From Sports to Success: A Health Entrepreneur's Inspiring Path with Yuri Elkaim

My whole philosophy has always been, I don't really want to help you build a brick and mortar because that's the prison you've already created for yourself. Let's help you help more people and expand from a time and location freedom perspective.

Sometimes we get. We're a little bit, maybe more conservative, reserved in making that transformation because we're like, well, no, this just isn't how it's been done. But once people get their mind opened up to what the possibilities are and they start seeing the outcomes, it's so powerful. All right, Yuri, so excited to have you here. You know, we've had the opportunity to collaborate in multiple different ways, I feel maybe over the last six or seven years, which has been amazing. And one of the things that I love about you, one, is your passion for entrepreneurship. You are maybe one of, if not the most intelligent conversationalists I've ever met. Love and appreciate your insights at all times and your willingness and desire to continue to grow and to make positive impact. So what I would love to maybe kick off with, if you're open to it, is to share maybe a little bit about your journey, how the business started, and where you guys are at today.

Yeah, well, thank you for the. The flattering intro. I'll do my best to live up to it. So the journey. So, I mean, the journey has been about 20 years in the making. So I started off when I was a young kid wanting to play pro soccer that when I was 10, dedicated my whole teenage existence to making that happen. I ended up going pro for a number of years in my early 20s. That was amazing. But when I was 17, I lost all my hair to an autoimmune condition. And that really kind of threw a wrench in my journey moving forward because I was like, huh, why did this happen? And let me figure out what I could do to solve it. So I had this kind of upbringing of being very, very fit and athletic, and then obviously wasn't necessarily healthy. And then I realized I'm like, huh, maybe I should look into that. So those two things combined propelled me into the world of health. I studied kinesiology at the University of Toronto. Then I went back to school for holistic nutrition. Wanted to solve my own problem health wise. And then I realized, like, huh, maybe I could share this with a lot of other people. And that's kind of how it started in terms of, like, working as a trainer and nutritionist. Did that for seven years, grinding away 12 to 14 hours a day. Underpaid, overworked, burnt out. And I was also volunteering as the one of the assistant coaches with the men's soccer program at the University of Toronto. And I did that for seven years. And so I was working from like seven in the morning with clients till seven at night. And then I would go over to Varsity Stadium, which was close to the gym I was at in Toronto. And then I'd be there till 10 o' clock at night. And I was like, it was fun for a bit. And then I realized, this is before I had kids. I can't keep doing this forever. So I knew that I wanted to have more freedom, more impact, et cetera, at least on the professional side. So I was working with a coach at the time and he suggested, why don't you set up a website or something? I was like, sure, I don't even know what that looks like. So this is 2005. Set up a website, had no clue what I was doing. Like, no idea about the Internet. This is just after like, you know, maybe two, three years after dial up. So, you know, we're not quite where we are now, obviously. And I was actually working with a client at the time who said, why don't you put your voice on tape? And I was like, huh, that's an interesting idea. So my first product online was actually a follow along workout program. And I thought it was amazing, but no one knew about it. And so my first year in business, I made $6,000 online. And then the next year I made a little bit more. And then the third year I made about 18,000. So my first three years online was literally below poverty line income. And I was during that time basically chopping all of my clients in person. I'm like, I'm gonna build my dream. So I just, you know me, I'm kind of like, burn the ships and do it. So I just very quickly started to throttle online, even though I was working even more, building the online side of things and getting very little traction. So financially I was in a really tough position for a long time. And then in 2010, I realized I'm like, dude, you're not as smart as you think you are, so you got to get some coaching. And that's what I did. I hired a coach who was more money than I made in my previous year. And that's when the inflection point happened. And again, this was more for like the health and fitness business. I was producing, you know, books, courses, we had some supplements and just a lot of scattered, like it was so complex. There was no streamlined strategy. It was a bunch of everything. So got some coaching, started to recognize the importance of building certain skills around copywriting, learning how to build funnels, learning how to, like, understanding how to build a business. And then eventually the business took off. We helped half a million people to better health. Ended up writing a book that became a number two New York Times bestseller. And then the business really became a pretty big thing. And I hated most of it for the last couple years of it before I decided to get rid of it. And during that time, the reason I didn't enjoy it was because it was just so complex. There were so many moving pieces. We were launching something new every month, and it was just the antithesis of what I suggest people do. But it's also good because I've had that experience of doing everything under the sun, some of it very successfully, but obviously making a lot of mistakes. So eventually sold the business. But in that process, I had a lot of other people in our space, health professionals, et cetera, start reaching out to me for like, hey, man, what are you. Like, what are you doing to grow this sucker? And that happened a lot in a very short amount of time. So I started to recognize maybe there's a gap in the marketplace here where there's all these amazing health professionals, but they don't know how to build their business. And I was that guy, and I figured it out. And so that became the seed of what is now HealthPreneur, which is the current company that I run. And over the past seven years, we've helped 1300 health professionals and coaches grow their businesses. They've done, collectively, more than 217 million. And we've helped a lot of people. Our goal is to help a billion people transform their lives. And I realized that if I can help other business owners in our space build better businesses, then collectively we can get closer to that goal. So that's been the mission. That's what we've been up to. And it's. It's been an amazing ride. Hasn't been easy in the slightest, but it's been a million percent worth it. So that's the. The journey in a nutshell.

