Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Yuri Elkaim. Yuri, welcome.
Thanks for having me, Thomas. Nice to be here.
Nice to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. So what I do is I own a company called Health Preneurs. We help health professionals get clients and scale their businesses online. I’ve always believed that the future of business, especially in the healthcare field, is moving more virtually, and we’ve been focused on that for the past six years before that I had my own health and fitness business online. So selling everything from courses to supplements to products, we held half a million customers to better health. I wrote a couple of New York Times. Bestselling books was on Dr Oz did that whole thing and sold that company a few years ago. But all that was, I guess, started off by me losing my hair when I was 17. That’s really what got me into health and my passion for soccer or football, as they call it, in your neck of the woods.
That was a dream of mine to play professionally and I was able to do that in my early 20s. And then when I hung up my boots and retired, I realised that I wanted to do more with my life and that’s kind of how I started my business back in 2005. But I made a lot of mistakes and I spent a long time in poverty line income territory, if you will, until I really figured a couple of things out. And it’s been an amazing journey. So we’re on a mission to help a billion people to better health and we feel we’re going to do that by helping health business owners build better businesses that in turn, helps more people. So that’s what I’m all about. You dropped in a few gems in there. There’s an awful lot I could ask you about. Well done on everything you’ve achieved is the first thing I’d go with. I know that we were going to talk a little bit about pricing, which I do want to get your expertise on. But, I mean there’s a lot to ask you about regarding achievement. So I also like to touch on that as well if it’s okay to start off with. I literally just spoke to someone who said, I have always undervalued myself and I always don’t price myself properly or perhaps not enough.
And as far as I’m aware, it’s a, it’s a big problem, and that was completely separate from the conversation we’re having today. So what do you think about that? Probably one of the most common things that I see, I think especially with service based businesses, obviously we help, you know, we specialise with health professionals and coaches and there’s especially in our field and this might relate to a lot of your listeners to is there’s this sense of I want to help everyone and if I price myself out of the market, I’m gonna alienate a lot of people. So that’s one piece of it. The answer to that question that I would often say is like, well, do you really think you’re gonna help everyone? Or like do you have the capacity to help tens of millions of people? Probably not. Right. So you’re never going to help anyone anyways? And there’s always gonna be a segment of the market that’s not gonna be able to afford your, your services or will afford your services regardless of the price. The second thing I see is that there’s a sense of, I’m not worth charging this amount. And so there’s a lot of kind of internal stuff that you know, goes into that and for whatever reason could be upbringing conditioning past experiences, etcetera.
And again, in, in my neck of the woods with health professionals, I continually remind them that, you know, if you can help someone reverse a problem health wise, they’ve been dealing with for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, How do you even put a price on that? You know, like is $2,000 too much? Is $5,000 too much. Like we all know that if, if we’re dead, nothing else matters. So like getting around that mindset of really understanding your worth and your value and this, this spends the spectrum of any business, like even if you’re, you know, a hairdresser or a restauranteur or whatever, it might be, it’s really like associating the work you do with the joy, with the, the joy brings people or the problem, the frustration, the pressure that it resolves in their lives. And the more you have conviction over that, the easier it’s going to be to sell that to the, to the marketplace because the first person you have to sell is yourself. So if you don’t feel you’re worth it, the people you want to serve are also going to tell you it’s too expensive because they can sense energetically that there’s something a little bit off.
So first and foremost you have to be fully convicted, you’re worth of the value you bring to the world and your place, whatever that is should be reflected there. So if you feel a million percent confident, I’ll just use a random number like $2000 for a service great. If you don’t feel a million percent confident at 3000, start at 1500, start at 1200, start wherever you feel 100% confident and build up over time as you get more wins under your belt. And as you start recognising that hold on these clients are getting great results. I’m starting to feel like I should be charging a bit more and what you’ll start to recognise is that most times when we raise our prices, there’s not a tremendous amount of resistance that wasn’t there before. Like if you went from 1000 to 1500, that’s not a significant jump. You’re not going to all of a sudden deal with, you know, most prospects saying that’s too expensive, people will say it’s too expensive if it’s 1000 people say it’s expensive. If it’s 100, it’s all about the perception of value that people have.
