Ep 251: How to be limitless with Vikram Raya

I think the highest form of currency for an entrepreneur is energy and those who can generate energy, sustain it and then, and even transfer to others. Right? Yeah, that's it.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, Next Level Income.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we welcome back my friend, Dr. Vikram Raya. Vic is a trained cardiologist and functional medicine physician. He's an international speaker, high performance coach, and a real estate expert who's been active in the multifamily real estate industry since 2015. He's also a founding partner and CEO of Viking Capital Investments. Throughout his career in the past several years, he's helped high achievers, doctors and other professionals around the world achieve ultimate vitality, financial abundance and a bulletproof mindset through his coaching limitless md. He also just released his new book, the Perfect Week Formula for Doctors, which you're going to want to get even if you're not a physician. And he's going to give you a free copy. And we got the link in not only the show notes here, but he's going to share it as well today on this show. Vic, great to see you again, my friend. How you doing?

Chris, man, thanks for having me on the show. It's been a while.

Yeah, yeah. Got to see you down in Miami. You had a wonderful event and we, we got, we got a really nice surprise down there at your mastermind, which I'm going to let you share with the audience. But I got, I got a copy of your brand new book that we're going to be sharing with the audience today, the Perfect Week Formula for Doctors. And Vic, you have an amazing story that I'd like for you to share today, but I love your new book because it's actually not, not just for doctors. We got a lot of, a lot of people in the medical industry that listen, but I'd love for you to share a little bit about your, your background and what you're doing today with Limitless and all your different companies.

Yeah, Chris, first of all, man, I'm excited. I don't know if you guys know this, but me gentleman here, your podcast host, we're going to go climb a big Mountain Mount Rainier. And I thought I was like, oh, this is cool. Thing is, Chris is already. So this is like old. Old hat to him. But that being said, I think entrepreneurs, doctors, investors, you want to live a adventurous life. You want to live a dynamic life. And why do you invest? Why do you work hard? Why do you save and create multiple sources of income so you can have optionality. And I think, you know, Chris does a phenomenal job on this podcast of giving people options. He brings in guests, he truth bombs on. On things. I mean, being able to retire from a safe career. And I put safe in parentheses because as you guys know, now nothing world is safe. And we're recording in probably Q2 of 2025, where there's a lot of turmoil and turbulence.

Yeah.

So it's about taking back control. And if I could just juxtaposition that to where my story starts. I wanted to take back control many moons ago. This was. Call it 2012, 2011. I just finished my cardiology fellowship, you know, and. And technically, I shouldn't be even here on this call with you. I should be in a cath lab somewhere to squeeze a small stent in a very obese man trying to save their. Trying to save his life.

Yeah, but.

But, you know, I made a decision. I was like, you know what? After some, maybe three or four years of just slogging away in traditional cardiology, so many of you are. Guys are in a profession where slogging it out, you're putting so many hours in, but you're wondering, hey, is this all there is? Is this the right thing? You know, and. And you're comfortable, right? You're making. You got two cars, the doctor house or the entrepreneur house. You take three or four vacations a year, and you're like, wondering, like, is this all there is? You know, is there any more? Or what's next? And I asked that question. I was like, what's next, Chris? And I realized that there was a lot more than what's. Than what I was doing. And so I wanted to not just trade time for dollars, which most people do, and that's a good first step, but that's not where you should stay. And so I learned about other asset class. I learned about options trading and even got a coach because I knew it was very challenging, but I got my butt kicked. Yeah, doesn't. I don't understand it. And, you know, Warren Buffett says one of the most powerful things you can do is you have to understand the business. Don't invest in something you don't understand. And so I was like, all right, well, let me look into real estate. So I started getting into single family homes. I couldn't afford to do it in the Northern Virginia, D.C. area. I ended up partnering with my dad down in Atlanta. And during this 2012, just coming out of the great financial crisis, so there's a lot of deals. We quickly scored about 30 single family homes. And we're like, all right, we're awesome. This is awesome, you know?

Yes.