Dude. I love that so much. And, you know, it's a. When you think of the entrepreneurial journey and the struggle and the growth and the success and the, you know, the failures, the. The exits, you know, you've got an element of almost everything in there, which is cool, right? And I think that's what. One of the things that makes you a fantastic coach is that you've Lived and experienced it. Now when you're talking about so healthpreneur, when we're talking about health professionals, what health professionals do you work with?

So we work with, it's kind of like a niche within an inch. So we're working with health professionals who really span the spectrum. So it could be naturopaths, chiropractors, health coaches, nutritionists, but their focus is really growing online. So my whole philosophy has always been I don't really want to help you build a brick and mortar because that's the prison you've already created for yourself. Let's help you help more people and expand from a time and location freedom perspective. So we focus on helping them build virtual practices. And we've been waving that flag since day one. It just so happened that Covid obviously accelerated things because all of a sudden people had to do that. And so as long as someone has a track record like they're really good at what they do, I can't give somebody expertise. So they have to be an expert in their field. They have to have worked with paying clients because we're basically going to give them a vehicle to accelerate their growth and their visibility. But if they suck at what they do and they can't help people, I'm not like we can't do much for them. So those are kind of the best clients that we take on in terms of what we're looking for.

Yeah. And so, and of course we've again had the opportunity to work together for a few years. So I know some of the answers to these, which is where I'm going to continue to direct. So one of the, one of the areas that you focus on with these online or these professionals moving to the online space, you focus on helping them with marketing and lead gen strategies.

Yep. So two things. Client acquisition. So like lead gen sales and then delivery. Because a big bottleneck on any service based business is delivery. Because if you're in a one on one setup, you can only acquire so many clients as your delivery can handle. So most entrepreneurs are not going to move into pain. So even if we could fix their lead gen sales, if they can't handle more than X number of clients, they're never going to grow their business because why would they? They're just going to, you know, kill themselves on the back end. So we help them with both, so they have capacity to help more people and then as we have more capacity we can obviously fill the front end with more of their perfect clients.

So let's jump maybe a little deeper into those two areas then. So when you're talking about creating capacity, what is it that we're trying to do for those practitioners? How, how are you obviously without sharing all of your tools and tactics, but you know, what are the primary objectives there? Is it moving to a one to many, you know, delivering to group based programs or how do we scale that out so that, you know, in general business owners are getting more capacity to live their life the way they want.

Yeah. So I think, I mean really what it comes down to is each business owner has to make a decision to say. Because some people say like they can't see themselves working outside of a one on one scenario. And it's like, that's fine, but just understand you've got some major constraints if that's the issue, because there are different ways of helping people. So number one is like, are you open minded to consider a different possibility? So the model that we teach is called the three Cs. So curriculum, community and coaching. Curriculum is the base and it's the biggest chunk of it. But you can't build curriculum if you're serving everyone. So the first thing we have, our clients do and really recommend is like, you have to specialize. A lot of health professionals become successful in spite of themselves. So they've got a clinic, people happen to fall in their lap and they help everyone. It's very hard to do that online when you have to proactively market yourself. You have to be known for one thing in the marketplace because most people would rather work with a specialist as opposed to a generalist. Right. So that's also like, not only is that important from a messaging perspective on the marketing front, but it's very hard to build a productized service on the back end if you try to do everything. So the first thing is if we're going to build out a curriculum, we have to identify what's the problem we're solving, who's the perfect client that has that problem. And the curriculum is built in a very linear, structured fashion so that even if a client never spoke with you as the coach or health practitioner, they would have enough self directed guidance, if you will, to see market improvements in whatever it is they're trying to improve. And we call this, basically what we're helping our clients do is move away from what we call a doctor dependent model, which is very transactional. Trading time for money. Got a session, 100 bucks, whatever client gets better when they see you, you get paid when they do, you don't get paid when they're not there. They don't get helped when you're not there. That's the typical model. We call it the medical matrix. It's a broken model. And we're moving our clients to more of a transformational model which is more client empowered. So what's interesting is like a lot of our clients are manual therapists, like chiropractors, physical therapists, et cetera. And some of them initially are like, how do you do this online? Like, I'm not going to adjust spines over zoom. I'm like, I know, but it's about getting paid for what you know, not what you do. It's getting paid for your brain, not what you're doing with your body. And that's a paradigm shift for a lot of people. But here's the cool thing, is that when you have a client, and I've been a patient, and I'm sure you have of many different health practices, when you go to a place and lay on a table and have stuff done to you, it's a very passive approach. The patient typically has very little involvement in their own healing. And I've never met a health practitioner or coach who didn't want more committed clients because we know if the client does some stuff between sessions, they will get better results. So when we work with people online, if we have a curriculum that they can follow independent of the practitioner's time now the client actually takes more ownership of their own progress. And that's why our clients who deal with like back pain, knee pain, sciatica, typical stuff that you'd go to the chiropractor for, their clients get better results virtually even though they never saw them in person. And it's because the client is doing more of the work. So that frees up a lot more of the practitioners bandwidth and time. And then they come in to build the community with other like minded clients. And then they layer on their coaching expertise and accountability at the top level of that. But the key is helping our clients dissociate their time from their client's results. So it really moves away from a one to one to one to many. And for some it happens very quick because they're very open minded to it. Others are like, I don't know how I could do this outside of a one on one. I'm like, listen, like unless you're dealing with deep emotional traumatic work, I've not seen a single setting in which group leverage coaching doesn't produce better results. And so that's the model that we help our clients build it. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, dude, that is so good. And you know, again, you get people in the professional space. Hey, I'm in the professional space too. And sometimes we get. We're a little bit maybe more conservative, reserved in making that transformation because we're like, well, no, this just isn't how it's been done. But once people get their mind opened up to what the possibilities are and they start seeing the outcomes, it's so powerful. And if truthfully, you know, there's not too many people that I chat with that aren't trying to maximize their impact, like, if you're looking to, as a professional, as a healer, trying to help support the most amount of people, that's the model to do it in. Right. So, you know, the second component for you in creating their capacity is then on the lead generation. So again, without sharing all your tools, what. What's your general approach? What sort of platform do you use to drive those leads? How to. Even outside of health practitioners, you know, how do people make the most of taking advantage of the online advertising space?

