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Yuri Elkaim 4:39

Number one, I think from a health perspective, we just all have to do what works best for us. I mean, I mean, I went through every possible dietary regime in my journey, like raw, Paleo the whole bit. And it wasn’t that one it was, you know, this is the only way it’s like it was the way for me at the time and then you just kind of find your way so I think, you know, we just have to honor what feels best for us and what does best for our health. And I think it’s challenging in a space where there’s a lot of confusion because most people don’t understand how their own body works. And so they don’t understand how to make good decisions. So it is. But I think when it comes to health and business, I don’t understand, well, I shouldn’t say this, because I work a lot. I love working and I can work myself into the ground, not because I have to, but because I’m just like an obsessive monster with this stuff, because I just love business. But I’m also very, very aware that nothing is more important than my health. And the reason for that is because, I don’t know, I feel very blessed honestly, because I lost my hair. As you said, when I was 17, it was a kick in the ass to be like, Hey, man, you should pay attention to your health because I was active and fit growing up. But it wasn’t healthy. And I didn’t realize that until I went back to school like eight years later to pursue studies in nutrition. And it started school didn’t cover that my body was just like a polluted wasteland. So when I cleaned all that up, and like, regrow my hair, long story short, it fell out again about 10 years ago after a shot. But like it was, it was like an eye opening experience for me to see like, whoa, hold on, like, the foods I eat can make a massive difference. Not only with my, like my hair growth was like, to be honest, the last thing on my mind, I was more concerned about my lack of energy. Because for 20 years of my life, I was exhausted, like sleeping 12 hours a day, I thought I was just active, so I needed more sleep. But then I started cleaning up my diet and I was sleeping like six, seven hours a night and jumping out of bed. I was like hold on. Whoa. And that was the the impetus from which I wrote my first book which became a number to New York Times bestseller, The all the energy diet. And I feel very fortunate to have had that experience to recognize how important good health is obviously playing professional soccer and went to school for kinesiology having that background as well. Just like being active has always been part of my life. And it’s like, I can’t even imagine living a life that doesn’t involve that. So for me, like a great day is five hours of exercise, like not like working out for five hours. But you know, on the on the weekend, for instance, we took a tour, the kids went for an 11 Kilometer walk. So it’s about seven, eight miles. And, you know, we did a big walk, stopped at a place for lunch, walked back, came back went for a swim. I mean, I don’t want I don’t need anything else in my life other than just feeling good. And I really, I love my work. And if I’m doing like, obviously in the business, doing things that are doing a lot of good for a lot of other people. And at the same time in my own life, just sweating, feeling good. There’s really nothing else that, for me is more important. And I think, you know, obviously during the pandemic, I had two friends that passed away. Because to begin with, right, they were overweight, they smoke they drank all the time. You know, and it’s like, what’s the point like you built this great business, you leave your family behind? And all of that. Nothing like from there to nothing. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs, maybe less so in the health space, but just in general, where they’re just, they’re overweight, they’re they’re not healthy. And it’s like they’re spending all their time living this entrepreneurial business life. And it’s like, what’s the point? They have unhealthy relationships? They’re divorced? Like, what’s the point of doing any of this stuff, if that’s the outcome? So I don’t know, I think for me, I think one of the most important constraints in any business is your own energy. If you’re tired and lethargic and you can’t focus, your business is going to hit ceilings pretty low.

Jeremy Weisz 8:43

I want to dig deep and you know, take me back to the time. And I want it we will dig deep on some, you know, tangible health things that you recommend that you do. And But thinking back to the time, it’s a scary thing. I mean, yes, you’re losing your hair, but it’s scary because you don’t know what’s causing it. Take me back to what was going through your head at that time.

Yuri Elkaim 9:08

Well, less hair was going through my head, that’s for sure. So I didn’t it was it was so I had long brown hair like my dad’s Moroccan. So there’s like bushy eyebrows, all that stuff. And I was starting to notice, like when I washed my hair, I noticed like hair in my hands. Like what’s going on hair on my pillow when I wake up in the morning and like, huh, and then I started to notice like these coin size bald patches in my scalp and essentially those alopecia after going to my immunologist, and getting diagnosed with that, so I didn’t really know what to make of it. I was like, What do I do? Their brilliant idea was let’s just inject cortisone into your head for the foreseeable future. And that’ll like somehow fix it. I’m like, You guys are crazy if you think that’s happening. So I didn’t really know what to make of it. I didn’t know what to do. We I mean, we went to every single practitioner you can think of I remember one of the traditional Chinese medicine doctor, and he had this like, weird concoction bark like soup that I was drinking on a daily basis. I mean, it was just nice to just try different things, but nothing really solved the issue. But a lot of people like to your point, you know, they say that must have been really hard going through, you know, your teenagers senior year of high school. To be honest, I don’t think it was that bad. And then maybe I’m just covering this up. Who knows? I don’t remember. I didn’t, I didn’t sink into a depression, we’ll put it that way. I was sure I was, it was awkward seeing people look at me, like I’m going through chemo that was kind of looks down the hall and stuff in school. But outside of that, I’ve never been one to ever give a shit to be honest about what other people think about me. And that’s not quite true. I mean, I think to some degree, like, I still care. But to be honest, I don’t care about fitting in. I never had like that traditional, like cool group in high school. I was just like, whatever it is what it is. And I think I had the perspective at the time where I was like, it’s only hair can be worse, right? And people are dying of other things. And I like I’m losing my hair. It’s not a big deal. So I think I had that maybe maturity, for the lack of a better word at an early age, which helped me navigate that. But it was also a real kind of kick in the butt to be like, maybe we should figure out why this happened. Because we know it’s autoimmunity. It’s like, it’s not just that one thing. It can lead to other things. And I didn’t know this at the time, obviously. But it was a real big eye opener to be like, maybe you should look at why this happened. And that was really where it opened Pandora’s Pandora’s door over the next couple of years to start going down the rabbit hole there.

