EP076: How to Think — WIth UJ Ramdas and Sachin Patel

Welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine.

Business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel is a functional medicine and success coach, international speaker and best selling author.

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UJ Randass co creator A popular gratitude journal that has been used by many influencers ranging from Tim Ferriss to Emma Watson. Apart from having sold half a million physical copies, the 5 Minute Journal iOS app which was featured on the App Store, has rivaled the sales of the physical product in units. Amazing. I have the app as well. He's also the co founder of Intelligent Change, a company that creates beautiful products that help you become happier and more productive. His work has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Lifehacker, the Tim Ferriss show podcast and the New York Times. He has exited the company in Q4 of 2019 and is currently on sabbatical, spending his time reading, thinking and drinking chai. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the digital stage. Yujay Ramdas. What's up guys?

How are you my man?

Really good.

Amazing. So thank you for doing this. I know how busy you are and you just moved into a new place. So this is, is this your first live stream you're doing from your new place?

Oh, it's definitely the first any kind of thing I've done for. I'm standing on my kitchen, in my kitchen counter. As you can see. This is all new stuff, man. This is my first day. I'm the first day I'm sleeping here. So. Yeah.

All right, well you'll, we'll all remember this amazing conversation that we're going to have today. So I just want to give people a little bit of context about how I know uj and what's really interesting is UJ didn't even know this about him and how the impact he had on my life until we recently had a dinner. So a few years ago he was hosting a party, a New Year's Eve party, and he invited everyone to come to that party as the version of themselves they'd like to be three years from now. And when he, when he was hosting that party, I, you know, I applied. I actually got accepted because it was an Exclusive thing. And unfortunately my schedule didn't permit for me to be able to attend and. But the intention was there. The intention I set into the world, the visual I set into the world. And brother, that's what prompted me to write this book, Perfect Practice.

Wow, that's awesome.

So you were part of creating, co creating this with me putting into the ether the idea, the concept of a better version of myself. And then I of course did the work and created it, but the inspiration came from you and, and just a few months ago when we were putting all this event together, truth be told, we already had filled all of our speaker spots. But when I had that conversation with you in my kitchen, I still remember it, it was so eye opening for me and I said wow, like more practitioners need to hear this because as practitioners we've never been given the business tools except the business tools of hard knocks. Right. Most of us have had this like hard knocks of situation going on and that's how we've built our business. Uj, as you'll get to know through this conversation and hopefully with future interactions you might have with him, is a very methodical thinker and you'll see that every word he uses, every idea that he expresses has such sage wisdom behind it. And we connected at home. My wife made us all dinner.

It was amazing doses and somber. It was great.

Yeah. And we had a great conversation and I wanted to extend that conversation with all of us today. So thanks for being here brother. I appreciate you.

My pleasure. I'm looking forward to this.

So tell us a little bit more about your origin story. I'd love to hear where this all started. I know you have very humble beginnings and I want people to really be able to connect with the essence of who you are.

Yeah. So a good sort of chunk of my story starts when I was 17. So I came to Canada, I live in Toronto presently came to Canada from India alone when I was 17, didn't have much support here, had never seen snow, had never been to a foreign country before. And I basically started from scratch here. And that was about 12 years ago, 14 years ago almost. And so since then my drive has always been how do human beings become better? How does this work? And that drive led me to create a company with a friend, Alex Icahn, who is my co founder for intelligent change. And we created a product called the five Minute Journal, which was essentially a product that helped people apply the elements of positive psychology into a simple to use daily practice. That's the basic idea. The product took off and the company took off as a result, because we were the publisher, the author, and the distributor. And some of the people in the audience might know from a business standpoint, authors, even when they sell a large amount of units, don't necessarily get too much money from it. The rights end up being bought by the publisher, and the publisher ends up taking the financial risk. And a lot of the time gets the return for the risk that they're applying for. So, thankfully, we took the risk and we got the return, and as a result, we grew that company to multiple seven figures in profit, multiple years, and late last year, sold that company. It was good timing for me. I felt intuitively that was a good time to liquidate some assets and start from scratch, start with a clean, beautiful slate. And, yeah, like Majeed mentioned in the intro, I'm on sabbatical, and this is a time for me to think, to recalibrate to and to soak in the pursuit of wisdom and create again. So that's where I'm at. Just for the people in the audience, I'm not here to sell anything. I'm just here purely because this is a very challenging time. And I'm just looking to find out how I can share some of my stories, some of the things that have been helpful for me, for a lot of people that are very challenging situations right now. So I'm excited for this. I love when people ask questions. I ask a ton of questions myself. That session can probably attest to. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to a vibrant conversation about the nature of what is happening now and how we can deal with it and how people can deal with their lives and their businesses, and all kinds of kids are at home. It's crazy out here, right? So, yeah, it's gonna be fun.

All right. Well, it's definitely the most interesting of times. And I think that if we're in the right headspace, we see opportun. If we're in the wrong headspace, we probably see chaos. And there's a bit of both. There has to be both in order for them both to co. Like to eat. For each of them to individually exist, they have to coexist. So getting into the right part of our brain is very important. When I say right part of our brain, right side of our brain, but also the right part, which is, in my opinion, the prefrontal cortex.

