How To Run Your Business At An Optimal Level Without Burning Out With Stephen Cabral

Naturopathic, Ayurvedic & Functional Medicine Doctor- Stephen Cabral

How to set specific goals and “plan backwards” to overcome any limitations. The amazing “12 week system” for a successful year. Why Stephen thinks that SEO is dead. The dangers of working off anxious energy. Why there’s no such thing as night owls!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington

Check out StephenCabral.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

 Jaime Tardy:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire.  I'm Jaime Tardy and today on the show I am super excited to have Dr. Stephen Cabral.  He actually owns Cabral Wellness Institute up in the Northeast and we ended up meeting at Freedom Fest right near New York City just a few months ago.  Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Stephen Cabral:	Thank you for having me.  It's great to be here.  

Jaime Tardy:	So why were you at Freedom Fest?  Tell me about your business and why you were talking about online marketing and all that fun stuff?

Stephen Cabral:	Sure.  So I consider myself just a lifelong learner and that's something that I'm passionate about in general is just understanding I think when you get to a certain point that you'll never know it all.  And that actually becomes part of the fun, like you have to figure out what part of your life or your business you want to improve upon and then actually seek out the teachers, the mentors, the people that can help you do that.  

	So I think one of the things I've learned over the years is there's not a lot of shortcuts to success but one of those big shortcuts is actually finding people that have already done it and just kind of modeling what they do.  Ryan Lee I think was the person that put on this big event.  I have a lot of respect for him.  I don't have a lot of respect for a ton of people in internet marketing space and I never considered myself certainly an internet marketer but I think he does it with people's best interests in mind.  So I always love to hear what he has to say and then I get to meet great people like you.

Jaime Tardy:	You see what I'm so impressed about is you have a hardcore offline business and yet you're still really interested in the online space also.  You're even starting a podcast.  I don't know if I'm allowed to say that or if I'm helping you with your podcast - everybody is here listening to it -

Stephen Cabral:	Absolutely - you are my coach for podcasting.  That's right.  

Jaime Tardy:	But I think that's what's so interesting - you're like; find a mentor and go figure it out.  What made you decide to bridge that gap between offline and online?  The reason why you're here is you have a ridiculously successful offline business. 

Stephen Cabral:	Well, I've actually been in the online space for probably six or seven years now.  And the problem is I've always tried to do both at the same time and I've had a weight-loss clinic now for about - as you can hear from the fire engine in the background I'm in downtown Boston - there's no error around that.  We live and work in a nice high-rise building which is fantastic but part of my practice has always been what people always talk against and that's trading time for money.  

	However, I have to tell you it's one of the most rewarding things that you'll ever do in your life if you decide to become a teacher or a mentor to someone else.  There is no way I would ever trade that for the world.  I would simply scale back on what I'd be doing in that aspect.  Since I was literally 16 years old I've been a teacher in some regard.  It's only about five years ago that I realized that's kind of my passion and my calling is to teach.  It just so happens now I use that in the aspects of teaching wellness and health and weight loss to people. 

	You do run up against this wall of how many people you can actually reach and so in my practice we have 17 health professionals that I have on my team.  Each one of those health professionals can maybe work with like 25 or 50 different people but you can see how you keep running into these roadblocks of not being able to work with thousands of people.

	Although we have what's probably considered the largest practice in Boston and I love it - it's amazing; I work with great people every day - we can't work with hundreds of thousands of people.  And so that is what the online aspect is now going to allow me to do is to reach more people.

Jaime Tardy:	So you said at the very beginning of that that you really want to teach people and that you only figured that out five years ago.  How did you figure that out?  I feel like a lot of people are going like; what is that thing that I really want to do and then put your finger on it is kind of difficult.  So how did you figure it out yourself?

Stephen Cabral:	I think everyone has their own paths.  So for me no one gets into the natural health field that I've ever seen without having something happen to them that's kind of caused them to go onto that path.  So for me when I was 17 years old I became extremely sick.  I literally woke up one day and my lymph nodes in my neck were the size of golf balls.  No exaggeration - they were probably a little bit larger than that.  That's pretty scary to wake up to that.  You can't swallow.  You have a fever.  All your joints hurt.  I went from being a pretty healthy guy to running cross country, track, throwing javelins, playing basketball; all of those things to not being able to walk up a flight of stairs.

	I had to leave school.  It was a really, really troubling time in my life.  I saw the best doctors in Boston and there are obviously great doctors and no offense against them, but they were never taught to figure out what I had because my blood work looked fine.  So I struggled for the next five years with trying to get well and that was a really difficult time in my life.  It was only with the help of naturopathic doctors and alternative medicine doctors - which I consider there to be no alternative - to helping me get well and it kept pointing me on the path.  

	Kind of a funny story is when I was sitting there in the naturopathic doctor's office I was looking at that as; wouldn't this be great to do one day?  But I figured there's no way I'm going to be able to do this.  I'm already out of college.  I'm just getting better.  So what I'd like to share with people is that you don't have to get to where you want to be next month or maybe even next year.  You just kind of follow the trajectory of where you want to go in life and you may eventually get there.  

So for me it was becoming a nutritionist and then a certified strength and conditioning professional and then writing books and then having the financial resources of this nice practice to say now I can go back to school and I can get my degree.  So anyway, things happen for different people in different ways.  My big thing is you have to find something that just has meaning to you and meaning for you.  The reason I say that is there's going to be trying times in business when you start your own business out.  You need to do something that you're just willing to push past and if it's just about the money you'll never get there.