Jeremy Weisz 11:44

Yeah. I mean, you went on a personal health journey, you know, for yourself. You mentioned the all day energy diet book, where can people find that?

Yuri Elkaim 11:55

bookstores, Amazon, all the typical places? Yeah. I love

Jeremy Weisz 11:59

to hear some of the resources, other resources you like and looked at and maybe other health mentors that you talk to you over the years that have helped as well?

Yuri Elkaim 12:08

Yeah, I mean, like, in terms of like other health experts, there’s so many, I mean, you mentioned Ben Greenfield, he’s a good buddy of mine. We’ve had some fun experiences together. And I’ve always like, you know, whether it’s him or Dave Asprey or anyone else, like there’s like, there’s all these little nuggets that I’ve gleaned from them. You know, some things we don’t necessarily agree on. And that’s not the point. It’s like, there’s certain things that people do or say, Oh, that’s interesting. Let me try that. Like when I first learned about Wim Hof, I’ve never really had done cold plunges. And now, I can’t live without them. I mean, that’s, that’s kind of an exaggeration. I can, obviously but I feel amazing with them, right? So it’s all these little like things that you pick up along the way. But I think for me early on the big the big transformation was, I just didn’t know anything about nutrition. Like I thought eating. When I was playing soccer in France, I would get a whole baguette every day, and like two chocolate croissants. And I thought that was just normal, like, oh, like a meal champions. Yeah, breakfast of champions. Totally. And then and then I started learning about nutrition way when I retired and came back to school and was like, what, really, and then I started to experience eating more plant based foods. I went raw for a whole four months, and I felt like I was on cloud nine. And that became the foundation of a lot of my my nutritional philosophy at the time, which was, eat more plants, eat more plant based foods more than the raw states without being fanatical about it. alkalize the body reduce inflammation, because I had done all that stuff. And like literally in two months, applying those principles, I removed all my hair. And more importantly, it’s like, I felt like I was on cocaine and not that I’ve ever done cocaine, but it’s just like non stop energy. It wasn’t the highs and lows you get with like caffeine and stuff. It was just sustained. I gotta go to I gotta go to bed now. Like I want to stay up. It was just incredible. And that really formed the foundation. And then I started looking into, I’ve always been fascinated by our body hasn’t evolved at all like for, since we’ve you know, been on this planet. So what did our ancestors do that we’re no longer doing? You know, intermittent fasting became a big piece of what I wrote about and taught. And I still apply it, you know, 20,000 years ago, there was no Starbucks at every corner. Right? There was no refrigeration, so our ancestors went through periods of feasting fasting. And to think that that’s not normal now is weird because there’s so much garbage in terms of, you know, information out there, like, you know, get into the starvation mode. If you don’t eat every couple hours, you’re gonna kill your metabolism like what that doesn’t mean just like didn’t intuitively make sense to me. But the challenge is that there’s science to support both sides. And that’s the the The never ending challenge and opportunity really in health is you can find science to support any position. So we know from a marketing perspective, like when you write a book, I remember having these conversations with my publishers, what’s the angle? What’s the hook? Right? We’ve heard that before, how can we make a difference and like, its marketing. And that’s, it’s great to know that but at the same time, it’s also a very, very confusing for the average consumer, when most of the information is kind of the same, or it’s completely different, just to be polarizing. And that’s hard. And that’s why I said, like, you have to experiment with stuff. Understand that you may not be attached to that for the rest of your life, but figure something out that feels good for you. That makes sense for you. And that’s sustainable, because if you can’t do it for life, don’t do it for a day. That’s, you know, that’s my philosophy in general. So,

Jeremy Weisz 15:53

I’d love to hear your musts health wise, like, whether it’s okay. Yes, I do. I know you. You know, I’ve heard you say you do cold plunges early in the morning. Intermittent Fasting is the most what are the must throughout the day. And also, I’d love to hear when you talk to Ben Greenfield? What are the most that you agree on? And maybe we’ll talk about what things you debate a little bit. But what are your musts for health?

