From Busy to Free: Sachin Patel's Journey to a Scalable Functional Medicine Practice

Welcome to the Practice Builders Podcast hosted by Dr. Vince Leone and Dr. Kyle Pankinen, your source for building cash services.

Let's dive in. Welcome everybody to the Practice Builders Podcast and where we help you add and grow high-ticket niches. And I'm not— my name is Dr. Vince Leone.

And I'm Dr. Kyle Pankinen, and we're excited to have you here today.

Yeah, we have a fantastic guest, uh, Sachin Patel, chiropractor, functional medicine expert, practice success coach. Sachin, welcome to the show.

Gentlemen, thank you. I am very honored to be here and honored to share this time and space with both of you and the audience.

Absolutely. We're, we're really excited to have Sachin on the show. Uh, I had the opportunity to meet him recently at, um, Dr. Matthew Loops' Social Media Summit, which was a fantastic event. Got to drive fast cars, which was— I know you enjoyed that, Sachin, right? I did.

I did.

Looked like you had one of those ready to order.

Well, I've got a Porsche, but I don't drive it that way. So it was a wonderful opportunity to experience what these cars are capable of and the attention to detail that goes into them. It made me want to come home and drive my car more than anything else. So it was, uh, it was fun to see what these cars are capable of, and it's also cool to see in practice what our bodies are capable of. So we sometimes don't understand our limits until we, until we are pushed to the brink of them.

Yeah, 100%. Um, well, why don't you just give us a quick background on yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm, you know, as I meant— as you mentioned, rather, I'm a chiropractor. So I started off in a sports chiropractic-based clinic Doing a lot of ART and soft tissue work and became pretty renowned for that. The practice we were working with, we were working with elite athletes, Olympians, professional athletes. So it was pretty cool. And 2 years in, I thought I was, you know, at the peak because I had, you know, accomplished what I had visualized. And there was really— that was the first summit in my life, if you will. And I'm like, what do I do next? And right around that time, I was invited to be on the news because we were helping people with these soft tissue injuries. And when the news story aired, I ended up having a flood of new patients come in. And unfortunately, none of them had soft tissue injuries. They were all dealing with what we might call cellular dysfunction, you know, metabolic health issues, autoimmune conditions, things that, you know, my chiropractic training didn't really provide me any preparation for. And I thought I was pretty darn good at what I did, but I couldn't help these people. And so I realized that the people that need me the most, I really have nothing to offer them, but neither did their medical doctors. And this isn't a shot against them, it's just the reality that none of us are trained in medical school, chiropractic school, and maybe even naturopathic school to look at cellular dysfunction and know how to measure it and what to do about it. And so I started learning about functional medicine as a result of that and just became enamored with, you know, digging a little bit deeper. And just like structurally we can get to the root cause, we can also get to the root cause at a cellular level. And then you realize that you also have to get to the root cause at an emotional level. And so my work evolved from there. I opened up a clinic in Cincinnati, Ohio, then another one in Toronto. And then practitioners started, uh, you know, learning more about what I was doing and how I was running my business and wanted me to offer some guidance and support to them. So I started a coaching business about 8 years ago. And so we still operate our institute called Living Proof, and we also provide coaching and mentorship services for functional medicine practitioners Holistic practitioners oftentimes are chiropractors, naturopaths, medical doctors, acupuncturists, and, and other allied health professionals.

Uh, awesome, awesome. How did you get so interested in breathwork? Because when— so when Sachin spoke at the summit, I was immediately impressed by how calm he was. And then he took us through a really brief exercise, breathing exercise, that then calmed us all down because everyone is pretty fired up. So how did you— I, I'm fascinated by the breathwork. I've been following you on Instagram and I see that a lot of, you know, your work there is, is centered around that. So I'd love to learn more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So breathwork is something that, uh, was introduced to me in, in 3 different ways. One is through my son. So when my son was younger, he had a lot of cavities. And it turned out, we would find out a few years later as I went down the rabbit hole, that he had dysfunctional breathing. He was a mouth breather, and as a result of that, that caused his cavities. In fact, the number one cause of cavities is actually mouth breathing, not sugar.

Really?

When we breathe through our mouth, it dries out our saliva, which naturally protects our teeth. The oral bacteria and microbiome in the mouth start to shift, and it becomes more favorable for dental caries, whereas If you can make adequate amounts of saliva and keep your, you know, your, your oral microbiome in good shape because of the way you're breathing, you're not likely to get cavities. And my wife is a perfect example of this. She was a dysfunctional mouth breather and, and she would get tons of cavities even though she had way better dental hygiene practices than I say I did.