Cortex, yes.

And I know you have practices that you've cultivated over the years, and we shared a lot in common, actually, when we were having our conversation. So what are the things that you do to get into that creative flow type of state.

A lot of stuff. So a lot of my life is geared towards the unlocking of that state. I think it's one of the most important things. If you can get rid of a lot of the external need for adulation, this that there's a lot that can be done. So just from a fundamental principle standpoint, you have a few pillars. So you have journaling, which I'm a big fan of, we talked about at length. The five minute journal is a great start. It's a beautiful practice that helps you get the most bang for your buck in terms of journaling. So the 5 journal is a great practice, allows you to practice gratitude, think about the high points in the day, etc. However, it's not the be all and end all. So for me a lot of it is about putting pen to paper or getting on a computer and starting to allow my brain to feel free to ask questions and introspect. I think as just very similar to what you said, allowing your brain to think. I think one of the. As I was logging on one of the slides I saw, which I loved on your presentation was think harder than you work. And I love that because I intuitively always felt that was super, super important. Thinking harder than you work is like so critical because if your thinking is off, your work is for sure going to be off. It's no contest. So doing a fuck ton of work. Can't swear here. This is cool. Good, great. Good. I'm going to feel a lot more free. It's not going to work in terms of thinking is. No, it's not. The five year journal, the five minute journal. It's a long time to journal. I'm just reading some of the comments here guys. I'm going to be responding to that. So a lot of my practice is get in there, ask a bunch of questions, get to some fundamental results. Learning the practice of introspection is hugely important. To get into that space. Taking, allowing time to feel your body and become embodied is maybe one of the most important things I've done. To be in harmony with my being, to be able to think, to be able to feel, to have the ability to think and feel together is a really, really important practice. Because thinking, as I'm sure you know, thinking and feeling are different, different operating systems. So thinking is a lot of the time the cortex, but feeling is our midbrain, the mammalian side of the brain. And having both sides of them work together are very critical, especially in times of challenge in times of chaos, stuff like that. So journaling, we got movement. And movement could be any kind of movement. It could be rock climbing. Obviously right now a lot of people are likely using kettlebells and, and wrists and bands and things like that. Whatever works that helps you feel embodied, expressed. And meditation is a big one for me, big one for me, because I've been grateful to have a practice for over a decade, easily. And in times of deep challenge, I've always turned to meditation. It's always found I've always been able to find that deep peace in meditation, which is critical, especially in a time of chaos like this. So, so the movement, meditation, journaling, and then something that's absolutely indispensable for me is having smart people around. I think it's really, you know, not smart to have not smart people around, if that makes sense. Yeah. So, because there's no way we can do anything worth doing alone. Like anything fundamentally important and hard can only really be done by other hard working and wealth, like people who think well and do good work. And I'm always looking to find and surround myself with as many people as I can who do that. And we live in an amazing time that allows us to actually think and feel and, and look at other people online. Like, I've never met Yuval Noah Harari, for example, who wrote an amazing book called Sapiens. But I have great respect for his thinking, I have great respect for his analysis, and I can follow that at any point I want by just opening up Twitter or reading his books or reading his articles. We live in an incredible time that allows us to do that if we have the internal compass and we were magnetized enough to be able to go for exactly what we want and find. You know, very similar to. I was listening to a bit of the previous woman's presentation. If we can learn to feel in our bodies when we are stressed, when we are unstressed, what allows us to move into those places? What allows us to look at new opportunities? Blah, blah, blah.

I would say a lot of people numb themselves, don't they?

Numbing is a common defense mechanism to.

Pain because then we don't have to feel or think.

Exactly, exactly. And there's different kinds of numbing. There's obviously the numbing of the wanting to think, the hard work that thinking it requires. Because guess what? If you're going to think hard, chances are you're going to have to change the way fundamentally you operate. And that's scary for a lot of people because their existing model of the world is entrenched in that their identity is entrenched in that same thing with feelings. So learning how to slowly do the work so you can expose more and more, peel back the layers of numbness pain, allow you to be more embodied and more alive and more present to the challenges and chaos and everything else that exists in the world.

You know, the thing with pain, pain is the great steering wheel, right? So it can steer us from one direction to another. But if we don't have that feedback because we're numbing ourselves, then we can't even steer ourselves in the right direction because we don't have that tactile or emotional feedback. And I know that. Not that people who are tuned in right now on a Friday morning are those type of individuals, but we might see that in our clients. Right. And getting people to feel what's going on right now, I think is extremely vital. And I know that you took a sabbatical not knowing that all this stuff was going to happen. And basically all of our lives got flipped upside down over the last two weeks. So how are you processing all of what's going on? What opportunities do you see especially for, you know, service providers like healthcare practitioners?