Yuri Elkaim 16:18

Yeah, so we moved houses about a year ago. And before that, I actually had converted my garage into a gym. In that gym, I turned a chest freezer into a cold plunge, which was amazing, like, and when we moved, I didn’t have the same setup to make it work. So we turn that chest freezer back into a chest freezer. And that’s the one thing that during that period of time, every single morning at 4am, it was like first thing like right in there. And so

Jeremy Weisz 16:50

freezer with what like, just for people who don’t know what the painted picture what that looks like,

Yuri Elkaim 16:56

I know I take it like everyone understands what I’m talking. Imagine a chest freezer, but there’s nothing in it other than water. And there’s a certain way of setting this up. So it doesn’t obviously drip through the seams and it has to be filtered properly, etc. So I’d be jumping into water, not I shouldn’t say jumping in, like stepping into water that was Celsius, four degrees. So whatever that is Fahrenheit, I don’t even know. But it was like, there was moments where you know, there’d be a little bit of ice floating around from, you know, sitting there overnight, as sitting there for three to four minutes. And I’d use that as like the toughest thing I’m going to do today is this. And it was very uncomfortable at four in the morning, especially like in the winter when it’s cold outside. But I would get in there and I would just like focus on the wall. And I would just breathe for four minutes. And it was my version of meditation, which I found very, very effective. I found it helped me zoned out and just handle different situations with a bit more tranquility, if you will. Because when you get into cold water initially, it’s like, fight or flight like holy. And then it’s like you calm down. And it’s very applicable to so many aspects of life. I’ve got four boys, there’s many occasions like that. So it’s like, what the chill, calm down. So it was really good practice for me. And it’s something I still do my best to be mindful of, although I don’t have the cold plunge anymore. I do a cold cold bath while just get a bunch of ice and throw it in about three, four times a week. I find it makes a huge difference for me. I also had a bit of back pain at the time from doing some deadlifts. And I was seeing a chiropractor and I love Cairo. So some of my best friends are chiral and I love the profession. But it really wasn’t, you know, really solving the issue for after a couple of weeks. And after one week of doing cold plunges for the first time, it was gone forever. And that was when I was like holy goodness. So that was for me. At that time and still to this to this. To this day, something really, really important that I tried to do my best have to replicate because I also believe that we need to stress the body. Right? So it’s like we become more resilient to our environments and other things. So that was one form of it. Second thing I’d say really quickly,

Jeremy Weisz 19:01

you’re I have a question on that. Did you work up? In other words, did you go on to do cold showers for a while and then go listen I’m just this is amazing and or did you go straight to the I would say you know extreme of just getting a full chest and in doing a dip in that every day? Yeah, I

Yuri Elkaim 19:20

think it started started with the cold showers but they just didn’t annoyed me. Because I’m like, I want to get my legs but only my shoulders are getting in the water right now. Right and that’s just I’m like this is snowing. So it started with a cold showers and then it went to the cold plunge. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 19:35

okay. Just for people at home like you know, you could you don’t think it like a chest you can you could start off slower, you know, and test it out. On a smaller level,

Yuri Elkaim 19:46

I guess you could say yeah, 100% musts, for me would just be daily movements. I’m a big believer like I love I love spending time outdoors. So walking, I don’t run too much on bike too often because I don’t like feeling like I’m going against the wind all the time, which I end up feeling like on a bike. But I just like being outdoors. So usually for me, it’s walking by the water and nature. I really, really enjoyed doing that. That’s for me on a daily basis, minimum, minimum, like an hour typically. And then outside of that, I just lift heavy things. So I’m not wanting to lift like five pound dumbbells. I’m like, let me I’ll throw a 40 pound weighted vest on, I’ll go for a six mile hike slash run. And I’ll like really stress my body. But I don’t do that every day of the week. I’ll do that once a week. And then I’m like my body’s pretty toast, I’m gonna give myself two three days off. So I train when I train, like I’m lifting heavy relative for me, because it’s just we know that strength is such an important indicator of longevity and quality of life as we get older. Plus, it just feels really good to be strong. So whether it’s squats, deadlifts, pull ups, I’ll typically do a lot of bodyweight stuff now with a 40 pound weighted vest on just because I get bored of doing like 75 Push ups, I’m like, let me just do like 20 but really get challenged.

Jeremy Weisz 21:15

weighted vest is pretty hardcore.