Hmm.

And I have no cavities, never have. So when, when we breathe correctly, it, it changes our dental health. So that was my introduction to my son. One of the things we also learned is that because he was a dysfunctional mouth breather, it changed the structure of his face. Because when our tongue sits in the roof of our mouth, it actually creates an outward force. So it pushes our upper palate outwards and, you know, forwards and sideways to open up the airways. So people who have dysfunctional breathing patterns, tongue sitting in the bottom of their mouth, are going to have small upper palates, small airways, and oftentimes their teeth are going to be overcrowded. And if you go to a dentist, they're going to want to pull those teeth. Which keeps the jaw small instead of fixing, fixing and correcting the breathing issue. And so my son would always complain about feeling stuffy, and we realized it's because he had a small airway. So we met with an airway dentist who expanded his palate. His breathing restrictions went away. He didn't have to have any of his teeth pulled. They all came in nicely, and he's now got a beautiful wide smile. So that's one of the ways that, you know, breathing impacted me directly with my son. And change the course of his entire life because most people find out they're dysfunctional breathers in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. It's great to know that he's gonna be breathing amazingly healthy for his entire life moving forward. It's one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids.

I think I'm one of those people that realize I'm a dysfunctional mouth breather in my 50s.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, and, and it's interesting because some people, when, when you start learning about breathing, right, it brings so many of my worlds together. Right? It brings my world of being a good father. It brings my world of form and function, right? As chiropractors, we understand that form and function are inseparable.

Mm-hmm.

And we also understand that God doesn't make any junk. So, you know, we aren't broken. We don't need to have our teeth pulled. We don't need to have our wisdom teeth pulled. I mean, all of this is a result of not using our bodies in the way they're meant to be utilized. And so one of the main causes of these small jaws is soft food. So even though people might eat healthy, if you're eating an organic or drinking an organic smoothie, there's no chewing involved. And mastication, as we all know, elicits specific reflexes and responses in the body like saliva production, like, you know, enzyme production in the stomach, like initiating a parasympathetic response in the central— in the autonomic nervous system. I mean, if you're not chewing, our hunter-gatherer ancestors used to chew 4 hours a day. And now kids, most of their foods are pureed or cooked or mechanically processed, so there's really no chewing involved. Most of it, most of the food people are, are consuming, they're just drinking it because it's already liquefied for them.

Mm-hmm.

So that causes the jaw not to form correctly. So, you know, once you know these things, you start, uh, piecing it all together and you start realizing, oh my God, well, if people aren't breathing well, then there's a lot of other things that aren't working well in their body. And as a functional medicine practitioner, we're really focused on cellular metabolism and detoxification and lymphatic flow and And, you know, improving circulation and all of these things. Well, these things are all connected directly to how we breathe. So the functional medicine practitioner in me, once I saw this, couldn't unsee it. And so then I started learning more about it, started going down the rabbit hole. And I'm— as I'm piecing this together, I used to teach head and neck anatomy in chiropractic school. I used to tutor it when I was in, uh, in school. So that, that's a big part of my focus for many years.

Sure.

And so a lot of my world started colliding together at breath. And so a lot of people who are out there teaching breathwork are teaching, you know, these 10-minute or 15-minute or maybe even 60 or 90-minute practices, which are great. And I, and I encourage people to explore those as well. And I, and I facilitate extended breathwork sessions as well. But what I realized is, is that most people What people are not talking about is how people breathe the rest of the day. So if we breathe, if we do anything for 15 minutes, that's 1% of our day. The other 99% of our day, that's what I'm focused on, how people breathe. And that's what I think differentiates the work I do from everyone else's because, you know, our breathing apparatus is— and I don't want to make this whole conversation about breathing, but—

Sure, sure.