And if you’re solving a big enough problem that they want solved, then it’s your job really, your, your ability to communicate and articulate that transformation for them. So they start to recognise how meaningful that is in their life. And then obviously, your solution is really like the best and ideally the only option that they have compared to everything else in the marketplace. So those are two of the most common things I see. And then the third thing is obviously comparison, right? Oh, well, so and so is charging this, I should also charge that because that’s what they’re charging, who cares, like, you know, I think if you obsess about your clients not the competition, you will always have a winning business. And if that’s not enough, remember that Most businesses generally don’t do very well. So if you’re comparing yourself to be a business without really knowing what’s happening behind the curtain, you might be comparing yourself to a business that’s one month away from going bankrupt, right? We don’t know. So pricing, it’s the single most important lever in your business?
It’s the highest impact, easiest thing to do because you can just add a zero or change the price obviously like the value should follow that, but it goes right to the bottom line, you know, and if you have more money, you can help more people, You can employ more people, you have more breathing room in your business to impact a greater number of people. or if you just want more profitability, like that’s really where it all starts. So those are kind of like three of the, the typical things I would I see and that, you know that I would say to someone who’s feeling that way, a lot of very good points there, one of the things which I suppose is worth asking you about is because we, the topic of is partially about defending your prices, which makes me think that someone’s going to attack them, quote unquote. So what happens if you do quote that price that you feel is justified or maybe it’s maybe you don’t feel it’s justified at that point because you’re, I don’t know, you’ve just raised your prices and someone comes back and says, I want to pay half of what you’re what you’ve just quoted and the scenarios might be, you know, maybe you need the work.
So what are your thoughts there when you say maybe you need to work? Are we talking to the business owner who has to do the work to get to get up to snuff to command these prices? Or are we saying they need to work for the prospective customer or client? We need the work from a cash flow perspective of the business owner. Yeah. So the first thing is you have to solve a problem that people are willing to pay for. So solving a bleeding neck problem as opposed to a stubbed toe. So let me give an example. So we have a client who is amazing at helping people with migraine headaches and migraines are the type of situation that sidelines people dramatically. Like you’re in bed, you can’t move like you’re done. That’s something people want resolved yesterday. If we’re talking about even weight loss as an example, weight loss is obviously a massive market and a lot of people want to lose weight. But in my experience, we haven’t done this for now 16 years even compared to migraines on the scale of emotional intensity, if I need to solve this now, weight loss is still below that.
And that’s why when we look at a problem, that is a major I need to solve this now type of situation, that is how you can start commanding a premium price because people are, I don’t want to say desperate, but they’re so in need of a solution. And it’s not to say that we’re taking advantage of that, we’re offering our services because we know we can solve that problem and it just happens to solve the problem in the best way. It’s priced a certain way. So the first thing is really identifying a market that has a bleeding neck problem. So if you’re dealing with, I had a call a couple of months ago for our community and one of the people on the call wasn’t in the health space, but she was talking about how she had a service for college students to improve they’re testing ability. And I was like, okay, interesting. I said, do you have like, do you have a track record of them paying you money for this? And she said, yeah, I’ve got a couple of people and I said, that’s awesome, well, what did they pay you? And she said, $100 I’m like, okay, like where do you want that to be?
And she’s like, well, I’d like that to be higher, but I don’t know if they’re willing to pay that and I said, well I kind of agree. Like, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s a service or a solution that is like, I need to have this and I’m willing to pay a premium for that. So the first thing is really identifying what’s the problem you’re solving the second piece that goes in with that is the target market is very important if you’re targeting, you know, college students, they’re not going to have the wherewithal to pay No matter what it is. You charge rather compared to someone who might be in their 30s, has their professional career going, etcetera. So the wherewithal to pay is important. But going back to the question, if someone’s like, well it’s too expensive, I don’t want to pay that, I’d like to pay less. We have to understand that in any market with any problem, there’s always going to be a spectrum of people. There’s always gonna be those people who are willing to stay and pay at the four Seasons Hotel, for instance, 700 bucks a night. And there are those in the same market of people looking for a hotel that will pay 1/10 of the price and that’s going to be the same in any market. There’s people who buy, you know, the Toyota Prius and there’s those who, by the rules of rice, right?