Well, I'll answer that question by answering have a slight point I wanted to make to the previous thing, and I'll answer that question in a second. So I don't know who said this, because online I tried to find exactly who said it, attributed to a bunch of people. But I really love the quote and it goes, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And I really want to take a couple of minutes to really drive this home, because this is something that I learned about four or five years ago when I had a very serious motorcycle accident where I nearly died, that I was in a ridiculous amount of pain, ridiculous amount of pain. And as I was lying in the hospital bed, I realized that I had to deal with it. You know, it felt like a really bad dream that I couldn't get out of, which is kind of what it feels like right now in a certain sense, you know, with the collective world feels like a really bad movie that we can't really, like, shut it off. And we all experience pain. We've all experienced pains in different ways in the last few weeks and months. Right. But the real work, and this is the only work that you can do in the privacy of your own mind and your own heart is doing the work to separate that pain and suffering. Viktor Frankl talks about it, right? Between stimulus and response, there is that gap and there are things you can do like meditation, movement, and journaling that extends that gap. And between that gap, you can change what it means, you can change what that pain means. And I cannot tell you how important that is for life, for business, etc. Some people in the audience might be thinking, how is this related to making money or making business? Trust me, like, I would not be the person I am right now, not have built the business I've built, if it had not been for that experience. I can say with confidence, learning how to. How to take something is very, very challenging and change the meaning of what that is in your body. And learning to sit with it, not hide it, not steer away from it, but sit with it, feel it, experience it, allow it to move through is one of the most important things you can do. And there's lots of resources about that that I can talk about if people are interested. But to address the question you asked about the opportunities that exist right now, there is a large amount of opportunity that exists right now. And this is really interesting because I'm talking to the friends, to family, I'm seeing how the world is reacting to this. A lot of the times, in times of challenge, I just look at people that I really trust and I admire their thinking. I really enjoy great thinking. This is like one of my pleasures in life. I just enjoy when someone is able to think very clearly and beautifully. It's like poetry for me. So in times of crisis, I am a very big fan of great navigation. How do great people navigate the world? Right? How do they move? How do they think? How do they execute? This is just a deep passion of mine. And so one of the things that I'm doing is I'm just looking for the shift in momentum. There are a lot of shifts in momentum right now. A lot of people that are, for example, great workers, amazing, really diligent, really exceptional employees are at work, they're out of work. Which means. Which means, chances are they will love to work with you guys for much less than they would normally work for, right? Because they're interested in having most people. This is why established belief systems work. This is why something like cults work. Because people have a need to belong. And if you can build a vision and a company and a way of thinking that people can attach themselves to. The idea of intelligent change was the world can be better if you just apply good research that we know we can fundamentally be better if we apply the things we know that are true. That was the idea, right? And like, I just think People that are early stage businesses, you know, there's a lot of people here. There's so much opportunity, especially in the health space because it's so broken already. We all know this, right? But for all the people in the audience, think of the people that trust you already think the people that you've talked to that trust you, that are willing to pay you, that are willing to work with you, guess what? They trust you. And trust is the lifeblood of business. Without trust, business doesn't work. Doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And so if you have a large amount of people or even a small amount of people that trust you, you're going to be able to leverage that somehow. Learning how to think, I think is one of the most important things you can do to navigate a difficult situation like this. Definitely move the fuck away from, from people that are, that are fear mongering and are stuck in this negative feedback loop and cycle and, and checking the news like three hours a day, right? That stuff is, is, you know, limit the time that you are checking the news every day. I think it's a hugely important idea, you know, time block that so you can process it, you can analyze it, you can understand what is happening so you can appropriately take action. It's very easy for all of us to almost, to get into this space where we are looking to others for leadership or understanding on how to operate. But learning how to think for yourself and go in a different direction when everybody's going in, in the opposite direction is a very challenging thing to do. And it's very rewarding in times like these because if you can think for yourself, like I came here, man, like when I was 17 and I had never known anyone else who had been to Canada who even attempted to go. It was a total shot in the dark. And the reason I did it is because I felt like it made a ton of sense for me to expose myself to a different culture, to see if I could thrive in that culture because I knew India was not the place for me. And so finding great opportunities that make sense for you, moving slowly, moving methodically and finding just so much here. A lot of people are afraid for their health and their well being right now. If you can be a bomb to them in some way, in some small but reliable, consistent way, you can learn to make money. This is also what a great time, at least for me. I've always been a fan of working remote because people just do the work and they talk when it makes sense. I've always been A fan of that stuff.

Yeah. The efficiency increases so much and the carbon footprint is significantly reduced. Time wasted is reduced. People don't have to take time off work anymore. A 15 minute appointment. Appointment doesn't have to be an afternoon off. So there's so many advantages to what we can do as functional medicine practitioners. And you know, for a lot of people who are watching this and including yourself and myself, I know, like we're kind of reinventing the way we do things to suit the demands of the current market because I'm certain that that's going to change. And that's why this event is so timely, because a lot of people are reinventing their business. But the way you reinvent your business is the. You reinvent the way you think. So if the same thing, this thinking that got you to what you've created today is not the thinking that's going to get you to where you might want to go or where you might want to pivot. So, you know, I know we're talking a lot about personal mastery and self development and changing how we think, but that's what changes the outcome that people create. So I love that and I can like, I love geeking out on stuff like this. For those practitioners who are in the throes of reinventing themselves and looking at maybe just like totally looking at a blank slate, Right. You've got this blank canvas that you can work with now. Where do you think that people should start? What should they be looking for? What are the patterns they need to start recognizing? How do you look at a blank canvas? And what advice can you give people?