I'm very passionate about it. And, uh, And so it's affected me. It's affected my wife. I don't know if I showed this to you. I don't think I showed it to you, but my wife had a military neck, and she had chronic upper neck and shoulder pain. And it turns out that she had a tongue tie, and that tongue tie is basically the frenulum under your tongue is is extra prominent or extra extra thick, and it limits the mobility of the tongue. So she couldn't get her tongues to sit at the roof of her mouth. And you know the tongue is connected to the shoulder, so there is a muscle. called the omohyoid. So our tongue attaches to our hyoid bone, or portions of it do, and there's a muscle called the omohyoid which goes from the hyoid bone to the top of the shoulder. Omo means shoulder. And so she would always have this chronic upper neck and shoulder pain, and no matter what I did, it would be only transient relief. She got the tongue tie done, which was like a 30-second procedure, maybe even less than that, and instantly her cervical lordosis restored itself. And we have the x-rays to show it.

Really?

And her neck pain immediately disappeared because your tongue is actually connected all the way down to the tip of your toes through your fascia. So when people have tongue ties, their entire fascial system is, is quite restricted. So chiropractors, look under your patients' tongues because if, if they're only getting temporary relief from the work you're doing and you're feeling a lot of fascial tension, it could be a result of a tongue tie, which is very common these days especially.

Huh, that's so interesting. Um, what are some maybe top 3 breathwork tips that you can give our, our audience and, and how they that could maybe improve their, I don't know, daily life and how they—

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple things for people to understand is that the average person overbreathes. So just like people overeat, the average person overbreathes. We only need to breathe about 4 to 6 times a minute. The average person breathes about 15 to 20 times a minute. The fastest way to slow down the aging process is to actually slow down the number of breaths that you take. So a turtle lives about 200 years, takes about 3 breaths a minute. A dog breathes about 35 times a minute, ages about 7 times faster than a human. We can actually consciously control our breath, and which other animals can't. They, they don't have the developed prefrontal cortex, perhaps even overdeveloped prefrontal cortex that humans do. So they, they are victims of their breath, whereas we can actually take the steering wheel of our nervous system, which is the conscious control of our breath, and, and literally Just like you would step in an elevator and push a button to where you want to go, you can do that in your body with your breath.

Hmm.

So the first thing we recommend to people is which hole in their face are they breathing out of, right? So there is a time to play to breathe out of your mouth, but the majority of the time we want to be breathing in and out through our nose. So nasal breathing, when we breathe through our nose, it cleanses the air, pressurizes the air, moisture regulates the air, temperature regulates the air, purifies the air of pathogens because our nose is lined with a mucous membrane that produces nitric oxide in the presence of healthy gut microbiome in the mouth. So that's why mouth breathing also kills our immune system because it kills the nitric oxide producing bacteria. So that bacteria, that the nitric oxide kills pathogens on contact. Nitric oxide also dilates our blood vessels, improving circulation, thus lowering blood pressure as well. So breathing through our nose also regulates our blood pressure. And so when we breathe through our nose versus our mouth, We're breathing in purified air, which creates a healthy lung microbiome versus breathing through our mouth. When we breathe through our mouth, the mouth is the dirtiest part of our body. Now we're adding this chronic stressor on the lung immune system. And so slowing down our breath would be the next thing. Automatically, when you breathe through your nose, it's— you breathe slower than you would breathe through your mouth. You just— there's— because you're pressurizing the air, you're always going to have resistance breathing through your nose. And that's with intent. We actually get 20% more oxygen delivery to the alveoli in the base of our lungs when we breathe through our nose versus our mouth because our nose pressurizes the air through the turbinates. The other thing that happens, so the other tip I would offer is breathing through the nose and then tongue at the roof of the mouth. So when we put our tongue at the roof of our mouth in the back of our front 2 teeth, there are actually tremendous numbers of nerve endings that soothe our autonomic nervous system and shift us into a parasympathetic state. So think of a child sucking their thumb, right? They're instantly soothed. Think of a child when the mother's nipple hits the roof of their mouth, they're instantly soothed. When they use a pacifier, they're instantly soothed. And so we can do that with our tongue. However, when you place your tongue in that position, you can't breathe through your mouth anymore, so it automatically forces you to breathe through your nose. And it also soothes your nervous system. So now you're automatically going to shift into a parasympathetic state. When you shift into a parasympathetic state, that's when all the reasons that people are coming to your office, uh, you know, their aches and pains, their fatigue, their, you know, excess body fat, their foggy thinking, their poor digestion, their high blood pressure, their high blood sugar, their high cortisol, like all the reasons that they're coming to see us All of those, uh, start healing simultaneously, instantaneously, because now they're in a more parasympathetic state, and we only heal in a parasympathetic state. So every breath we take is literally a fork in the road. We get to decide how we want to feel. So if we can take conscious control over it, it's like taking conscious control of the steering wheel in your car. You can drive in any direction you want. And then, uh, so the pace that—

What breath?