Yuri Elkaim 21:17

Yeah, totally, like, rogue, I get all my I get all my stuff from Rogue, so they have the best fitness stuff. I’m just like, cool, 40 pound weighted vest, let’s just do it. And then I’ll just do core work like planks, side planks, push ups, pull ups dips with the weighted vest on. And I like a lot of variety of my workouts. So at least for now, it’s what I enjoy. But I’d like to lift heavy things, because number one, it creates the best stimulus for the muscles, I don’t have to work out as often. Again, I would rather be outside than in the gym. So if I’m in the gym, it’s like I’m gonna lift heavy for like 3045 minutes. And then I have to, I have to take a couple days off because my muscles are crushed. So it’s nice, just from a time saving perspective, as much as I enjoy working out, I’d much rather be outside playing soccer, or going for a walk in the woods. But I can’t just do that, because you got to peak keep your body strong. I like to start my days now. Not every day, but most mornings with a swim. I I’m not a great swimmer. But it’s something that I have said, Okay, I’m gonna work on this. And I like moving my body first thing in the morning. So when it’s nice outside, like ice not minus 10 degrees, and the pools open, I’ll typically swim just to get movement going. And then that’s just a nice way to for me to start the day because I don’t often feel like going for a walk first thing in the morning, again, and for me, it’s just a lot of variety. So sometimes I go for a walk by the water. Sometimes I go for a swim in the morning. But movements just like getting

Jeremy Weisz 22:44

getting moving as important. From a diet perspective eating.

Yuri Elkaim 22:49

Yeah, so it’s actually this is hilarious, because in my book, The all day energy diet, I demonized coffee. And now I love it. So that I’m just being real like, like, give this as you know, I wrote the book.

Jeremy Weisz 23:02

Well, tell me about that. What what changed? What were you? What was your thought that time? And what’s your thoughts now?

Yuri Elkaim 23:08

Yeah, so I never drank coffee until I moved to Europe, when I was playing soccer there. And then I was introduced because you know, my teammates are European. And we’d sit in a cafe and they’re like, hey, so anyways, that’s where I started. I didn’t get heavily into it. But I did feel the effects like the jitter. It’s when I had caffeine. I’m like, I don’t like this feeling. And I remember playing a game where I had an espresso before the game, and I was a mess in the game. Like just like, not good. And so that was my first like, Oh, this is, you know, maybe not that great. So I wrote a lot of boats because I experienced the difference of sustained energy, and the jitters and crashes and I’m like, I like sustained energy. And I don’t know what changed. I mean, maybe it’s just over time I like the it’s, it’s almost like the romance of having a coffee. Like I like to think that I’m a European living in Canada. And I don’t drink big coffees. I mean, like this is the size of the cup I drank so it’s like a limbo I guess. But I just I like the I’ll wake up in the morning. I’ll do my stuff. And then I’ll typically have one of these maybe two. I’m at a point that where I’ve had enough coffee where I don’t get the jitters so maybe that’s not a great thing but for me a big piece of of my day to day existence is just doing things that bring joy to my life. And I and this is weird. I go to bed at night and I’m like I cannot wait to have this in the morning. And maybe that’s like you can say hey your demand I think you’re like addicted or something and maybe that’s true. But I get a lot of joy out of small things like that. But at the same time I balanced that I balance that out with a lot of greens a lot of green juices, a lot of alkalinity and I understand like I can have two three Astra I feel like crap crap afterwards. So first thing the morning typically for me is one or maybe two of these. I tip Please do not eat like I haven’t had any food today yet. Um, if I do have any food before, one o’clock, it’s typically a protein shake. So so like literally like protein powder with water. I don’t even blend anything in the, in the VitaMix. For me, it’s like, nothing early in the day, pretty much. mid afternoon, late afternoon, I started getting a bit hungry. So we usually have a bigger dinner. But I might have something around lunch. And then dinner for us is like early bird special with the kids 435 o’clock. And at that point, it’s you know, fish, steak, lots of salads, vegetables. You know, it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s not a vegetarian or vegan diet, nor is a paleo. It’s just whole food based for the most part. And, you know, it’s pretty simple. So, you know, we have our staples. Once a week, I treat myself to a little Cinnabon, or a croissant, you know, little things like that, I guess was pretty simple. So,

Jeremy Weisz 26:00

typically, on a daily basis, you’re you’re sort of practicing intermittent fasting, in a sense, right? Because you’re not eating maybe until one or something like that each day.

Yuri Elkaim 26:10

Yeah, I’d say it’s not as maybe as consistent as like a 16, eight, seven days a week. Nor do I do a 24 hour fast that often anymore. It’s more of Am I really hungry? Am I just am I bored. Like, I’m just going to set the intention of like, I don’t really have to have food. Because even I went through a phase where I’d have like a smoothie first thing in the morning. And I just felt like a zombie afterwards. You know, like, like, even if it was a healthy smoothie, blueberries, strawberries, a banana veggies. I’m just like, vegetable after that. So I’m like, I don’t even need anything in the morning. If I’m going to have that I’ll work out first open up my cells to be more receptive to that. And then I’ll make that kind of smoothie a bit later. But I would say on average most days, again, if I go to bed, I don’t typically eat after eight o’clock at night. I’m usually in bed by 930. So call it nine until nine the next morning is 12. So minimum on most days for me is like 15 to 16 hours in a fasted state.

Jeremy Weisz 27:13

If someone’s thinking they go, I’ve heard this intermittent fasting thing I’m thinking about it. What would you tell them?