So this is where I differ from a lot of coaches out there. There's a lot of. And it's not to say that they're wrong. It's just the philosophical difference. So my first business was built largely on content, like it was the grind. And I'm a firm believer in building content and building the brand. The challenge there is that it takes a very long time. So the analogy is like, okay, let's say we want to go from New York to Los Angeles using the typical grinds that everyone talks about. Posting on social media, creating content is like biking from New York to Los Angeles. You'll get there, but it's gonna take a long time. And our approach is like, well, what if we could just fly? It'll take us five hours, right? Metaphorically speaking. So in our space, because most of our clients are not business owners who spend the majority of their time working on their business, they spend the majority of time working in their business. And what that means for us is, although I do believe social media and creating content and adding a lot of goodwill to the marketplace is a very valuable thing to do for the long term health of your brand. For our market, they don't have that luxury because they're seeing patients 10, 12, 14 hours a day. So what, are they going to like, spend all day creating content as well? No, they're not online business owners who just do that stuff. So we have to provide a vehicle that uses leverage, and we do that through a process called the perfect client pipeline, which is essentially leveraging social media ads. So advertising on Instagram, Facebook, we move those people from those ads into an online presentation, masterclass, webinar, whatever you want to call it. From there, people fill out an application if they want to take the next step, and then they finish up on a phone call. I'm not saying that's the only model, obviously to build a business, but in my almost 20 years of business, it's, in my experience, the fastest way to go from New York to la, because you can. There's, again, just kind of using that as an analogy. There are hundreds of different routes from New York to la, but only one of them is the fastest. Like, you can't have three that are the fastest. One is the fastest. And in my experience, this model is the fastest. It's the simplest, but I'm not saying it's the easiest. So the trade off is that a lot of coaches talk about, you know, build up your business revenue wise, organically, till you're doing like 20, 30, 50k a month. I'm like, dude, if you have no following, how, like, when are you getting there, right? Like, it's a lot of work and it takes. It took me seven years to make my first million dollars, my first business doing that stuff. With HealthPreneur, we made a million bucks in seven weeks when I started it. And it was like, like, yeah, I had the experience and the skills at that point, but still we had a better vehicle. So the opportunity is like, you can move a lot faster. You don't have to have a following. Most of our clients are not famous. They're amazing health practitioners that no one knows about, and they don't have all day to build this huge following. Is it helpful if they have it for sure? Do I, do I think they should over time build it? Yeah, totally. But in the near, like in the, in the six to 12 months of, like, I want to build a little more financial stability and get more clients in. Leveraging paid traffic ads is the fastest way to do that because you don't have to have a single follower on social media. You can press, publish on your ads and be shown to more people in a day than you would otherwise over a year with posting content. That's the power of this. Now the downside is there's a little bit of risk, right? You're investing money. And this is where some people get caught up. They think of like, I'm spending money on ads. I'm like, no, no, you're investing money building and nurturing prospects on an email list because every single person's opting in. Like, where else are you getting these leads? And so over time, the biggest opportunity is really in the value of that email list and the nurture that you're able to provide to them. Because it's a no like and trust game, especially online. Right. Like, you have to build trust with people. And this pipeline is built so that it time compresses as much as we can. The journey of someone not knowing who you are to I want to work with you. And you know, again, it's never 100% of people, but a greater percentage of people doing that in a shorter amount of time than any other vehicle that we've tested. So that's how we help them get clients. And really, I mean, it comes down to, like, you have this vehicle, but we also have to teach our clients how to drive it. Right? Because they're great practitioners. They have the skills technically, but they don't have the business acumen around messaging around how to manage the business, how to, you know, look at the data and the numbers in a very simplistic fashion to make good decisions. So they're not emotional and reactive. They're thinking logically. And. And this is what I get really excited about is seeing health professionals who have no business training turn into really great entrepreneurs with some very simple skills and good coaching that helps them move closer to where they want to go. And these are skills that they have for the rest of their life. Even if they decided to do a different business model in the future, that's fine. But like the skill around messaging, the ability to sell over the phone or on zoom, you know, understanding the nuances of how to move people to action, how to share your truth. These are all things that doesn't matter what your business model is. They become very valuable skills to help you grow no matter what you're doing. So that's our approach. It's, you know, it's. Again, it's a little bit different from what a lot of people do. So for us, it's kind of like we say, start with paid traffic, grow your revenue, grow your income, and then later you can grow your influence. What a lot of people do instead is they grow their influence first, which takes forever, and then hoping to make an income from that, which just takes a lot longer.