But then it was like, you know, the amount of income I generated was not that much to replace my six figure salary. So I was like, all right, what next? And, and that's a theme that you ask and that I ask. Throughout our life, we always were wondering, like, you know, how do we go to the next level? And successful people, high performers and entrepreneurs do. And it's a healthy question asked. And it's not that we're not satisfied with our current lives. Don't get me wrong. You know, someone I follow Ed Mylett talks about called Blissful dissatisfaction. Right. And it's. You're in, you're, you're so grateful, so thankful for your. Where current conditions are. But you're like, I still want to grow, I want to strive, I want to be, be more. And so I think that's a healthy tension to have. Anyway, back to my story. I was like, okay, 30 homes, I'm feeling good. But like, I, I wanted to actually replace my income so it would give me option. So someone had come and given us a lecture about multifamily and syndications and like, raising capital. I was like, whoa, this is interesting. But then when they use the word syndication, it seemed almost illegal, like a syndicate. What is that, man? I don't know. Is that irs?

It's Mafia, right?

Exactly. And so, but I looked into it. I'm like, you know what? I don't know if I can get into it, but maybe I can help someone else. And so I ended up, you know, raising a little bit of capital, another person's deal. I ended up getting a business partner who was also a fellow doctor.

Yeah.

And we formed our first company, Viking Capital. And, and it seemed like, you know, we had some. Initially, I didn't want to tell anyone what I did. I felt embarrassed as a cardiologist. I'm doing this real estate stuff on the side. We're going to make fun of me. They think I'm, they think that I can't, I can't make enough money in medicine. And so I had this, like, Chip on my shoulder. But then I finally realized what I thought was my weak was my strength. I'm surrounded by a lot of people with a significant amount of money that's disposable, with low financial iq. What can I do with that? And that's when the whole concept of, hey, let's bring people who are looking for size returns with, with tax adjusted, you know, capabilities into alternative investments. And remember in 2015, 2016, this was not as common it is now. I mean, you walk into a syndication if you go to the grocery store. I mean, it's crazy. So anyway, that's what led to, we ended up getting our first deal. We started becoming owner operators because we thought, hey, you know, if we can put a stent into someone's body, we can save someone's life. I think we can figure out. And now fast forward to where we are now. This is 20, 25, 10 years later, we're at, we crossed about a billion dollar. Sorry, we've crossed a billion dollars of our portfolio and about $800 million of AUM. And we have a team now and we're starting to institutionalize the team and look forward to really growing in this next market cycle, this next up cycle that I'm seeing. So that's what we got.

I love it, Vic. And that's how we got to meet. We, we actually bought a deal from you guys down in Atlanta. I think it was, it was 2018 or 2019. I have to go back and look at the exact date, but I want to, I want to step back. It's an awe, it's an amazing story and it continues, Vic. But Dr. Rai, I should say, but please. Yeah, on Mount Rainier, we'll be, we'll be on a first name basis for sure. So I go back in time and at what point did you say, okay, you know, being a successful physician, a specialist, a cardiologist, this isn't enough. This isn't walk through, you know, kind of what went through your mind to initiate that first step. Because a lot of people, I mean, you look around, I mean, what, 35,000, $40,000, you're in the top 1% of the world if you make that a year. So here you are making 10, 10, 15 times that, 20 times that. As a very successful physician. What, what made you unsettled? What made you decide to take that next step and look outside of that?

I think there's a disease in, in most professionals out there. And the disease is high income, low net worth, and it's also the disease that they think that they're safe and maybe the baby boomers hadn't made, you know, where they could find job. They can crush it for a while and they'd be fine and they'd retire. But if you look right now are not safe AI, nps, private equity, big hospitals, cutting Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, people dissatisfied going into cash based practices. There's so much disruption and value based care versus just cranking them out and just getting paid no matter what. Number two, you know, let me see, let me catch my thoughts for a second. Okay. Number two, it's really, you know there's a ceiling on most people's W2, right?

Yes.

And I got a $225,000 salary, first year as a cardiologist practicing. I was like, I was thrilled.

I was like, oh my God, I'm.

Like 50,000 to 225. But I was.

Buy a nice house, buy a couple luxury SUVs, send your kids to private school. Here we go.