Well, the first, I'll work on some process stuff and I'll. And we'll talk about some principles.

Sure.

In terms of the day to day processes, which I think is hugely important for something like this, the process will get you to where you want to go. As long as your processes is dialed in, you're solid. One of the things I would do like, if I was in, like, if I was starting out now, that's the way I'm thinking about. I was starting out now and it's crazy times and I have like two months of savings in the bank. Okay. You know, we got to crunch some stuff because this is going to be a long game. We know this, right? Covid is a long game. And so first I would just do whatever I can to save liquidity, just save cash, move in with friends if I have to move in, my parents if I have that option. Obviously my parents are in India, so I don't have that option, but if I did, I fucking do that. Just, like, hunker down. Understand this is a long game and understand this is a volatile situation. Second, I would just find the people that I consider positive and that are mutually supportive and I would build and, like, I would check in on them. Because my attitude in life is we are all here to learn and grow at a pace that is slightly uncomfortable, right? That's my attitude. And so in that context, I'm going to help people grow. I'm gonna give people feedback, I'm gonna, like, help them go through challenging times and maybe a shoulder for them to cry on, all this other stuff. And they're gonna do the same thing. They're gonna do the same thing. And so finding social support, really great, important social support, people that you can be support to people can be a support to you is maybe one of the most important things, right? Because human beings are connective creatures. And I know we're in this weird situation where we can't really hug people too much right now, apart from family, right, that are living in the same space. But being able to get on a call, being able to feel connected, being able to share your feelings and be able to have other people is hugely, hugely important. And I think once you have that, there is, you know, the same the vagus nerve principle, right? Your body just starts to go, huh? Things are okay. That social connectedness, that social feeling of safety starts to arrive because we are fundamentally social beings. And our happiness, as we know from the Harvard study. The Harvard study, if I call, that is your well being in large part depends on the depth and the quality of close connections you have. And being able to express yourself, being able to communicate effectively, being able to expression of emotions, hugely important, right? So once you have that, then I would start to think about and process information from people that I really respect that are where I want to be. So typically, when I'm looking for advice, I rarely take advice from people that don't have the results that I don't want, right? So when people are offering me unsolicited advice, very often I'll just tell them. Typically, like when I'm taking feedback or advice, I like to take feedback from people who have the results I want. So if they don't have the results I want, I'm a lot less interested. And a hugely important thing is to find out whether they're actually valid, they've actually done the work, and if they actually have the results, they can say they have the results, but the world sadly, is not entirely truthful about everything. And so I like to do the research. I like to dig all the way down and figure out does this person actually have a great life or are they bullshitting?

And, you know, part of what we talked about earlier was just that. So you're, you're hitting the nail right on the head, which is know the values of the person and the integrity of that person.

Exactly.

And, you know, their energy kind of speaks for itself to a certain degree too. Right. Like, if you're, if you're really in tune with your nervous system, then, then you can be in tune with somebody else's nervous system and become a better antenna to receive good vibes or bad vibes and know when to circumvent. And I know that's maybe a little bit harder to measure. Right. And quantify, but it certainly is a feeling. Right. Like you can feel when you're connecting with the right person, talking to the right person, and then, of course, asking the right questions just so you can go those few layers deeper to know, is this a person of high value, caliber and integrity? And then surrounding yourself with the right people as much as you can is so huge right now. Especially you want to surround yourself with positive people because that's going to be what keeps you in the right physiological state to create the best work that you can.

Absolutely. And then I would just be very careful with cash flow management. Be very careful with cash flow management. I think that's like a lot of, especially people in the audience that own businesses and stuff. Like your cash flow is your lifeblood of your business. If you've never seen a profit and loss statement or balance sheet, doesn't matter. Point is, if you get the cash flow is the most important thing. And estimating cash flow, understanding what does it, making the hard decisions that you need to make, being able to get. This is why I'm a big fan of masterminds. And what I mean by that is there's two styles of masterminds in my mind. One style is like several people, like 40 people, 50 people, 100 people in a Facebook group, whatever. That's cool. That's awesome. It's great. It allows you kind of weak ties. So you can put a word out, you can start to get intros, stuff like that. That's wonderful. What is my preferred is a smaller, tighter mastermind. So you have many two people, three people, four people, not more than six. Where you get on a call and you hold yourself to a high standard. You hold yourself to a high standard. And it could be a habit, accountability, business accountability. It could be helping sit down and work through challenges, right? When a business mastermind goes deep enough, it goes to personal stuff. Go there, right? Doesn't matter. Point is, if you can sit with someone who has an equal amount of drive and curiosity and desire to do what you want to do, the chances of you getting to where you want to go goes exponentially up. I'm a big fan of like, you know that the self made thing is total nonsense, right? Like we are all supporting each other at all times and like, awesome, we should do that more because we can do more together. And there's beautiful power in unity, strength in unity. And, and so I'm a big, big fan of that. So if you can do a lot of these things, if you can start to journal consistently, if you can start to ask the right questions, look at people that are asking the right questions and start to pattern your thinking on their thinking. So understand that this time, right now is one of the most historic times. There'll be so many books and documentaries made about this time, right? Like, this is a special, challenging as fuck time and this is essentially wartime, right? Without really, you know, it being war on the outside. There is a intensity to it, there is a level of gravity to it that is very strong. And if we can surrender to it, if we can allow the emotions to pass through their body without resisting it or holding onto it, what we can do is we can allow the, the sense of what is happening to fuel our growth. It's very challenging, very fucked up. However, it's just like when you're doing a pr, right, when you're going for the most weight you've ever listed. Never comfortable, it's never super great. But hopefully you'll get the gains on the other side.