Yeah. And you know, what a great summary on how to use paid traffic. Right? Start to finish. Now, guys, there is so much that goes into getting that right. You know, like, if you just. If you just Took Yuri's template there and started working on it. You, you're probably not going to be overly successful. It's all the intricacies that are involved in there. That again, you know, Yuri talked about seven years it took him to get to a million and then did it in the first seven months. That's because of everything that's been learned and I'm sure what you share in your program too. So huge value in there, which is amazing. So great share, great insight. And for sure, the whole paid traffic situation, you know, people looking at becoming the known celebrity in the space. Listen, if you get your paid traffic right, you will be the known celebrity in the space to your prospects because they will continue to get your messaging. And that is a very cool thing. Nobody might know you except for the people that you're targeting. And it's pretty cool.

It's crazy because I think obscurity is one of the biggest dangers we all face online. Like, if no one knows you exist, no one's doing business with you. And so it really comes down to, like, how do you get people to see your stuff? Like, every single social platform is a paid to play platform. Every fourth post is an ad. I think we all know that if you post something, not all of your followers see it. A very small percentage of them do. And if you're one of the lucky super humans that has amazing engagement, that's amazing. But most of us, like, you could write the most amazing piece. No one's gonna see it. You might have a video. Like, we had a video that went viral on TikTok the other week. In three days, it got more than 335,000 views.

Amazing.

And guess how much of an impact it had on our business? Zero. Zero. Right. And so this is the other thing is like, you know, not confusing vanity metrics for stuff that actually moves the business. Like, and the worst part about that is like, can I repeat that process? No, because on TikTok, we've just thrown everything up against the wall. Like, I mean, pretty much is all social media is anyways. Like, you just throw a bunch of stuff up against the wall and if something catches, you're like, cool. So we took that same video, posted it on Instagram, Crickets. And it's like, I don't, I don't like running a business like that where I have no predictability, no forecasting, there's no learning. Like, what do I learn from that that I can replicate? And it's like, nothing. The nice thing about advertising is that you can start to test theories, you get feedback and say, well, this image versus this image performed a lot better. And if you repeat that over and over again, you start to recognize patterns that you can duplicate and make better decisions from. And I like that because I think if you can't predict to some degree what next month or whatever is going to look like, I like knowing if I spend this amount of money, I'll get this amount of leads, this numbers of calls booked at this price. And this is the return on ad spend with, you know, let's call it a 10 degree, 10%, you know, margin. That's a very, very nice place to be in as opposed to let's just throw stuff up against the wall and hopefully next month is better because it's just like, it's exhausting. Right? And you don't sleep at night.

