How to strategically differentiate yourself and create success with Dennis Wong and Sachin Patel

Hello my friend, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today I get to speak and share the amazing talents and gifts of somebody who's become a mentor and a friend to me over the years, Dennis Huang. Dennis is a pharmacist and functional medicine practitioner based out of Winnipeg. Him and I actually met through a colleague of ours, Dr. Bob Rakowski. We both belong to an organization called Organo and it's through that organization that we've helped thousands of people with the utilization of reishi mushrooms. And we've also, I can say personally, have met some amazing people, including Dennis. Dennis then joined our mentorship program and I'm excited to speak with him today, dive into more about what he represents, why he does what he does, how he's using his knowledge as a pharmacist and functional medicine practitioner to serve others. And I really admire Dennis for his continuous effort in spreading the gospel of functional medicine and wellness. So without further ado, welcome Dennis. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you for the invitation. This is exciting stuff to share.

Well, you know, I really admire you for so many things, you know, as a father, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who, you know, is willing to step outside of his comfort zone to reach as many lives as he can. So thank you for inspiring me to up level my game and inspiring others in your community to live a better life. It's greatly appreciated and very needed right now in the world.

Absolutely. Thank you for doing what you do also because, you know, after we met, I'm also being sort of following and trying to find that direction. Right. And your group become one of the highlight way and how I should be spreading the word and how to help people, more people.

Amazing. Well, thank you. So I know that with your background as a pharmacist, you're exposed to people on a daily basis who are looking to improve their health, looking for solutions. But before we get into that, what I'd love to know is where does your story start? What prompted you to become a pharmacist and get into healthcare? From what I understand, you did not grow up in Winnipeg. So what prompted you to move there? Like let's, let's go, let's go way back. Where does your story start?

I was born and raised in Burma. Now it's called Myanmar, which is next door to India and China and Thailand. And when we're growing up, I'm actually number nine out of nine brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest. Yeah. So my parents didn't really want to move to Canada because they have their own business there. One of my brother moved here and from his point of view, it's going to be better for younger generation, you know, for us, a few young people to get a better education out here in Canada. So my parents decided to move in 1984, and I was 19 when I came here. And my goal was to get into some sort of health care, especially medicine. And the reason is my mom, when she was running in second World War, my grandfather actually got dysentery during the war and they could not find any health practitioner to help them. And so my grandfather died with dysentery. So before he died, my mother promised him that every child that she has gonna be in healthcare, if not physician. So she pushed all of us there. And so when I came here, I went to high school, university, and my goal was to get into medicine. And it's funny that I became pharmacist even though I didn't want to. As my. One of my brother who's above me, number eight, he wants to be a pharmacist. And he asked me to fill out the form and I refused to. And he actually fill it out and made me sign it. I got into pharmacy, he didn't. He's now electric engineer in us. So I always said that story saying, hey, you know, it's because of him. He. He has the good, I guess, future, whatever, and that he believed that I can be this rather than physician. So that's how I end up as a pharmacist.

Wow. So out of, out of the nine, all brothers you said, Right.

So you brought us and sister. I got four brothers and four sisters.

Okay, awesome. So how many of them ended up in healthcare?

This. I'm one, two, three of us.

Okay, not bad. That's amazing.

Yeah, actually, yeah, three of us. Yeah. Right. Sorry, have to count because there's so many of us.

No, I totally get it. So does anyone else live in Winnipeg with you or are you there by yourself?

No, I got three brothers and one sister live in Winnipeg, and then one sister in uk, one sister actually in Toronto, and one brother and one sister in Denver and one brother in Michigan.

Okay. You know, it kind of sounds like my family. So my mom has four siblings, and at one point we all lived. At one point they all lived in the same house, believe it or not, here, right here in Toronto. And then now they've spread out. Some of them live in Toronto, some in Michigan, some in Georgia. So it really helps to have, you know, a family close by. I growing up, I so greatly appreciated that. So I can I can definitely empathize and recognize the value of having family.

Close by to you for sure.

So you run some. Your business is called Sin Den Pharmacy?

Yeah.

And where does that name come from? I know there's a story there.