People looking to get from A to B. And there are obviously different psychological factors that go into why someone would buy one or the other. So really what it comes down to as a business is you want to make the decision philosophically of like what’s hip and business, do I want to run? Do I want to have a four seasons business or do I want to have a motel, six business. Do I want to have a Toyota Prius type of offer or do I want to have a Rolls Royce offer that’s for you to determine. That’s for you to put it into the marketplace. Now when people come to you and they say, well, I want to pay half. You have two choices. Number one is that you could potentially have a slightly lower product offering maybe or number two is you say sorry, right? Like if you go to the fourth season, then it’s $700, mate, you’re like, I’ll give you half. They’re like, cool, well there’s a hotel down the street that you can stay at, right? So it’s a philosophical decision you want to make us a business. But let’s just use the example of, you know, a consultative type of business we’re speaking with a prospective client and you know, you really need the work and they’re saying it’s a bit too expensive.
I think it all comes down to conviction because if you have the ability to show people that where they are and where they want to go, there’s a massive disconnect and you can have that conversation to show them how much pain they’re going to stay in if they stay here and how much benefit they’re going to achieve by achieving the goal in working with you and you can logically help them see that all of a sudden the conversation becomes a lot more interesting because if someone thinks that their problem is a $500 problem and you introduce a $5000 solution, it’s never going to match up in their head, they’re like, there’s no way I’m going to pay that, right? So you have to be able to have a conversation. So someone comes in and they give you a bigger, so someone comes in and let’s say, you know, they’re expecting to pay 500 you’re saying it’s 5000, they’re like, there’s no way, like, I can’t make, I can’t make sense of that. And so what we need to be able to do is when someone gives you a problem, like Ie I can’t afford this or I don’t want to pay for this, you have to give them a bigger problem. So one of the things I noticed when Covid’s first hit in Toronto where I live is there were two pizza restaurants and when we went into lockdowns, these two pizza restaurants have been around for a long time.
One of them had been around for like 40 years. I think the other one, not as long, but maybe 10, 15 years. And the one that was around for 40 years, they closed within a month. The other one is still thriving. And that was really interesting to me. I said, well, I don’t know exactly what happened. Did the owners just cash out and say, I wanna deal with this, or were they like one month away from bankruptcy anyways, and this just happens to really open up the cracks in the foundation. So if I were to go to that business and you know in that lockdown and I said listen like I, you know, looking at your numbers, I can see this as you know what’s going on. And let’s just say over to say, listen, I can help you get out of this situation. It’s going to cost, it’s going to cost, let’s say $5,000 if they’re like, well, you know, we’re in a bit of a sticky situation, I don’t know if we can afford that, It’s my duty to then show them that if they don’t invest the $5,000, they’re going to go out of business. So now I’m introducing a bigger problem that if this doesn’t get solved, this is only gonna get worse. And so being able to have that conversation and ideally you want to be speaking to people who can recognise that themselves.
And generally if you’re speaking to a more sophisticated clientele or like people who have been on their journey a little bit longer, it’s generally a little bit easier because they can, they understand what the consequences are of not doing something as well as doing something. So then the second piece is, do they believe that you can help them? So that’s the big, that’s another big piece, going back to our first conversation around like your conviction, like If someone’s like, well I don’t, I don’t know if I can spend $5,000, like you have to be in the position energetically or you’re thinking yourself dude, you’re freaking crazy if you don’t do this because I know with every fibre of my being again based on the fact that you know you can help them that I will help you get out of this situation and you have to bring that conviction and confidence to your conversations to your marketing because people are buying people by conviction right? Like not just like I mean if you look at the most charismatic leaders of all time regardless of their points of view and their strategies and stuff. People follow charisma, right?
So if you have, if you don’t have that conviction and you haven’t sold yourself, no one else is going to buy you either. So those are the two pieces really. It’s helping people understand that if they have a problem and they think that it’s you know, let’s say $500 problem. You have to show them that it’s a $50,000 problem so that your $5,000 solution is a steal. And then second is they have to believe that you can deliver on that which comes down to your conviction and your belief in yourself, your track record and then when those two things happen, you know the pricing, you know, even though they were like, well it’s more than I wanted to spend, but I see the value and let’s do this. So that’s how I would approach that. Typically, I think a lot of what you’ve said is contingent on the ability to deliver, right? So if you can, if you can deliver on something which is high value, then really you should be charging higher value prices. And if you’re, I think a lot of this pricing stuff comes from A place of someone who’s not 100% sure on the value they deliver. Do you think that’s fair?