Jaime Tardy:	I love that.  Now what's so crazy is going from just yourself to a huge practice with 17 people and one of the largest in Boston because when people see the gap they're like; oh, well look at you.  Of course you can do that because you're amazing and you have all this stuff.  But you told me the trajectory which I think is really important for people to understand.  You didn't start out going; you know what?  I'm going to start this huge practice.  It's not A to Z; it's A to B, which is way easier.  

So give me the learning of the business side because it's one thing to be a health professional.  There's 1,000 health professionals that make no money because they can't get clients.  So tell me how you did that.

Stephen Cabral:	Sure - the funny thing is, too I used to for the last couple of years be in the coaching of other health professionals.  Again, it's never an industry I wanted to get into but its like; oh, you've been successful doing this.  Can you teach me how to do it'  I just stopped doing that because you can't - I was just pulled in too many different directions - and so now, I want to get back to your question, but now what I do is I only look at what my next 18 months is going to be.  That's it.  Every 18 months I start a new project.  It doesn?t mean I ever forget the previous ones but I build off of them or I start moving in a different direction.  

	Now, why 18 months?  I believe it takes six months to hash out a real business, a real plan.  I think you can do it faster, but I think you need those six months to just kind of bounce ideas off of other people who have already been there and learn what you need to do and then hit the ground running.  Don't hit the ground on day one and be just like; okay what do I need to figure out?  I believe that if you do things correctly in a year you should be getting to a place where you know the business is successful.  Again, you might not even get there until month 9 or 10 but at month 12 you?re like; okay, I'm there.  

	So, getting back to your question my goal was never to set out to have a practice where we do 20,000 or so appointments a year.  It was to do what I loved and I know that if it was just me and even just a couple of other practitioners I could just make a living and I could do pretty well for myself.  That was enough for me because the work I was doing had meaning and that's a big part of my life is that a lot of my work is a big part of my life and so the steps that I took were - and I think this is big for a lot of other people - is that you don't have to just burn bridges right away and leave your job.  I guess I'm a little bit more on the conservative side.  

	I would say if you're working eight hours a day at a job I believe you could put in another four hours working on building up your ideal business.  That could be with some consulting or teaching or writing or whatever it might be.  Commit to that and then transition into that job.  That's a really safe and easy way to do it.  I know we'll probably get to it later but I think there are specific steps you can take and that you should take before you even build that business.  
Jaime Tardy:	So yes, we're definitely going to talk about that but I have way too many other questions before then.  So did you have a vision of this large practice, because what we do is we go; oh, I'm a solo-preneur and then maybe I know it needs to be a little bigger but in my head it's like an amalgam of a whole bunch of things?  You're actually specifically visioning that this is what I want to create or I know exactly what this is or how did that look like?

Stephen Cabral:	No, no - not at all and I guess a lot of entrepreneurs always try to shrink back to just being them in their practice.  The more I think that my problems are just to me the more I understand that they're universal with basically business owners.  They're not bad problems to have - you just have to understand that they're part of the business and they're not even really problems.  It's really about growth and what type of opportunity that you want to have for yourself and for other people.

	What happened was I just wanted myself and a couple of other people on my team but then I realized that what we had was different and I wanted more people to experience that.  The only way to experience that is to grow your team because you know you can't see more people than you can in a day.  That's just not how it works.  So what I did was I got very - honestly they need to have experienced people on the team but I don't even necessarily care about the skill level.  I care about the person themselves because everything is teachable.  Literally everything is teachable.  Skills are a dime a dozen.  You can just teach those skills that you need.  

	What I look for is people that have compassion about what they do, that they truly care about other people and that they're just not in it for a paycheck, that if the day ends at 5:00 p.m. but they have work that still needs to be done that they stay until 6:00 p.m.  That's something that you can't teach.  That's not a skill.  That's a philosophy on life and so that's what I look for.  That's not easy to find but you can find it and that's why we're always looking for good people.  Even when we don't have a position open we're kind of always putting out the feelers like; do you know someone who's really passionate about massage or personal training or nutrition - other people we can add to our team.

Jaime Tardy:	I love that.  So it sounds like you do stepping stones and what's so funny is because I've worked with you personally.  I remember when we got on our first call and we were only talking about podcasting but I'm such a business coach I'm like; tell me about the other pieces just so that we make sure we have those too.  You had plans like crazy.  I'm like; oh, never mind.  I'm not going to touch any of that.  You are great.  So you are such a planner.  I know you said you work 18 months and that's completely true because we've talked about it.  

	So how do you take that, what that thing is that you want - let's say you said you wanted a couple of people on your team and you've never had a couple of people on your team before.  How do you start figuring out that plan in order to create that?  

Stephen Cabral:	Sure - there's two parts to that.  The first is = I'll talk about that part specifically and then about my goals because I'm actually not - I'm a macro planner but I'm not a micro planner.  So I want to definitely talk about that because I think there's a huge distinction between the two and the other one produces a lot of anxiety for me.  So I want to definitely talk about that.  

	What I did was you have to just start doing things and the reason you have to do them is that you don't even know what you don't know and so I hired two people when I first started.  I helped build them up into basically getting clients for their own particular nutrition and weight loss.  So a lot of what we do for our general practice is help people transform their bodies but there's something bigger to that.  

People think what I do is helping people get well from autoimmune diseases and you name it, whatever it is.  It's always looking at the underlying causes so for me I don't care what you name your particular disease.  What I care about is forget about the symptoms - what's causing you to get to where you got to in the first place? 