Yeah. When we started, actually our first pharmacy was started over 24 years ago and I was working for Shoppers Drug Mart at that time for about five years and I got frustrated because, you know, there's corporate rules and regulation and I'm one of those that when I graduated I was one of the few that wanted to do more clinical, you know, patient care rather than just filling prescription. And with the corporate rules and regulation to the point that for me was I either go start my own pharmacy or I quit pharmacy profession totally and go back to university, change career totally. And my wife's a pharmacist classmate of mine also. And she said no, don't do that. So I said, okay, we got to open a pharmacy then. And she said, no, pharmacists never lose the job. I have a good job, you can go sell your own. And I said I'm not doing it myself. So within six months she actually got laid off from she was working for Walmart nursing home division and Walmart decided to sell the nursing home because it's not profitable for them. So she got sold with the nursing home to Rexel Pharma plus. And after working at Rexall Pharma plus for three months she got really frustrated and there's a weekend that turning point all the nursing home pharmacist has to take the call pager, you know, every other week or once a month, whatever. And that weekend she was on call on Sunday and at 10 o' clock we were about to go to church and the pager beep. So she called the nursing home and nursing home said they have a palliative care patient who ran out of morphine. So they needed right away patients in pain. So my wife said okay, because it's narcotic and we have to, with the regulation we have to pay the on call palliative care physician. So she pays the physician. Physician did not return the page for about an hour. And when the page, the physician called back, he said yeah, I'm at home now, come and get the prescription. And the physician live across town and Winnipeg, it's not a big city so you can go across town within 45 minutes on Sunday. So we said okay. So my wife said, can you drive me? Because you know, across town she doesn't really drive that across town. Other site So I said, sure. So we left the house. We just got in the car in the garage and she got paid again. So she went back into the house and called the nurse saying, yeah, you know, I just got the reply from the doctor, we're gonna go get the prescription. And the nurse said, that's why I paid you. Don't bother. The patient died.

Oh, man.

Yeah. So we both sit at the garage door in the car and we both cry. And then my wife turned around and looked at me and said, you said, you want to open your own pharmacy. I said, yeah. Do you still want it? I said, yeah. She said, so if we have our own pharmacy, this kind of thing, if I cannot get a hold of the physician and patient is dying, would you let me take the morphine to the patient and then we'll deal with the prescription later? I said, absolutely. She said, okay, let's open. So we started planning and I already did some leg work. So within three months we opened the pharmacy. And everybody at that time said, independent pharmacies are dying. You're not going to make it. Within six months, you're going to die. Don't do it. And I ignore them. And when we're trying to look for the name, we didn't know what to do. We wanted something in there, but we also wanted community that we're opening. So in the community that we're opening, it's a brand new community, south end of the city, 24 years ago called White Ridge. So we want to call White Ridge Pharmacy. But then we said, we need to have something in there. And so we're trying to think of the name. And my brother from Michigan was visiting us for Christmas, you know, for fall or whatever reason I forget, it's. We opened in November, so. And so we were discussing about all this different name. And he then looked at it, look at me and Cindy and smile and said, she said, he said, call it cd, White Ridge. And we looked at him and like, cd. And he said, compact disc. And Cindy and I looked at each hand, I said, yeah, Cindy and Dennis, CD. So that's how it started, the name CD. And then 10 years ago, we opened second pharmacy. And so we said, okay, we're going to call it Sen. Dan, Cindy and Dennis. So that's how the name came about. Wow.

And you proved them all wrong because not only did you survive past the six months, but you opened up a.

Second location, second location. And the interesting thing was a year after we opened our pharmacy, first pharmacy, Walmart actually came in a block away. And opened up this huge pharmacy with superstar, with the pharmacy. And so everybody's like, are you going to sell to Walmart? Because you can make it, you can compete. And I said no, we're just going to stay under the radar of Walmart and do different things than what Walmart did. So we kept going and then safely opened up. We got shoppers around here, we got Sobeys a block away. So a block away I got four other big corporate pharmacy and I'm independent a block south of them. And we work together. The stuff that they cannot do, then they call us and say can you do this? And we say yeah. And so whatever they cannot do, we pick it up.

Okay, so what are some of those things that you do that they would.

Call you up for after they open up? And our community was really brand new community with a family with two and a half kids, that's how I call it. All these young, you know, child and children. And so they got at the time a lot of antibiotic ear infections and stuff. And antibiotic flavors are really bad. So we actually got into flavoring of antibiotic. And so in the whole city we were the only pharmacy that know how to flavor antibiotic with a different flavor. And we got to the point that we had actually 100 different flavors in our pharmacy. And so when the patient come in, we have the list and we put the menu down on account and ask the kid and which one would you like? And we go from there. Every time they come in, they pick different flavor for antibiotics. And so that's how we've been known as a flavoring pharmacy. And across the city all the pharmacies are actually sending patient to us because they don't know how to do it. We did it.

It's like you're the Baskin Robbins of pharmacies.

Exactly, exactly. And then we later on got into actually compounding because then we got palliative care doctors asking, saying can you do this, can you do that? And so I started doing more pain management compounding. So I've actually brought in the practice of topical pain gel to Winnipeg doing Douglas Fennec and staff started introducing to the palliative care physician and we started doing actually even anti nausea topically for cancer patients that are on chemo drug. They're getting really nauseated and any other manufacturer products are not working for them. They'll call me and I will then come up with the topical anti nausea for different patient, different cases and we go from there. That actually led to more training into compounding. And we belong to a group called Professional Compounding center of America, which is based out of Houston. And they did a lot of. They still do a lot of training. And some of their training, they actually have a foresight of bringing in functional medicine physician to lecture about, okay, you're treating pain from functional point of view. What else can you do? And started digging off these root cause. What else? What else? And so that's when. And at the same time we're known for pharmacy that will do anything to serve the patient. So patient were coming to us and saying, well, I take this arthritis medication now because of that side effects now I got high blood pressure, so what can you do for me? And so we started looking into functional approach and nutritional and you know, herbal supplement. And that's where keep flowing. And to the point that I've actually end up doing fellowship with the A4M. And that's when I got into ifm and all that. And the training just keep, keep going.

