EP079: How to Successfully Pivot Your Practice with Dr. Navaz Habib

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. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Welcome everyone to Perfect Practice. I'm really thrilled today because I've got a very, very special guest today. I'm joined by Dr. Nawaz Habib. And Dr. Habib is going to be talking to us all about his amazing personal and professional transformation through functional medicine. We have had the privilege of working together for many, many years. First in a coaching capacity and then he was part of our Living Proof Institute team. And then fairly recently, I guess it's been a little over a year now. Dr. Beeb, I'm going to call you Nawaz. Nawaz has started his own practice and we were just talking before we started recording the amazing progress he's made, the pivots that he's made, and how during times of everything that's going on right now, it prepared him for so much success and growth and opportunity. So first and foremost, thanks, Navaz. Thanks for being here today.

It's my absolute honor. It's always fun speaking with you.

Yeah. So our conversation starts back many, many years ago when my wife got into a car accident and I walked into the chiropractic office that you were working at and requested an appointment for her, started talking and you came to know that I was a chiropractor. And that kind of stemmed some curiosity, which is one of the most important things about being an entrepreneur is being curious and listening and asking questions. And that's exactly what you did. And I don't know how our information exchanged, but the information exchanged and we started hanging out. And later on you started upgrading your practice. Right, the chiropractic practice that you were working in. And then you later joined our institute. So I just kind of told your story. I want to hear from you. Like tell, tell me about the journey from your perspective and your side.

Yeah, it was such an amazing journey because it really came from a place of both personal and professional curiosity. And you alluded to curiosity before. I wasn't healthy. When I Met you, I was dealing with significant health challenges. I weighed 250 pounds, I had high blood pressure, high blood sugar, borderline diabetes. This was in my 20s and I'm working as a healthcare provider trying to teach my patients about the ideas of health, what is necessary to promote positive health, and yet I wasn't living it myself. And then when I met you, the light bulb just literally turned on. It was like a switch flipped and I said, holy crap, this is what I've been looking for for such a long time. I've tried all these basic weight loss ideas and cutting the calories and changing diet here and. And nothing had stuck because it just didn't resonate with me. But when functional medicine was brought up to me, it clearly did. It clearly had the specific and science backed and understanding of looking for the root cause, rather than simply addressing the symptom of weight challenges and blood pressure and blood sugar, looking for why those challenges were happening. It really gave me this leg up on my journey and it really piqued my interest when, when I got the testing done, when I figured out what was really, truly happening inside, the changes just started to noticeably manifest inside me and I started losing weight. I ended up like, you know, losing about 75 pounds, but also gaining a ton of energy and balancing out my hormones and getting my blood sugar in balance and getting my blood pressure normalized and just noticing that I was able to do more, be more productive and have way more efficiency in my life and just feel like a much, much better version of who I wanted to be. And once I got there, I said, this is something I absolutely need to share with everybody. And that's how we started working together.

Amazing. I love that. And it feels like yesterday, but it was, what was it like five years ago?

Five or six years ago? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's been quite some time. And of course our relationship has evolved because first you started off being a coaching client and then we started working together. I'm like, hey, you would be a really great addition to the team. And so we brought you on board to work with us and we did that for a few years. And then you had a calling and I want you to talk about that because clearly making changes and shifts in our career and companies that we work for, that's not an easy thing to do and not always an easy conversation to have as well. And what I really admired about you, and I even told the team this during one of our meetings, is that he followed his passion. And to me, that's the highest act of courage that most people don't do. And not just your passion, but more importantly, he followed your values. And so I'd love for you to share a little bit more about that.