What I'm really looking for is not to help people get well but for myself what happened for it as well.  I couldn't live my life when I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs, when I couldn't do the things that I loved to do so what I wanted to help people do is simply live their best live, achieve what they want to achieve, and leave life feeling like they enjoyed it, like they loved it.  That, for some people is making money.  For some people it's just being able to spend more time with the kids.  Whatever it is, you can't do that if you have something wrong with you or if you're overweight.  Your self-image isn't where it should be.

So what I'm looking to do is of course help them with the symptoms they came in with but what I'm really looking at is what can we do for the bigger picture?  That's how I sneak it in there.  So I don't even know what that was in response to your question, but hopefully that -

Jaime Tardy:	Well, we were talking about planning, too so I wanted to make sure we talked about the macro and micro planning because seriously when you were telling me your plans I was going like; you have done this before. 

Stephen Cabral:	Oh yes, exactly.  That's what I want to say.  So I started with those one or two people and it took them three times as long as it now takes me to help build up a practice for one of the people that I hire.  I'll put it to you this way - once you figure out how to achieve a goal it is very easy to reproduce.  So once I figured out how to help each personal trainer get the clients that I knew that they needed to do to build up their practice and to help a certain segment of our community now achieve their goals I could then replicate that.  All I had to do is once that person got booked up I just hired the next person and I'd book them up.  

	Literally the sky is the limit.  It really is.  We're limited by the space that we have and the amount of people that we actually want to have in our own practice.  So for this January now, for 2016 my goal is now to bring my message to more people online.  How do I do that?  One of the ways that I got well was through very specific, functional medicine based nutritional supplements, different from what you would buy at GNC or at CVS.  My body was missing a lot of nutrients.  It was worn down.  It was run down.  It didn't have what it needed to combat what it was going through and it's a passion of mine.  I know that it works.  I've used it in my practice for a long time.  

	So I created my first nutritional supplement that I've used in focus groups for the past year and it's now out.  The amazing thing is that I've never done this before.  Of course I've used my practice and I'm very fluent in nutritional supplements.  It's something that I've studied for a long time.  I'm now going to have to figure out what that means to get this out to more people.  Once I do then I'll know the system.  I know how it works and I can help other people or I could do whatever it is with that but again I don't know that yet but I will in a year from now.

Jaime Tardy:	That's what I love.  So one of the things - and again, I still want to talk about micro and macro - but when you were talking about; oh, we just book up personal trainers, do the people who are wellness professionals and personal trainers are like; tell me how you did that, because that is an enigma to so many people just like you said on the online side.  You're like; oh, I'm going to figure that out.  You have no doubt in your mind that you're going to figure that thing out just like you did on the other one so how did you figure that out, especially for booking up personal trainers?  There are so many personal trainers everywhere and it's a hard thing.  

Stephen Cabral:	I've coached hundreds of personal trainers.  I've taught at seminars and have done all of those specific things because I know it is difficult.  I'll give you a few tips and this goes for any teacher or any mentor or anyone in the service industry.  The service industry is amazing because it's so difficult.  The reason it is is that it has such a high barrier to entry that your chance of success I believe actually goes up because you have less competition.  

	Now I have a ton of competition in the city.  Don't get me wrong, but usually it's not done correctly and a lot of people want to go for like boot camps or large groups or whatever those things are.  So we work one-on-one with clients because we know it gets the best results.  Yes we are not able to work with 20 people at the same time but I believe our results are greater.  Therefore we get more referrals and people understand that we do one specific thing and not one million different things.  

	You'll hear me say I never say personal training basically.  We do body transformation.  Now that means, so are we looking to help people get ready for fitness shows and get people to put on a lot of muscle?  No, it's typically weight loss and we talk about weight loss.  Now, have I worked with and do we work with celebrities and NFL athletes and all sorts of athletes and fitness competitors and body builders - absolutely - but we market one thing and the problem is most people don't market one thing.  They market 100 things, so we're the body transformation people in Boston. 

	People go to gyms and pay for gym memberships but they come to our small studio because they want an expert I believe in that category and we have the proven results to do that.  In the beginning when you don't have proven results it's a lot harder.  What you have to do is you start with yourself because you're pretty confident in yourself, you get those results, and then you start to get more referrals and you build on top of that.  But you do also have to learn - I resented marketing and all that for so long because I only want to be known as one thing and that's someone who cares as much as a naturopathic doctor and then someone who's going to help with your body transformation as well, but you do have to learn how to market yourself.

	Just because you build it doesn't mean they will come.  That's not true and that's a whole seminar basically in itself -

Jaime Tardy:	Give me one or two because everyone is going; give me a tactic.  What do I do to get people to say yes for me right now, today?

Stephen Cabral:	The big thing is I would say search engine optimization is dead so don't even really bother wasting your time on that.  What I would do is I would market directly where your clients are.  I know everyone always says that but it doesn't make it any less true.  So if you are a personal trainer, we'll say, then you need to be going directly to whether there are groups on weight loss if that's your niche - whatever it might be.  

Nothing will ever convert better than speaking in front of a group of 20 people in person, whether that's at an office doing a luncheon or a meetup group or any one of those things with someone who wants to lose weight.  Because you're talking directly to them you're connecting directly to them and they see that you care and then you can make what we call a low barrier to entry offer.  Come and just talk with us.  See if we're the right fit for you.  That's complimentary.  There's no cost to that.  If we're the right fit, great - if not, the worst that happened is that each one of us just wasted an hour of our time - no harm, no foul.

