Laura (00:03): So here's the challenge: so many entrepreneurs dream of leading a life of impact by creating a multi-million dollar brand, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. On this podcast, we speak openly and authentically about what it takes to scale your business, following the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts, and leaders, looking at the behind the scenes of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur, wife and mom to three. I love talking all things business, especially digging into the mindset and strategies of scaling joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. Let's go! (00:49): Hey, hey, welcome back to the Scale with Joy podcast. I'm here with Yuri Elkaim and he is at Healthpreneur. He was a former soccer player, professional soccer player, which is so interesting. He's the CEO and founder of Healthpreneur, a leading coaching and training company that helps health practitioners and coaches grow to seven and eight figures with their coaching business online. So welcome Yuri. It's so nice to connect with you. Yuri (01:19): Yeah. Thanks Laura. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Laura (01:21): And you're also a father of four boys and a husband. That's incredible. Yuri (01:27): Yes. It's busy households, but apparently I love growth cause there's a lot of challenges that come with that and it's great. So yeah, it's fun times. Laura (01:38): That's so fun. I have two boys, 16 months apart and I know the crazy that can ensue, but it's so I find it pretty character building, even in the moments where I'm probably not at my best, like when they tear apart, you know, something that I thought looked really nice, but it's been, it's really, really good to have those moments. Tell me a little bit about just what brought you to today. You have both a health background as well as a fitness, as well as being able to scale as an entrepreneur. Yuri (02:10): Yeah. So I mean, my journey started, I think when I was 10, I wanted to play professional soccer. That was my dream when I was a kid. So I dedicated the next 10 years to hopefully making that happen and made a lot of sacrifices, gave up family vacations to train and play. And in my early twenties, I was able to play professionally for three years, which was awesome. But when I was 16, just about 17, I lost all of my hair to an autoimmune condition. And that was a bit of a wakeup call for me because although I was active and fit, I wasn't healthy. I grew up with just not the best dietary choices, you know, subjected to antibiotics and a whole slew of vaccines and stuff. But I knew it was, my body just became a bit of a wasteland. So I didn't realize like I didn't recognize why that all this was happening when I was that age. It's what really prompted me to get into health and understand, you know, how could I solve this for myself? (03:02): So that really the combination of like soccer and fitness plus, like this health issue really moved me in that direction of pursuing studies in kinesiology and health sciences. Then I went back to school afterwards, finishing that to get my degree in holistic nutrition. And it was really just first and foremost to like solve my own issue. And I was like, huh, I'm not finding the answers I wanted from doctors, all of the solutions related to injection cortisone into your head. I was like, let's not do that. I started to learn a lot about nutrition and I got very, very passionate about that. And through my own learnings and application, I was able to regrow my hair and I kept my head shaved the whole time, but my eyebrows and everything came back. And then, um, obviously I don't have any now it's cause a couple of years ago, long story short got another tetanus shot and then my hair fell out again, whatever. (03:52): So that's kinda what started me into this journey. And then I started training clients after I finished my professional soccer and working with them on a nutrition basis and I really enjoyed seeing their transformation. But the challenge is that I very quickly got into trading time for money, like 12 to 14 hours a day. And that became very, very exhausting. So after doing that for about seven years, I was like, you know what, there's gotta be a better way. And I, there was I guess at some point in 2006, I started my business online to share my message with more people and see if I could get more leverage and impact. And it took me a long time to get leverage and impact and traction. Cause I thought I could do everything by myself. And so I started off in 2006, just creating programs like nutrition workout wise that people could purchase from our website. (04:43): And I didn't know anything about marketing and business. Eventually I got some coaching and mentorship and built that business to multiple seven figures. We helped half a million customers around the world. I wrote a New York times bestselling book and was on Dr. Oz and all this stuff, whatever. And I got to a point where our business was very successful on the surface, but behind the scenes, I felt like this was a frigging nightmare. Like there's way too much complexity. There's way too many product lines is crazy. And during that time I had a lot of people in our space ask me for business advice because they saw like what we were doing. I was like, there seems to be a big demand for health professionals to like build a better business online. So I started Healthpreneur six years ago because of that. And in that process sold my previous company. (05:30): So now I'm exclusively focused on Healthpreneur, but our mission is to help a billion people on the planet. And I realized that if I can help other health professionals build better businesses that in turn can help not only them live a better quality of life, but help more people, then I think we'll get closer to that goal. So that's, that's really what brought me to today. I love what I do. I absolutely love it. And I'm just very blessed for, for doing meaningful work that impacts people's lives and you know, being able to be on podcasts and you know, like stuff like this and share the messages is what I love to do. So yeah, that's the journey in a nutshell. Yeah. Laura (06:04): And it's so aligned with what I love to talk about here on this podcast, because having scaled multiple businesses myself, there are times where it was so stressful and so hard and it was chaotic or you had financial surprises because of the way that it was structured. And then there's been other times, like right now I'm in the process of scaling a multi seven figure business as well. And it feels fun and light and there are so many components of it that yes are intellectually challenging, but also very joyful. And I think that that's a really important conversation that is often missing in the internet marketing space in the world of how many commas are in your comma club award. So I think that, you know, as we're talking about this, I love that you're really bringing up the health component of it. What are some of your personal practices as an entrepreneur that you utilize in order to stay in that centered space? Yuri (07:03): Yeah. I mean, I think what I'm about to say is also reflective of the season that I'm in, in my business. I don't know. It feels like this when I first started, because I do think there's a time where you have to put in a little bit more hard work, but I also don't think you should compromise your health and the process of it. And also like I always found this kind of ironic, like a lot of health professionals, their number one complaint is burnout. Do you see to yeah, so now I mean like the most important thing I can do with my time is teach coach and think like those are really the only three things I should be doing. And when I, when I look at those, um, you know, the biggest, the biggest thing I can do is really just fill up my cup and make sure I'm taking care of myself. (07:46): So first thing I do in the morning, I wake up at 3:48 AM every morning. And basically I've got a process where I do a three minute cold plunge, uh, which I absolutely love. However, recently I turned a chest freezer into our cold punch, right? So there's a whole process there.