100%. So part of this is like, listen, like if you can’t command premium prices, maybe you’re just not good enough yet, right? And that’s, that’s totally OK, because we all start at ground zero and we all have to earn our badges if you will buy, you know, through time and experience. And, you know, like what I remember when I was, when I started earning money, like, in the field of health, I was a personal trainer, I was earning $18 an hour and I’m like, I can’t command premium prices if I don’t even feel confident myself to deliver. But I did that long enough and I started to recognise like, I’m like, you know what, I’m pretty freaking good at this. So it takes time to build that confidence and confidence comes from experience. So you do have to, you know, as the navy seals would say, eat dirt for a little bit of time to build that confidence and that, that track record. But it’s pretty amazing to how many people negate their experience. Like I talked, we talked to people who’ve been doing what they do for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and they still think they’re like, I don’t know if I can charge this much.
I’m like, dude, we’re not talking about $1 million, we’re talking to, like, $2,000, you know, to, to transform someone’s life. So I’m fully with you that the purpose of business is to solve a problem for your clients or for the customers you’re serving. If you can’t do that, you don’t deserve to have a successful business. It’s really simple. Like, you have to have a great product or a great delivery and that’s something you we always have to be obsessed about because if, if we can’t deliver the promise for making, then like, we’re not gonna be around very long, nor do we have the, I don’t even want to say entitlement, but we have the responsibility to deliver on our promises, right? So if you’re someone who has, you know, someone of integrity and ethics, then obviously you’re gonna want to continually get better and the more, the better you get naturally your prices will, you know, kind of flow with that. And so yeah, so I definitely agree that, like the delivery is very, very important. You alluded to something which I was going to ask you about, which is the squeamishness around higher prices, what do you think about this?
I mean, in a way, I think you’ve already given a reason as to why it’s not valid, but what do you think about that from a societal perspective? So I mean this, this like this goes into the hole. I think there’re global beliefs that shape our lives and how we view the world, right? Some people believe that, you know, those who have money are filthy rich people, right? And there’s that kind of mindset and I don’t, I’m not one of those and I’ve never been, I believe that money can solve a lot of amazing problems and I think again, honestly, there are exceptions to this, I think that a lot of people who do well for themselves usually do well because they’re in service of other people. Now, obviously there are people who have done well for themselves financially by cutting corners and doing some shady stuff and you know, obviously I don’t agree with that, but I love the perspective that well, you know, money is not the root of all evil. I think money is great, It amplifies who you already are, but when you have, again, I don’t know what the percentage would be, but I would say that there’s a large percentage of the population on this planet?
I think that there’s like this, this evilness with money, right? There’s, there’s like, especially in health care, a lot of people think that health care should be taken care of for the citizens of the country, right? Especially if you live in Canada, the UK us a little bit different, but you know, if you’re a practitioner In those types of countries where it’s socially driven healthcare and all of a sudden you’re charging 234, $5,000 for a service. Now, it’s all of a sudden, well I don’t know if I could do this because, and I hear this all the time when we spot, we have a lot of UK clients and they’re like, well, I mean, I don’t know if people in the UK would pay for this because health care is taken care of for the most part, I’m like, are you crazy dude, Like I understand where you’re coming from, but there is, there are people who will pay out of pocket for this type of stuff, but it’s a cultural belief that, you know, some things like that should be taken care of and that also goes into, especially in the healthcare space, this sense of like martyrdom, like I’m going to help people for free because I should and therefore, you know, they don’t really take care of themselves in the process and they burn themselves out.
So I think this pool like the squeamishness around pricing and money is number one, a belief system that may have been conditioned from a very, very early age that’s reinforced over time. And again the reality is like, do you want to serve those clients? Right? It’s not your business to serve everyone on the planet, you know, and some people even at a higher level have those same beliefs. So it’s not to say that people who are doing better financially have a good money mindset versus those who don’t, but you know, the percentage might be a little bit higher towards the upper echelon. But nonetheless, it’s really, I think it’s about re-establishing the conversation people have around how they prioritise their values in life. I think where we spend our money and our time is what we value the most in life. So if someone says, you know what, 5000 for this is a lot and then they go buy a flat screen TV for the same price. It’s like, well it wasn’t that you didn’t have the money, it’s just that this wasn’t a priority for you. So I think that’s a bigger issue that we have to consider is we’re not trying to price ourselves out of the market, we’re not trying to make our services inaccessible.