Jaime Tardy:	I love that.  Good - so everybody that's listening and needing new clients, go do this.  So let's go to the macro versus micro planning thing because I found that so interesting.  Tell me all about that.

Stephen Cabral:	So I always have been big on goal planning and goal setting.  And it's almost never been from a financial standpoint.  It's always what I want to achieve in life but what I would do is I would look at all these planning books and I would start to journal daily.  There was a great one - like the Magic 100 - achieve 100 things in 100 days and the problem for me is that my mind doesn't turn off so it's very anxiety producing.  I think that's the way with a lot of creators.  I like creators better than entrepreneurs because again, I kind of like revile against that business thing but obviously it's one and the same.  It's just semantics.

	What I had to do is I had to stop - and I know this goes against a lot of people - but I had to stop journaling.  I had to stop doing that daily thing of how I was moving myself forward and all those things because it's like if I didn't do it and I had so much going on in my day - whatever it is - then I was like; oh, I failed and I just had to stop.  So what I do now is I realize that I just have to move in a general direction but with clear-cut goals of what that end result will be.

And then I have a simple index card that I carry around with me every day.  That's all it is.  It stays in my pocket and I just knock off the things that I have to do for that day.  That's it.  It's just one step at a time and it's simply like; write an email to my newsletter list or film a video today and my whole day is scheduled.  A lot of people say; oh, I like to leave time and this and that.  I am the world's largest procrastinator, because I love to read and I love to just plan and think.  I would do that forever.  

So I actually like to do things, so what I do is I schedule clients because I love meeting the clients so I deal with them for the first half of my day or so and then I get to what do I have to do now to get to that next level, which would be shooting video because I love doing video and teaching in that way.  I really do believe for a lot of people out there that connecting with someone on podcasting is so great.  You get to hear their voice, hear their passion, hear their enthusiasm and all that but when you see someone on video as well then you're like; okay, I kind of feel like I've met this person before.

And if you come to my office there's no difference.  I try for there to be no difference between how I'm talking to you right now and how it is when you come in and meet me.  I try to be straight to the point and there's no real beat around the bush because I'd hate to be like two different people.  I just try to be me and that's helpful.  Essentially what I'm trying to say is that I look at long-term goals and my long-term goal now for 2016 will be to create in a larger presence.  To me that means - what will that mean?  

I do set specific goals.  I would like to achieve X number of sales of our, its called the Dr. Cabral Detox, by the end of 2016.  I know it's going to look really slow in the beginning and the first quarter.  It will start to get a little better in the second quarter, third quarter we've got it, and then fourth quarter we're like; oh we know what we're doing now and then it just jumps up.  And so I understand the trajectory now only because I've made a whole lot more mistakes than a whole lot of other people.  

So yes, we do want to set a specific number and that's because I completely believe in this product and I know that will help a lot of people and so I want to see that happen.  I want to build a larger community.

Jaime Tardy:	So I love the sole focus of going; okay, this is the number I want to hit.  The question is how do you write down those things on the index card?  When does the writing of the index card come into play?  When do you write that down and how do you actually align it with that goal that you set?

Stephen Cabral:	Sure - so one thing I'll step back is - this is always a continual process, right?  As creators we're always tweaking things but for a couple of years now I've been using a 12 week system.  Every 12 weeks of my year is its own year.  There's actually a book written about this and I had no idea.  Maybe we can look this up and put it in the notes but it's something like The Four Month Year or The Twelve Week Year.

Jaime Tardy:	The 90 Day Year?  Have you heard of that one?  There's a bunch of them.  

Stephen Cabral:	Let me see if I can get you that name of that book.  I wish I had it right now but it just came to me.  

[Crosstalk] [00:29:46]

Stephen Cabral:	So it tweaked my process because someone actually kind of had written it down.  

Jaime Tardy:	The reason I say that, too is because Todd Hermann, who was at Freedom Fest has a thing called the 90 Day Year, which I think is hilarious but anyway I just interviewed him too.  All right - well we can definitely put the links in when you send it to me because that sounds awesome.

Stephen Cabral:	So what I do is I do plan out - okay, so it's called The 12 Week Year - I had to look it up for you.  It's by Brian Moran.

Jaime Tardy:	Brian Moran?  Oh, I know him.  Okay.  

Stephen Cabral:	Get more done in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months so I'm a big believer in this.  The book was perfect for me because it was like; oh, this is my whole philosophy because when you're first starting out you're not going to become the best in your industry.  Every great creator that I've ever met has been super-competitive.  It's just the way it is and it doesn't mean that you need to destroy your competition.  It just means that you want to try to be the best.  That's it, and there's nothing wrong with trying to be the best.

Jaime Tardy:	Thank you.  I appreciate you telling me that.  

Stephen Cabral:	Well, if you want to be the best it just means that you're going to be able to provide the best service now to people because you are going to read more.  You're going to research more.  You're going to do more for other people and that's just how you become the best.  There's no ego involved.  It's simply like; I want to provide the best service possible and in order to do that I kind of have to try to work to be the best.  Now, that's subjective.  Who knows whoever is going to be the best?  You're the best for the person that follows you and gets the most out of it.  That's basically it.  