The pace at which we encourage people to breathe is called coherence breathing. It's 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out. And if you breathe at that pace, you're gonna take about 5, 5.5 breaths a minute. And that's gonna slow your breath down. You're gonna get more oxygen delivery to the tissue. So I didn't know this. You may— you guys may know this, but there's something called the Bohr effect. So the slower we breathe, the more oxygen gets dumped at the tissue level. So as CO2 levels increase, which is a byproduct of cellular respiration, CO2 and water, As CO2 levels increase, we actually get more oxygen being delivered to the cell. It's called the Bohr effect. So that as the pH shifts, there's more oxygen that's dumped. So for every breath we take, we only absorb about 20% of the oxygen, and the urge to breathe actually comes from an intolerance to CO2. So we don't actually need more oxygen. That's not why we feel like breathing. We can't tolerate CO2, so we have to expel it. And then take a breath in and lower the concentration back down. So we also teach people how to improve their CO2 tolerance because that in effect improves their mitochondrial and cellular health as well.

That is awesome.

I—

it's so funny how there's different aspects of health where you just really, from at least from my perspective, I had no idea, you know, the value of breathwork and, and the role it plays.

I mean, Let me share these 3 things. This will blow your mind if you're finding this interesting, and if not, we can always change topics. But, uh, I think as chiropractors, most people would find it interesting.

100%.

So one of the most important muscles in our body is our diaphragm. So our diaphragm, um, basically is a— is our master pump. The diaphragm is referred to as the second heart. So it acts like a piston moving up and down with the 23,000 breaths that we take each day. We consume 30 pounds of air, which is more food than we eat in a week. And so the diaphragm has to move this air. And so it's the only muscle that works 24 hours a day that we have conscious control over. And so it's, you know, unconsciously we're breathing while we sleep and consciously and unconsciously during the day, but we can actually, you know, control our diaphragm. So our diaphragm helps the heart in pumping blood. When we breathe, our lungs expand and contract, thus squeezing the heart. If we have short, shallow breathing, then our heart has to work harder to create pressure. So it creates more stress on the heart. The biggest lymph nodes in our body are located underneath our diaphragm, which is where, if I was an intelligent creator, that's exactly where I would put them because they're going to get pumped 23,000 times a day and that lymph from the trunk is going to move. This is why short, shallow breathers have poor lymphatic function because, A, they're in a sympathetic state and they're not adequately pumping their lymphatic system. Because they're not breathing correctly. And the third system that the diaphragm regulates is the myofascial system. And as you guys probably know, it's— that's a hydrostatic, uh, pressurized, you know, pressure stationary system, which means that it's a force distribution system. And the main organ that regulates the pressure in that system is the diaphragm. So our myofascial system, which regulates our pain and force distribution, our cardiorespiratory system, which regulates circulation, And then our lymphatic system, which regulates detox and drainage. So all of those things are automatically functioning better when people learn how to breathe correctly.

Yeah, that is awesome. I love that. So tell me about, and then, well, Kyle, do you have, I know you had a question because, you know, with, with some of the functional medicine side that Dr. Patel is doing.

Well, Yeah, I got in the world of functional medicine about 10 years ago myself. And most people, chiropractors, get into functional medicine because either a personal health challenge— that was me in my case— or they have patients coming in just like what you had. It's like, I don't know what to do to help this person. And so if you were— if there was somebody listening to this, another chiropractor for instance, says like, you know, I'm interested in getting into functional medicine. What programs are out there that you would say where you would kind of steer them towards as to, to kind of get that clinical knowledge and expertise that they, that they need to take on these more challenging cases?