But I was living in Washington D.C. northern Virginia. It's not much money and when you look about it, this is like real class at most.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And, and my, my, my, my trajectory was maybe I'll top off at 400 and 500, which is fine. But you're not going to fly private, you're not going to fly first. Even you're going to be in cattle class. If something major happens, a death in the family, your wife can't work, something that you're not planning for, you're actually going to be struggling.

Yeah.

And forget about optionality. Right. When we use the word freedom, that's a buzzword for options. And your options are reduced if you don't have that kind of income. And then finally, even if I was able to handle all that, then it's all about autonomy. I'm a grown man at that point. I was like 35, 37 years old. And I had to ask permission to take a week off, to take two days off. Had to then arrange for my own coverage. And then as a physician, I had work every Tuesday night. I would be on call from, you know, p.m. all the way to 5:00am and so that means you would not get sleep Tuesday nights. And then fourth weekend I'd have to go and do on call and I would go see 50 to 70 patients in a weekend to four different hospitals. I'd leave at 6am, I'd get back at 10pm and I'd have to do this for the next 30 years. Don't get Me wrong. I love patients. I love caring for my people. In fact, the people part of medicine is what I really loved. But I noticed I was doing less and less of that. So then I needed a, A wealth creation vehicle outside of medicine to allow me to practice medicine the way I wanted to.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And yeah, I love, and I also love how you. You went from residential to commercial, very similar to.

Which.

Which most people have read my book. Now you're. It's not. I gotta, I feel like I gotta do a new version now that you got one out, Vic. Mine's getting on like five or six years at this point. But yeah, I love. You said, I got 30. The first thing that went through my head when you said we got 30 homes was, oh, shoot, now we got 30 homes and 30 tenants. We got to deal with and do that. You know, you said you got introduced to multifamily. A lot of people know my story, talk about that transition as well. Like what, what light bulb went off in your head before you and Ravi picked up that first multi family deal?

So first we were scared.

Right.

And that's natural. There's a pushback. You know, Gay Hendrickson's book called the Big. He talks about all of us as successful people, high performers, achievers. We have an upper limit problem. And the way he described it was interesting. It's. Right, it's.

I got to put this on my list. What's the name of that book again?

It's called the. The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

The Big Leap. Got it.

Yeah. And it's interesting, this upper limit problem, right? You. You are used to living a certain life. You're listening, performing at a certain level, and that's your thermostat. Right. Your thermostat said that.75. Right. For example.

Great analogy. Yeah.

Want to get to 80? It's. You'd have to kick in the heaters and really work hard for it. But that's, that's, that's challenging. Now. If you dropped to like 72, you're gonna get pissed off. You're like, no, no, no, I'm used to 75. I'm gonna work hard to get up there, get back to that 75. But the interesting thing is if you want to go higher, you have to change the thermostat. So that's an internal programming. That's, that's. And you know, there's a, there's a discrepancy. People say, oh, it's the five people you surround yourself with. It is the Five people you want to impress or you compare yourself to, those are the people that will actually influence where you go. Because the five people you hang out with could be your, your cousin, your Uber driver, your friend, your workout buddy. Fine. Or it could be like, you know, your, your five colleagues at work. Okay, cool. But that's not who you end up becoming. You end up becoming who you want to reference. So, for example, when I hang out with Chris, I'm like, what is it? What's. What's. What's the new thing he's. What mastermind is he part of? Oh, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to notch up that metric is where I want to be as well. Or it's, it could be virtual mentors. Like, there's people that you'll never meet, but you love them, like Tony Robbins or, you know, the big guys.

Right.

All right. What would they do in this situation? And you'd use them as a virtual measuring stick, like.

Yes.