	So what I do in the beginning - and I think a lot of people have to do this as well - is you have to have the one thing that the veterans in the industry don't want as you're most likely hungrier than they are and you're going to outwork them.  That's simply what you have to do in the beginning.  Now, I don't think you have to go Gary Vaynerchuk style.  I mean I love him; he's motivational and all of those things but you don't need to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and work until midnight.  I think you will burn out.  Everyone will burn out.  Everyone just has their timeline.  

I know me - I would burn out very quickly but you can be more strategic about it.  You can put up more podcasts.  You can do more videos.  You can do all these things and with the systems now, like I'm planning on doing a daily video/podcast.  Now to people I think that might seem insane and to me it's insane as well but I know I can get that science down to being able to shoot that or do that in about 30 minutes and then outsource that to have it edited.  So my total time commitment is about one hour to 90 minutes per day.  I believe that that will drive me forward and create a new community that I want.  

I don't think a lot of my competitors are willing to do that so I think that's kind of how I will just move ahead.  I say that just because really there are no secrets in my opinion, but then that's for the first 12 weeks.  I'll see how that goes and then I will adjust for my next 12 weeks.  I do believe that in the beginning how I became what I think would be considered successful is that I really was willing to do what a lot of people would do in three or four years in one year.  At the end of the day I would say; wow - I feel like I did a week's worth of work today.  And that felt great.  I don't know.  It just felt really good to me.  

Jaime Tardy:	So that's the thing - people are going; okay, I think that's awesome.  How do you do that though?  Is it a wellness thing?  Is it because you have so much energy?  How do you get so much done in such a short period of time?

Stephen Cabral:	That is really important.  Until about maybe seven years ago I was still having ebbs and flows and dips in my energy because I was completely wiped out.  My whole body got wiped out and it was a very slow process rebuilding.  I would relapse and those relapses really made me connect again with how grateful I am when I have that energy.  So for me it's like when I have the energy I'm like; wow.  At one point I didn't have this and it's almost like; will it run out again?  It hasn't, but you do have to correct that.  

	The bottom line is - and this goes for entrepreneurs and business people as well - you have to get your body healthy.  That's the most important thing.  It really is.  Like we do adrenal-based and stress-based testing and we can actually see that people's adrenal glands or their cortisol levels are just shot, like they're depleted.  That's your fight-or-flight response.  That's your energy.  How are you going to do your best work if you don't have the energy?  How are you going to have any passion?

	When I relapsed or wiped out I had no energy to work.  I just made it through the day just barely.  I didn't want to do anything other than the bare minimum.  And every once in a while if I still get a cold or whatever it is I get that momentary feeling of like; oh wow, I know what that feels like and it keeps me related so I like that.  I like getting like a little cold once or twice a year.  It just kind of pulls me back.

Jaime Tardy:	I'm glad I'm not like this all the time.

Stephen Cabral:	Absolutely - and so I do think people - and this isn't talked about enough: as entrepreneurs or creators you need to keep your body firing on all cylinders.  And that means that in my opinion you need to get seven to eight hours of sleep.  You need to create what's called a diurnal rhythm, so if you don't mind me talking about this for a moment -

Jaime Tardy:	That's what I was going to ask you about because I keep going; okay, how do we know what is good and what isn't good, because we're just entrepreneurs, right?  We just keep on going, right?

Stephen Cabral:	You can't just keep pushing your body.  It has to just come naturally and it won't come naturally until you have natural energy but so many people just work off of what's called anxious energy and I was there myself.  Like the anxiety to do something, to produce, to write; like I published a book a few years ago with a major publisher and I had to hit all these deadlines and it was like, anxiety inducing.  It was like anxious energy - okay I'm going to do it and I was flying - anxious energy means that you can't sit down and just relax.  When you sit down, that means that you have to be moving.  Now, that's not real energy.  That's burning yourself out because you're basically stressing your body.  

	You put yourself in what's called a fight-or-flight position.  But now you can have energy and passion and you want to work but from the energy of basically relaxation.  It's just natural energy.  So I believe this: anybody who believes that they do their best work at night is incorrect and I know that's controversial.  There's no such thing as night owls and I'll go on record right now as saying it.  I used to be up until 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m. and I was exhausted even though I slept until 10:00 a.m.  During the day it would take a half a day to get going and then okay - I feel great at night; I can work at night.  

	The thing is humans have lost touch with what's called the diurnal rhythm of their body and this was one of the biggest things that got back my energy.  Nutritional supplements helped.  Good food helped.  Exercise helped but not too much.  Most people over-exercise and again as someone who owns fitness companies and all that you should not over-exercise because that burns the body out.  We do not give ourselves time to regenerate and rebuild.  

	Here's the thing: if you go to bed at the same time every night within a half hour or so and wake up within a half hour every single day you will naturally start to create your own diurnal rhythm.  Now if you can do that closer to when it gets dark out and closer to when it gets light out you will naturally get back in rhythm with the natural energy of your body.  So try to go to bed by 10:00 p.m. and wake up at 6:00 a.m.  It's fairly simple and straightforward.

	Now if you go to bed at midnight don't just go to bed at 10:00 p.m. tonight.  Try to work back 15 minutes or so every single week and work your way back.  I live in Boston, New England and it gets dark here at 4:30 p.m. and it's cold and you don't want to wake up in the morning right away.  

Get one of those little alarm clocks that wake you up with light.  It's amazing, and then it starts to just naturally wake you up out of your sleep.  There's one in Phillips.  I don't own any stock in them but basically it's called like a Wake Light and it just naturally wakes you up so you don't wake up to the siren of an alarm going off in your ear which immediately spikes cortisol which immediately gets anxiety going and it just wipes you out.   