Number one, we have to identify who do we want to work with, who can we work with, who we feel we can produce the best results for and then are these individuals that value that solution, that transformation versus doing other things with the money, they say they don’t have. And so I don’t know if it’s a really, I don’t know if it’s an easy answer but I think that there’s any market, there’s also be those who are you know squeamish around pricing whether it’s the customer or the business one of themselves. And that’s why I say like all business growth starts with personal growth so you have to grow through this stuff because I was that guy to like I used to feel terrible As as a as a trainer and nutritionist asking people to sign a contract for you know a $1,500 package. I was I was so uncomfortable doing that and it took me a number of years to to really come to grips with like is it really that much money like and for what they’re getting, the transformation, etcetera. So we all have to go through this journey. I must think it’s easy, but I think it’s 100% worthwhile because when you make more money you can serve more people and help more people and again, coming from a place of wanting to do good in the world that’s supposed to doing bad money just becomes an amplifier of all of that.
So I think it’s important to go through the journey and really, you know do some of that internal tweaking if we need to what do you think about the use of guarantees because your personal training example made me think, You know, you could completely feel perfectly fine with a $1,500 package given the result. But you know, let’s say they because my interpretation of a lot of personal training stuff is that people sign up to it, well, a lot of people sign up to it and then don’t follow through on it. In which case, I mean, in that scenario, they’ve potentially wasted their money. Your thoughts there. I love the conversation on guarantees because I think it’s contextual. So let’s say you run an agency where you are, you’re saying to a client, we’ll take care of your let’s just use marketing as an example, we will handle your acquisition, we will give you clients we’ll do what we need to do to hand you the clients in that case you own You have 100% ownership of the process.
So there should be a very strong guarantee there to say, listen, if we don’t deliver clients to you, you don’t pay a single thing. Or maybe there’s a rev share agreements where they don’t pay anything until clients come in and then there’s a bit of a split or like I think when you have full ownership over the process, a very, very strong guarantee will annihilate any scepticism because, you know, every one of their mother can have an agency or a service based business and they’re like, well, I’ve done stuff like that before. So I think having a strong guarantee when you have ownership over the outcome is very, very good when you don’t have ownership over the outcome. So let’s use the example of the personal trainer and a client. I remember working with a number of clients where I would see this one client three times a week and he would show up once. I’m like, dude, what do you like? Number one is disrespectful, but number two, how am I supposed to guarantee your results when you have to show up and do the work? So, I think in the context of a service like consulting or coaching where the client is responsible for doing the work.
Here’s my perspective is that you have no guarantee and here’s why again this is a philosophical decision. And again, I know many coaching businesses that do have an RL I guarantee or stuff like that and that’s totally fine. This is my perspective is I do not want to work with clients who are looking for the exit door before they board the plan. And if someone is sceptical coming in, I don’t even want to have that conversation, which means my marketing needs to be better. So that when they come into a conversation about working with us, they have zero doubts based on our track record. I’ve built a business where our guarantee is very simple. It’s a 0% money-back guarantee and we have 100% results. Sorry, 100% success is on you guarantee pretty much. Which basically means your results are your responsibility because we know how we’re going to show up as a team. We know, for instance, we provide up to seven coaching calls a day for our clients. Like why would we do that if we didn’t care about their success?
But we also can’t do the work for them. So we let them know like listen, You’re making an investment, this is your business, this is your life. We know how we’re going to show up. We know like our process works, we generate, you know, we generated more than $217 million dollars for our clients. Are you gonna get the same results? I have no idea. I have had a conversation over a messenger the other day with and this happens a lot, you know, you know, can I speak to someone else in my situation to see what type of results they got. I was like, well, number one, our clients aren’t just sitting around like a call centre waiting for them to talk to prospective clients. But here’s 100 testimonials. You can have a look at second even if someone is in the same profession as you, what they got what their results for have nothing to do with your business because that’s how you show up. It’s there’s so many little nuances in terms of your offer your messaging, how you do the work. So my personal preference on guarantees when it comes to a service based coaching consultive type of relationship where the client has to do some of the work, like a trainer etcetera, is to come from a place of exclusivity to say this, but you need my help more than I need your money.
