PP101: Essential Business Practices for an Evolving Landscape with Dr. Eric Zielinski and Sachin Patel

Hey Satchin. And welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast. It's my mission to use this podcast as a platform to help holistic, heart centered practitioners transform the world. I think we can all agree that the world needs more of what we have to offer now than ever before. And I want to take all the information and all the knowledge and experience that I've gained over the years and leverage the community and the contacts and the mentors that I've had over the years and, and share some of the most valuable nuggets that I've picked up over those years. I also want to bring special guests on so that they can share their valuable wisdom and knowledge with you as well. Each episode is going to be packed with valuable nuggets of information to help you grow both personally and professionally, all while moving you towards more impact and more freedom. I'm excited that you're here. I'm excited that you want to grow and learn. So let's jump right in. Hello my friends and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today I have a very special friend and dear guest, we have Dr. Eric Zelensky. He's joining us today and we're going to be talking about a lot of things. Eric brings a lot of value to the table. He's a very, very astute entrepreneur, very sharp clinician and we had a great conversation leading into this conversation where we're talking about the direction that business is going in. So Eric, welcome. Thank you for being here today.

Well, Sachin, love you man. I really appreciate you and you know, I was just scrolling through your Facebook feed and you consistently deliver just jaw dropping stability to people. Just it's the wisdom and the truth and you have been a wonderful stable voice these last two years. I just want you to know, you and our mutual friend Matt Loop and some other people that have been bold but firm and it is just common sense. Love it, love it, love it. So thank you man. It is a privilege and honor and I can't wait to see how this unfolds.

Yeah, super exciting and nerve wracking at the same time, right? It keeps us on our toes as entrepreneurs and keeps us thinking and it really challenges our creativity, right. To figure out how we can stay relevant today. But five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. And what I love about speaking with people like yourself is that you have A, very sharp business skills for the current environment, B, you're very grounded and C, your very mission and vision, vision driven. And D, which I think should probably be the first thing is you're Very family driven as well. So when you're building a business, you're keeping all of these things in mind so that you can stay balanced, you can stay true to what's important to you without getting too much into the technical side of things just yet. I'd love for people to know more about you, so if you could share a little bit more about your journey, where it started. I'd love to bring people up to speed and introduce them to, you know, you.