This is a very unique time. Like you're going to see. Like this is a time where I feel the people who've done the work are going to have an easier time and the people that haven't done the work are going to be forced to do the work.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. The work is not optional anymore. The work is not optional anymore. And sooner is better. So there's a, you know, there's obviously the cliche ignorance is bliss. I have a, I have a modification to that. Ignorance is bliss until you get fucked, right? Because reality, you can't argue with reality. Reality will eventually win, so you better get on the same side as reality because you want to win with it.

That's a definite meme. We got to get somebody to meme that I'm down.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, mentioned, you know, this is a scary time for people on the front line. Absolutely. It's a scary time for everyone. And that's okay. Like, the fear is okay. Allow it to pass, allow it to move. Allow it to move through and find yourself in a safe place, in a safe space for yourself, for your family that you can, you can look like. I went through a super challenging time two or three years ago, super challenging time. And I have to say I am grateful for that time because it brought me very close to the friends and family in my life because I was able to ask for help and I was able to receive help, you know, both such a privilege. Like, I'm closer to friends as a result. I'm closer to family as a result. Like, challenging times can bring you closer to the people in your life. Your friends, your family, people who really matter. It's almost like it's in challenging times that you realize who your friends are.

Yeah. I mean, this is an important time to make business decisions and life decisions. Usually we're confined to having to worry about or think about our business or make difficult decisions with our business, but now we've got to make difficult decisions with every area of our life. I mean, this is the time. Reminds me of this quote from Joe Polish, where you've got to be at some point in your life willing to be, blow everything up and, you know, for it to come together. Right. That's the paradox of all of this, is we've got to be willing to blow things up for it to all to come together. And that can feel scary because whatever we've built up to this point, we've spent our entire lives building it, and now everything is coming into question. So this is awesome. We're getting some great feedback. Everyone's loving the content and the rawness of the conversation. So I appreciate you bringing, you know, telling us how it is. You know what I mean? There's no sense in sugarcoating this. We talked about this, you know, theme of this is either you live a tough life or you get some tough love. So today is going to be a combination of avoiding the tough life. So. And in order to do that, we've got to give you some tough love and paint the reality. So you also talked about cash flow. I want to come back to that a little bit because as business owners, some of us are getting subsidies, some of us are able to, you know, support our staff members and things like that. What other suggestions do you have to besides hunkering down? Like, I literally just my hunkering down story. I had to sell my dream home and move into a three bedroom condo with my parents and my one and a half year old child. So in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sharonville, if you know where that is. It's like very undesirable location. Like you couldn't even pay me to live there now. So I know what that feels like. And I moved from a 3,500 square foot house into that condo and then I moved to a thousand square foot condo in Toronto on the fifth floor. So like the total opposite spectrum, like basically it felt like overnight. But it was the greatest teacher for me because it taught me the value of even $1. I think I had taken it for granted up until that point. I learned the value of that, but more, more importantly, learn the value of relationships. So going back to this, if you want to change your business, you got to change how you think. And if you want to change how you think, you got to change who you hang out with. Because then you can tap into the hive mind and you've got to be honest with yourself. So we've all got to be honest with ourselves right now as UJ is highlighting and he's bringing us some fire. So keep going, man. What?

Great. Well, one of the things actually hugely important, you know, mentioned who you hang out with. And a big part of that is look like when I was starting out. Let's give you guys a general sense of my beginnings. Like for three or four years, I live in the ghetto in Toronto, right? So what is the ghetto? You guys might ask Driftwood and Jane. Not even Jane and Finch. Driftwood and Jane.

