm playing regularly now because I'm training for the world master games in Switzerland. So one of my challenges is that my mind and what I think I can do is not the same place my body is. My body often says nope. And I often just tell myself, I gotta train more. I gotta just, you know, get in better shape. Maybe I gotta lose a couple of kilos and I'll be able to have a little bit more airtime. Am I delusional? Do I need to just come to terms with this and just enjoy the game as it is? What, what do I do? Yuri, help me.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  I don't know, man. Like I want to, I want to give you like props on that because I, I really do think like I am, I still haven't achieved my best. Fitness potential and I think, I think a lot of us can as we get older. I think the biggest thing that I've noticed is recovery time is a lot longer, like the soreness and all that kind of stuff. It's just like, dude, like half the week I'm sore. So what I would, from a mindset perspective, I'd be like, it is possible. Maybe it's possible, or maybe it's at least close to getting to like, could I be where I was 10 or 15 years ago? And I think if you just have that mindset, like anything's possible. I think tactically, two of the things that I try to be very cognizant of is sprinting.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  Because apparently statistically, after thirty years old, ninety-five percent of humans don't sprint anymore. And when you look at a sport like basketball, where there's a lot of like cutting and agility and sprinting, I think that might be something to consider. And then for basketball, maybe plyometrics, right? Some more like the explosive stuff. So you can lift weights all day long, but as soon as you're like bouncing off one leg, you don't want to blow your Achilles. So I think like explosive training, especially as we get older, becomes really important, especially if we want to continue competing at a level that's somewhat respectable.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  But I think you can do it, man.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm committed. Also love the game, so that's, that helps a lot. And LeBron's a good motivator, given how old he is.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  It's insane. Did I hear that right?

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's crazy, dude. That's crazy, man. I mean, this is like a fantasy world. My last question is a little bit of a personal one. What is your favorite way to kind of unwind? Not at the end of the day, but like, maybe you're going on holiday for a week or two. Like, do you like city holidays? Do you like beach holidays? Can you get your head out of work? Or do you like to bring with you like a book that you've just ordered? That's going to help you, you know, improve your efficiency at work or like, tell me a little bit about like, you're the entrepreneur going on holiday.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Well, this, I mean, this is very fitting because my wife and I, we, over the past two and a half years, we've been building our dream home on the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. And the reason for that is because we've been to this one area about twelve times in our life. And when we saw what they're developing in this one area, we're like, we need to live there. So for me, when we go there, basically our neighbor is Hawaii. Like, we are on a cliff and it's Pacific Ocean facing west. So for me to unwind, like, I either put myself mentally there. We're actually going to be going in about a week and a half to, we're almost finished the, the build of the house. But that is like, I've literally, we've literally built this house for this very question.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  It's like, when I want to unwind, I'm gonna just sit in a chair and I'm gonna look over the ocean. And I'm gonna enjoy.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Whatever it is, dolphins, birds, nothing. And for me, that is the ultimate in terms of tranquility and peace, but also expansion. Because when you have this endless vista, there's a huge amount of like creativity, I think, that comes from that. As opposed to like looking at a brick wall in front of you. And so for me to unwind, like even where, you know, where I live now, I typically will sit in the backyard and I'll just look up at our trees. And I just sit there and I think, and I love doing that. So having obviously the winter come, you know, not too far away. We wanted to have somewhere where we could escape, spend a couple of months and have that, that sense of peace and tranquility. But also I, I don't want to not work, like I love working.

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  But to have space throughout the day where I can have an hour to sit and think, or exercise, go for a run, go for a lift. All of those are ways for me to unwind. And for me, it's a lot of work, life integration as opposed to, I don't take weekends off. Like I work seven days a week, but it's only a couple of hours here and there on certain days. Because I love doing it. And when I feel like I'm a little bit of a pressure cooker, if a lot of stuff is going on. For me, exercise, sweating is a really nice way to just kind of get it out of the system. And then just go for a walk in nature, stare at the sky. That's typically how I want, how I unwind.

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  I love this concept of something physical in the world, like, like a home that you're building. That you can go to in your head and just, you know, you've been there, you've, you have that picture in your mind of the Pacific Ocean. And that's kind of a nice way to not only motivate you through a tough time, or maybe you're having a long day. And you kind of remind yourself, okay, I'm working towards something that I've been dreaming about. I like this concept. I'm sure I've heard of it before, but the way you painted that picture right now really makes me think. Because Nicole and I just were in Italy and we went to Sardinia, which was gorgeous where Nicole's dad's from.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  And we went in the Bowne coast and it's just like that cliffs and this is the ocean or the, in this case, the Adriatic Sea, I believe. Between Italy and Sardinia or mainland Italy and Sardinia. And it's just incredible. It's just like you, it's hard for you not to be grateful. It's hard for you not to just wonder what's going on, what is this? This is incredible. It just blows you away and the homes there are incredibly cheap because it's so hard to get there. I'm like, oh, maybe, maybe I should consider this now that Yuri's, Yuri's painted that picture in my head now. So

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I mean, for me, like, it started with the picture in my head. Now I have it as a screensaver on my computer. But for, I think for a lot of stuff in my life, it's always started in my minds. You know, I had a sense of what it was, put myself in the position. And then I was like, okay, let me just put this on repeats over and over again. And it's, yeah, it's great.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  Love it, man. Going to your happy place.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  Yuri, thank you so much for your time. This has been a great conversation. I absolutely love getting to know you even more, getting to know you a little bit better. There's something about you that I feel like is magnetic, like you're really got, you really believe in what you're doing. You're really pushing to help people out. Like it's genuine energy, you know, like sometimes you meet people and you feel like, okay, they're saying the right things, but you don't actually feel it in your heart. But I definitely feel it. So thanks so much for showing up and giving it all.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, man. Thank you for having me and thank you for the kind words because I do feel that way. I mean, I really, really do feel that I show up as my true self and I'm just happy that others, including you, feel that as well. So I appreciate you.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Have a good one, man. Take care.

• 1:13:43Speaker 03

  Thank you. You too.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  What a great chat with Yuri Elkaim. If you want to learn more about his work, his books, the type of businesses he's running, and to go deeper on those core 10 that we discussed in the episode, just a few of them we discussed, but all 10 of them are great. Just go to his website, healthpreneurgroup.com. I learned so much from just going to great entrepreneurs' websites. What messaging are they delivering? What's the impression you're getting when you hit the website? What, how are they packaging their offers? I go to the about page and learn more about their story and how they got to where they are today. So this is one you want to check out. If you've got a nugget, if you've got something that really got you thinking, write it down, put it in your journal so you don't forget it. Right? And then ask yourself, what are you going to do about it? Right? You're going to take action? Are you going to implement this idea?

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Are you going to consider it in your business? What are you going to do with it? Right? Don't just be a passive learner. Take action with what you learned. That's what really moves the needle. That's what allows you to move forward. That's what has helped me over the years. And it can help you as well.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  You could take is make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you get our next episode automatically and you're part of the community. If you're on YouTube, just hit that subscribe button. If you're on any podcast app, Apple, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it might be, hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA Show, being a part of our community. I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

• 1:15:16Speaker 04

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