Yeah, boy, you know, it all really started in 2003. I had, I just had a revelation. I had a I was blind now I see moment. And I became a Christian in a very non religious, non like legalistic way. It was like this just epiphany of love, of joy, of light and purpose in my life. And before that I was clinically depressed, suicidal thoughts. I was alcoholic, smoked pack of cigarettes a day, abused narcotics, gut issues, cystic acne, chronic back pain. I was a wreck. But at the core of everything was my lack of purposelessness, my lack of mission, my lack of why am I here? And that really drove me to the point of really contemplating killing myself. And thankfully, I never attempted, I never obviously succeeded in that. But when I, when I met Christ, you know, some folks and yogis call that a Christ realization. Like, when I met Christ, I realized I was here for a reason. And I saw the pain, literally the physical pain, the mental pain, the panic attacks, the anxiety I was dealing with, the addiction, the substance abuse. I looked at that and instead of seeing as a curse, I looked at it as like, okay, how do I get well not only for myself, but for others. And it was a shift, it was a shift in my mentality. And then I found myself really, really enjoying this, like, out of pain became my purpose, where I ultimately started helping people, coaching people, becoming people's. I don't say doctor, but man, a lot of folks were asking me what I was doing because they saw the change in my life. And it wasn't until 2009 that I decided to do this professionally. That was six years later. And so I quit a good corporate cushy job in this chase after a dream of opening up a health center with my wife. And I went to Life University in Marietta, Georgia. And that's what started my research career. Because, you know, it's funny, there's a proverb, an ancient proverb that says a man's minor, a person, a woman, right? A person's mind plans, there's ways, but the Lord directs their steps. So I went on this thought, I'm going to go open up a health center, we're going to do this and that. And when I, when I fell in love with research in around 2011 in middle of school, it completely changed the trajectory of my life. I was very blessed and honored to get this very esteemed scholarship at school beyond the research track. One of five people and I'm getting a full ride scholarship to pursue my Master's of public health at Emory University, which coincidentally is right across the from the cdc. And it just started me on this career that I ended up quite admittedly graduating school with very minimal skills on how to be a day to day clinician. But I graduated with unbelievable skills on how to be a speaker, a presenter, a researcher, published author. And that's really where I've been since then. So how I do what I do now, again, it's just one of those very interesting things. We think we know what's going to happen and the next thing you know we get nudged in a certain way. I never thought I'd be making my living and have this like global renown by being an essential oil educator. Like that wasn't on my 5 or 10 or 20 year vision plan. It just happened one of those things. But I saw the need and that's one thing for people that are, man, what a great, what an unbelievably tumultuous shift that people are going through right now in their businesses, in their careers. Don't see it as a negative thing. Even if you lost a job, even if your business just folded, don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. See that as like, okay, how do I shift? How do I do better? How do I reevaluate? How do I reinvent myself? How do I use this as an opportunity to pursue something that maybe I've always wanted to, but I never had the courage or the faith to do it or the time. And so ultimately there was a need and we can go into the details of it, but the bottom line is it was a great need for people to do what I do online, to educate people on how to use essential oils without selling them. Because I don't have a network marketing company I represent, I don't like private label them. I legitimately make my living writing books and educating people on how to be healthy. And that's very odd. Not many people do that. And so I should say not odd, but very unique. And so there's like, there's this little sliver and of course I love essential oils. My Wife's life, our lives been changed by them. It's very congruent, though, with who we are. It's not like I pulled. It's not like I eat McDonald's every day and I'm like, oh, let's sell essential oils. No, we are the home birth, hippie, yuppie granola people next door. I mean, again, we