Yeah. So I mean, quite a. Quite a colorful background. I love, I love hearing this aspect of what, you know, brings you to the present day, which is, you know, helping people in such a meaningful capacity, whether it's through the pharmacy that you operate. And also I love the innovation. I love how your mind works because you're differentiating yourself not only through the flavoring. Right. Not only through the compounding, but then also through the functional medicine aspect of it as well. Yeah, that's really important for any entrepreneur to kind of recognize that. Right. Is like, how do I identify what I love doing and do it in a way where I am serving the underserviced.

Right.

I've always been curious as to why these big companies around you don't do these things. Is there. Have you identified why they don't do it and for these things kind of.

The reason is that to do this, when you do this, you get patient that really, really need help. And from their point of view is they don't want pharmacists to spend a lot of time with the patient. Even though they do. They say they do. Their practice model does not give you the time that you need to serve the kind of patient that we serve in our pharmacy. Like we may be on the phone, you know, triaging and trying to do mini discovery call or root cause, you know, quite everything for half an hour with one patient. And so especially like I got another pharmacist and she was just talking to one patient today and about chronic uti and we will start talking about other function approach Other supplement all of that and took half an hour. And for me, if I get onto the phone with the patient, my phone call the shortest is 45 minutes. So I don't want to get on the phone. I want them to make an appointment for discovery call with me so I can spend the proper time with them. But if I get on the phone like during the day because somebody calling, oh, I was told to talk to Dennis, then I end up 45 minutes to an hour on the phone and I can't do anything. Everything's behind. So that's the difference because these patients really need help. And as you know, there's not a lot of help out there. We need more people like you and us to be able to help these patients properly and make them understand what, what's going on and what to do.

Yeah, you know, my wife is a pharmacist, as you know, Dennis, and as many of the listeners probably know as well. And that was the thing that, you know, really bothered Deepa too is not being able to spend the time that's required to actually answer these people's questions. And you know, many of these companies, you know, we're not here to point fingers or anything, but many of these companies are set up and the only the KPI is how many people can we churn out today isn't how satisfied are people.

Exactly.

You know that customer service goes a long way and as Tony Robbins says, find an underservice market and over deliver and it sounds like that's what you're doing.

We try our best.

Yeah. That's awesome. So tell me about your story with Organo because you know, that's another business that you've built quite successfully. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, as you know, we got to know each other to Dr. Bob and when I got into functional medicine and when I was learning about nutrition initially back in 2006, Metagenix Co. And you're familiar with the company, the rep that came to visit me, I'm learning as much as I can from him and I'm learning from the conferences and stuff. But I was not 100% happy with the training that I was getting and information that I'm learning I wanted more. So he actually in 2006 suggested that at that time Metagenix, every time the new rep start, the first training that rep has to do is go spend two days training in clinic with Dr. Bob Rakowski in Houston. And so back in 2006 when I was pushing for more training, they suggested that they will actually get me to Houston and pay, you know, talk to Dr. Bob and then I can then pay Dr. Bob to go do training with two days with Dr. Bob. So that's how I got to know Dr. Bob Rakowski. And so I tried to schedule it and his schedule and I my schedule was just couldn't match it. So I actually couldn't go down. So since then I follow him. And so, you know, like many of us, we have mentors over the whatever distance that the person may not even know that he's mentoring you. And so Dr. Bob has become one of my first mentor that I follow. So I subscribe to his email, I always ask metagenx what he's doing, every lecture he's trying to do, you know, webinar and stuff, I will try and attend. And so when Facebook become a thing, Dr. Bo was on the Facebook and so I follow him. And at six years ago, he posted something that caught my eyes. He said healthy coffee and he was sharing his experience with his patient with these coffee. And I'm already doing function functional medicine console and I see about 10 to 12 patients a week in my practice, you know, one on one. And I see a lot of patients are coming to me saying that in the morning before I start anything, I have to drink a pot of coffee. I'm like bingo. You know, these patients, if I can have this whatever healthy coffee with Reishi in it, I can do something. And I didn't know much about Reishi at the time, just started learning. And so I went to Minneapolis CCN conference and Dr. Bob was doing a workshop and he shared his case report about patient with these Reishi mushroom coffee and stuff. So when he finished the lecture, I went up And I said, Dr. Bob, I don't know, you know me, but I've been following you since 2006. But I noticed this, I want to learn more about this coffee stuff. So he said, come to the presentation tonight. So I went to his presentation in Minneapolis and I'm listening about all the studies and you know, all the patient case report that he had and other practitioner has in his group. By the time he finished, Jacob Rakowski, his son was there too. And Jacob was sitting the same and as soon as talked about finish, she said, what do you think? I said, what can I sign? Because this is going to be another tool for my patients because I have a lot of patients. And my practice somehow went through more of the adrenal dysfunction underlying causes. 90% of my patients are adrenal fatigue or adrenal dysfunction. Patients. So everybody's staying up or you know, pushing through at the coffee. So for me was, hey, if I can put this healthy coffee with Reishi and if Reishi is supposed to do what it said, I got a really good tool. So that's how I got into it. I'm always looking at what else can I put in my toolbox for my patient, you know, and I think that's similar to you that you were always looking at. What else can we do to improve our patient and offer them, you know, something better?