Oh, damn, I remember that place. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And that was like 400 bucks a month, right? Rent, Like should feel uncomfortable. I bootstrapped my business, right with my buddy. We took no outside investment, grew it over the period of like seven years. And the way I think about it, especially in this time, guys like, I don't know exactly like where a lot of you are, business wise, but understanding money is maybe like such a critical part of being a business person or owning a business. Understanding how money works. What are some good money habits? What are some good money ways of thinking about money? What are some basic ideas about how good cash flow management works? And if you guys already know, awesome. If you don't, I would highly recommend doing the research and digging into understanding how money works right now. Because very diligent. Cash flow management is not optional in this Environment. It's absolutely not optional. It's a huge part of how you'll learn to forecast your expenses, forecast your income, start to realize, okay, if I do this, what's the minimum I can expect from this change in the way I'm going about my sales, blah, blah, blah. All this other stuff, you want to be thinking a fuck ton. You want to be thinking a lot around this time. And you want to be thinking from a calm place, because thinking from a fear. If you're thinking and you're in a fearful place, you're not getting, you're not getting results, you're not going to. Your thinking isn't going to be effective because your thinking is going to go in circles, right? So you want to think from a calm place. You want to think from a place of deep relaxation, you know, get that vagus nerve going, right? And if you are doing it from that perspective, if you are hanging out with, right, like the people I hung out with when I was, it was podcasts, I didn't have access to hang out with these people. I didn't have time or money. Like I was listening to podcasts hours and hours and hours of interviews, YouTube, all this shit, right? Because what's great is you can pattern your thinking based on your. What they're saying. How amazing is that? You can pattern your thinking based on what they're saying for free, for hours on podcasts, interviews, and all of this stuff. And that was amazing for me, and it still is amazing for me because that process never really stops. The process of going after what you want doesn't really stop what you go after changes, but the process of being inspired, being admiring people that are getting the results you want. One of my favorite books is a book called the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. And he's got a great line in there and he goes, to stare is to love. If you stare at what you love, your ability to absorb it and absorb the thinking pattern, the ability to do what you want to do improves. So you want to, a lot of the time be very focused on what it is you want to create and what it is you want to bring to life while being very in touch with reality. It's a bit of a seesaw experience while holding something very fundamentally strong in your body, while paying attention to what is happening in the world and adapting, iterating over time.

This is a time of great reinvention. I think a lot of industries, the rules that govern some industries are so silly and they've prevented expansion and growth for many Practitioners, for example, every state in many designations regulates itself. If you're in North Carolina, you may not be able to help somebody in South Carolina, but physiology doesn't change when somebody crosses an imaginary border, right? And I think a lot of those rules are going to be rewritten to redistribute the experience and the knowledge and the know how of how to get people better. And you know, there's going to have to be this, this dissolution or this dissolving of these imaginary lines as telemedicine, telemedicine and these type of services start to expand and the government starts to recognize like, hey, these rules are kind of stupid actually, because I could put one of the top doctors into anybody's home, into anywhere in the country if we just get rid of some of these silly rules, right? So there's a, you know, we, there's. And I believe this is going to happen. What I've always kind of banked on is that things that are smart and innovative always prevail. Now it may not be happening now, but I have to kind of throw that arrow. And time will intersect with it at some point. Believe that time will intersect with it at some point in the future. Now, as people try to build their practices online, here's the beauty of it. Whether you're working with somebody who is just in the other room or just down the block or in another city in the same state as you, to expand that into a worldwide practice or a nationwide practice is just the click of a button, right? So set your business up in such a way that you've thought it through, you've asked the right questions, you've surrounded yourself with the right people, you've created and cultivated the capabilities of the technology and everything that you need and then be ready to scale at the press of a button. I think that that's a smart thing for people to start doing when they're planning out their business. And this industry is so primed for disruption that I think that I believe at least that the rules are going to be written. Rewritten in our favor.

Absolutely. Well, they can be. I really hope they're rewritten in our favor. They can be rewritten in our favor. But like, what's, what I think is going to happen for sure is because the healthcare system just based on such craziness, like doctors aren't taught nutrition for maybe more than like an hour or something in like six years. Some crazy shit. What? What, huh? How does this happen? Like, a lot of people here, like, I've consulted functional medicine Doctors in the past. I know how valuable that is, how amazing that is. The question around. I'm jumping around here around cash flow discussion. What are some good resources for the newbies? So there is a really great book called Profit First. I can't remember the author, but it's small, it's not that large. It's really great. It's a very straightforward approach to cash flow management for businesses. There is a. I'm not bashing doctors at all. I'm just bashing their education they get. Doctors are amazing. I go to them all the time. There's another book about money that there was some people asked about money and resources and stuff like that. There's a few books about improving the relationship with money that I liked. I don't like the title of this book at all, but I like the content. There's a book called the Millionaire Mind by T Ho Ricker. Not a fan of the organization or the seminars or whatever, but I'm actually a fan of some of the thinking patterns in the thought process. There's another book called the Richest man in Babylon, which is a really simple, really straightforward but beautiful story of how a simple story of simple practices that allow wealth to accumulate over time and then just guys do the actual work of estimating your expenses, estimating your income, understanding what is it you need fundamentally to get to where you want to go. What are the basics? How can you reduce expenses? Right? Like this is the time to throw pride out of the picture so you can actually work with what is real. Okay, you need to move in with your parents. You can do that, right? Do you need to size down to a place that where rent is smaller, you can do that. There's all these things you. And attack new opportunities. This is going to be a time of change. If you're not changing right now or you're not planning to change, ha can be tough for you. It can be tough for you, right? Making the right decisions during this change is going to make all the difference between whether you're going to thrive or you're going to barely survive. Look like it sucks to say this, but a good chunk of people on the call are going to have a terrible time. Just the nature of the beast, right? Like just the nature of the beast. So like, doing everything we can while simultaneously taking good care of ourselves is the challenge of our times right now.