Yeah, no, and I was actually just, I was gonna say listen to, but it was on audiobook Alex Hermosi's new A Hundred million Dollar leads book. And it was interesting, you know, listening to his strategies related to lead gen and paid ads and traffic as well. And maybe one of the more successful people in that space right now in, you know, killed the Internet last week with his book launch. Like super impressive to watch and learn from what he's doing sort of behind the scenes. And when he talks about his strategies and going, you know, nine out of ten are probably big failures. It's just, you know, once you get one, then you've got to be ready to invest in it because that's where it really takes off. And I think what you do really well is that you create that win sort of platform or copyright or content and you duplicate it for your clients so that they don't have to go through the same learning experience as, you know, like the Alex Hermosi or you know, me, early on figuring out what 99 ads don't work and oh, we finally found one.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think like there's, I mean every market, every message is going to be a little bit different. So we obviously provide framework and templates and a tremendous amount of feedback and coaching for our clients so they can accelerate that growth. But you know, like we tell our clients, you'll see 5 to 10 years of growth in 12 months or less. Like, am I saying that every ad you launch is going to work? No, like we have clients that. I was talking to a client last week, her first ad is doing so well. I'm like, you understand you could have a million dollar business in three months from now. You know, and then other clients, you know, their first five ads don't work. Right. And that's the boat that we fall into. We. I mean, out of 10 ads that we run, we're lucky if one of them catches on. And I'm like, I'm like, even if half of one catches on, I'm like, yes. Because the reality is I personally have written 1200 ads for HealthPreneur over the past seven years. So now we have obviously, copywriters on our team that do ads as well. But out of those 1200 that I've written, maybe 20 have built the business, you know, and I think a lot of, like, young entrepreneurs, like, not young in age, but, like, young in business age, they don't understand the volume required to make something work. They just think, like, I tested five ads, this doesn't work. It's like, that's like saying, I did squats five times and my legs aren't stronger. It's like, dude, like, you just have to do the reps. You know, in.

Fact, they're probably weaker right now because you've just blown them right out.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, you have to go through a little bit of micro tear to build them back up. It's the same in business. It's like every setback is an opportunity for the comeback. And I think you just have to get back up every single time. And. And when we realize, I think when we accept how hard the journey is, it becomes a lot easier. Like, it's like going to work out. If you've never worked out before and you're expecting it to be easy, you're gonna be in for a real shock when it's hard. So. But if you go and say, okay, it's gonna be tough, I'm gonna have some muscle soreness. Cool. Now you've accepted the reality of what's ahead, now we can attack it with a bit more real, you know, reality.

Absolutely. Now, so you, you help all of these entrepreneurs in the health space grow, scale their business, maximize their impact. I'd love to know for you, you know, as part of growing and scaling your business, because I know you've had a lot of great success in getting to where you are, how much, you know, is related to revenue growth. But let's talk about, you know, team development and the importance of building that team. You talked about different copywriters and media buyers and whatnot that are part of your team. Can you walk us through a little bit about maybe your approach to building a team and how you've done that successfully.

Yeah, I mean, without my team, I would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago. So I'll just start by saying that like it's, if you, if you don't have good people around you, it's, it's not going to happen. I mean you can, you can take it to such degree by yourself. But yeah, I mean, I've got, I'm very blessed to have a great team. And I also know that I don't have the team that we will have in the future to get us to the, you know, the biggest levels that we want to get to. And that's okay. Like everyone's with us for a certain season and then as long as they can keep growing, that's amazing. But for us, I look at like, how so our process for like bringing in clients is very similar to what we do on the hiring side. We have a, like a core belief of ours is like, if you want the most, make it easy. If you want the best, make it hard. So when we, with our hiring process, we don't entertain conversations with just anyone. Like in our application process, we ask like, what's the secret code? And they're like, none. Like none of the secret code's in the bullet points. So if you miss that, you're out. First thing we have people do is submit a video cover letter. And some people put like, n A, like you're out. You would be amazed at the number of video cover letters we get. And in the first five seconds I'm like, I will never consider this person. Just because like we've had people, one person I can remember, shoot a video and I swear they were high. We've had another person shoot a video from their unmade bed closet in the background, wide open a closet, like clothes all over the place. I'm like, you couldn't re record the video. Like it's not, it's three minutes. Right?

Or choose a different backdrop.

I know. Like, it's not. We're not, we're less concerned about what's being said in the video and just kind of like the process of the video itself. Right. Some people shoot a 12 minute video. We're like, dude, we asked for three minutes, not 12 minutes. What does that say about this person's ability to articulate themselves succinctly? So it's not like the thing. It's about how they do the thing almost. So if they don't pass that, we're not even considering them. If they do pass that, we send them a test. Project, which is like very relatable to the stuff they would do in the role. If that looks good, we take them to the next step. Now with Chat GPT, what's been interesting is we get a lot of test projects. We're like, dude, that's copy paste ChatGPT. I'm like, it's like you couldn't, like the formatting is so obvious. Like, you couldn't have just changed the formatting to make it less obvious. So I think, I mean, I don't know, I mean, in my experience, like, you have to go through a lot of duds to find the stars. And it's just, I think if you set up your hiring pipeline to do a lot of that filtering for you so that you're not speaking to every single person. Like, you'll just, you'd go crazy if you had to speak with every candidate. So our process is video cover letter, task, project. If that's good, then they move into a team interview. We do a cognitive assessment which assesses their ability to learn quickly and their kind of intelligence, if you will. And then if all is good there, we move to a final interview. Reference checks, the whole bit. So it's, it's, for us, it's a pretty like lengthy hiring process. But we also know that like, when you make the wrong hire, it just costs you so much time and money. In our case, if someone's been with us for more than 90 days, they stay with us for more than three years. So we have a very low churn rate. If anything, we let people go quickly. Once they're in within 30 days, we're like, you know what, for this role, this is not my consents, we're done. But it's never perfect. I mean, like, you know, like, you never know for sure until someone does the job. And then obviously we want to spend a lot of time coaching, nurturing our, our team like we do with our clients to help them skill up and move up to help them achieve their goals. So that's, that's kind of our process in a nutshell.