are who we are, and we live this way. You come into my home, you're going to see air purifiers in every room, infrared sauna diffusers in every room. You're going to see us living the way that we live in, which is very congruent with who we are. And so essential oils are just part of it. And so we've been very blessed. Very blessed. I mean, we have 5 million people visit our website every year. We sold nearly 200,000 copies of our books, nine languages. And it's just a privilege, quite frankly, an honor, to be in my position and really appreciate, quite frankly, the relationship you and I have developed and the few times we've met. And I will say this about you, and I know people know this about you, but you're who you are. You know, you're satching. It's not like you're satching who you are at a conference versus who you are on a podcast versus who you are in front of your. Your patient. You're congruent. You're in integrity. And that is so valuable and it's so rare. How many people in the functional medicine space have we seen, like, sheep's and wolves clothing, like, completely go way wire and support, things that are completely contrary to what we fundamentally believe and how this experience that we've lived in the last two years has really caused people's true colors to come out. I've seen people like you dive deeper into who you are and now even see truly who you are, which is who I hope you would have been. And to see these other people, quite frankly, go back on their word, go back on their recommendations, completely change everything because of what? I don't know. I'm here to judge, but I very much value that about you and other people. Like, again, the Matthew Loops, the Peter Osbornes, the people that we know, but people that are who they are behind closed doors, not just in front of a camera, live streaming.

Yeah, you know, I appreciate that, and I, and I received that with great honor. It's interesting because sometimes circumstances show us who other people are, and I also feel this is a circumstance that's really shown us who we are. As well. And, you know, I'll be the first to admit, and not that you were saying this, but I'm not perfect. So I have plenty of opportunities for my own personal growth and development and things that I work on on a daily basis. And that's not what we're saying here. What we are saying, and I hope the message that comes across to everyone is how can you become more of who you really are instead of letting the outside world and circumstances shape who you are? Because all growth, all healing, all repair, all restoration, you know, reparation comes from within. If we can find that, find that source within us. And there's different things that different people will call it, but at the end of the day, that's ultimately where our salvation is, is really discovering who we are and connecting with that, with our creator and our source. So I really appreciate that about you, that, you know, you're constantly in the pursuit of that path. And I love hanging around with people like that. I love being connected to people like that. And it inspires me to hang around people like you and be in the presence of people like you so that I can become a better version of me. And, and ultimately that's what I want people to know is who you hang out with matters, who you follow or walk side by side with makes such a huge difference. And now we've been able to see who those people are. And if we can really get clear with our value system, then other people's value systems become really clear. And when we can align with other people who share those same values, we can make our relationships are much more valuable, but we can also pour value into the world. So thank you for sharing. I know bits of your journey. I'm sure there's lots of stories and wins and challenges and situations along the way, but it's great to see you coming out on the other side of it with so much love and compassion and drive at the same time. We were talking before we started hitting record, we were talking about how business fundamentally is changing. And in the next few years, how you're sensing that how we do business at its very core is going to be different websites, email is going to be different. Our technology that we actually interact with is going to be very different. We were talking about Facebook's recent upgrade, downgrade, I don't know what we want to call it. Shift, let's call it to creating the metaverse. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and, and what you think is a great way for practitioners, entrepreneurs to prepare for the shifts that are coming.