Yeah, 100%. I spent three years working internally with you guys at Living Proof and couldn't be more grateful for everything that I learned that I experienced. All of the coaching, all of the on like the love, the care, the gratitude that you showed me that you offered to us, it really set me up to understand how to be successful. It was really a masterclass in becoming a successful person. And one of the main things that I remember coming out of that with was coming to an absolute space of clarity in what it is that you want. You spoke about values and when it comes to values, we all have a certain set of values by which we live. And these things can change. They do alter based on what happens. So I have a three year old daughter. Obviously the values of family are very heavy for me. I have certain other values that I was aware of. But at some point there was a misalignment with the values that I wanted. The idea that I had this entrepreneurial kind of burning or spirit inside me and not being able to really express that when I was working internally. And so making that change did take some time. Coming to that conclusion took a lot of effort and it was internally very, very difficult to make that decision. But when I did make that decision, it was like a weight was lifted. And it said, okay, now it's your time to soar, to follow that value. And it was because I finally became so clear on what it is that I wanted to do and where I wanted to be and how I wanted to share my story and my practice with a certain set of people, a certain type of client. And that certain type of client probably just didn't match between our two practices. And that's where the misalignment kind of started. But what it did was provide me clarity on who I did want to work with. And so once I left Living Proof, I started Health Upgraded, which helps us help me to become very clear on what my mission was. My mission in business and life is to help end needless suffering around the world. You're doing a wonderful thing with all of the Living Proof projects in in Uganda and Africa. Like those things always resonated so strongly with me. My brother and his wife are doing amazing work in Nairobi and Kenya in a very similar capacity, teaching starting schools and early childhood development centers in the slums of Nairobi. And so I've always Had this desire to help decrease the needless suffering around the world. But I knew that I wasn't going to be able to go and do that, and my skill set didn't specifically lead to that. So I said, well, who can I help that can help that or who can I help that can then go and do those things? And for me, the answer was entrepreneurs. The answer was helping those who can help others, who want to go out and create opportunity, create hope in the lives of others that are suffering needlessly. And so I started working primarily with entrepreneurs, high powered executives and people that are really working to create hope and positive change around the world. And that's what Health Upgraded focuses on. We are working with these entrepreneurs, these high powered clients that want to take health challenges out of their way so that they can go out and be as productive as I felt when I initially made the changes, that they have the energy to go out and do the things that they want to do. And like I say, going back to that understanding, being clear on who you want to be, who you want to work with, being clear on the change you want to create, create what your mission is in the world, creates this understanding of where you then want to go and how you're going to achieve that.

Yeah, I love that. I love that story of helping other people impact and influence more people and kind of creating that fractal ripple in the world so that you can use your strongest gift, which is helping people get healthy and you know, taking them on a journey of wherever they're starting, there's always that next level. And nobody understands that better, I don't think, than executives. And it's great because the impact that they're going to have, you know, the trickle down effect, so to speak, in their immediate environment amongst their peers and other colleagues who are also probably executives, but then also into their workplaces and you know, and also into the missions that, that they might be supporting around the world. So that's amazing, man. It's such a fantastic story that you shared and I'd love to hear about, you know, how you were prepared for all that's happening right now. I think we were, you know, we were talking about this before we jumped on the live here. We were talking about how all the things that we were working on at Living Proof and leading up to it and the things that you, you know, I, what I. One thing I really admired about you is you'd always like jump in and take action, right? So you know, you'd build that landing page. You'd get that funnel built, right? And it would look really nice and pretty. And it was like, wow. Like, you know, I can see that you put a lot of attention to detail and time and energy into it, and you. It. It essentially prepared you to be able to handle some of these, you know, nuances and tasks yourself, which kept you lean and allowed you to pivot. But I'd love for you to kind of unpack. Like, maybe looking back, we can connect the dots, maybe you can unpack for us. Like, what prepared you for being in a great position right now, like, with the way your practice is set up and so on and so forth.