Yeah, no, which is awesome. And you know what, and you talked about, you know, growth and as long as they continue to grow and grow with you, I think it's 100, 1, 800 got junk. Their story, which is Brian is the CEO, still the CEO and talked about, you know, getting to that million to 3 million range. And he went in and fired everybody and he said he's sorry that he put everyone in the spot to not succeed and that he had to Bring the right people in to, you know, successfully grow the company and immediately, you know, the company sort of launched into growth mode. But it took them like 10 years to not grow. For him to solve that, it was, you know, him not coaching, not hiring people with the right skills to be successful, that he had failed with that and had to start over. You know, pretty powerful having the right people in the right seats. And you know, life changes, people's lives change, family dynamics change, health changes. You know, what may be a good fit now isn't later. Or maybe someone evolves into being an absolute superstar when they've had struggles for a little while. So. Yeah, very interesting. And love your process. I love the, the virtual or video cover letter. I think that's an amazing added step. I might try that actually.

You should, dude. Honestly, it's so easy, right? And it's like it takes you three minutes to watch it and it just avoids so much wasted time if that person can't do the basics right.

Yeah. Or is not prepared. And I think, you know, to your point, I bet you that weeds out so many people that on paper may look okay, but they're not even giving the care and consideration for this process. So is that going to transfer into their day to day? Likely, yeah.

And it's weird, like you don't want to judge a book by its cover, but it's very interesting because I think earlier on we would have been more lenient to be like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. Like we can let that one thing slide, but that one thing ends up being a real problem if that person's hired. And so really coming down to the fact that how you do anything is how you do everything. And if someone's letting something slide in the hiring process, it's gonna show up later. Cause if you think about the hiring process, they're gonna show up at the highest level possible to get the job. And then after that it just goes down. Right. It's like the first dates. Like you always wanna have best first impression, but if they don't show, if they don't really blow you away, you know, don't rush into hiring people. Just, you know, keep. Allow people to come into the pipeline. That's why it's important to have a pipeline of, of candidates. You're not rushing because there's only like n equals 1. Right. You want to have a supply of potential candidates for sure.

I, I want to just share this. You talked about dating and I gotta tell you, when I met my wife, we did we made. We started dating in high school, so we've been together for a long time and I was that guy, like over, over the top guy. Then she's held me to that standard for the last 23 years. So there's the other side that's like, oh my God. As a high performer. Yeah, you set your expectations too high here, Bob. Man, oh man, it's good. Hey, it's been a, it's been a 23 year relationship and still going strong. So hey, something, something worked, right? Setting the expectations high. Listen, Yuri, I think you do this very well and, and maybe I'm hoping you can share some of your insights with some of our listeners as well on how you maximize your work life balance. Because you know, you're one of those people that I admire, really great family life, you know, worldly sort of experience and, and exploration with the kids and, and with your wife as well. So what is your approach to work life balance and how do you make it work so well?

I get up really early. That's the first thing. So I think having kids is like the best productivity hack of all time. So like right now the kids are back at school, so it's like, you know, 8:15 in the morning until 3, 3:30 ish. Like that's you know, kind of work day without the kids. But for me, to be honest, even whether at home in the summer or even if I didn't have kids at this point in time, I'd still get up for I typically get up four and from four until about eight o' clock is just focus work. And if I were to shut the day down at that point, like if I were to like, you know, have breakfast with the kids, walk them to school, if nothing else happened during the day, my day is already one. And that took me a long time to get there because I was always the guy. Like I always wanted to get up early, but I spent like 10 years like going back and forth. I'd wake up early one day, not so much the other, it's like, ah, screw it, whatever. And then I just got to a point where I was like, no, no winners get up early. And that was the story I kept telling myself. And I'm a winner. That's it. And it's just like autopilot. And I love that space. That's where I get my most useful work done. It's like idea extraction, you know, thinking, et cetera. So from that perspective, I think most people, myself for sure, are most useful early in the morning. So our Battery power is like fully charged and we're less creative as the day goes on. So I try to get my most heavy lifting stuff done first thing. And then, you know, when the kids are at home, I mean, I mean, I see them all the time. Like, sometimes I'm like, I think I see them too much, but like, there's all, there's. There's obviously like that balance too. Like they can be at home and sometimes I don't even see them all day. Right. Cause I'm like, I'm in the office or they're watching YouTube or who knows what's going on. But nonetheless, I'm around, they're around. We're always kind of seeing each other, which is nice. And I've always wanted to create that dynamic. And then obviously we have the luxury and I've had the opportunity to travel a lot with them and create those experiences, which has been amazing. But for me, it's like, you know, we spent. Before the pandemic, we spent three months in Australia. And it wasn't, it wasn't like a three month vacation. I'm like, I was still working there, I was just in Australia. And that's the way I've always treated my travel. I'm like, I don't care where I am. It's. I still do what I do here, but somewhere else. Now if we go for a week, that's my more of like a, a getaway, resort, vacation type of thing. It's a little bit different, but in general, it's all the same for me. Like if I'm. When I'm traveling, I'm always shooting videos because I'm like, this would be great footage for an ad or whatever because I want to document that lifestyle and share that because that's a big aspiration for a lot of the people that we serve. So for me, it's not, it's not even balanced. It's just. It is like personal and business is just one and the same for me. Like our, our oldest son, Oscar, now he's like the resident videographer. So he's getting some video footage of me around the house now, which is pretty cool. And then our second, Luca, he wants to do more of the video. Sorry, he wants to do less of the editing, more of the videography stuff. So I'm like, this is cool. So now we can kind of like, you know, kill many birds with one stone. But yeah, that's, you know, that's just been the way it's been. So it's, it's Been a great ride.