Like the ship has already left the harbour. I’m good. If you want to work for, if you want to work with me, please tell me why I should send the zodiac back and pick you up because I know I’m the best at what I do. I just need you to show up and do the work. Can you do that? Cool? You understand that your results are on you. They’re like, okay, great. So we’re very clear on the front and that some people don’t like that too bad for them, right? We don’t lose anything. And the funny thing is that we have, I mean to my recollection not Lost two clients because of the fact that we didn’t have a guarantee. We’ve had people talk about like I’m talking with this company as well and that company and 99% of the time they come back and work with us because they see the value. And we also want to work with clients. You understand that like this is the real world, you gotta put on your big boy pants and do the work and we all know that I can’t do your setups for you? I can’t do your push-ups for you, right? So I think that’s the difference is really understanding, do you have ownership of the outcome if you do then a very strong guarantee is awesome because now it’s like all on you, But if they have to show up and do the work and it’s a 5050 relationship, I’m like, dude, there’s no guarantee.
I don’t know you, like, show me the proof that you’ve done this stuff before because I’m taking a risk putting my time and effort into working with you. So here’s how it’s going to be. That’s my personal philosophy on guarantees. I like it. You got a, a very good pitch is what I, what I would say about that it’s a compliment. I did want to ask you about your, your achievements. So the first thing that you kind of dropped in there, which was kind of done quite subtly, but I thought was worth highlighting, was New York Times bestseller. do you want to tell me about how what that was how it went and what you thought so yeah, so I wrote a book at the back of class in nutrition school. So I eight years after losing my hair, I went back to nutrition school to figure out what might have caused it and in the first day I was like, oh my God, how did I not learn this? This is after four years at one of the top universities in the world, at University of Toronto, like how have I not heard this stuff before, And very quickly I started applying this stuff and my hair re grew even though later on I fell out again, you know, I’ll save that story for another day, but I was so flabbergasted by the simplicity of learning about how our body interprets food, et cetera, and I started to really feel the difference energetically, like I was like energised beyond belief and so I’m a very fast action taker, so I’m sitting in the back of nutrition class and I’m starting to like write out ideas for a book as I’m literally going through nutrition school and so that eventually became a book called the it’s called eating for Energy and it was sold as an e-book for many years when I started my business online.
And when I got out of my own way in 2010, I started to get some coaching and I joined the Masterminds, you know, two years after that, a different mastermind than I was initially in and I met someone there who was in a similar space and we started doing some joint venture business back and forth, we ended up becoming one of their best partners and I was invited to one of the masterminds they hosted at that mastermind, there was a gentleman in the audience, his name is Reid Tracy, he’s the CEO of Hay House and I was like oh my God, I love chaos, like this is amazing. And I went up to him and I said I have an idea for a book, do you have a couple of minutes where I could maybe just you know, give you some thoughts and he was like yeah, for sure, let’s connect this week. So he got on the phone, I basically told him here’s my existing book eating for energy and it’s done, you know, these numbers in our digital online format and I’d like to bring this into a published, you know, type of book and he’s like I love it, we don’t really have anything like this right now. And literally like the next day sent me over a contract and I was like that’s amazing.
So that’s kind of that was my first book deal. And that book you know, from a digital e book, we turned into the all the energy diet obviously regarded a little bit and that became a New York Times bestseller. Now that obviously there’s a big journey, I’m kind of missing there. The reason it became a New York Times bestseller was because This is 2014 we had tested and now like I really was starting to, I had a very solid grasp on marketing and had developed a lot of partnerships and relationships in the health space with other influencers who had large audiences that could support the book launch? So we had tested out the funnel, we had tested out different ideas how we can make the launch of a book, which is typically not very lucrative for people promoting it, how we can make it lucrative for them that want to continue promoting it and that’s, you know, it took us nine months to really dial that in when we launched them in September. I remember sitting down to dinner Tuesday night at 6:00, I got a call from my agent, she was like You hit number two.
I was like straight what it was like, yeah, you hit number two on the list was like, out of curiosity who’s number one. she’s like, Peter Thiel power 0 to 1. Like, he was like, the co-founder of PayPal. I was like, okay, I can take number two, but it was just an amazing process. I’m very, very happy about that. Like, the book was amazing, it is an amazing book, but I think the reality is like for anyone thinking of writing a book, published book, my recommendation is don’t do that unless you have a massive, massive, massive following because the amount of work that goes into it and if you don’t get a massive advance, it distracts you tremendously from the rest of your business. So, you know, I see so many people who are like, yeah, like I’m, I’m finishing my book and my great, like you’ve got 100 followers on Instagram, like what’s the game plan? You know, Like for what, like what are you doing? You’re gonna sell five copies, like I was gonna say, sell one copy, but exactly, you know, so, I mean, you know, I wrote that book and then I got another two-book deal with rodeo after that, And so I wrote three published books in the nutritional health space and then I kind of had said everything I can say about that stuff and it was a great journey.