I totally agree. I totally agree. And we'll make sure that we type in the notes or in the chat the books that you're mentioning. So Prophet first Richest man in Babylon, which is a fantastic book. I actually have it on my Audible account, so I listen to it quite often. Jim Rohn references that book. So thanks for sharing those. And do you listen, read or delisten to audio?

I do everything. Just like, just get the information in me.

And then the other one was the Millionaire Mind by T. Harvick. He's based out of Toronto, isn't he?

Yes, it is actually another. I don't know where he's based out of, but he's had seminars out of Toronto for sure. One thing I would be amiss if I didn't mention this book is the Four Hour Workweek. It's a classic, great fucking book. Because a lot of people say, oh, I don't want to work for four hours a week. If you read the book, it's not about working four hours a week, it's about working smart, that's about working effective. And if anyone wants a really good primer on how to think effectively about business, I don't know a better book. That's a great book.

Yeah, it's a timeless classic.

It would. Timeless classic. What's also great about it is what he didn't realize he created was there's a lot of books for people that are running six and seven figure businesses to get to like, you know, scale and build and all this other stuff. When I was starting out, I didn't have to scale. I didn't even know how to make, build a product. I didn't know shit. And the Four Hour Worker Week is just, just gives it to you straight. It's beautiful, it's crisp. It was his first book. I'm a huge fan of Tim Ferriss and I followed a lot of his work. But that was. I reread that book every like three or four years just because it's done so much work for me. The book is called the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Yeah. And that's a book that you definitely want to purchase.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because there's a lot of links in it and when you listen to the audiobook, they recite the link. So it's so much more effective if you purchase that book. It's definitely a productivity classic. And you know, hey, listen, most people are working 80 hour work week. So if this can get you to a 40 hour work week, work week, then all the power to you. And then, you know, here's the one way to look at that is even if you could save four hours a week, it would be worth it. And if you could put systems in place that, you know, could take some. Take something or an automation or something that would take somebody 40 hours to do and condense it down into four hours. You know, everyone wins.

Yeah. And what they also talk about, you know, he also talks about stuff like automation and outsourcing and stuff like that. And a lot of people right now can't really afford to pay people that you used to pay before. And so there's people all over the world that they can pay for a similar product or service or similar ways of being. It opens your mind to the fact that the way things are is quite shitty. And the way things can be, at least in your own life and your own family and your own business can be not shitty, be actually quite great and gives you confidence to actually follow through on that. And having been like someone who got inspired by the four hour work week, like that was actually the muse for the five minute journal, that was the thing that made me go, whoa, this guy's awesome. This makes a lot of sense. I want to do that. And it took me two or three years to create that, but it was, that was the foundation where I was like, I understand what he's thinking. This makes a ton of sense. And I think it makes sense to do this. And a lot of the time now people don't think like that. Like, this is such a great environment to think like that because there's so much opportunity. But independent thinkers will win here in this environment, in this economy, in this crazy time, independent thinkers will win.

Do you see any new industry? I'm sure there will be. So the answer is yes. But do you foresee any specific new industries or new opportunities in health?

In health. A good question.

Now think about this, especially as a consumer. So you're on the, you're kind of, you know, you're on the consumer side of things. We had a great talk about what functional medicine is. And, and so you get a great, you have a great understanding of our kind of philosophy. You've obviously been through the traditional medical system. And this is, I just want to make this very clear that it's always about the system. The system does exactly what it's designed to do, right? The people manage the system or they're run by the system. There's systems in our health, part aspects of our healthcare system. There's aspects of my practice, there's aspects of everyone on here's practice that are broken or could be refined and updated. But I'm curious if there's, if there's anything and you may not know the answer. I'm just curious if there's anything that kind of jumps out at you that says, you know, this is how healthcare has to change and this is one way to innovate and make it better.

Yeah. I do have an idea from experience.

So.

I think for people, the idea of a concierge health service is going to be an important one. Let me. Let me explain. So when I go to a doctor, the doctor, I don't feel like he gives a shit, you know, and maybe this is just my experience with doctors. Maybe there are doctors that are really great that I haven't really met. Totally understand. But it's rare for the doctor to sit down with me and say, hey, how are you doing? Let's take an overall assessment. Let's understand who you are as a person. Let's understand how many hours you move. But the intake I have felt, in my personal experience, is insufficient. And they're not talking, asking about my nutrition stuff. They're not asking about my supplementation. They just take a bunch of tests. They say, you're okay, and I go my way. And I don't feel understood or I don't feel like the service I've received is doing that much for my performance as a human being. So they're trying, you know, so that the system that at least I've had experience with is trying to keep me not broken. That's not what I'm interested in.

Right.