Or a rubric for decision making. Right. And so that's how I've started to, like, you know, assimilate my thought process. So. And that's how I was able to break out of that upper limit problem. Because technically, 2,5k, 2 50, 400k, even a million dollars, okay, that seems like a lot of money. But if that's, if you're able to raise your thermostat, then you can go beyond that. And, and then the actions and the effort and the intensity comes with it. And so anyway, that's, that's, that's, that's one of the challenges we, we as entrepreneurs have to do. And so that's what got me beyond the single family home, multif. Family. And then from the multifamily, I'm like, all right, what, what else can I do? And the thing is, here's the distraction here. I'm sorry, let me, let me change that. Here's the challenge. From going from multiple products to multiple distractions, it seems like you've done a lot, Chris. You've done your, your original career, then you start investing in doing your owner operator, and then now you've started becoming this, you know, single source equity JV partner. And now you're actually doing mobile home parks. And then now you're the podcast, and then you wrote a book. I'm like, dude, isn't this guy's just all over the place? But what you don't realize is Chris Larson has sequential success, not simultaneous success. And once he built a team, he got to the next project Once he created a system and operations, he went to the next level. And so he expanded intelligently. And so I think that's the difference. I want to really, for people to take home. You can't just do 10 things at once, but you can do one thing that's gonna really be powerful enough. And then once it has it like it's its own flywheel and the self sustaining engine, you go to the next one. And so I started with medicine, then I ended up doing real estate, single family, then multifamily. And then, you know, I, it allowed me to then pursue medicine on my own terms with my, my private clinic clinic, reversing disease kind of thing. And then, you know, during the COVID I transitioned out of the clinic into coaching because that was the next opportunity and I had leadership on the real estate to where it could run essentially without me. So I think those are important distinctions.

And you have, you have great teams. I know your teams quite well, Vic. You've done a terrific job building those. And I love what you said about raising your internal limit, raising that artificial limit that you have. And your coaching group is perfectly named, it's called Limitless. And I was fortunate enough to be at your event down in Miami here a couple months ago. Phenomenal group of people. Everything that you put in there, it's great because so many of the lessons you actually have in your new book here, the Perfect Week Formula for Doctors. The ultimate playbook for time and Financial freedom. Talk about the process of writing that book. How did you distill this? Because there's some, there's some awesome tools in here that you, that you have. And so I'd like you to kind of walk through with the audience. There's a couple that I had bookmarked in here, but walk through the audience, some of the tools that people are going to be able to use immediately to help their success, like how to 5 extra productivity. I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that the first thing is I want to give a shout out to both our mentors. Craig Valentine, yeah. Inspired me to write it. He wrote a book called the Perfect Week Formula, which I loved. And I. And I used to give it out to all my clients and all my friends. I'm like, you got to read this. And it was really powerful. But then I was like, hey, can I take it one step further? And so I was like, there's some things that I believe I can enhance some of the techniques. And I think speaking to a specific set of high performers would be very powerful. And so the thing we talked about, the upper limit problem, I call it the comfort cage or I also call it the Gucci comfort cage. Right.

Gucci handcuffs. Yeah. So there's a joke in there about with our wives and Gucci handcuffs, I think, but I'm going to let it slide.

So yeah, when you have, want to have a little bit of adventure, adventure in your life, you may want to explore that. But here are, I guess if I had to give you like some of the best techniques in the, in this book.

Yeah.

That I use personally and that a lot of my coaching plans use. It's one is like the 20. 20, 20. Yes. Yeah, it's like in the morning I'm so busy, I don't have any time for anything. All right, well, you know, start with a 20 minutes of like moving your body, getting it active, whether it's tabata exercise, yoga, you know, you know, a quick a hit hit or strength training. Then you want to do 20 minutes of mind, mindfulness work. Like whether that's the mindfulness meditation, visualization. Right. Prayer, whatever that, that, that is for you. And then the final one is journaling and scheduling. Like journaling and figuring out why you're grateful, what's going well, dissecting problems in your head, you know, and then otherwise scheduling out that perfect day yourself. Right. So I call that the 202020 routine. And this is what it's a powerful one hour block that you can use to own your morning. And as we've studied the best performers across industries, people who crush it usually own their mornings. So whether that spirit am or that's, you know, 10am it doesn't matter. It got to own your morning.