I’m like, I’m very, very happy that I was able to do that because that was one of the things that I wanted to accomplish in my, in my journey if you will, but it also gave me a tremendous amount of perspective about, you know, where to put your eggs, you know, if you will in terms of focus and energy and ultimately, you know, it helped a lot of people and I’m very proud of it. So it was a fun, a fun journey. Cool, Thanks for sharing. The other thing you said is that you were a professional athlete. Um, are there any crossovers there in terms of lessons you took away from doing that, that you now apply to business, right? Totally. Like I was telling my kids yesterday and what the two types of people that I love working with as team members or clients are ex-military or ex-athletes because it’s all in the mindset, I’ve always had the belief that no matter what I do, I’m gonna do the best I can and I’m going to be the best at it. And that’s the way I took my approach the soccer when I was 10, you know, I had posters all over my wall like Brazil and you know, all these teams I really liked and I loved it.
Like I just, I was obsessed with soccer and I played on a team at the time, that was terrible. Like we lose 89, 10, nothing, I was the goalkeeper. So, you know, in some cases I can kill your confidence, but at the same time, it also gave me a lot of repetition of, of handling, you know, shots and different scenarios that I would not have been exposed to. So I, I think there’s um, you know, going back to like experience, I think, you know, when you put in the reps, you just get very good. So I had, you know, that 10 year experience from 10 to 20 like the 10,000 hours if you will have a lot of exposure to scenarios and shots and situations that just, you know, allowed me to get better at my craft and in that process, I started to really develop and I don’t know when this came about. I don’t know if he was there from the start or during the sense of delusional optimism which is something I’ve carried to this day is no matter what happens I can figure it out. and number two is I’m the best that was it right? I had this belief that I would watch these teams on TV. And like I’m better than my goalkeeper. I could play there. Like there was never a doubt in my mind because I’m like I could do that and I think that really helped propel me and yeah like there’s a sense of delusion there for sure. But I would rather have that than like I don’t know if I’m good enough I don’t know if I can play well today and so that that that belief and like it allowed me to keep moving forward and taking risks and doing things and the same thing has happened in my business. Like it’s the same the same mindset, it’s the same like lifelong belief I have about no matter what it is that I’m always gonna try to do the best I can. I always want to be the best at anything I do and that’s just the way I play right like I can’t do life half as you know like I have to have that high performance type of approach to things. Anything that comes from I don’t know I’ve had people ask me about this and I’m not sure. I don’t know if this is innate to be honest. I don’t know if it’s something that, I mean, I don’t recall having copious, converse, copious number of conversations with my parents where they were like drilling this into my head.
I don’t, I mean maybe there’s a few. Um, but I don’t know, to be honest, I don’t know if it’s, I’ve got four kids and I remember The first day they were born, like instantaneously there’s, they’re very distinct personalities, you know, and I don’t know if I was brought onto this planet with that from day one or if that’s something that was there and then it just developed over time. So I don’t know if I have a good answer. Well, it’s certainly something that can be cultivated, regardless. Would you say that’s accurate? 100%. I think. You see, I mean when you perform well, you see that like you used to like, you’re like, cool, Like I had a good game and then you also, that’s reinforced by parents and coaches and people around you. Um, so that’s, that’s certainly for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean the other thing that we could maybe touch on is, um, the success in business. It kind of reminds me of the type of question that I asked where I’m like, can you summarise your business experience for us the decades of experience that you’ve got in the next minute or so?
Yeah, just thank you for like the stock, just thank you for like the stock market, it’s just up and down, up and down. But if you’re just, if you play the game long enough, you’ll just generally be on the up and up. So business is like a marathon without a finish line. So the way you win in business is just you just keep playing the game. That’s it. Like the only reason I’m here is because I just kept playing the game and there’s been so many moments in my journey where I’m like that was a bad decision alright, that’s gonna cost me a lot of money. I don’t want to I don’t really want to do this today, like it’s you just get punched in the face all the time and you just have to be willing to get back up and that’s the secret like there’s if you just keep going, you will learn everything you need to learn to keep going, right? So I think persistence and longevity are the secrets to success in business because it’s so much easier just to stop when it gets tough. So that’s been my dream. Keep playing the game. That is a great quote for the episode. Is there anything that I should have asked you about today? Oh my God, I mean like there’s so many.