Yuri Elkaim 27:19

Try it. So my second off the all day fat burning diet. One of the days it was basically based on a kind of primitive caloric cycling type of type of process. One of those days was a 24 hour fast. And one of the biggest things I realized from everyone doing it was they started to report how they started to recognize the relationship with food. It’s like, they they got to a point where they went through a little bit of a panic. And this can be 1214 1618 hours in and they’re like, Hold on Why? Like, I’m going to be okay, I’m not gonna die if I don’t eat for one day. Why am I hungry at this time? Am I Am I anxious? Am I stressed? Am I bored? Am I eating because I’m used to eating at this point. And most people, myself included, back in the day, do not realize what true hunger feels like. And I think it’s important to get that level. So you recognize everything’s okay, you’re gonna be just fine. And when you learn the science behind it, it just makes a lot of sense from a health perspective. But I would say doing a fast, I would say like, do a legit 24 hour fast, for no other reason than to experience that because you’re gonna see like this thing kick in your head, your mind is going to be like, You can’t do this dude, you gotta get some food, you’re gonna pass away. Just go through that experience. And another flip side of it. Now you’ll be in control to be like, I’m going to be okay. I’m not going to die, everything’s gonna be fine. And actually, I feel more mentally clear, I can focus better. So you start to see these benefits that most of us are scared of experiencing, because we’re like, Oh, my God, I have seeds. So I think for anyone listening, just try it. And again, I understand that certain people you know, there’s there’s hormonal things to consider whether fasting is the best for everyone. I don’t I don’t know. But I think regardless of your situation, just try it once. You’ll be fine and you’ll you’ll learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Jeremy Weisz 29:24

In your diet you’re in I know like you said there’s factors where you should definitely not do that. Like if you’re diabetic and you actually a videos about specific things for diabetics. But let’s assume you’re not diabetic, you’re fine. You’re going to survive, and you’re okay. What would be the ideal scenario maybe for you of how often should you do a 24 hour fast?

Yuri Elkaim 29:48

Yeah, yeah. Again, like it depends. I think you have to consider you know, your lifestyle a little bit. I think it’s actually easier for someone who’s busy working in like a hospital for instance, compared to them. me working at home where the kitchen is over there. So I can just like go eat whenever I want. It’s challenging to be like, hold on, you’re fasting, relax. If you’re busy out of the house, it’s actually sometimes a bit easier. So if you’re really busy at work, use one of those days, as, hey, I’m just gonna fast today because then you don’t have to think about what am I going to for lunch? What I’m going out for dinner? What am I like? All these questions that take up so much, so much mental energy. So I would say, and again, there’s different ways of fasting, there’s 16 816 hours fasting, eight hour window of eating, I talked about a 24 hour full day fast. So I would say experiment with both of those, and see what makes the most sense for you. I again, personally, I don’t do it 24 hour fast. It’s been a while since I’ve done one. Maybe I just I don’t see the need to be honest. And for me, I find 16 eights consistently is a little bit easier. But I would say, honestly, probably once a week, once a week, there’s a tremendous amount of benefits to not eating. And if you experienced that once a week, there’s a lot of like, just from a fat loss perspective, you know, inflammation perspective, etc. I think once a week is a nice ballpark to to shoot for.

Jeremy Weisz 31:17

I’m curious, you’re you know, I know you are a big proponent of eating whole foods, you know, there’s nothing that replaces fruits, vegetables, you know, healthy meats, fish. I’m wondering from a supplement perspective, I don’t know what you would recommend, maybe you’ve taken or maybe that you’re, you’ve talked to Ben Greenfield about what if someone, I don’t want to use the term lazy, but you know, supplement their, their diet? What supplements do you recommend? I mean, you don’t have to say brands, but just in you know, shapes of supplements.

Yuri Elkaim 31:49

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s very, very individual based on what their needs are. So it definitely helps if you do some kind of blood panels to see where you are deficient. Because that’s a good starting point. And so for me, I did a blood panel. Earlier this summer, I was very high in vitamin D. I was like, Cool, I’m gonna take the summer off from that. And that’s good to know, I wouldn’t have known that. Otherwise, I was taking like 10,000 I use a day for months. So that’s good to know. Otherwise, you can just you know, not do, you can do some damage if in certain cases. I’ll just share like what I do again, it’s tough to make recommendations for everyone. So for me on a daily basis, it’s DHA. So in the form of an algae oil typically like I don’t, we don’t have fish oil that much anymore. So it’s an algae oil, DHA, big focus in terms of reducing inflammation, improving cardiovascular function, reducing LDL, all that good stuff. Second thing typically right now is quesiton. That’s because I’ve got asthma and for some weird reason over the past since we moved actually because we’re a lot more nature now. I’ve noticed my asthma during pollen season is a lot worse. And it’s partly related to histamine, of course, attends all summits. It’s kind of like a natural natural reaction more or less, right. It’s just incredibly effective. So I’d take that on a daily basis. The other thing I’ve been doing the last couple of months is desiccated beef organs. Which for me, it was never something I considered. I mean, I did bone broth, a lot of that, but now I’m like desiccated liver, heart spleen, I’ve noticed a really pretty significant difference in terms of energy via virility, if that’s the word. Male prowess. Consider that way. So there’s been some really cool benefits on that person on that side of things.