One thing that is important is if someone is in the virtual world, which I live completely, this is my world right now. This is my, my office, wherever. As long as I have a computer and Internet connection, I'm in business. One thing to recognize is that this, we just got out of a very comfortable level where there was minimal changes and shifts in how we do business. Yes, we know Google changes algorithms. And I'll be the first to say I went from 14,000 people visiting my website a day down to 2,000 overnight because Google changed an algorithm which. All right, I get it, that's the nature of the beast. Like, we've dealt with that kind of stuff for years. But the way that people live, the way that we quote Internet is rapidly shifting. And so this is. I hate the word I used to use the word and not have to be unprecedented. Right? I mean, this is. It's almost like I don't want to use these words anymore because I've been co op by the system. But it's really unprecedented to be in the virtual space and as a coach, as a practitioner trying to communicate with your patients, your clients, it's. We have to see that what worked yesterday. Quite frankly, we cannot rest on our laurels and how to be prepared, in my opinion, in thinking what is coming around the corner. How do I position myself best to get my message in front of people in the way that they're going to be getting the message? Who would have predicted, no joke. Who would have predicted 20 years ago that a third, if not a half of the world would be stuck on their phone getting most of their news and entertainment and quite frankly, social interaction through an app called Facebook or TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. No one could have conceptualized that they would have thought you were crazy. A my phone. What do you mean? That was when flip phones were around. Remember Nextel? Beep beep. Right? That was the technology of the day 20 years ago. And people again, go back to 9, 11. I'm sorry, go back to Y2K when we thought the whole world was going to shut down because of the 1999-2000. I'm old enough to remember that. But we were technologically advanced. But more than any society in the history of the world then, and we are now more technologically advanced today than we have been in the history of the world. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So for people that had the foresight to see, wow, laptops, wi fi applications potentially growing onto a network that could be virtual for those people that saw that, they're the billionaires of today. They're the people that could see and not. What I want to share is. I don't know the answer to this, but I feel it's really important because for people like me who make a living educating by communicating on social media via email, that has completely changed in the last six months. And it's changing not daily, but on a rapid pace. I fundamentally can't do the way I do my business now how I did even six months ago. No joke. It's impossible. And from there. But there was. I was really comfortable. And that's the thing, I think that really got a lot of people during this experience. You know, we hear the phrase we get fat and lazy. I think a lot of us got fat and lazy. It was like we got. Things were easy, we didn't have opposition. We had this nice lull for about 10 years or so that, you know, people were interneting in a similar way. And yeah, another app with TikTok and Instagram, whatever, it's just another app. We get it. Facebook's been around for a decade. Like, you know, it was like we had 10 years of comfort, we had 10 years of affluence. We had 10 years of. This was the Internet renaissance. And I feel maybe that a good way of looking at it is look at the. Look at the Italian Renaissance. Look at what happened with the renaissances of the world that shifted literature, that shifted technology, that shifted everything. Like, we are at the peak of the Internet renaissance right now. And with the announcements of Facebook changing the meta and little. Little sneak peeks, we mentioned the little, you know, the little prophetic insights we get from Hollywood. Like the movie Free Guy, from what, Ryan Reynolds. If someone hasn't watched that movie, I don't think it's coincidence that this movie just came out right around the same time that Facebook is announcing their change to meta, which at the same time that we're just having this huge shift of the new normal of staying at home right before kind of going back to health. Right before the pandemic, 93% of our time, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, was spent indoors. And so the EPA at the time was like, whoa. Actually, in a good thing, a good way. Like, hey, the. The air indoor inside your house can be up to 5, 10, maybe even 100 times. Some people more polluted than outside. And if you're spending 93% of your time indoors, you got to get outside more. So the EPA used it as like a public service Announcement like, go outside, get air purifiers. Like, you know, it was their way of trying to get people to think about what they're breathing, you know, essentially what's the environmental toxicity around them? The environmental threats. Well, fast forward now two years since that first came out, where people are literally spending 99 plus percent of their time. Some people today still haven't left their homes or if they have, 0.1%. I mean, people are living. And I got to say, myself included, because I have a home based business. But you know what I'm going to do after this call? I'm going to go outside and go on a walk instead of being stuck on Zoom all the time. I always excuse myself and say, hey, I'm mobile. But I go outside, I get some fresh air, I get my vitamin D, right? It is just this mentality of how do I maintain my work, life, health, balance. But when you look at the shift in what is happening here, these little prophetic insights, to say, look, we are being pushed to be inside all the time. And how do you make inside more enjoyable? Well, VR, virtual reality. If we see VR as virtual reality, if we see the Metaverse as the new normal, which it very well could be, what does that mean? How we do business when people are spending 99% of their time indoor? How do you communicate with them? How do you market to them? How do you reach them? I think if we're resting on