I can’t I don’t know if I can answer that question because there’s obviously a million things that we could discuss. But no, I think you’ve done a great job covering, you know, a lot of the stuff we talked about in terms of mindset pricing. it’s been great. It’s been good. Cool. Yuri, where’s the best place for people to find you? If you are on Instagram, you can follow me. Follow health preneur, that’s my previous business, which is more like the health stuff. But if you like this conversation, follow health preneur on Instagram. And then if, if you’re into watching videos and training, I’ve got a ton of stuff on YouTube again, previous businesses more healthy finish stuff. So just type health printer into YouTube and you’ll find a bunch of my stuff on there. I suppose probably the two best places to connect and follow along. I’ve actually missed a step because I said I was going to ask you about your goals. So, and I am interested to know a man like yourself. What are you trying to achieve at the moment? Yeah, it’s never ending. Yeah. So we want to build a billion dollar brand. We want to build a brand that again, like you know, it gets to a billion dollars in revenue for no other purpose than the fact that that’s a scorecard of our impact in the world.
Like I can care less about the money. Like if we hit 990 million, I’ll be okay if we hit 1.1, it’ll be fine. But I think that for us, you know, the financial objectives that we set are really just like the benchmark we can use quantitatively to show our progress as a company in terms of our impact on the planet and second is the challenge of who we have to become, who I have to become as a leader to get there. The learning, the blind spots that I have to uncover that journey that gets me very, very excited and it’s going to be hard as hell. But I like challenges, I like, I like feeling the pressure and really rising to those occasions and ultimately, you know, the bigger reason why we’re doing all this is because we want to build a world in which, you know, every man, woman and child has the opportunity to be in great health and to do meaningful work that really lights them up every day and I don’t know if that’s ever gonna happen, but you know, if we can kind of move the needle a little bit there, you know, that’s meaningful to me, you know, and we’re here to help people become the best versions of themselves.
We just happen to do that through the context of business at the moment, but that’s what gets me really excited. So that’s kind of like our personal, you know, business school. and then from a, from a personal perspective, my goal is to live to 144. So wow, that’s yeah, it’s just, I like, I just like, I don’t know if that’s gonna happen obviously, but I like setting the bar higher than like 100 for instance, because now it’s, you know, like the focus becomes a bit different and like as an example, I’ve had two friends that have passed away during the pandemic because of, or with Covid, and it reminded me of like, how important our health is. And the thing is like, they were unhealthy to begin with, right? They were overweight, they smoked, they drank and it was just like the, you know, the thing that kind of put them over the edge. And it really reminded me like my, my morning routine for many years has always been like, get up and do the most important stuff first thing in the morning, which was, you know, kind of get into the work, and I’d say this past year it’s shifted to the most important thing is, is my health.
So when I get up, the first thing I do is work out, right? It’s not a gruelling work out all the time, it might be a 30-minute ride, it might be a lift, it might be some yoga, but if I do that first thing in the morning, every single day, I’m setting the foundation for – if I say I want to live a healthy long life, you know, my actions have to represent that. So it’s been a really interesting perspective. I don’t know if it’s a shift but a reminder that like whatever is most important and you know, if we say we want certain things, we have to do our best to make sure that’s congruent. So that’s a personal goal of mine. Yeah, so that’s what I’m working on. The business goal, is that revenue per year? Yes. So it would not be like business valuation. It would be like cash collected on a yearly basis. What you said reminds me of Jim Rohn. Have you got any Jim Rohn inspiration there at all? Jim is amazing. I mean, I go through phases of listening to people and I went through a good period and it oscillates. It comes and goes like he’s just such a great mentor and just a great speaker and thought leader, really.
So she replaced the M with a B because he says make $1 million, not for the million dollars, but for what it will make of you. 100%. I love his philosophy on don’t wish things were easier, wish you were better. Like all that stuff. I mean like I lived my life by those ideas and it’s awesome. Yeah, he’s great.
Yuri, thank you very much. You’ve been a great guest.
Thanks, Thomas. It’s been awesome.