Jeremy Weisz 33:50

Yeah, I remember in in chiropractic school, there’ll be some companies and people aren’t familiar with it. I know there’s a bunch of companies that probably do it at that time. I don’t know if they’re big anymore, but standard process was big in having capsules of like, desiccate. It sounds weird for if you’ve never heard of this before, but yeah, desiccated organs of like, you’re like you’re talking about in a capsule. Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim 34:13

Other than that liposomal vitamin C. That’s about it, and wintertime more vitamin D. But that’s that’s pretty much all I take. And then obviously I have a greens powder that I don’t even use that much anymore to be honest, because I’m too I’ve almost taken it too much because I developed it many many years ago. So it’s like I’ve almost used my island stuff too much that I have to have more variety. So supplement wise, that’s pretty much it. In terms of like food supplement, it’ll be maybe a greens powder and water. Typically it’s going to be like fresh pressed green juices instead. And just like protein, like a good quality protein with water after a workout or even during the day just to get my protein up. That’s pretty much what type

Jeremy Weisz 34:59

of protein And I know it’s individual. But for you, is there a certain grams of protein you like to get a day? And what type of protein do you like to take?

Yuri Elkaim 35:08

I’m not I don’t like whey protein? I don’t I don’t like the fact that it will, it kind of upsets my stomach a bit. So that’s one. So I typically don’t do that I’ll use a pea protein isolate, which basically has the same amino acid profiles wait. For me, I’ll take any one serving about 20 grams. So if it’s one shaker, it’s about 20 grams. I’ll do definitely one shaker, maybe two a day. And, yeah, I don’t count my stuff. So I don’t know if it’s 100 grams of protein, I’m getting a day or 85. So

Jeremy Weisz 35:42

from the business perspective, you know, he talked about obviously, if you don’t have your health, it’s hard to be as effective as you can be. What are some of the myths and you help a lot of different businesses? What do you see as far as mistakes in business that people are making,

Yuri Elkaim 36:00

I’ll say like one of the biggest ones, this is more on the health professional side, because so many health professionals are busy burnt out, they’re dealing with patients and clients all day long. And they say they want to keep doing that, instead of the marketing. So what they do is end up outsourcing the most important part of their business, which is marketing, to an agency, some VA, someone who doesn’t understand their messaging, and then they’re screwed. Number one, they haven’t built the skill set. Number two, if that person leaves, they’re left with nothing, because they don’t have the skill set to learn how to put their stuff out there. So I think that’s a big, big, big issue. And I think that is really just like a mindset, because, for me, marketing is teaching, that’s just sharing content over and over and over again, a million times to like, You’re bleeding out the years. And it just takes time, like people are not going to see your stuff initially. And the more you do it, the easier selling becomes or the user buying stuff from you becomes because people have seen your stuff forever. So if you like teaching and sharing content, that’s marketing, that’s not stuff you can really outsource. And I’m not saying you should never have a marketing team. But eventually, as your business grows, for sure. But I would I would venture to encourage everyone to build out all of that internally. Because we’ve we’ve done both, we’ve worked with agencies to run our Facebook ads. You know, recently we, so we did that for five years, I ran all of our Facebook ads myself. So I built the skill set when we started health printer, built it to seven figures. And then I was like, Okay, I’m gonna have I’m gonna have someone else do this. So over the past five years, we worked with three very well known, expensive agencies and things were things were good. And then less so. And then I just got really upset earlier this year. And I was like, you know, this is ridiculous. I feel like we’re spending a lot and there’s a lot of room on the table here to to improve things. So I just said, we’re going to bring everything back in house. So I ran the ads myself again earlier this year. And in the process kind of updated our internal SOPs. And we dropped our cost per acquisition by 60%. We tripled our ad spend in 45 days. And I was like holy shit, like, what have we been missing out on for the past five years. And I was just like, This is crazy. And so anyways, trained up one of our team members to run the ads internally now for us. But it was a good process, because it was a good reminder of number one, if you don’t have the skill set, you will always be at the mercy of other people who do. And a lot of times, they’re not as good as you think they are. And even if they are, they don’t care about your business as much as you do. And when it comes to working with agencies, although there’s some great people running those, the reality is like fractional attention leads to fractional results. And I just wasn’t okay with that. And so I just got to the point, I was just like, pissed. I’m like, You know what, I’m bringing this stuff in house. And I think a lot of health professionals are doing this stuff way too early in their business. Like, they’re not even making, they’re not even generating revenue, and they want to outsource their marketing. I’m like, What are you talking about? Like you have to learn this stuff? I would say it’s probably the fundamental, most common mistake I see. And it’s also why a lot of them struggle in business because they don’t understand how to market. They don’t understand how to position themselves. And they think that someone else can do that for

Jeremy Weisz 39:21

them. Three, who’s ideal for you, when we talk about health printer, health, health printer group.com. People can check it out. Who’s an ideal fit for for that business.