So yeah, especially if it's simple, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Coffee. Coffee and Reishi. And even If Reishi does 10% of what it's capable of doing, it's. It's definitely worthwhile for people to investigate.

Well, I. If I can share one patient story with my initial reishi. When I came back, one of my patient husband came in to pick up the nutritionist stuff for her. And I was talking to him and I said, how are you doing, Jack? And he said, well, I've been having back pain for two years. And I got MRI done, CAT scan done, nobody can find anything. So I said, you know what, I just got this new reishi mushroom coffee supposed to help with the pain too. So I said, why don't you try? So I give him six sample. He went home, drank four in the same day because after two cups, his back pain improved. And so he tried another 2 cup and by the evening his pain 10 level went down to 4.

Wow.

So the next day he came and bought a box and he drank the whole box. He drank four cups a day and he kept buying. And within 30 days, his back pain at 20 disappeared.

Oh wow, what a great.

So after that I'm like, hey, I'm keep carrying this now because nobody can find anything for him. And now I'm looking back as he's a farmer, so there's, you know, chemical toxicity and his wife's not well, so he's really stressed. And so combination of toxin and stress. His adrenals are totally shot. And so Reishi and coffee, the whole detox and adaptogen and anti inflammation help him really, really well.

Yeah. And low back pain is a common functional symptom of adrenal fatigue.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Great pickup there. I love that.

Yeah. Thank you.

He would have probably never gotten this relief if he just went to a regular pharmacy.

Yeah, right.

Or even, even a regular pharmacist. And that isn't to be demeaning, but it just goes to show that the extra steps that you've taken the trainings, you've taken the mentors that you followed, have uniquely positioned you to offer, you know, exceptional service to your community. So absolutely awesome to hear that.

Yeah.

So. So you and Cindy work in the pharmacy together?

No, like I said, we have two pharmacies. So I run the whole operation of both pharmacy, and she run the second pharmacy by herself. Second pharmacy is right inside the medical clinic, which is a blessing for us because what we do, we can interject functional practice into their clinic. So those physicians are actually quite happy that we're there and being able to offer this extra service to their patients.

So amazing. So in addition to the medications, you probably sell supplements and functional foods like the Reishi. What's the number one supplement that you sell? I'm curious.

The number one supplement, what? There's two of them that I sell a lot. And by the way, I actually have my own nutritional company I started five years ago. It's called Senna Nutritional. So I created some of my own formulas and register with the Health Canada, and it's still going. The. One of the one that we sell the most is our own brand called Sericom, which is ldna. You know, being from my background and my work with the patient is a chronic stress and chronic fatigue type of thing. So that the works really well with doing brain fog, focus, dopamine, serotonin, all of that, and sleep. So that's one of our top one. And second one that we saw very close second is chelated magnesium, amino acid, chelated magnesium. As you know, it's involved with over 300 different enzyme function, especially involved with the energy production, muscle relaxation, all these chronic stress people. We all are really tense, right? So lack of magnesium and cramp and all of that. And sleep apnea is one of them. Like, you know, I do boatload of magnesium and I see improvement in sleep apnea, and I see chronic fatigue patient with tons of magnesium. And that alone can do really, really good relief on pain and fatigue. So those two are my number one seller.

All right. Yeah, magnesium, you know, we. We call it the cure for everything. Right. And yeah, with 300 enzymatic functions, it's super important. And of course, it's. It's so neat because it helps you relax and it also gives you energy because it plays a role in mitochondrial mitochondria.

Yeah, exactly.

Is one of those paradoxical supplements that can. That can really kind of unwind people how much. What's a heavy dose? As you're describing, what would that be.

For the chronic fatigue patient I use up to one patient, actually. The patient was in Ontario. It's a pharmacist. She's a pharmacist. And she got chronic fatigue to the point that she had to stop working. And we, through one of my colleagues, it wasn't me directly, but through one of my colleague, he asked me and saying, okay, which dose should we go? Whatever. So we use it actually. 1600 milligram of elemental magnesium, like four times a day, divided four times a day. And within. She was in chronic fatigue and couldn't work for two years. And after six months, she went back to part time. She was meant to go back to work. Yeah. And that's all we did. We didn't even add any other supplement, just magnesium alone.