It's funny you ask it the way you did. I got a phone call from one of my friends from chiropractic college, one of my really, really close friends in, I believe it was in May. And he called me and he said, how did you know this was happening? How did you know to get out of a commercial lease? How did you know to go online? How did you know to get into functional medicine? I said, I absolutely had no idea. But I truly believe that luck is when opportunity meets. Preparation and working with you. Working at Living Proof helped to create a level of clarity on the life that I wanted to live. It helped me see where I wanted to spend my time. I wanted to be able to travel, go to events, work from literally anywhere on the planet, work with clients all over the world. I didn't want to be limited by geography. I didn't want to be limited with some of the challenges that we experience when we're working in a brick and mortar type of practice. I didn't want to experience those. I've done it before. I've had a chiropractic practice, as you know. And I remember one of the things you said to me was, are you running your practice, or is your practice running you or your business running you? And at that time, the business was running me prior to starting working with you. And I said, well, I never want to experience that again. I said, I never want something else, some other force directing what it is that I can do and where I can be and the life that I want to experience. So being able to travel, being able to spend time with my family, being able to literally practice and take my laptop with me literally anywhere and be able to see clients and work with people, that was really important to me. I never wanted to feel tied down to anything. And so when I left Living Proof, I said, okay, I want to set up the practice that I'm going to be in based on the life that I want to live. Rather than shifting my life into the business, I want to create a business around me. This is something I learned very much from you. And so I started to figure out how to do these things. I was lucky enough to live in a house that has this beautiful office in it. I had this office space set up ready to go. From the moment I decided to open up Health upgraded, I created my workspace accordingly. So I've got my beautiful desk, I've got my family upstairs, but I can't hear them running around, which is wonderful. And I started working on finding tools that could allow me to work with people first off with clients that I was looking to ideally work with and then how to do that in any capacity that I wanted. And I found online programs, some that you introduced me to, some that I've learned ever since, things like Practice Better being one of the best practice management systems that I've ever worked with that's so robust, so complete, just makes my life so easy. When you create automations and you're able to set up automatic scalable tools inside there, things that you don't then consciously need to worry about all the time, for example, being able to set up a call with somebody and an email and reminder going out to them automatically or specific forms being sent out to them automatically and reminders being sent to them automatically. Something that I don't consciously need to think about. And so when I get to the point when that appointment is right ready, all of my forms are filled out, all of my things that I all the information I need is ready for me to be able to then go out and deliver the care that I know that I can deliver. One of the greater tools that I learned from you as well was the stuff that you brought from Joe Polish, which was the half versus elf specifically what are the things that you find easy, lucrative and fun? And then what are the challenges that are a little bit more hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? What are the things that you don't like to do? And a lot of those I found were automation and checking in with people on a regular basis and some of the little more tedious tasks. I was able to actually find somebody to work with me. So I was able to delegate a lot of my tasks to a teammate that I was able to bring on as part of this. So I work with a nutritionist who helps to manage those things. And those things are things that she enjoys. She enjoys reaching out to clients, she does coaching calls with them, she enjoys Checking in on a weekly basis and saying, how are these things going? How are the supplements feeling? Are you doing well with the dietary changes, et cetera. And she checks in with me and we have our bi weekly calls, making sure that were on top of everybody, that we're not losing track of any clients. So I was able to set up my business around the life that I wanted to live and really shift into the ELF things. I wanted to be able to manage the business, I wanted to be able to run the business, I wanted to be able to oversee a lot of the client care, but I wanted to also be able to delegate and promote my team, my team members, my teammates, to be able to go and grow their own practices, to be able to get to the level that they want to be at. If they don't have an entrepreneurial spirit inside them, but they know that they can work with somebody that is comfortable and that enjoys doing those things, then there is a synergistic energy that can be created. And so that's who I was lucky enough to bring on to my team as well. So finding team members that resonate with your mission, finding team members that resonate with the type of life that you want to live, the type of practice you want to create, the type of patient that you want to work with, is absolutely key to creating that life that you want to experience.

I love that. And I wanted to go backwards just a couple of minutes and give a big shout out to practice better. And it was actually when we were introduced to practice better, we're like, hey, this is a total home run. But we couldn't implement it right away because they actually just this past April, this past spring, launched the group program. So we implemented, and we love it, and we recommend it to all of our practitioners. So big shout out to them for all the amazing work that they're doing, Natalie and Graham and the team there. And then also just, you know, going back to some of the things that you said about unpackaging your ELF and your half, and this is a good exercise for all the practitioners that are listening. You should be doing this periodically with your team members, and they should be doing it kind of on themselves and even amongst their spouses and anyone in their life should be doing this exercise where you basically, just for those of you that aren't familiar with this, on the left hand side of a piece of paper or left page of a book, you write down all the things that are easy, lucrative, fun, things that make you money, things that you enjoy doing, things that come to you naturally, your natural gifts. And then the things that are hard, annoying, lame and frustrating could be people, projects like circumstances. It could be a whole bunch of things that you don't like doing. Guess what? Somebody else loves doing them. So find people that love doing the things that are hard, annoying, lame and frustrating for you. And you're actually. It's kind of like two plants watering each other. So it works really well synergistically and everyone's in their happy state. And so it's great that you found that team to surround yourself with to then first of all, we have to identify what our strengths are and what we love doing and then where the opportunities are for us to be supported. It's not a weakness, it's just an opportunity for us to be supported. A piece of the puzzle isn't the whole puzzle. Right? You've got to attach other pieces to it for it to represent the entire vision that you have. That's awesome, man. So you're working with entrepreneurs, you're working with clients that are making a big impact. And it's great to see that the influence that you're having is, is pretty much global. Right. With the people that you're working with. So tell us a little bit more about how people can work with you or how do people find you? Maybe we can talk about that.

Totally. So Health Upgraded runs entirely online. All of our calls are done through video, through zoom. So it's very easy to find us, very easy to work with us. So we're located just online@healthupgraded.com and what you can do, essentially if you're interested, is to just go on the website and book in a complimentary call and we can discuss how to help you upgrade yourself and your life and your energy and feel a ton better and create more of an impact in the world.