That's super cool. And my daughter is in grade eight and her and I have had this sort of relationship where anytime I go speak at an event that's in an interesting spot, she comes with me and we document the adventure a little bit and she takes photos and video while I'm speaking, which is very cool. And I think it for us as entrepreneurs, it opens up our kids eyes to what's possible. Right. And it's not necessarily the traditional school system where you go to the guidance counselor and they say you need to be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, you know, a teacher, a nurse. Right. There are other options out there for you to create the space or even take those specialized knowledges and learn how to build them online and create freedom and flexibility. You know, it's not just how the textbook says and I love that and I know you do that with your kids and, and I try and do that with my kids too. It's something real special that they'll remember forever.

Yeah, I figured if they can build skills outside of the school system, like I was telling my son, I'm like, if you become like, he, he put out some reels, so we shot some longer form content and I said, try to find one idea out of this that you can condense in one minute or less. And he, he pumped out a clip and I'm like, dude, this is, this is amazing. Like he put like the captions in the gifs in. I was like, this is great. I'm like, dude, if you can do this consistently, I could literally send you clients at 12 years old. Like you could actually have like an income that's greater than the teachers in your school. Right. And it's just really cool to be able if they have the desire to want to learn that skill and seeing how they can stack skills over time. So by the time they're 20, you know, they have just amazing experience that they can bring to the marketplace place 100%.

I want to talk about cars because I know you like cars and I, I know that and hopefully it's okay that I share that. You know, we work together in a professional capacity that, that you're a client of ours as well and, and I'd love for you to maybe just share a few years ago you'd had this dream and maybe just walk us through there of where that started and where it's at.

Yeah, so I was on a six hour supercar drive with a buddy of mine and so we had six different supercars over six hours got to drive them all. Ferrari Audi R8. Finished on a McLaren 570, and I didn't even know what a McLaren was. I'm like, I don't even know what this spaceship is. Like, let's just whatever. But we finished on that car, and we looked at each other, and we're like, oh, my God, this. This is unbelievable. And I got out of the car, and I told him, I'm like, I'm buying this car. And so then I started to really get clear on what I wanted, so I started doing some searching online. I'm like, you know, what type of model, what color specs, all this kind of stuff. And I created a vision board, and I journaled about it every morning, and I was just super clear about that intention. And I didn't know how it was going to work. Like, financially, I didn't. That's where, obviously, you came in. But in terms of, like, clarity, I was very clear about what I wanted. And then one morning, I just happened to be searching for, like, McLaren 570s Toronto for sale, and this car shows up on Kijiji, of all places. I thought it was a toy model, but it was an actual real car. And I was like, this is the exact car that's like, it's the exact car, same everything. And I was like, my car's ready. Like, that's literally the way I thought about it. It was about a year and a bit process, and then finally it was like, there it is. And then. I don't even know the conversation or when that started with you, but I said, like, how do we make this happen? Because the biggest pain in my ass living in Canada is obviously personal tax. You know, if you have a car that's $200,000 and you take a $200,000 from your business, you're really paying $400,000. Ish. And I have a problem with that. I'm like, listen, I don't know. We all have to pay taxes. I get it. But I didn't feel that was fiscally smart at this stage of my life to even consider doing that. So I just asked him, like, hey, is there a better way of doing this? And you introduced me to some stuff I'd never even considered, which is obviously why we're working together. And we were able to make that happen and completely avoid paying that, you know, excess, unnecessary tax, at least in the short term. I mean, we never really avoid it, but obviously it's deferred in some way, shape, or form. So that was really cool. And Then that car was just an amazing. I mean, I still have it. It's amazing. And then several months later, some people were starting to talk about, like, the luxury car tax that was coming out. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, what's this all about? And then I was like. Because I was thinking, well, the f. And by the way, our mutual friend actually got the same car at around the same time. Just different, you know, colors and so forth. And I was like, oh, my God, dude. Like, so funny. So then there was, like, another model, the 720s, which was like a rocket ship. And I was like, maybe we should get a second one, because it'd be cool for Amy, my wife, to have one. Whatever.