Wow, it's amazing. Magnesium. It's. If you're not using practice, it should. Miraculous. So great, great call there. And then theanine, you know, as we know, theanine is so powerful for, for sleep and kind of unwinding that stress response that people have. You know, I'm kind of curious, Dennis, with, with everything that's going on in the world right now, have you seen people's prescriptions starting to change or people's stress and anxiety levels changing as they're coming in to see you?

Absolutely. We are seeing more antidepressant and antipsychotic. We have patients on like two to three different antidepressant or antipsychotic combination and do the plant that we're seeing. Some of them as a pharmacist, you know, it's alarming because there's interaction you start seeing or there's, you know, enhanced side effects you start seeing. So. Absolutely. Last two years being, it's bad, you know, with the stress and anxiety for a lot of people.

So, I mean, I'm glad they have you, but hopefully things change here soon and we can get back to some, some level of normalcy, right?

Absolutely.

So tell me, what, how does it, how does your functional medicine practice fit into this? You did, you did mention people can schedule a call with you, but I'd love to hear how you've incorporated functional medicine more specifically in your, in your pharmacy.

What we've done is every pharmacist who, you know, came to work with me, I've tried to teach them what I've learned, I've shared information and I share my patient story, what I've done. So every time we fill prescription, we, we looked at the prescription and saying, okay, patient has needed antidepressant. And we see those escalating why is that? How does this antidepressant work? So, for example, one of the one that we see a lot is SSRI like serotonin or fluoxetine or Prozac. And we know that these medications work in a way that it's slow down the elimination of the serotonin in our system, in turn increase the level of the serotonin. So I use analogy of we are in the summer that the stream is, you know, water level is low because of the, you know, drought and stuff. So there's not enough water in the river. So to increase the water level in the river, we built a dam. And the dam will hold the water, so the water level will go back up to normal. The same idea. I looked at these SSRI as water dam that holding serotonin to increase the level because serotonin level is low and people are depressed. But I ask a lot of patient, if this is supposed to work as a water dam and the water dam good enough, why are we building more and more, increasing the dose? My analogy from functional medicine point of view is we know that for your body to make even a little bit of serotonin, you need the protein as amino acid to building block. And then you need vitamins and minerals for the enzyme to work as a cofactor properly. So you need to eat protein properly. And your stomach has to be able to digest that and absorb that nutrient. And at the same time, you've got to eat vegetables so that you're going to get B complex and mineral, the enzyme need to make the serotonin. But I talked to a lot of these patients and said, so how much protein are you eating? They may eat once a week of protein. They say, oh, a vegetarian. Okay, what are you eating for vegetable? Potatoes. So they're not getting any of the, you know, they need greens or vitamins and minerals. They need protein for amino acid. They're not getting that. So you look at this river and a dam, the dam is there, but river is totally bone dry because there's no serotonin production at all from their system. So you're never going to increase the serotonin with the drug because the body can't make it. So I start talking to them saying, you should eat at least, you know, chicken. If you can eat meat, chicken or fish a few times a week, you need to really load up greens. So, you know, the same idea that a lot of us doing, right, you know, patient, okay, seven days, you gotta do vegetable loading, and if you can, protein. If not, at least Protein shake to load the system up to do that seven days before even we do anything. So I've been talking to a lot of people about you really got to eat vegetables, you don't need to do that 70, you know, whatever thing that we taught our consultation to do. But as you know, regular pharmacy, patient filing prescription, you need to eat that protein, you need to eat the vegetables. And talk to me again when you come and refill the prescription, if you're eating it and where your dose and how your moods are, and if they started eating vegetables and protein and things within 30 days, when they come back, their dose stabilize, they don't need to increase, they don't add or even reducing dose that we see.

Yeah, you know, to me this makes total sense. And what doesn't make sense to me is why more people, especially the prescribing physician, isn't having this discussion again, grateful that they come in to see you and they can get the answers from you. But if they were to go somewhere else, they would just be filled the prescription.

Oh, absolutely.

If the prescription doubled or, you know, there was another prescription added, then they would just keep getting it filled.

Yeah, yeah.

And really with no end in sight. Right.

No, I can understand from the physician point of view because I, you know, I work with some of the physicians fairly closely and the billing process, right, government pay them for 30 time charged. So they have every 10 or 15 minutes they have to see another patient. And if they don't, they can't build a government. So for them to be able to, you know, build a government property properly and have their practice properly and being able to afford it, they have to see patient every 15 minutes. So they have no time. And you know it and I know it. Every time we see patient is at least half an hour talk, if not an hour. Right. And so if they see patient for half an hour, an hour, government only still let them bill 15 minutes unless they can add on different diagnosis and stuff and being, you know, good at billing. And that has become an art in itself. And, and a lot of physicians don't like to do that and it's not right. So then they end up billing 15 minutes or an hour appointment. Then so they start saying, well, we can do this.