That's, that's so good. And one of the things that, you know, we teach our coaching clients. I have a little post you can search on our website, nextlevelincome.com how to create 20 to 40 more hours per week. One of the things I did, Vic, I realized, you know, back, I don't know, 10 or so years ago, more than that, at this point I was wasting time at night. Like after 9 o' clock I was like, I'm just watching like some new show, drinking a beer, like, what a waste of my day. I started getting up an hour earlier and implementing my, my morning schedule's slightly different but incorporates a lot of the things that you just mentioned. And it's amazing. If you shift that unproductive hour at the end of the day to what you said, taking, you know, 20 minutes for something active, something mindful and then really focusing on, you know, what you have, you know, coming up in your day or even, maybe even getting right to working on, you know, what, what you need to get done before your kids are up, before emails start coming in, calls start coming in. I won't even turn my phone on until I'm done with my, you know, my big, my big hour, which, which I absolutely love that. Now, Vic, we're going to transition as we wrap up here to something a little more fun. You know, you talked about the comfort cage and you know, you've had, you've had a tremendous amount of success in your, your original profession as a physician, the real estate world, your coaching business, including, you know, your, your personalized medicine business. You got your book out now, but you don't rest. I know you're, you're super. I've worked out with you multiple times. You're, you're, I've done breath, breath work with you. We're about to hike Rainier together. So I'm looking forward to virtually training with you up there in Northern Virginia. Why, why do you continue to push yourself physically? How does that help you in other areas of your life?

So, Chris, I stumble upon this by accident, but really, I think the highest form of currency for an entrepreneur is energy. Love it and life.

It is an energy game.

Yes. And those who can generate energy, sustain it and then, and even transfer to others. Right? Yeah, that's it. Right. Like you're so enthusiastic when you and anyone you meet. It's infectious. And same thing with your team members, your investors, your, your coaching clients. Like, like that is powerful. So if a high performer, an achiever, an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, we can start generating this energy. That's cool. So like biohacking is a big thing that me and you love into. So I really think there's basics that any, any per. Listen to the call needs to do. Like, you know, take care of the foundations, like water intake, like strength training a couple times a week, flexibility, like supplements, the core supplements, like a probiotic, a fish oil, a vitamin D, you know, creatine. And then if, when they're ready to level up, right, when they take care of the foundations, perhaps they're doing peptides or hormone replacement. All of that can stack on each other. And then sleep, sleep optimization. Like you probably have a ring or a whoop band, you know, There you go, right? There it is. So all of this, guys, and the only, not the only reason, but the main reason to do this is how you show up, because it's your state. By you being in the super energetic state you come in, you're able to solve problems better. You're able to absolutely stand the, you know, the crap that we have to go through in life. And I know you've had some curveballs. I've had curveballs thrown at us. It's not that are they going to come your way, but when they come your way, how will you face them, how you resolve them, how you move through them, and how you be a leader for your family, your friends, your kids, your, your, your, your, your, your team members, your employees? That's it.

Yeah. No, I love that. And one of the things I love about picking a big physical goal, like I try to do that every year, is that it causes you to rethink what you're doing. You have to stretch. So, you know, whether I mean not stretch literally, but that's also not a bad thing. But when you go to the gym, why are you making the most out of every rep? Like, if you're, if you're training for something where, you know you have to be in shape and you're not a professional athlete or you don't compete on a professional level, you pick something, run a 5k or a 10k, pick. Like, my friend that I was just visiting in Utah did a hyrox competition, you know, hike Rainier, do something. I think the most important thing, it's not the physical part, in my opinion, Vic, it's the mental part where you say, I, I'm mentally going to be stressed to do this physical activity. If you said to me, oh, Chris, you know, you should go ride 100 miles, I'd be like, I've done that probably 100 times in my life. It's not a big deal. It doesn't. I could do it right now. It wouldn't be comfortable, but I could do it. But hiking Rainier, I have done it. I know it's possible, but it's been a long time, different stage of life. So I'm, I'm fired up to do it. And any, any final thoughts you want to add on having that, that big goal from a physical perspective, that it helps pull you along in every other area of life?

Yeah. Like, you know, I spoke about this at the retreat where I was giving my keynote. I talk about this thing that Jesse is Itzer calls soi challenge. You know, and soi is a Japanese word where it's like a monumental challenge you're doing once a year that harnesses your physical, mental, and spiritual capabilities toward like, an advancing, advancing goal. It's not the destination per se, it's who you become along the way. And that's what sharpens our soul year after year. And I think you do that all, all day long. Which is, which, why, which is why I love you. I mean, you're, you're, you're the example, right? You play life at such a high level and, and you, you encourage everyone else to play at that same as well, so.