Yuri Elkaim 39:34

It’s really any health professional who has ECD so what I mean by that is expertise, confidence and drive. We work with health professionals to grow their coaching businesses or virtual practices. So online, not brick and mortar. And there’s a certain element of I don’t know what that’s going to look like. I don’t know if I can do that. Or I believe in myself. I know I can figure it out with the right support. So for the person who has expertise, like they didn’t just get certified last weekend, or they didn’t just graduate last weekend, they’ve worked with paying clients, they know they can solve a problem. And they believe in themselves to the extent that even if they don’t have the answers, they believe that they can figure things out with the right support for us, whether they’re a chiropractor, naturopath, dietitian, nutritionist, health coach trainer, doesn’t matter, because we’ve helped all of them. But it’s funny, because on our application page, we say we don’t work with massage therapists, yoga therapist, those selling MLM, or low press membership sites. And there’s a very specific reason for that. And someone was asking me in our Facebook group, like our non client, Facebook group is like, why don’t you work with massage therapists and Yoga people. And I said, no offense to them, because they’re amazing. But after doing this for a very long time, and speaking with 1000s of people, I can tell you with a very high degree of certainty that those two professions generally have a very small vision for their business, and don’t believe they can help people virtually. So why would I entertain those conversations? Like, if someone, listen, we have massage therapists that are clients as well. But generally, 98% of them are like, I don’t, I don’t see how I can do this online. I’m like, Well, I’m not going to try to convince you that you can. Versus a chiropractor, who’s like, Well, how am I supposed to adjust people have resume like you’re not supposed to. But you have years and years of knowledge and protocols that you can guide someone through without you being hands on, I’m just asking you to be open minded to that possibility. And there are chiropractors who are, who crush it. And there are others who aren’t, who continue being crushed in their clinic 14 hours a day. So for me, it’s like understanding Number one, we’ve been waving the virtual flags since 2016. The pandemic hit, and everyone came online, they’re like, I’ve been thinking about this. But now I have to do this. And there was a big surge. And the market fundamentally shifted, where virtual care was more accepted by patients and clients and also more accepted by professionals. Because we’re like, Oh, I could do this. And I don’t have to leave my house. And my clients are often getting better results, because they’re taking more ownership of their own healing journey, as opposed to laying on a table and getting stuff done to them. And all of a sudden, now it’s, it’s really just, it’s a bit of a paradigm shift. There’s still a lot of resistance, I would say on the practitioner side, like because now things are kind of somewhat back to normal. So they’re back in the clinic and burning out. But I’d say those are the so being open minded and having ECD expertise, confidence and drive are the most important determinants. Everything else on the client acquisition, delivering results online. That’s easy for us, right? If someone has the chops, we can help them do all that stuff.

Jeremy Weisz 42:55

I’d love to hear of how health burner works. Theory talk about Dr. Ryan?

Yuri Elkaim 43:02

Yeah, so in a nutshell, we have our main program called the health business accelerator, it’s essentially helping solve the acquisition problem of clients, like no one knows who you are online. No one’s walking by your clinic, online and walking in the brick and mortar world does not exist online. So you have to proactively market yourself. We do that with paid traffic. So we don’t do dancing videos on Tiktok and Instagram, we’re like, no, let’s build a real business built on systems that works for you. So the two systems we help our clients build are on the acquisition side, and on delivery. So away from one on one to one to many, producing better results. So Ryan came to us and a 2019 team of six chiropractic clinic on the verge of bankruptcy, they took out a $40,000 loan to stay afloat comes across our stuff. He’s like, I gotta do this. And within three months, so this is starting, getting into March 2020s adjustment COVID hit, they went from negative 40,000 to doing $350,000 per month. And then that summer, they hit $1 million per month. Two years later, they’re close to 5 million a month. They now have built the largest thyroid coaching program on the planet, enrolling about 1000 clients a month $7,000 Each, on average. And it’s funny because people are like, Oh, they’re scamming people. They’re taking advantage of people. There’s no way they can produce results like okay, the right based on what you know, right. But could it be possible that they’re producing incredible results just in a way that you’re not even familiar with yet? So that’s what’s possible, right? And obviously, they’re a unicorn, not every one of our clients get those types of results. But we have another clients

Jeremy Weisz 44:41

before we go to the next client, we talk about so from a little bit of going in the weeds with me here for a second so they come in, he comes in and what are some of the steps you take them through to get from okay, we’re negative 42 scaling it up.