Yeah, well, you know, the, my brain goes to, well, why don't they just record a video of saying what they need to say and absolutely give that to a patient on a QR code or just send them a video and says, hey, watch this.

And that's, that's the thing that's why I joined your group and you know, your training, because I wasn't thinking that either. I will talk to them over and over again, different patient on the phone, whatever. And since I've been working with you, you know, I'm thinking, okay, I gotta do video on this, I gotta do video on that. And like sometime we don't think and I'm in still traditional mindset a bit. Right. Even though I'm doing functional medicine. And that's where like you said, the community is good that I'm in functional community with you guys. And everybody's, you know, pushing different, sharing different points and different tricks and tips and then make it really improve for everybody.

Yeah, I can. Maybe you've already done this, but what I can see in your pharmacy is perhaps a little QR code, decide maybe your top selling products that describes who this is for, what it's for, you know, what dosage is appropriate for people to take it, perhaps what medications it might be paired with appropriately. And your, your pharmacy could be like almost a library of content as people are waiting for their prescriptions to get filled. They could be learning so many things and.

Absolutely.

And also. Go ahead, go ahead.

And that's coming in the new year. That's my new year project.

Amazing.

All of these QR codes gonna come. Yeah.

That's awesome. So tell me, tell me, you told me some of your, some of your favorite stories, like the gentleman with the backpack with the Reishi. What's one of your favorite functional medicine stories?

One of the favorite stories, it's probably almost three years now. I got a patient that actually contacted one of my friends and colleague in New Jersey because my friends, you know him, Jon Kim and John Kim was on Instagram a lot and I wasn't on it that much yet at that time. And so they found him. And so this couple from Ontario found John Kim in New Jersey. So they contacted him and said, we want your help. So John Kim said, while you're in Canada, if you want, you know, pharmacist and function medicine practitioner, you should work with dentists. So they came to me and so I actually worked with the wife first and she got better after a month and she said, then can you help my husband? I said, okay. So I set up the one on one Zoom call Friday night for an hour. And as we're talking, I'm asking questions about his history, all of that. And every time I ask him a question halfway through, he cannot remember what he was talking about. But after an hour, a lot of Probing. I found out that he's been diagnosed with PTSD for 20 years and never got better. And nobody can help him. So he's hoping that I can, you know, do something for him. And he's vegan. And so I told him, okay, you're vegan. I'm going to do vegetable load, go find a vegan protein and eat about 6 to 9 serving of vegetable and drink about 5 shakes of vegan protein. And then I told him to do meditate or, you know, breathing technique and stuff. I show him some basic stuff, and I said, if you like, you can do yoga. And he said, I do weight lift. I said, stop. The whole week. You cannot exercise. You can do movement, gentle movement, but you got to eat, you got to drink protein shake, you got to go to bed. And he was not sleeping. He can only sleep about three hours a night for last 20 years. So I said, because I didn't do discovery call with you, and I feel bad because I have to probe a lot, and I couldn't get anywhere except, you know, I know you got PTSD fatigue. I'm just doing this, and next week we'll catch up again and see what else do we need to do. So I said, I'll schedule complimentary an hour next Friday. He said, okay. So I didn't hear anything from him the whole week. Friday we got on the Zoom, and as soon as we got on, I said, how are you doing? He smiled, and before he can say anything, I saw his wife on the Zoom camera. She said, thank you. I said, for what? She said, giving me my husband that I lost 20 years ago.

Wow.

I said, tell me more. I was excited, right? Because I haven't really done much except I just told him to eat and certainly. And so she said, he's been helping. They got two young kids. And so she said, he'll think he's been helping me with all the kids homework. He's been actually doing laundry, and he's been tugging these kids to bed every night. I'm like, wow. And he start laughing. He said, I love doing that. And the wife said, but you haven't been able to do that a week ago. I said, okay, what else? And he said, I don't need anything. I'm gonna keep eating this, and I'm keep doing what I'm doing. Thank you. And that was it. And I was so excited, so happy. And, you know, some people looked at me and said, you didn't make a cent or I make one consult fee, but I save the whole family. Life.

Yeah.

And that's what, you know, get you going.

Yeah, that's so I have goosebumps. Like literally my whole body is covered in goosebumps right now as you're sharing that story. So thank you. Warms my heart to know that people like you are out there. I'm grateful that our paths have crossed and that somebody who's just as like minded and giving has joined our community and has not only grown from it, but also contributed to it, which says a lot about who you are. Dennis, I'd love for us to perhaps switch gears and share your experience. What has it been like being part of our community from a mentorship perspective?