Hmm, that's, that's a great question. So it really depends on what they want to niche down to. For some people, we have— so there's, there's different trainings, and some trainings will provide excellent education. Some trainings will also enhance the scope of the practitioner. So one of the things that's worth mentioning for me is I, I'm obviously trained as a chiropractor. I retired my chiropractic license when I turned 40. It was my gift to myself so I could speak the absolute truth and not have someone breathing down my neck telling me what to say and not to say. And I became a functional diagnostic nutritionist. And so by being an FDN, it allows me to order lab testing for anyone anywhere in the world. And allows me to cross borders as well. So I don't have to be limited to Ontario or Ohio or wherever I have my license. I can work with people remotely anywhere in the world. And so we always have to— that's the first question I would ask is, what is the grand vision that the practitioner has? Do you have a global vision? Because you need to get training that allows you to expand your physical scope of practice. So that's FDN. FDN allows you to do that. It's a wonderful training. You go through it as a patient yourself, so you get to experience what it's like to get tested. Yeah. And then the training is quite extensive and very thorough. Another great training is IFM, so the Institute of Functional Medicine. That's a very comprehensive training. With IFM, because there is CEUs and things like that involved, you just have to check to make sure that it has what you're looking for because they can't make specific protocol recommendations because of the way the course is structured and designed. So sometimes that could be a limitation for some people. Again, you'd want to look into that. And then there's other trainings like FMU, Functional Medicine University, Dr. Grisanti. That was the first training that I ever took. And Apex Energetics also has really great trainings. I know Standard Process, I think, has wonderful trainings as well that, you know, can, can be closer to the functional side of things. So I would say, you know, depends on, you know, what kind of work you want to do and, and associate yourself with the experts. And the other thing I'll say, Doc, is that I would say most people know enough to help the average person. Here's what I learned is that, and this has been my personal experience and journey and everyone has their own unique journey. So, we would try to offer lab testing and get really granular with our clients. And then, one day, I came to the realization that I got an email from somebody at 2 in the morning and I'm like, this person isn't even sleeping. at the right time. Like, they're on their computer at 2 in the morning, and here I am worried about their, you know, this one little marker that they— that I found on their stool test. I mean, we've got to put the big boulders in first, you know, and then we put the pebbles and the gravel and all that stuff in. And people weren't doing the basics.

Hmm.

So what I realized is if I go back to the basics, what happens? You know, we did a split test and we realized— and what we learned is that when we go back to the basics, people get better, faster, more affordable, and more sustainable results. And it takes a lot of the pressure off the practitioner of, of, uh, basically, uh, interpreting all this laboratory testing and then having to come up with a protocol which is unique to each person. Uh, we did that for a while, and there's— I think there's a time and place for it. But what I realized, the ultimate realization that I had, is that most people weren't doing the basics. They weren't chewing their food, they weren't getting sunlight in the morning. They weren't well hydrated, they weren't breathing correctly, they weren't going to bed on time, they had no connection with nature. And there's no lab test for all of those things, right? Like, I can't test the quality of your relationships, I can't test your trauma, I can't test, you know, if you're getting your earth, uh, earthing in every day, right? If you have a connection with the divine, none of that stuff shows up on testing. And so when we started addressing some of those areas, Hmm. With a lot of common sense approaches, of course eating healthy nutritious meals and all the other stuff, we started seeing amazing results with people. And that took the learning curve out of what all the things that I had to learn because we just, it just boiled down to teaching people the basics. And when you teach people the basics, what we found is that they can then teach it to others and it becomes the fastest way to actually create rapid and permanent change in people's health. So, so that was, that was kind of the thing that I learned along the way is that we are niched down. So we, we do focus specifically on metabolic health, which does cover a wide variety of, of things. But I would say our practice really focuses on metabolic health, body composition. Weight loss is a big part of what we do, and we do things a little bit differently. We go back to the basics and give the body exactly what it needs. And, we seem to get amazing results with that.

That is, that was actually a follow-up question I had because Dr. Leone and I teach our clients to focus on specific niches, be it spinal decompression, disc problems, or chronic knee pain, specifically osteoarthritis and peripheral neuropathy, as kind of a business model in a sense to take on a big problem, a big challenge, and provide a comprehensive solution. In the world of functional medicine, are you seeing that Doctors are really doing well by focusing on very specific niches within the world of functional medicine.

Yeah, you know, that's a great point. And, and to double down on that, I think we have to have a focal point in our practice. You know, we can help everybody, right? It's, it's rare that I come across somebody that I can't help, but we can't market to everybody, right? We can't be positioned as the best at everything. So I never turn people down if I can help them, right? However, you know, that might be a referral, that might be somebody who meets me and says, hey, do you think you can help me with this? But if I'm gonna create a position for myself in the marketplace, I wanna be known as the person for X, Y, and/or Z. So I would, yeah, I would definitely encourage people to be focused. And that's something that is easy to Overlook, especially as a functional medicine practitioner, because we literally can help pretty much anyone that walks in the door, but you, we just can't market to everybody cuz it just is not practical. Yeah.