Whatever we have to tell ourselves. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like.

But I didn't want to pay an extra 100 grand in luxury car tax, so I was like, okay, let's make this happen a bit faster. So again, same thing. It's like, you know, do we need it? No. Do we want it? Sure. Can we afford it? Yeah. I mean, again, I don't want to take out excess amount of capital from the business unnecessarily. So you were able to help us in making that decision in a much more intelligent fashion to make. To make sense of that. And I, like, I think part of that process, too, Bob, was, like, started to recognize how wealthy people buy luxury items. They're not necessarily buying them all cash, just withdrawing from a company. And I never considered that before. And I think a lot of people, myself included, had a negative relationship with debt. And, like, it's not all bad. Like, you can leverage it properly. And I think that was a really big eye opener that I started to see as a result of working with you and your insights, which was just immensely valuable.

And so what's your. And thank you for that. And I will say we have paid no tax on getting that car, which is pretty awesome. And I think the second car was a. Hey, since we saved the tax on the first car, can we just use that to buy the next one? And it's like, yeah, that's awesome. What's the next project that you have on that I feel is very exciting as well? You've got a new development?

Yeah, so we're building. I mean, we're building an amazing house in Mexico. Like, it's on the Pacific. It's on a cliff in the Pacific Ocean, pretty much. And my wife and I always wanted to live on the ocean, like that expansive horizon. We always love this one spot in Mexico. So that was started Almost two years ago now. So we broke ground this past February. Architectural plans took about a year to get all finalized. And it's just incredibly exciting to see how that's all come about. It's actually been a more streamlined process than building in Canada, to be honest. Like, it's been like, everyone's like, oh, watch out, it's Mexico. Whatever. I'm like, no, dude. Like, obviously we're working with one of the top architectural firms down there. They're amazing. The process has been incredible. But the other thing too is like, we've been able to do that not out of personal income, but from business income that's moved into our holding company and it's again, it's an investment. So we've basically built the whole thing tax free as opposed to taking all that money out personally and then building something personally, which is just twice as much money pretty much. So it's just really cool when you have a business that you can move profits from out of that into a holding company and then using that bucket as an investment vehicle to create experiences and opportunities communities like we're doing right now. So it's. It's a lot of fun.

Yeah. 100 and dude, I, you know, you're one of my favorite people to watch online. And I ask those questions knowing that you've posted, you know, about the development and the progress. And I love watching the progress because it's. It's so cool to watch people go out and capture their dreams. And you do that so beautifully and you share the experience with people, which I think is amazing. Yuri, I want to maybe just ask, you know, if people wanted to work with you or wanted to even follow the progress or some of the cool things that you're up to. How do people get a hold of you? Where can they find you?

I'd say the best place is probably Instagram. It's from probably most active. I mean, I post stuff on my personal profile on Facebook, but I think in terms of useful stuff, Instagram. So I'm elthprinter on Instagram. And then if you're into podcast, I have a podcast on itunes and Spotify called the Health Partner Show. I'm an open book. I share everything that we do. I hold nothing back and I just tell it like it is. So if you want to connect with me on Instagram, I respond to my DMs and then obviously you try to put out as much valuable stuff as I can in the process. So yeah.

And then for any of the practitioners who would want to Reach out to your team or connect with your team. Learn from the programs that you guys have created. Same thing. Reach out through Instagram.

Yeah, for sure. From there we can obviously just direct them to whatever the next step would make most sense for them.

Okay, awesome. And I want to leave maybe with one thought from you. You know, if you had any advice for a starting entrepreneur or a business that was getting started right now in any field, not necessarily in the health space, but any entrepreneur, you know, what would your words of wisdom be for them?

Things get better when you get better. So your business will only grow to the extent that you do. And if you're not where you want to be, it's because you're not who you need to be. And that took me a very long time to realize it's not about the tactics and strategies or the vehicles, if you will, it's about who's driving the car. And that's. I mean, I've worked with beginners and very, very successful people and everyone wants to know, what's the difference? There's no difference. Like if you have 100 people in class, all the same professor, all the same curriculum, different grades, how's that possible? It's each individual person. So whatever you can do to invest in yourself, to grow your skills, traits, beliefs, hang around other successful people, just start infusing your brain with the right inputs. It's the most important thing because you can't out tactic a broken mindset. And so whatever you can do to build yourself, everything else will flow from that point.

Amazing, guys. Yuri, my friend, appreciate you so much. Make sure, guys, he has so much wisdom and insights. Make sure you're following him on Instagram. Watch his progress as he continues to grow and share his wisdom with everybody else. Yuri, thank you so much for joining us today. Can't wait to connect again soon.

Thanks so much, Bob.