It's actually been really good. Like I said, I've been looking at different mentor different things, you know, to improve my practice so that I can serve patient better and but before I doing like I'm still doing it one on one a lot and as you know, one on one take times and you cannot reach as many people as you can. And so with the mentorship program that I'm on it with you with the living proof, I've learned that you know, you can actually do good group program that you can reach more people. So I've been last two years, I'm slow learner so I'm still learning how to get these things online and group program started. And so it took me two years. I actually started finish up 10 week program, not online yet, just on the paper. I got one patient started starting actually this Sunday. She paid for it, she bought the program, came and talked to me and I asked her to come in because she's in Winnipeg. I asked her to come in to see me because in my office I have a bioimpotence measuring machine embodied. So I wanted to measure fat percentage, you know, water percentage, muscle, all of that. So I told her to come in and I did the BIA for her and I said we're going to compare that in 10 weeks. So I started that and then throughout, you know, I learned about social media, all of that from different social media group and the Organo actually got me into how to do social media training and stuff with Eric Worre and those people. So I've actually last two years started Facebook live or posting video on the social media every day. I have not missed a day yet. So I've done over two years every day.

Wow.

And with Eric or last year they said oh you should get onto TikTok and I got onto TikTok. I played with it a little bit here and there I didn't get much initially. And six months ago my TikTok follower were about 300. And then I learned about doing short video. And every night I started doing the short video less than a minute on TikTok. Within two months, my follower had $10,000. 10,000 follower.

Wow.

And so my tick tock post about I talk about breathing, I talk about, you know, how all of that. And actually a week ago I was listening to your, you know, breathing to lose fat. You know, you talk about if you burn fat, 85% come out as a carbon dioxide, so you have to breathe properly and so that you can eliminate the fat and 15% go as a urine. So one night actually last Sunday I was scratching my head saying, I've been doing this for two years now, I need to do something different topic and I want to talk about breathing and I talk about breathing already, about calming, whatever. So when I watch your thing, I'm like, bingo. So I went on TikTok and just impromptu I did talk about, you know, when you burn fat, 85% is carbon dioxide, so you need to breathe properly so that you can lose fat. And my title on TikTok was fat burning Tips. And so I posted up last Sunday I got so far 70,000 views on that 20 second video. And with that I did another video saying if I do seven day challenge, would you commit to it and I can show you how to improve health. So far, 190 years and asking me for length.

I love it.

So I learned a lot from living proof mentorship, how to get more, you know, reach more people and how to help more people. And that is a huge thing. And the whole QR code thing, you and I talked about it, I think almost a year ago that I should do that. And I've been trying to work at it, play at it, but you know, running pharmacy and all of that. So that's my next project.

Okay. You know, I love that and congratulations on the growth that you're experiencing and thank you for putting this out there. More people need to hear it and you know, the more people we can reach with this, the more people can experience absolutely. Better health. Right?

Yeah. On the comments, some people even call it skinny breathing.

Ah, there you go. I love it. That's a. Yeah, that's a good term.

Yeah.

So what, what you mentioned that you're going to be working on immortalizing some of your content using QR codes. What's, what's next on the horizon for you? What, what else do you have planned right now?

Like I mentioned I have a nutritional company and so I'm trying to put out more specific combination of supplement out there and right now I'm working with Another company in US Dr. Wilson, James Wilson, I don't know if you're familiar with that. He's the ND that actually coined the term adrenal fatigue.

Yeah, I have his book.

Yeah. So he's actually one of my mentors. That's why a lot of my consult is looking at the chronic stress and we hit it off really well. So back in 2009 actually Health Canada switch all the supplement to be registered, you know, with the Health Canada and his supplement was not. So he pulled off the market and 2009 he actually contacted me and said would you help me register and be my exclusive distributor? So we've been off and on working with him but last five years we concentrated working with him, signed a contract and all of that. So he got actually nine product registered with the Health Canada. We got two of them as we speak in our pharmacy. And there's one specific his multivitamin, multi B complex or adrenal support. It's going to be coming into our pharmacy probably by the new year. We're just waiting for the stability and toxicity testing data. When that come up, we got approved by Health Canada to import it. So by January. So that's my next thing that I'm working on. And the other thing is I want to learn genetic. I dabble in genetic and I've been kind of talking off and on with the DNA company because I know they were creating, you know, the course with Dr. I forgot his name. Mansoor. Yeah, thank you. And I know they've been creating calls with Dr. Mansour and I don't know if it is. I'm not up and running or not, but I got busy with my pharmacy so I push that back. But that's one of the other thing in the new year that I want to do because in pharmacy practice, traditional pharmacy in Toronto actually shoppers did the two years ago pilot project for pharmacogenomics. Why don't we do pharmaco, you know, nutrigenomics. So I know DNA company has that part also. So that's what I wanted to do is I want to work with them and see where we can get to.

Amazing. This has been awesome, Dennis. I've learned so much about you today and I really admire you for the work that you're doing and the service you're providing to your community and also the inspiration you're providing to Our community. So keep that up. I would love for you to share. How can people learn more about you? Where can they go? Where can they follow you?