our laurels that we're still going to be able to email people, if we're going to still be able to communicate in the ways that we have been, even snail mail, whatever that might look like, I think that's unwise. I could be off on this, but I think we're on a precipice where the way that we fundamentally do business and the way that we live is changing. And it was this catalyst, it was this catastrophic global health crisis that caused. And part of it, by the way, is being indoors, being isolated, being contained in a very small environment which we call home. So we can't stop that this is happening, it's there. And so there's a shift. And so ultimately, I think the reality is, I think we need to just keep an open mind and look, okay, how am I reaching people? How am I helping people now? How am I satisfying my purpose? How am I satisfying my mission? How am I really helping my patients, my clients, my followers, my fans, whatever it might be, whoever you are, and are you really top of mind? Are you really getting your message out to them and the reality is you probably have seen your engagement decrease, whether it's because your emails now are going to spam boxes or promo boxes, whether you do a Facebook Live and you only reach a hundred people instead of a thousand, because there's 2 billion other people doing Facebook lives and there's just so much competition, like you got to think everything, everything has changed. And so I don't have the answer to that. I don't. But what I do know is things are changing and having multiple ways of communicating with people and reaching them in the way that they want to be reached, that that is the only solution that we have right now is where are people? How do I reach them, where they want to be reached at. So one thing I'll leave people with is this is creating your own environment that you own. And this is the danger of what we've done and how we've allowed ourselves to create all this content that essentially Facebook owns and Instagram and Twitter owns, they own the intellectual property of everything that we do. And when you run your business off of email, Facebook, YouTube, all that, you're giving all these companies complete freedom and control and ownership of everything you do. And that's a really, really dangerous place to be. And I don't think we realize this. We created this massive beast that is indestructible at this point. We can't stop it. So a solution for people is to think, how do I own this? How do I create my own environment? And look at what happened to Parlor. Perfect example of an app that tried to break free, but because they use Amazon aws, Amazon Web Services through their service and cloud hosting, AWS shut them down. So how do we even get to the point where we own the server? Where you own your own server. And I'm talking to friends and colleagues who are super brilliant, geeky, you know, app developers, and they're literally creating servers and warehouses to be self sustaining at this point. And with the advent of blockchain technology, by the way, and crypto, the Pandora's box has been lifted. And I'm not saying anything about anything about crypto other than this. It's given people a glimpse that there is autonomy and that I think that word is, I don't want to use the word freedom. I don't think that's fair. It's autonomy. It's now we have this system through blockchain technology, through NFTs, non fungible tokens and all the stuff that they've created to have a system where we, the people, or I own it and no one can touch it. And that's where I see us having to go to. Because ultimately my risk to everyone is, heaven forbid you get censored. Heaven forbid to be a blip in the force. You know, Satch, you know what happened to me. And this is again, woe is me, a first world problem. But from July 1 to August 15, Facebook deleted everything I did. And I have a group, so I have a Facebook page with 225,000 followers or something. I run advertisements through that to promote my products and services, my books, my teachings. And my Facebook ad guy who runs my advertisements for me said, hey, Dr. Z, did you delete the ads? Because they were doing really good. I'm like, nah, I never delete ads. I don't even know how. Right? How do I do? He's like, everything's gone. And then I look back to my postings. It went from August 16 to June 30. What in the world happened? A blip in the force. It wasn't censorship. I didn't get warned. No fact checking. And all I'm doing right now is posting inspirational memes. Go to my page. Go to the Dr. Eric Z page on Facebook. All I do is I'm sharing, like, memes about Jesus, about Bible verses, about inspiration, about hope. Nothing is a violation of anything. But it was gone, satchin, gone with no recourse. That's the way that the systems run because I don't control it. Remember the Facebook outage that shut down the world? That was a big deal for folks like us. So the reality is, I just want people to get this. Yes, take advantage of the opportunity we have. And there's no better place still in the world to reach people than Facebook. It is. It's the marketplace. I get that. But the reality is, if you don't create your own system that you own, you can't control how you communicate with people. Being in contact with people and even email. This is kind of scary. My email provider, and we have like 400,000 people that we email on a regular basis. My email provider just literally got blacklisted by Yahoo and AOL and Microsoft. So that means like 20% of all the people that signed up to hear my information, to read my information, to learn. Yahoo is just not even in spam. It's like block. There's like a force field around Yahoo that says, anyone that's part of this company? Maybe people have heard of mailchimp. That's common. I don't use mailchimp, but it's A version of mailchimp out of my hands. So what am I looking at? How do I create my own system? Because ultimately, if my business is at the mercy of a third party, who could get censored, who could have a glitch, who could have an outage, that's going to devastate me and it has devastated me. So I guess my message to everyone is autonomy and thinking about how it is or how to create your own business in an app, potentially in the future, would have to be in an app environment where you own the experience and no one can touch.