So go ahead, Dr. Leone.

Oh, well, I had a question on, cuz you have Perfect Practice, right? So that's, that's your coaching program.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm assuming that you, I mean, I'd like to hear more about Perfect Practice because I, I'm assuming that's how you are, you help guide doctors. Cuz I know, you know, from a business standpoint, you're a very astute And I think it sounds like you translated that into your coaching. So I'd be curious to hear, you know, how you help doctors through your Perfect Practice program.

Yeah, thanks for asking. So there's actually a few ways. One, I do private consulting, so people can, can hire me and, and work with me one-on-one, uh, depending on the stage of the practice that they're in. And, uh, the other way is we actually license our program. So our metabolic program is called Living Light. And, uh, it's, you know, it's something that we've been working on for about 4 or 5 years. And we have, you know, we've put in hundreds of thousands of dollars into R&D and developing it, years of research into it and validating the process. And we've taken about 300 practitioners through the program themselves as patients and/or clients, if you will. And so we know that, uh, we know that it works amazingly well and we want, uh, more, more— we want more people utilizing this process I feel that eventually they'll come to the same realization that we have, that simplicity is the greatest sign of sophistication. And if we can make it so simple that people can teach it to their loved ones, then we can really create, you know, a transformational shift. So, you know, for someone to build what we've built would take years and cost them, you know, probably more than it cost us to build. So we just want to plug it right into their practices. So we have a licensing model. For practitioners, we provide a year's worth of coaching. We take them through the program themselves, so they get to experience the shift and be on the receiving end of care. Most practitioners have never been on the receiving end of care because we just work on ourselves. And, and then they also get all the trainings, the webinars, the modules, everything installed into their account. So they have something that they can have up and running, you know, usually within 90 days, if not sooner than that. And, uh, and they're transforming as well. So they become their own case study, and, uh, it's just a great way for, for them to start sharing the work that they're doing. The other thing that we do is we have a mentorship program where we provide clinical mastery, we provide open Q&A sessions, and then we provide, uh, you know, kind of world-class trainings and expert speakers that come in and, and train our practitioners. And these are practitioners who have their own practices, maybe their practices are developed and they want to streamline operations. Maybe they want to achieve more freedom in one of the 5 freedoms, which is health, emotional freedom, time, geographic, and financial freedom. So we help them kind of build a practice around that process of being more free in those 5 categories of life. So yeah, so there's a few different ways that we work with people.

I love that. I think I heard that you're a big reader. Is this correct?

Yeah, I enjoy reading, of course.

What are your top 3 book recommendations? I always, I love to read. So, I'm always curious what other, you know, just motivated individuals are reading or maybe they have on the bookshelf that maybe they haven't gotten to it yet, but it's in the queue. Yeah.

Well, my favorite book of all time is called the Bhagavad Gita. And, uh, Bhagwat means God and Gita is song, so it's the Song of God. And there's a version by Jack Hawley and it's called the Bhagwat Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners. So it's written for people like myself and perhaps yourself who are born in North America. And, um, and it's—

Can you spell that? Because I'm, uh, yeah, yeah.

So if you, if you— I think it's B Sometimes they spell it differently, but I think it's B-H-A-V-A-D-G-I-T-A.

Okay, got it.

And it, Jack Hawley is the author and there should be an orange cover.

Got it.

Okay, good. Perfect. So that's, you know, I like to read, you know, timeless material.

Yeah.

Because the lessons that you learn in, you know, if they're relevant, if they were relevant 2,500 years ago, they're relevant today, they'll be relevant 100 years from now, 1,000 years from now, 2,500 years from now. So I like to read that kind of material because that's how I like to model my business and my life is based on, on these type of timeless principles. The other book I love is the Tao Te Ching, which is written by Lao Tzu, another timeless classic. So it's basically 81 verses or meditations And kind of teaches you the way, the grand way of life, the great way. And then the other book that I think is a great book that everyone should read is called Breath by James Nestor. So many years ago, I bought a copy for all of my clients because it completely changed my life. Another great book, I'll leave you with one more, is called Regenerate by Sayer Ji. And he does a masterful job at kind of showing us how amazing we are. I think every chiropractor should read that book.

I love it.

I love it. Dr. Kyle, any other questions on your side?