	The other thing is I used to start my day too fast.  Now I wake up a half hour to an hour before I have to even leave the house.  What that allows me to do is start my day in a relaxed manner and it allows me to do something for me first.  That can be read - something that I love to do - or it could be start to plan my day, write an article; whatever it is.  I could also just get the big thing out of my day that I need to do.

	Now, someone like Richard Branson says that if he gets the first 15 minutes of his day right he really doesn't have to work much the rest of his day because he's writing emails to as many people telling them what they need to do for the day, kind of delegating, and his day is now - after that it's his.  

	So I would just urge people to - I can't go into all the health things obviously right now - but there are amazing things you can do for your body through functional medicine.  Just start to look into functional medicine.  What it means is that it looks at the underlying causes of why you are not where you want to be.  Your mood, all of these things - there is an explanation for all of it.  If you're having anxiety, if you can't sleep, if you have insomnia, if your joints hurt, if you have skin rashes, if you can't walk up a flight of stairs like I could; there's always a reason why.  

Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's your genetics or you're just destined to it.  Genetics play a part, but there's something called epigenetics which means that only your lifestyle allows for that to turn on.  And it's anything from toxicity, improper food, weak digestion, burnt out cortisol levels, lower thyroid; all of that and it's all-important.  So in order to operate your business at an optimal level, you have to operate the conductor of that business at an even higher level or you can't be a great leader to your team and you cannot get to where you want to go as a solo person.  
You need people on your team and you could outsource that of course.  I love having people in my office.  I love giving people jobs.  I just think it's phenomenal to help people build a career and I know again that what I do is different from a lot of people but if you love helping people there's nothing that is more rewarding than that.  

Jaime Tardy:	Yeah, I agree 1000 percent.  I just love the fact that you're one-on-one with people and still - I've got money and I do all this other stuff and yet I still really want to connect with people.  The one quick question that I have to go back to what we were talking about and align the two - okay, so you work eight hours a day in your day job and then four hours at night and then if you have kids - I know we have a lot of people who are listening and they're like; I'm trying to do all of those things.  How do I go to bed at 10:00 p.m. and wake up at 6:00 a.m. in a wonderful state and do all of those things?

Stephen Cabral:	Absolutely, and that is part of life.  It is a challenge but I will tell you this - let's say that you're sleeping for eight hours a day, right?  So you get that - never less than seven - I just want to tell people like you need that seven hours because you need to function optimally.  Now if you're suffering from fatigue or you're burnt out right now you will need that extra little bit of sleep and that's important but a 20 minute nap after lunch could do wonders for you to calm that parasympathetic nervous system down, basically to go into the parasympathetic, which just means to rest and relax and that's where you rebuild the body.

	You can also learn to start to breathe because most people when they're working they tense up and they start chest breathing.  That just creates more tension in the body and what you need to do is just to start to relax the body, relax the muscles and that will start to rejuvenate the body as well.

Jaime Tardy:	Do you have a video on that I could link to on how to breathe right?

Stephen Cabral:	Absolutely - I will create it when this interview is ready - we'll just go to StephenCabral.com/em and we'll get you all different links.  You can tell me what your audience wants and I'll put it in for free.

Jaime Tardy:	That's what I - give me a bunch of video - of course listen to the podcast too.  We already said that before but I want to go - we only have so much time - give me like four videos where you're like; if you guys do these things that's going to make a huge difference, okay?  

Stephen Cabral:	Absolutely, and so the podcast has nothing to do with it.  My business is health so I talk about wellness, weight loss, and anti-aging.  You simply can't have the anti-aging part of it until you do the weight loss part and after you lose the weight you want, then you get the wellness part and then you can do the anti-aging.

Jaime Tardy:	I love that you said that, though.  I don't think people get that because I was just reading an article today about there's a new drug that we can live to 120 years.  Of course you know this stuff because it's anti-aging stuff but it's so funny because people are like; ooh, I want to live to 120 but the pill they were talking about was a diabetes pill, which I think is hilarious because they're like; oh wait, we're going to make people that are already sick and on diabetes medication - which is great; my dad has diabetes - let's make everyone live longer, I agree.

Stephen Cabral:	But you don't want to live in a state of suffering.

Jaime Tardy:	Exactly.

Stephen Cabral:	People right now are in a shambles after the age of 50.  The issue is that yeah, I want to help people live longer.  People are living longer now than ever before, but what you don't hear about is that over 55 million Americans have an autoimmune issue and their lives are terrible.  The number one cause of disease is still cardiovascular disease which is absurd - like it's so preventable.  

	The bottom line is that if you have high cholesterol there's always a reason why you have high cholesterol.  It's very straightforward why you have high cholesterol.  There's only a half dozen reasons for why it could be and you just have to figure out what that reason is.  So I just wish people -

Jaime Tardy:	I have high cholesterol even though I eat really well.  They're like; it runs in your family.  I don't mean to complain or anything but like; it runs in my family?  What else am I going to do?  