It's amazing how much of our power we give away when somebody else owns this content. So it's our energy that goes into creating this content, into this material, into doing the research, and then literally somebody else owns it. And that could be used against us in so many ways. And there's so many ways that they could draw you in. Right. You know, they could show your ads to more people so you spend more money.

Right.

There's a psychology behind it as well. I mean, they're socially engineering the experience for advertisers as well. So, yeah, really fascinating stuff. What would you say to somebody who's just starting out? Let's say somebody doesn't have an email list. Let's say somebody hasn't billed, you know, or substantiated their practice just yet. What would you advise them to do? Wow. Any thoughts? Because I work with a lot of startups and you have to, you know.

What, things haven't changed yet. So you have to take advantage of the opportunity we have right now. So you still there. It's a failing system, but you still have to build an email list. You still have to communicate with the. With your community via SMS or text message. You still have to start up a social media platform. Now, my recommendation, though, for a startup, and this is a really. If I would do everything over again, I would do one thing and do it really, really well. What I did wrong and what a lot of people do wrong is I went live with Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and Twitter. And I just essentially, you can't be an expert at everything. And so I realized my interests were so divided, my energy was divided. YouTube is a business by itself. Facebook is a business by itself. And Instagram now, because they bought it out, TikTok is a business. I haven't even started TikTok. I have no interest right now because I know it's going to do to me, it's going to take a huge effort to Ramp up for me. So my recommendation is, if you're brand new, pick one. And quite frankly, pick the one that you want to be on. Because it doesn't. It almost doesn't matter which one it is, because you choose one, you make it work, but it has to fit right for you. I'm just not a Twitter. I've always struggled on Twitter. I'm way too long winded. I can't do it. I can't do little tweets. When Twitter was around, when they only restrained you to, like, 50 characters, that was torture. I was like, I'm an author. I'm not a texter. Like, my daughter texts me in letter code. I'm like, what is this? Give me words. I'm still. I'm bucking the system. I will fight till I die. I'm not talking to you in short code. You know, my grandma learned short code in World War II. We're not talking in short code right now. I'm talking. I'm a word person, so I can't do Twitter. Okay, easy. But if I would have known that, boy, that would have saved me a lot of time. So my recommendation is choose one, find your voice, and ultimately take advantage, quite frankly, of what's available to us. But in the back of your mind, don't rest on your laurels. In the back of your mind, ask yourself, everything you do, whether it's the membership platform, whether it's. Look at Zoom, right? Is everything you do through Zoom, Heaven forbid there'd be a Zoom outing. What are you going to do? Like, think about this. Recognize that, yes, I will use Zoom as a temporary solution, but it's not my final solution. I think the mindset is the most important thing here. The application, it's kind of like it's 95% of this is about the mindset. 5% is the application. Quite frankly, I think that's what it all is. It doesn't matter. Because if your mindset's right, you're going to see things, you're going to pivot, you're going to be able to shift, and it really doesn't matter. The 5%, the application of it, it really doesn't matter. It's about restructuring your operating system so that we get hung up on the apps. We need to focus more on the operating system. What is your operating system? And I'll say, I didn't come up with this idea. This came from a podcast I've been following called Investing from the Beach. I'll give them a plug because when they Said that they're teaching about how to look at money. I'm like, oh, this is brilliant. We need to look at our operating system, fundamentally how we think. And all these apps, the way the implementation, the actual tools that we use doesn't really matter because they come and go. We get hung up on the apps, literally apps. So that would be it. And the other thing is just think every time you do something, if you're a startup, think in the back of your mind and even try to build it with two things, scale in mind and autonomy in mind. So when you build something and for example, if you're going to choose a platform like click funnels, which everyone wants to use because it's an all in one nice, inclusive $100, $200 price package a month, Just realize though, your whole business now is in that company's hands. And is that where you want to be temporarily? It might get you started, but that's not a long term solution, right? That's not like creating a business that you could sell. Your whole entire world is subject now. You're at the mercy of click funnels, their deliverability aspects, their IP reputation. And I know I'm maybe speaking gibberish to some people, but you want a business that you manage and you have control over. So these little out of the box solutions are temporary. And again, that goes back to the mentality you have to work towards creating and building your own experience for people and ultimately you'll find yourself. And there are simple ways. But something I've been sharing with my team, I'll lead people with my two S's. Now is my, my, my theme. Simple and sophisticated. That's what I want. I don't want complicated anymore. I have such an extremely complicated system in my business. It's caused us a lot of problems. And me with my crazy ideas, I don't stop. I'm a creative and if I'm not creating something, I'm finding problems with this stuff. So my team wants me to create so I don't find problems, right? So create, create, create. Simple and sophisticated. I'm telling you something. And the most successful people are the ones that stay in their lane that are simple. They have a single message that they really drive home. And that's something that a colleague of ours, you know, a mutual colleague, Dr. Josh Axe, he teaches. We go too wide, we don't go deep enough, we try to do too many things. You can't be an expert like Jack of all trades, expert at none. That's not how you survive. Nowadays, you can't thrive in this environment. That's why, you know, when you look at it, the most successful people. And successful is relative, by the way. I'm not talking about money. The most successful people, the most balanced people, the most even then affluent people are the ones that stay in a very finite lane. That is their zone of genius, their expertise, and they go as deep as possible. It's really, really, really hard to build five different businesses, five different brands, five. It's like creating five different marriages. Yeah, right.

Are you familiar with Ed Hollowell?

No. No, I'm not.

He wrote a book called ADHD 2.0, and he refers to it as the entrepreneurial personality trait, where we're always creating, creating, creating. And the worst thing for us is not having something to do because we'll just create something more. And so I just. I learned about his work recently and it was really interesting to see myself in that label. And he actually calls it a superpower if it's properly contained. And our business can, you know, can really benefit from all that creativity and creation. However, it needs to be focused, right? It needs to be directed. And the reason most people get overwhelmed in their business is not because they're craving underwhelm. It's because they're unfocused. And what they really need is to focus more. And I love what you said about simplicity and sophistication, because that's one of the things that I try to teach people as well, is the greatest sign of sophistication is simplicity. That comes from Da Vinci and was echoed by Steve Jobs. And I love how you're tying it into your personal growth strategy as well. Is that keep it simple. And then getting it simple is a process of making it more sophisticated. And I love an outlet.