Well, I appreciate that and the feeling is mutual. So I mentioned it in the intro where people could get the book, but a quick reminder here. What is the best way to get a copy of your new book? And I encourage you. I know it says for doctors, but I will tell you after going through it myself, this isn't just for doctors. What's the best way to get your new book? Vic?

Yeah, you could have put for astronauts on there or like, or like real estate investors, but it's meant for everyone. A lot of cool stuff in there. I want you guys to pick it up. I have some cool examples of people really crushing it. And there's one last story in there called Sprint the marathon.

So most right towards the end.

Yeah, most people, you know, they, they're sprinters. They run really fast and then they poop out and then they're done for a long time. Then there's some people who, okay, I'm gonna run this marathon. And it'll take them exactly. And it'll take five years to run this marathon, but they'll eventually get it done right. Slow and steady. Then there's a rare breed of people who actually sprint the marathon. There's Kenyans who are running this in like a less than two hours and, and they figured out how to have sustained greatness over not days, not weeks, not months, but decades. These are the, you know, the Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, the Oprah's, the Tonys. Like these are the people that can figure out how to sprint the marathon. Way to do that is you have to start toggling your brain into different modes. One is monk mode, where you really like going deep, going into your laboratory and you're just really working and no one sees you for a while. Sort of super introvert, but super high, high deep work. And then beast mode is where you're just going on a podcast. You're, you're, you're training like a beast, like non stop because you're going to climb a mountain. You're, you're, you're, you're, you know, you're on Big shows, you're, you're networking with 100 investors in one one meeting. Then after doing all that, you spend your greatest currency we've talked about, which is energy. You got to go into recovery. That's. And this is not like your, your mom's version of recovery. This is like active, like, like elite athlete recovery, floating tanks, you know, using new calm and going deep and regenerative sleep. This is like, you know, this is what Lebron James does before he gets ready for the playoffs, for example.

Yeah.

And then it's. Then you have your default setting. Now what I encourage you to do is your default setting should be other people's beast mode. That's, that's how you should play the game, and this is how you sprint the marathon. With that being said, I want to give a gift to everyone at the next income show. And that gift is if you go to perfectweekmd.com you're going to be able to go to the website. And if you put your information in, I'm going to a copy of my book for free.

Awesome. Oh, Vic, that's amazing. Thank you. And we're going to put that, we have that link already in the show notes here. That's a perfect week. Md you can click on it down below if you're on YouTube here. If you're listening, check that out when you get back in front of a computer. Vic, I love that, man. Thank you so much for that, for our audience. And then I just to highlight what you just said, one of the things that I learned through not only racing bicycles, but also coaching others. And they use this going back about 20 years in the Olympics, but they found was cyclists, they generally ride along at a very low rate of speed for most time. And what happens is the high performers, they train about the same amount in terms of intensity, you know, whether they're training 10, 20, 30 hours a week. And we're talking, you know, typically only about a few hours a week of intensity. And what differentiates the high performers from low performers is what you said. It's like, do you really push it in beast mode? And then the hardest thing for elite athletes is the hardest thing for a lot of us is actually actively recovering, you know, and I say actively recovering, like consciously recovering, so that when you get back out there, you can actually push hard enough. The amateur cyclists that don't perform, their issue is they don't recover enough and they, they train just a little bit too hard when they're going like, like not that hard. And then they don't they're not able to train hard enough. So I love what you just said. You go into beast mode, you recover, you go into monk mode, you visualize your success. That raises your average level up to most people's beast mode and allows you to become that performer. And the thing is, it actually doesn't take that much time. It's just that focused energy. Amazing, amazing message to end here. Dr. Vic Raya, thank you so much for joining us again here on the Next Level Income show. Thank you for the gift to our audience. Make sure you check it out at Perfect Week. MD and Vic have amazing, amazing spring here and summer. Look forward to training virtually alongside you.

Thanks, Chris. Take care.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.