Well, I just, I just appreciate his enthusiasm about root cause medicine because that's what functional medicine is really all about, and that's what chiropractors in general are about. Is we, we want to be a doctor of cause, finding the root cause. And so functional medicine is a nice, and it's not a side thing. It's a, it's a It can become a major emphasis of any chiropractor's practice if you're looking to get out of the world of mostly musculoskeletal medicine and solve maybe some of your own health challenges, but to really educate and, and, and improve the health of the masses. And so I really just am inspired by your enthusiasm of functional medicine. And just wanting to improve the health of people all around the world. It's, it's really an inspiration, Doc.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. And, and I, you know, I, there's something that I, I missed saying that I think is worth mentioning cuz you jogged it in my memory is the scalability of what we do. So one thing I, I recognized a few years ago is that very bespoke functional medicine Is awesome, but it's not scalable. So you know, if every single patient is treated as a unique biochemical individual, then it requires you know obviously the interpretation of that and then the expertise in interpreting that. And so it becomes difficult for practitioners to replicate and replace themselves because the patient is determining the outcome, and the patient's determining the intervention as well because they have a unique situation. But if we help people solve a specific problem in a specific way that they want to solve it, then everyone is coming to the table with a very similar issue, and therefore you can work with them in a group capacity. So we have our programs tiered where we have our metabolic program set up so that you can go through it with a community of others. You can go through it with a coach, and these are both scalable programs because they don't involve testing. Or you can go into the third tier of the program, which is more bespoke, where we do genetic testing and food intolerance and inflammation testing so that we can come up with a, with a very specific, you know, customized blueprint for that client. So there's ways that you can tier your programs as well, even though they're all solving the same issue. You can offer different levels of service and different levels of customization for the client based on their budget and based on goals. And that way, you're also being very highly leveraged as well as you deliver these type of programs.

I love that. It's interesting, I was speaking with a doctor today. And, you know, he has a very successful practice, biggest practice in town. But it's really interesting. He said, I feel like my wife and I created a prison for ourselves. And it was such an interesting way to phrase how his practice is, because I think from the outside, I'm sure people in his community and other doctors and colleagues would look and say, wow, this guy has a million-dollar practice, and what a what a lucky guy he is. But he feels like he's like, I'm either gonna sell this thing and just ride off into the sunset, or I need some help from you or something. So what impressed me most most probably about Sasha when I met him was how calm he was and just. Just seemed like he was at peace, you know, and I think so many doctors are not there. And so I'd just be curious, like, if you have any kind of, I don't know, message or words of advice for doctors that may be feeling kind of like this guy that are just, you know, not in a practice that they love at the moment, and maybe how they can figure out a way out of it. I know I'm putting you on the spot here, so—

No, no, I, I have lots to say about this because I encounter that as well. And, uh, and I think the, the creation of our evolution in our practice came from that need as well, because, you know, we all want to help people, right? And what I realized that if I became a busy one-on-one practitioner, I could probably help 40 people a week, right? If I'm seeing my clients once a month, I can help like 160 people max a month, and I'm not really even really putting a dent, uh, in the healthcare problem, right? And I can't help people en masse. I couldn't go into a room and help all 1,000 people that were in it. So it actually forced— it begged me, it forced me to, um, ask a different set of questions, right? And a different set of what-ifs. Like, what if I could help Everyone. What if I could help everyone and measure that I'm helping them without doing something invasive and something that requires lab work or blood work, which then increases my liability? What if I could do something where I could help 100 people at once instead of helping 100 people one at a time?

Right.