Yuri Elkaim 45:01

So all of our clients, we teach them the same business model is called a perfect client pipeline on the acquisition side. So it’s a four step business model. It’s a Facebook ad or a traffic source into a webinar from the webinar, it’s leading people to an application to speak with you. And then you’ve got a phone conversation. So like a discovery call, right? We didn’t invent that, but we’ve perfected it. So our clients that generate more than $270 million with that process, we only work with health experts. And what’s funny is some people like yeah, like, I’ve got a bunch of that stuff in place. I’m like, great, why are you making less than 5000 a month, you don’t have anything in place. Because if you did, you’d be crushing it. And we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be speaking, there’s a very big difference between driving a broken down 1980 Honda Civic, which is a car and a Ferrari, which is also a car. And what we help our clients do is do things properly. So they’re driving a friggin Ferrari instead of a broken down nightstand on the Civic. So there’s so many little nuances in terms of the messaging, the positioning the offer, how to speak with people on the phone to enroll them,

Jeremy Weisz 46:08

you have one thing is off it, the whole thing doesn’t work. Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim 46:11

And amateurs don’t see that amateurs believe like, Oh, I’ve done a webinar before, I’m like, great, where are the results, because if you don’t have the results, you’re missing something that you’re not even aware of. And that’s the biggest danger in every business is our blind spots, you don’t know what you don’t know, which is why people hire coaches, and ideally, people who’ve been there and done this many times, like we have, we didn’t just have like a good month, I’ve been in business online since 2005, Kevin made a lot of mistakes had a lot of wins. And obviously, we’ve helped a lot of people. So you know, we’re the best of what we do. And we expect people coming in to work with us to be the best at what they do. Because in no way shape or form, if we help them amplify their their marketing, like that’s what we’re doing. More people are just going to know that they suck, right. So they have to be good at what they do. So the beautiful thing about our process is, I would say 90% of our clients come in with no following no websites, nothing. And we can help them go from that to six figures in a couple of months. Because of the power of paid traffic. If you don’t have a following on Instagram, and you start today, you’ll spend the next three to five years to maybe get to 10,000 people. And that’s a daily thing, maybe it’s credit, it’s a big maybe with Facebook ads, you can press publish on your Facebook ads, and you can be doing $10,000 A month or $10,000 Next week, based on your ad spend and what your metrics look like you can do more, you can do less. So what we’re helping our clients do is by speed by leverage and systems. So you’re not grinding away on social media. And if you have social media accounts our clients come in with that. They’re making like we’ve had some clients, the first week they work with us, we’re making $40,000, because we show them how to communicate with their followers to turn more of them into paying clients, even before their pipelines built. So if you have assets, you’ll just go crazy very quickly. If you don’t, it’s going to take a little bit longer, but you’re going to have to put in the work anyways. Let’s build the system that works for you. And then you don’t have to work as hard on the future. Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 48:22

I want to talk about branding a second but really quickly, the offer offer is huge. With Dr. Ryan did he did you help him figure out oh, thyroids my niche, or did he come in and go, This is what I’m best at? Yeah, there was a bit

Yuri Elkaim 48:39

of, they had a they had a functional medicine designations, they had done some functional medicine stuff, and they had, let’s see more success than Hashimotos. So that’s what they focused on. And that’s a big piece of what we do with our clients like right away. Who’s your perfect client? What’s the big problem you’re solving. That’s the like, that’s where most people go wrong. Like, you choose the wrong market the wrong problem to go after nothing else. He doesn’t make sense. If you really identify that problem that people need to solve. And then you put an offer in front of them in such a way that it’s unique. It’s different. It’s better. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s really like three quarters of the battle for sure.

Jeremy Weisz 49:20

And what happened with with Dr. Brandy,

Yuri Elkaim 49:24

so brandy was a naturopath. 60 hours a week in her clinic burnt out like most health professionals are, she took a year off. She like literally like left the clinic took a year off. She kept seeing our ads on Facebook for like a year. And then eventually she’s like, commanded us and she did and her second second month she made $27,000 And the most important thing about that and then she’s you know, maintain that level since the most important thing about that is not the money it’s about when she was in our clinic. She barely saw her son and her son was three at the time. And she wanted more freedom. She wanted more time with her son You know, now she’s able to took a full year RV trip. So she was working from our RV and spent a lot more time with her son and family. And that was a big driver for her was just to have that freedom and location independence, which you don’t have if you have a clinic. But again, she had confidence. She knew she was good at what she did. And she had a big vision she had drive. If someone’s got a very small vision, the number of bumps you’re going to run into in the road is going to derail you. If you just want to cover the bills. That’s not a big enough why you will get punched in the face. So often running your business like this, that you have to have drive and a vision to keep getting up. Because a lot of health professionals succeed in spite of themselves in a clinic where people walk down the street and just fall into their lap. But that doesn’t happen online and you have to be realistic about that. And you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves, do the punches get back up.

Jeremy Weisz 50:59

And just keep going. Yuri I want to be the first one to thank you everyone check out Healthpreneurgroup.com check out one of his books All Day Energy Diet. Or all day fat. What is it the All Day Fat Burning Diet, but check it out and Yuri I really appreciate your stories and your expertise. Thank you so much.

Yuri Elkaim 51:22

Thanks for having me Jeremy.