Stephen Cabral:	Well, genetics are genetics, right?  So everybody has their genetics.  It's potentially a loaded gun but that doesn't mean that that expression has to take place.  It means that everyone in the family is suffering from an expression this specific in your genome.  The nice thing is once you start to produce more content and get out there you get to start doing amazingly fun things and that's why I don't do a five-year plan or a ten-year plan because just last week I got basically flown to Miami by this company that was going to be one of the first ones to bring genetic testing to consumers.  And I can't talk about all these specific things -
     
Jaime Tardy:	[Inaudible] [00:44:12]

Stephen Cabral:	Exactly, but where you can actually talk about how your health is so we do that right now in my functional medicine that I practice, but it's a 97 page report.  It's very in-depth and all these things.  What they're trying to do is create a back-in that's very easy because again, this is 101.  I can look at your genetics and there are these things called single nucleotide polymorphisms - SNIPS, for fun.  What that means is that shows you if you're susceptible to high cholesterol, Alzheimer's, breast cancer - what type of diet? Like, everybody talks about - oh, Paleo diet, Mediterranean diet - there is no one diet for everyone.  That's completely insane.  It's the diet that you're meant to live.

	These tests can actually show you that and then if you're predisposed to, let's say Alzheimer's, let's say five kids in the family all are predisposed to Alzheimer's but only two get Alzheimer's - well, they all should have gotten it because they all have the gene for that but not all of them allowed the expression for that because one of the kids had higher levels of heavy metals.  They had all of these different things that allowed for that expression to happen.  

	So anyway, that's the future of medicine and you get to do all sorts -

Jaime Tardy:	I'm really, really excited.  Like my grandmother has Alzheimer's and I did 23 on me and so you're saying this stuff and I'm going; okay - we're going to talk offline about all this stuff later on but I think that's what's so important.  Entrepreneurs need to understand this right now, that all of this stuff adds up.  Like entrepreneurs especially because our energy matters, what we produce and our clarity matters, and if you're eating crap food - no offense - your clarity probably isn't where it should be.

Stephen Cabral:	Without a doubt.

Jaime Tardy:	Like all these things need to add up specifically.  So if you could say one thing - and I know we sort of said the sleep thing - but if there was just one thing that could really improve everybody's life to start down this path, which I know is different for everyone, what would you do?

Stephen Cabral:	I have a clearance for that.  Really, the number one thing you can do - and I know this is going to seem insane until you do it - is you're going to have a smoothie, a liquid breakfast every single day.  Now I say that for a big reason and it is this: very few people eat the amount of antioxidants to get the nutrients that they need in their body.  They also start their day with coffee, which further dehydrates the body.  No one is getting half their body weight in ounces of water per day.  So if you weigh 160 pounds you should get about 80 ounces of water per day.  

Again, it's subjective.  It's going to vary per person and I recommend adding some - keep it simple - some blueberries or some type of berries in there.  You can add a little bit of greens if you want.  You can get crazy; you can add a little bit of flax, but you're going to do it with water.  You're going to do it with a little bit of almond milk if you want with that and you're going to use what's called an all-in-one powder.  Again, you don't have to use my product.  You can use anybody's product you want.  It's an all-in-one - it has all your vitamins, it has all your minerals, your electrolytes and your antioxidants for the day.

So if you do one thing, you just got it right for the day.  Now, why is this also more important?  This is like my huge topic to talk on because it helps so many people is this - you could have a cup of coffee if you'd like in the morning; fine - but now you're getting 20 ounces to 24 ounces of liquid to start your day so you're super-hydrated.  Most people are dehydrated and that's why they have no energy.  You're getting fresh antioxidants and berries.  You're getting your all-in-one but what you're also now doing is you're not having a muffin, you're not having cereal, and you're not having dairy and gluten and all these things that affect so many different people.  

I do food sensitivity testing all the time and with people the number of things that they're sensitive to are a lot of these things in all of these processed foods.  So it's kind of sometimes what you're not doing that's very helpful.  The other thing is this: we're told to maybe have this big breakfast, like the Paleo diet, and again the Paleo diet is the foundation point of how you should live.  You just can't have sausage and eggs and all that for breakfast.  That's kind of insane.  Like, in Paleolithic times do you really think that someone woke up and just said; oh, let me just get this bacon and eggs and fry myself up.  I mean it's insane.  You hunted - you had what you had for that morning.

So the other thing is this: if you have a big breakfast that's fine if you're going to go meditate after that or do light, relaxing walk but most people jump right into work and stress.  When you're stressed it shuts down your digestive system.  So now you have this big lead weight in your stomach that you can't digest and that food just begins to putrefy.  So there are so many reasons why I could go into why this is so important.  Do the smoothie in the morning and at least 20 ounces of liquid in that and you're just going to time-release and you're going to sip it over 60 to 90 minutes.  It's going to be the number one thing that's going to help you jump start your day.

Getting back to kids and all that - I have two kids - it is a lot.  There is a lot to juggle but you can make it happen.  Your lunchtime can be used for doing your most important tasks.  That one hour when you wake up in the morning can be used for those things and then you can find an hour at night as well.  So now at least you have three hours.  

You have some time on the weekends that you can sneak away.  All of these things do add up.  Will your progress be a little bit slower?  Maybe, but if you want do it in a safer way or maybe leave your job and you can do a little consulting with them but there are ways to do it and believe me, if what you set for yourself is meaningful enough you'll always find a way.  That's just the way it is.

Jaime Tardy:	I agree 1000 percent and I have so many testimonials from people with like four kids and a day job and making $10,000 to $20,000 on the side.  So just so everybody knows there's no excuse whatsoever and I really appreciate - I drink a smoothie every day so I'm really glad you said that.  We have this always in the fridge as much as humanly possible - exactly.  