And so in order for me to do that, I just have to find every— I have to you know, amalgamate people that have a similar problem who want it solved in a very specific way by a specific person through a specific process. And there's plenty of people that want that, right? There's plenty of people that want to lose weight without excessive exercise, without, you know, shooting themselves up with injections every week, without, you know, starving themselves, right? I mean, who doesn't want that? So it became very easy for us to put all those people in the same room together And as long as we're educating them and blowing their minds and teaching them things that they didn't know before, and they're feeling like they're not alone in the process, then, you know, it's a win-win. And in 2020, the Cleveland Clinic ran a study, and the conclusion of the study was that group programs are actually more effective clinically and cost-wise than one-on-one services are. So if we're evidence-based practitioners, the evidence is clear that group programs actually work better. Group programs allow us to be more leveraged. Group programs lower our liability and susceptibility to any legal action. Group programs allow us to bring in lower-tiered practitioners, if you will. And that's not to say anyone's less than another person, but I don't have to bring in a doctor who has all my knowledge and experience to deliver this program. I can bring in a health coach and they can deliver the program because it's pretty much all lifestyle-driven. So now I have like a very scalable system. I can bring in, you know, I can hire health coaches who are— unfortunately, right now there's so many of them looking for work. So there's no shortage of health coaches that you can hire, and I can plug them into a system and a process that is reproducible, right? Not, you know, 100% bespoke for every single person. So now I actually have a mass solution. I can go into organizations and say, hey, we're gonna do this for you. You know, in January, one organization said, hey, we want you to take on all of our practitioners, and we were able to onboard 25 people all at a time and take them through a group program all at a time. If I had to work with those people individually, it would be so much more work, right? And maybe even impossible to take them on. So I would say that if you're feeling stuck, then doing more or less of the same thing isn't the answer. You have to actually break your brain a little bit and come up with something that might be radically different. So we asked ourselves, like, what if we could get better results by seeing our clients less? What if we could get better results by doing less testing? What if we could get better results, um, and do it— do things in a group setting? What if we could get better results and not have people take supplements, right? So we started just asking a different set of questions, and then the answers became very clear to us. And so that's why we have our Oura Ring, right? It's a short feedback loop, makes it easy for people to coach. That's why we have weekly group calls. That's why we've pre-recorded, you know, a lot of our content and material so that people can reference it. That's why we have quick start guides when people buy our kits and our programs. So we've got everything kind of sorted out that makes the operation very streamlined. And it's also— this program is so simple to deliver that So many of our patients that go through the program or clients that go through the program ask us, hey, how can I do this? Right? Because they see that it's simple and it's intentionally simple, right? Not because it's a silly program or a rinky-dink program, but the answers have always been simple. It's just we live in complex times, so we have to, you know, make it easy for people to follow the recommendations and coach them through it.

Is this concept of you know if you want better answers in your life, maybe ask better questions. And like Sasha was saying, is try to even you know break your brain in a sense of trying to think outside of what is the norm because that's typically when you you find solutions that are you know uncommonly good. So I really like that approach, and and that's really truly working on your practice versus in the practice, right? Where you can. step out and try to take a 30,000-foot view. Well, I want to thank you, Sachin, so much for spending some time with us. It looks like you are, you're outside, you're in a beautiful environment, which is perfect. How can people, doctors, get in touch with you and learn more if they would like to do so?

Yeah, you know, one of the things I love to do is offer value. And I'll send a link to you gentlemen that you can post below.

Yeah.

And it'll take people to a really simple Google Form that they can fill out. And I'm happy to send everyone a copy of my book. It's called Perfect Practice, and it's filled with, you know, little micro nuggets. And each of them, you can just open up to any page in the book and read a chapter or 2. They're only like 1 to 3 pages each chapter, and you'll find a ton of value in there. So I'm happy to send that to everyone, and included with that will be a 30-day course. So I'll send a practice tip every 30— every day for 30 days so that you can start learning a little bit more about how my brain works and how our systems work. And then if you're interested, I'm happy to jump on a call with anyone to see what we can do for their practices. So I'll send that link over to you guys and feel free to share that with your community.

Yeah.

And they can also follow me on Facebook. That's where I share a lot of, uh, that's where I share my most raw content, and then everything else gets disseminated from there. So, uh, Instagram, it's @TheSachinPatel, and then on Facebook, it's Sachin Patel DC.

Okay, perfect. Well, we'll absolutely be sharing that. I've been getting your Practice Pearls, and I read them every day because I've been getting them since the summit. And so I— and by the way, usually when you're on someone's email list, you don't want to get the emails. I want to get Sachin's emails. So So highly, you know, recommend get on the list and, and get more information. So, Dr. Kyle, any last thoughts or parting words?

Just a lot of truth, a lot of wisdom shared today. So there's a lot of value here for those that are listening to this. And yeah, if you wanna get into the world of functional medicine, I think there's a lot of opportunity here with what this fine doc has offered today.

Awesome. Well, that's going to be it for this episode. I'd like to thank Sachin Patel for joining us and sharing a little bit of his time and his wisdom. And for Dr. Pankinen and Dr. Leone, wish everybody a great rest of your day. Thank you for joining, and we'll see you on the next episode.

Take care.