I think it's important. And I know we're running out of time here. You need an outlet. If you're like me, if you're like Satchin, if you're creative. That's who I am. I need an outlet. And by the way, this interview has been very cathartic for me because, you know, I've been spending the last six months promoting this book. It hit the bestseller list. It's great. I've been talking oils, oils, oils. But this is something like deeply intimate to me. It's what my business and my life is, you know, fuels and funds all that. And I need this business creative outlet at times. And having these conversations, by the way, talking to a friend, coaching somebody, for me is so helpful because I get it out of my system, you need an outlet of some way. So for me, having these discussions with my colleagues, by the way, is one of my outlets because I have to be creating and I help people create. And that's the benefit. If you are a coach, you understand what I'm saying is focus on your lane. Use your creative outlet to help others so you satisfy that. And whatever your outlet is, it could be anything. But you need some sort of outlet. If you're a content creator, well, you need a private thing. Just do your thing on the side. That's what hobbies are for. That. That's what your personal time is for. So, yeah, that's, to me, has been the biggest thing. And that's one. You know, the wonderful thing about what's happened the last two years is it's really put so much strain and pressure on virtually everything and everyone. It's like squeezing out. Like, I feel there's so many diamonds. And this is a positive thing about all this we have. I'll admit I've been a rough piece of dirty coal that's just being pressed into a diamond right now. And the experience of the world and all the pressure is pushing and pressing and everything. And I choose in my prayer is that we all allow ourselves to get squeezed and pushed so the diamond that's within us shines through. Because we ultimately can't control what's happening around us, but we very well have complete autonomy and complete control of how we respond to everything. I can't stop the mandates around me, but I could stop how I respond to them, or I could change how I respond to them internally, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. And if people get that, that will completely change the frequency and the vibe that we're all feeling right now. That will completely just down level everything. It was just that weight of the world gets off your shoulders. You can't stop the cancer diagnosis, but you could change how you react to it. It's just whatever you want to say. That's what it used to say. I used to say that cancer, whatever, now it's like, well, no one cares about cancer anymore, care about what's happened. So it's just the same thing. So anyway, what a blessing. What an honor to be alive right now. And my encouragement to the people is really, people are depending on you. Someone somewhere, people are absolutely depending on you to be who you are meant to be. In my opinion, as a source of hope and inspiration, like, I'm accountable to the world. You're never going to see me at McDonald's. You know, it's funny. It's kind of funny story. We were at about. We were part of the Bible study with our local church, and they knew who we were. And this was when I was in school, so I didn't have, like, you know, anything. No credentials yet. I was just a student. And they still allowed us because they knew, hey, we love what you're doing. Can you teach? Can you teach a Bible study? They asked me to, you know, substitute teach one day. And I was talking about our message, which is Bible health, living your best for God and being healthy, and it's your duty beauty as a Christian. Like all that fun stuff. You know what's funny? They. A week later, I took my kids to McDonald's. And admittedly, we were really. And you know what it's like, we were broke, like, living on food stamps, student loans. I would take my kids to the McDonald's play area to play when it was raining at times or just because they wanted to go there. We never ate anything. We never got water. We just actually would bring my own bottled water. I take my kids. And that was something we just did. Again, that was. That's a fun thing. My kids liked. And I'll never forget at the time, they had a toy, like a dollar. So I was like, I was willing to pay a couple bucks. I got the Happy Meal toy for the kids because it was something special that they wanted. And I was in line and the Bible study teacher walked in. Boy, if looks could speak judgment and curses. She goes, oh, what are you doing here? What are you buying? Seeing me at McDonald's automatically produced. This guy is in integrity. He is not who he says he is. And then, of course, I laughed it off and like, oh, I'm just here to buy the Happy Meal toy. And I had my bottled water outside, letting the kids play. But I've learned my lesson, you know, you're not going to see me at a bar. You're not going to see me at McDonald's. We need to be the light that people are struggling to shine through, right? And so that's my inspiration to myself and everyone else. What a wonderful opportunity to shine. You know what the cool thing is about what's happening around us? Things have become so dark that even you know what it's like when you ever go camping or go outside. The dimmest light becomes really bright. So you might have a really, really dim light, but you might just be a flicker. But your flicker is enough to brighten someone's day because the darkness is so dark outside.

Wow.

Just let that sink in. Flicker your light until you just shine all the way through.

Thank you. Thank you. That was amazing. We're going to have to do this again. I really enjoyed this conversation and I could see how passionate you are. I could see that this was a healing process for both of us to be able to share what's going on and how we can hopefully inspire others to see what's coming down the pipeline but also to shine their light, their authentic light as much as they can because it is dark out there and it's our obligation. I think we were all put on this planet if we're in this space to make the world brighter and healthier and happier and frankly it's never been harder but it's also never been easier to do that. So thank you my friend and so grateful for this opportunity to chat with you and keep up the amazing work.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Sam.