	I got the times wrong on our call today so I went; oh, it's at 10:00 a.m. so my smoothie is sitting downstairs in the fridge because I made it and didn't have a chance to eat but hopefully I'm feeling great.  So what I want to ask you - because I know we have to start wrapping up and hopefully we'll have you back on the show again; we'll all start listening to your podcast too so that will be helpful - but tell me what's one action listeners can take to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Stephen Cabral:	I talked maybe about not having micro plans but planning for the macro.  The macro is this: you're going to figure things as you go along.  There's no doubt about that, but you do have to have a plan and so it's very important that - when I help a wellness client or a weight loss client or an anti-aging client the reason why people don't lose weight or keep it off or they can't get well even though they've seen a dozen other doctors before they come to see me is because they just didn't have a plan.  Like they said maybe try this or try this or let's just wait and see.  

	That isn't the philosophy.  You need to know what works the majority of the time and you need to begin with that plan and that has to be customized for you, tweaked a little bit for you.  So the problem is when I got sick when I was 17 years old no one had a plan for me.  I didn't have a plan for myself so I was like; oh, well I read online that this might help.  It's never that.  It's systemic.  You need to work from the sleep, the detoxification, the whole lifestyle and the thing is you were talking about sleep loss, so if you get a little less sleep guess what?  You're doing the other half dozen things right in your life so it's probably going to compensate for the sleep part.

	It's the same thing in your business.  You're going to be doing a lot of things right and a few things wrong.  The other things will hopefully compensate for that so you have to have the end results in mind and the end goal in mind which means that if your goal is to achieve X in business you have to just simply work backwards.  So for us let's say the goal is to do 1,000 appointments a month.  Let's just keep it at that.  So then what you have to say is; okay, well how many is that per day?  Is that 30 per day, 33 per day - okay, great.  Can I do 33 hours of appointments per day?  How many people would I need on my team to do 33 appointments per day?  

	Let's say each one of us could do six or eight.  Okay, well now that means I need four total people on my team.  Now I know what my goal is.  And so I say let's start out for the first three months - let's go back to the 12 week year - the first three months is me, the second three months the next person, the third three months, the fourth three months, guess what?  By the end of 12 months you are now doing 1,000 sessions per month and that's how it works.  
Honestly it can be that simple.  It's the same thing with weight loss.  It's the same thing with wellness.  There's no doubt about it; there's a plan to it but that's why you have to have a coach.  If you can't afford a coach that's okay - that's why I say don't leave your job right away sometimes because that's the money that you're making into your product or yourself and that way you don't have to go broke at the same time and have so much anxiety.  

If you can't hire a coach - understandable - I couldn't do that in the beginning as well, but that's where I found my love for reading.  I've read thousands of books and the thing is I honestly believe that if you want to become an expert in something just read - push yourself - if you read 10 pages a day you've read a book a month.  So that's what I tell all of the people on my team.  You want to become an expert because you're becoming a nutritionist, read 10 pages a day and you've read 12 books now in a year.  You are absolutely an expert on that topic compared to the majority of people.  

But let's say you could read 40 pages a day.  Now you've read four books a month, a book a week, right?  I don't know if that math is correct.  It's about that, yes - 280 pages a week or so - so that's about your average book.  Well, think about how much more you would know to get to your goals.  So anyway, when I got sick back before there was no real internet or anything like that and I just started to read.  That's been my biggest thing.  I love to read and I love to just keep pushing forward and just expand yourself and the bottom line is that you'll get there.  You really will.  You'll achieve your goals.  

Sometimes you have to put deadlines on things, absolutely, but if you haven't made it yet as long as you don't give up you will make it.  I really believe that. 

Jaime Tardy:	Yes.  I love that.  I've heard this a lot and I like to say business is simple but it's not necessarily easy.  I highly recommend everybody that's listening to make sure you have what that daily goal is or what that one thing is that really makes a difference.  As long as you keep focused on that one thing and keep moving forward, that's what I've learned from you and just seeing all of your trajectories I'm like; man, you have it all figured out but you don't have it all figured out.  You're just moving forward as you go which I think is hugely important because everybody is like; well I can't start until I know the end.  Nobody knows the end.  It's so silly.

	Thank you so much for coming on the show today.  Tell us where we can find you, your podcast, and all that fun stuff online.

Stephen Cabral:	So my main hub is StephenCabral.com - Stephen with a PH - and I'm sure we'll link that up.  And then I'll do - I guess any questions that your audience has I would love to answer them for you.  That is why I do what I do.  So if you just go to StephenCabral.com/em we'll set up a nice little page for all of your listeners.  My podcast, you'll find that at StephenCabral.com as well.  I think it will be a nice adjunct to all the business podcasts that you do listen to because I think that you need to be well-rounded in life and to get the most out of your business, to not have any regrets in life which is what I'm all about.

	Those are my goals are just to do the things that you would regret not having done in your life.  And yes you needs sometimes money and options to be able to do those things and you need to balance that with the lifestyle as well.

Jaime Tardy:	I agree 1,000 percent.  I don't think enough entrepreneurs pay attention to this.  It will make your business better if you pay attention to yourself and invest in that.  Thank you so much for coming.  Everyone, check that out and download his podcast.  Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Stephen Cabral:	Thank you for having me.

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Tags: 12-Week System, Goal, Goal Planning, Goal Setting, millionaire interview, Overcoming Limitations, Plan Backwards, Planning, SEO, Stephen Cabral, The 12 Week Year

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Goals, Millionaire Interviews, Systems/Processes

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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