That's awesome. I would love for you to talk about your book because I think right now that book has so much value and it's almost like it was written for today's modern day situation. So you want to talk about it?

Yeah, 100%. So thank you for writing the foreword for my book. It really has been just a catapult. It's been a ton of positive energy that's come from the work that I did. So I wrote the book Activate youe Vagus Nerve and it came out last April as well. And essentially the book talks about what are some of the exercises, tools and reasons for why our bodies tell tend to go into more of a sympathetic state. And what we can do to promote parasympathetic activity, rest, digest, recovery through the vagus nerve and why the vagus nerve is such an important piece of the puzzle in creating an optimal health based life and lifestyle.

All right, and where people can get that from your website?

Yeah, you can get it from vegasnervebook.com There are some links from Health Upgraded as well. And it's available on Amazon. We have an audiobook. It's available in a few different languages as well, which is really cool. But yeah, you can get it@vegasnervebook.com all right.

Amazing. Nawaz. So I'm going to take this opportunity to maybe share with the practitioners on our podcast and followers that are listening. You've had a very unique perspective of our business. You've had kind of like the comet perspective. Where the comet's coming, it comes and then it goes, but it's still there, it's still in sight and it's still valued. So I thought that this would be a great conversation and great perspective as a mentee, as a team member, as a friend and all the amazing journeys ahead that we both have together. So thank you for sharing. What would you say to practitioners right now? What advice would you give to people who are maybe in a similar position to where you were a few years ago to a, like, should they hire a coach? Should they try to figure this out on their own? Like, what are the things that you feel really catapulted you to move faster in the direction of your dreams?

I think the best decision I ever made was to say that I didn't have all the answers and to step into a situation where I could get a lot of those answers from those that were around me. So starting to work with you as a mentorship client, with you mentoring me, mentoring the growth of the business, it really prompted me to say, okay, it's all right to not have all the answers. In fact, it's better to not have the answers because this person doesn't just have the answers to your questions, they have the answers to your future questions because they've already been there, they've gone through this. And so if they can't help you immediately with that specific answer, they can help you find the path to get there. And so being able to work with somebody who can help you promote that path or accelerate through that path that you want to go down it 100% is the answer. So many of those people out there that you look at on social media that you see promoting such positive values and having such an amazing impact. All of those people, every single one of them has somebody that they look up to, somebody that they work with, somebody that helps them on their path, that is guiding them through this. And if nothing else, they're working with them to create this positive impact that they're having. So for me, finding somebody to work with that can help you answer the questions that you have that has gone down that path is by far the best decision you can make in creating the impact that you want to create.

Awesome. I love that. What would you say stops people? I'm curious about that from, from, again, from your perspective. But what stops people and gets them to talk themselves out of seeking that help?

I think there's a level of lack of clarity being the biggest thing when people are really, truly unclear on where they want to go on, what outcomes they want to have. On saying that this idea is too ludicrous, it's too out there, it's too unrealistic, is, I think, the word that most people use, that the ideal life doesn't exist. This idea that you can't really create a business around your life. I think there's a level of you don't know what that next step is, and so it stops you from taking any step. And when you become clear on exactly what it is you want to create, when you take the time to really visualize what that looks like, to know what your values are and what that means for you, for your family, for your loved ones, what it then does is push you or accelerate you into putting all of your energy into that one direction. And when you don't have that clarity, it really slows you down. I tend to visualize this ball of energy that every single one of us is where this massive ball of energy, or like a light bulb, for example, so we've got this glowing light bulb, and a glowing light bulb that's glowing in all directions doesn't illuminate. It illuminates, but not very brightly in all directions. But imagine a flashlight that's very, very strongly directed in one area. It's going to illuminate in a very strong manner in a specific direction. And it's going to essentially put all the energy in one way. So the difference between a basic incandescent bulb and a strong, high powered LED flashlight is going to be very, very different. Dispersal of energy versus very directed energy. When you become clear, you become very directed. And so that visualization really works well for me.

That's awesome, man. I love that analogy and metaphor, and it makes perfect sense to direct our energy and focus onto as few things as possible. Ideally. One thing, if we can, and if we're going to hold anything in our focus, it should be the things that we praise as our highest values. And you can kind of tell what people's values are based on their actions, not based on their words. Right. Not based on their memes, but on their actions. And I, again, want to applaud you and admire you for the action that you took so that you could live out your highest values. And it's just great to witness your success and growth and continued personal development. And I just wanted to acknowledge you for that. And thank you for sharing your experience today.

Thank you for having me. It's been an honor.