I want to be awesome. Right? So give me the person that I can talk to that makes me awesome. And in terms of the opportunity, I have been looking for a concierge service. Like, one person who knows me really well, he or she doesn't need to know everything. I don't expect them to expect them to be honest, expect them to be really smart, expect them to be diligent and know something enough to know what's bullshit and what's not. Because guess what? Like, I'm not in the health field. I'm not gonna, like, look at a bunch of studies and say, oh, these studies say this, and these studies say this. So clearly the truth is this. I don't know that. I don't know how to do that. Right there, a trusted individual that gives a shit about you that is able to say, this is your picture, your health picture. This is what makes sense. This is what doesn't make sense. And there's some people that do that, that already do that, that maybe I've not really connected with. There's a complete side of the picture, there is behavioral modification in there. Right. They understand how habits work, they understand how coaching works, they understand how this works. They are not researchers necessarily. Human connection and trust is where business is made. And so people naturally orient themselves to places where they can feel more trust. And so when the system starts to crumble, you start to go back to people that you trusted, that you felt good with, that you felt that actually cared about you. And if you can systematize that, if you can, like a lot of ways, if you can systematize trust. Right. So how does an influencer make money? They systematize trust. They're able to say something, hit a button and it goes to thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people at times. Right. So in a certain sense, yes. Jennifer asked the question, is anyone? I need to better establish boundaries. Can you talk about setting those. Yes, you absolutely need to set boundaries because you're not a slave. So X hours, you know, a week, X hours of email, etc, etc, things like that. You're a concierge service, you also do primary care. Well, depends on the person. That's a very context specific question. It really depends on your situation. I don't know that much about healthcare and doctors to answer that question, frankly. Right. So if you can do that, that stuff isn't going to go anywhere. When you have a system where insurance companies are starting to feel the burn, some of them may not be around after this. Right. What you're going to go to is the fundamentals. How does immunity work? How does health work? What are the building blocks of how all of this stuff is how do we ensure the health of ourselves and our family over time? Right, right. A retainer model for that, for a family makes a lot of sense. And people who are able to do that, build practices and then systematize their trust digitally over time, that makes a lot of sense.

One thing you mentioned about the experience that you had, I just want to make sure we add a little bit of clarity there. What I believe is that doctors inherently all healthcare providers are good people. Like nobody became a doctor so they could buy a big house and have a nice car. Right. They want to genuinely serve humanity. But I believe the system creates limitations for them in terms of how much time they can spend, what they can actually do. In fact, here in Ontario, a practitioner may know more than what they can technically offer and that literally kills them on the inside. You know, there's a slow death that a lot of practitioners face because they're not able to truly and fully Express what they know might be helpful to the person and then they're unfortunately trapped in this system. And I know that everyone here who's on this call, I can speak for everyone who's on this call is they're good hearted people, they care about their patients. But what I want you guys to understand is that and what I think Ujay is trying to get across is that service so important. Service, in my opinion is more important than the result. Because if somebody genuinely knows you care, they genuinely know you're trying your best, that you're honest with them, you have high integrity, they're going to refer people to you before you even create a result for them because you're exactly what they're looking for. And so I won't do this to you. I was going to say that just reach out to Ujay if you want to be his doctor and he can vet you and he can see if he's got all the tools that you need to meet his criteria. But you know, that's, you know, people want to know how much you care. They expect you to know. Right. You're a knowledge expert, they expect you to know. But showing them that you care is kind of the next evolution in health care. It's called health care. Right. So I think I just wanted to make sure that everyone recognizes that everyone who's on this call, everyone who's tuned in is a loving, caring and if you're not, then please log off. But we recognize that. But we also recognize that the system is broken. And a broken system breaks the people in the system. It breaks the patients and it breaks the doctors and the. And the providers as well.

Yeah. So a lot of what is required in the innovation process is the mind. So it seems like a lot of people on the call are big hearted people. Amazing. Awesome. Right? So they're not assholes. Amazing. Great because it's. There's a bunch of them around in the world as well. So what's. I think the critical piece is the big heart and the big mind. They need to work together. And the big mind is what allows for ideas and innovation to work and then you connect them and magic happens. And so the big mind is the world of thinking, of deep relaxation, of meditation, of the vagus nerve of the healthy community around you to weather challenging times. Like this is a great time to get rid of like shitty friends. No, it's a great time. So you just focus on the essential. Like that's such a great mantra for this time.

Yes. So this has been Amazing, brother. I. People are typing in. I know. Gurdeep typed in. I could listen to Ujay for hours. And I'm looking forward to continue to hang out with you a lot more. And thank you for this amazing information and knowledge that you've provided to our tribe today. We'll have to. We'll have to do a podcast so we can kind of continue this conversation and keep everyone in the loop. I know there's lots of questions that are going to come pouring in. Feel free to go through the chat and answer any questions that people have. Everyone, let's give it up for Ujay Ramdas, dear friend, dear mentor and the co creator of the five Minute Journal and also a friend of our community. So thanks for your insights, brother. It was so greatly appreciated.

My pleasure. Happy to be here. Like I said, I'm just here to, you know, I'm happy to answer questions. I'll be here for a little bit longer. Look, this is a challenging time. Like I've been fortunate enough to make some good decisions and be lucky and I'm happy to share some of my thoughts and things like that. I'll be in the chat in like, like a minute and I'll go through it and I'll figure it out. Thanks a lot session. Looking forward to a podcast in the future. Great event going on.

Thanks, brother. Love you, my man. And have an amazing rest of your day.

Absolutely love you too. Yeah, by.