I'm on social media a lot so I'm on Facebook. You go look for Dennis Huang. I'm on Instagram as Cinderenrx and I'm on TikTok at CNNRx and then to my website Cinden dot com. There's quite a bit about myself and Cindy and what we do and how we serve the patient. We're always looking at new thing, new way of helping and improving patient. And today people look at us and say why do you do this? Why do you need that many stuff in your pharmacy? And we said because our patient really need our help and our time and our support. So I'm always looking at new technology to improve the time that we need to spend. So you know like you said, QR code for information on nutritional supplement, etc. I'm trying to do more video and blog that coming in the new year to put it up and I'm actually trying to start weekly. I don't know it's going to go to podcast or not, but weekly actually live video Q and A with one of my partner about you know, different health, different things and I make you will be probably that I will invite you on my, you know, live video chat type of thing that we're just trying to figure out the time and where and which platform. I probably going to use the Streamyard and do that so that I can put it on any social media platform. I'm on YouTube also.

I love it. Do you. You've got two young boys, right? Do they help you with the tech stuff or is this stuff you figured out on your own?

They, they actually TikTok. They show me what to do on the TikTok because when I was told to go on the TikTok I didn't know what to do at all. And my two teenager laughed at me saying don't do it. I said no, I have to just show me. And they said that's only 13 and 15 years old on. I said no, you gotta show me. And so they show me what to do. And then you know, I saw the Dr. Bennett, right? He was on it really good and that inspired me to do more. And that's being you know, in the community with you, right? There's David Bennett doing it and his thing hit like you know, 100k view and stuff. I'm like that's neat. You know I gotta try it and so I stopped playing with it. And so some of mines are now hitting 70,000 views. So I'm happy with it. I got one went over 103,000 view. But you know, it's what you put out, right? You trying to help patient and trying to share that information. And if it is helpful for them, you're going to get the viewer their following start following you.

That's great. You know, before I let you go, I do have to ask you a question. What is that symbol behind you in the sky there?

Thank you.

Looks important. I'm curious.

Yeah, that is our logo, our trademark. When we started the pharmacy, our mindset between myself and Cindy was we want harmony in life in Chinese medicine, Ying and yang. And the same thing with your living proof symbol. Right? It's harmony there. So when we were creating the logo, I wanted ancient practice, Chinese traditional practice a bit in it. So I thought of Chinese ancient coin. So the round circle itself is a Chinese ancient coin from one of the, you know, whatever dynasty, I don't know. I grabbed it and then I went and walked with the Chinese artists and I told Chinese artists that I want five Chinese element in it that's supposed to circle inside the quine. And Chinese coin has a square hole in the middle. And I wanted in that square in the middle Chinese character that said harmony.

Okay.

So she cut out the coin into five spot. So if you look at it, there is a fire. And then after that when the fire is done, everything go into earth. When you look at the earth, there is a metal and gold stuff in there. And if you use the metal to make a container and stuff that holds the water and the water give life to plants and forests. So now you got the forest. Then the forest will then feed the fire. So that's a circle of five element. And that's in the harmony. Then our body will be. Well, so in the middle that represent that character represent harmony. So that was my thought process that I came up with. So we got the and I wanted to make sure that the Chinese character in the middle is because apparently you can write harmony and Chinese so many ways. So I wanted to make sure that that represent the health and wellness and you know, our mind and body. So I asked the artist making sure that you choose the right character. So she actually sent a few character to China and consulted these Chinese experts in China and saying which one should we use? What represent health and wellness and mindset. So they said this one. So we did actually spend fair bit of time and thought process that I came up with. And then with the help of the Chinese artists, we came up with this logo. So that's our trademark.

Amazing. It's all those attentions to detail. Right. They serve as a reminder. They serve as a proclamation that these are the values that we live by and as a consistent reminder that this is why we do what we do. So.

Absolutely. Yeah. And at one point. Thank you. Yeah. At one point, we were going to try and change our pharmacy name to Harmony, but apparently Harmony name is owned by us Company for medical and pharmacy, both US and Canada, but they don't have any pharmacy or clinic in Canada.

Okay.

So I can use that as a fine, you know, synonyms, you know, work well.

It works well. Yeah. It's got. It's got both your names in it, so it's powerful.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thank you, my friend. This has been so enlightening for me. Once again, I appreciate everything that you're doing. Keep up the great work. And for those of you that are tuned in, Dennis is a great person to follow. He's consistently putting content out there, rain or shine, as he said, for the last two years. And that takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of diligence, and he shares great information. So check out his website, check out his social media handles, follow him and let him inspire you, just as he's inspired myself and many in our community. And, you know, what can I say, my friend? I'm looking forward to seeing you again in person here soon. Hopefully that happens sooner than later. Until then, lots of love, lots of gratitude. Have an awesome rest of your day.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure.