How to Build Energy That Compounds Like Your Investments

Opening on Compounding in Health and Wealth 0:00

If you could compare the mindset of long-term investment with long-term health optimization, what would you say is the biggest similarities? The compounding effect. What seems small in the beginning has amazing dividends in the end. Again, to repeat this, it's like Einstein said that the compounding affects the ninth wonder in the world. It's amazing if you put pen to paper and you look at the numbers and you just save a little bit consistently and you invest it wisely, let's say in the S&P 500, how big that number can become in 30 or 40 years.

Health is the same exact way. You make small incremental improvements on a daily basis. The gains will be huge. This is Dr. Talks. Welcome to the TBD Fit podcast, where we are blessed with our guest today, who is a very, very close friend of mine. So I'm very appreciative of him coming in and spending some time together to have what should be a very enlightening conversation. I want everyone to meet Ilya Zlotnik, who is for two years in a row, Forbes top 100 best advisors in Illinois. When I turn to wealth advice, I often We'll inquire as to where he can point me in the right direction.

But beyond that, he's just been a tremendous friend. We have developed an incredible relationship. And so that's probably what I value most. And so I wanted to highlight his success as a patient of ours for the last two years here.

Introducing Ilya Zlotnik and His Health Journey 1:34

He comes in and works out with us and I manage some of kind of his health concerns. And so I want everyone to meet Ilya Zlatnik. Daniel, thanks for having me here. It's truly an honor to be on your show. And one of the things I look forward to the most every week is training with you and your team. Awesome. Love to hear that. So let's dive into your story because I think it's unique. I will never forget an anecdote that you shared when you mentioned, and this was, I mean, years ago now, but the first time you ever felt that you were able to breathe or take like a true deep breath.

which I think that's one thing that's often overlooked is just our ability to breathe. We often just take that for granted, but there's many people who suffer with asthma or allergies or struggle with breath. And I think as science continues to evolve, we now realize often enough, what are the cause of allergies in most circumstances? And we can typically undo the allergies that people are facing. It's not a consequence of bad luck as many practitioners once were led to believe. And so I just want to hear kind of from you, your trajectory, how things have transpired for you in terms of your health, being able to breathe, and kind of what you attribute some of the progress to.

Yeah. I remember I graduated undergrad from Indiana University. I had like $50,000 in student loans and didn't really know what I was going to do. Graduated the finance degree and kind of got into the business world. And it was likely that period of time, those first 12 to 24 months were the most stressful times in my entire life. So I was trying to figure it out, right? Trying to figure out how to build a career, what I wanted to do, how to make money, how to be able to interact with my peers and people that were older than me, all these things were new.

I had to figure out how to pay off my debt as well at that time. And that period, the enormity of stress started to manifest itself into kind of physical ailments such as we talked about alopecia. I started literally losing my hair in the back of my head because of the stress and I would have to go to a dermatologist to get injections to fix that. And the other issue that it caused was I couldn't breathe properly. I remember almost for like 10 years straight where I couldn't really breathe consistently.

My breathing was very labored. could never really figure out why that was. But also at that time, for some reason, I was drawn to exercise and more of a healthy lifestyle. But also you kind of have all this baggage that you build up over the years because my parents were immigrants. They didn't really understand what it is to feed your kids a healthy meal. It was probably like a lot of kids. I drank a lot of pop. I ate cereal, which is like sugar in the mornings. But luckily for me, for a few things that I felt lucky about, I think genetically I was always gifted, but I always loved exercise.

I always loved playing sports and all that kind of stuff. So that was a counterbalance. But also at that time when I got into the career, I started looking at more holistic ways of trying to heal myself. And that's where I started my journey and kind of fast forwarded to 20 years. It's become such an integral part of my day and my life and something that I really enjoy and has made me a lot healthier and allowed me to enjoy life a lot more. And you guys with TBD have been a big part of that journey.

Yeah, it's a remarkable story. Again, in terms of, and I appreciate you being vulnerable because sometimes that's hard to address as men when we're going through certain pains or ailments or suffering from these. Usually we just kind of bottle things up. And so I remember when you came to me early on and you were looking to just improve your overall physique capacity to do what you love, which is rock climbing, which we'll get into.

Stress, Breathing Issues, and Early Health Struggles 5:53

I appreciated the opportunity to help improve your health and fitness. And I remember early on too, when we would look over labs, often enough, we would see many things that other practitioners or that you would come in and be like, yeah, everything looks normal. And I said, well, given what you're suffering from, I would suspect it's anything but normal. We just begin to normalize what's abnormal. And so there's a lot that one can discern within lab work. When we began working together, I know that you expressed concern over kind of some of these things.

How did you feel our approach, I guess, differed from maybe that which when you were working, whether in a conventional setting or seeing some other practitioners? Yeah. Well, I've always done my annual checkup. My insurance covers it, it's free, so I go do it. It's like a check the box type of thing, and they do your blood work, and that's about it at that time. I remember recently, a couple years ago, I would go, and all of a sudden, you sit down with the practitioner who, it's different every single year, and they ask you the same questions.

They're like, Do you sleep well? Yes, because I'm maniacal about my sleep. I haven't always slept well, but lately I've been sleeping really well for many reasons, which has been amazing. Do you eat healthy? Yes, I try to eat as healthy as possible. Do you do drugs? No. Do you drink? Not really. You have good relationships, all those kind of things, right? Then they give you the lab work. and then it comes back to you. And then everything is kind of within the normal band. Besides, I think I was high on cholesterol or blood pressure was one of those things.

It's hard for me to remember exactly which one it was. And it wasn't like something that was alarming, but I sent them a message. I'm like, what's going on here? They're like, well, they sent me like a very like boilerplate message response. Well, you should think about getting better sleep. eating better, exercising more, having better relationships. I'm like, I told you, I already do all that stuff. It really bothered me, but I shared the labs with you and me and you sat down and we went through it line by line and things that were normal, you said, hey, you got to think about optimizing that because at the end of the day, It's like what's normal for the broader US public isn't really normal because the broader US public is not healthy.

So I'm trying to think of where should I be to be kind of that top 1% when it comes to feeling good. And that's your approach as well. Yeah. I know we addressed obviously mold issues because when I see things in a lab that are off, I start to question, okay, what's driving this, right? We need to figure out what are the underlying factors. And especially when we talk about anything impeding respiration and healthy breath, I often think some exposure to either chemicals or toxins, certainly mold.

And so we would do some other testing, which was definitely warranted and came back with definitely high levels of things that we've been able to treat with you. And I know that you've seen improvement, but that's, again, I see that all the time is when patients come to us with labs that look normal, it's usually anything but. And so I know that you understand that in terms of how you prioritize your life, I am absolutely astounded because you're not the typical patient. As you said, you're maniacal about sleep.

You're very, very diligent with nutrition. I know when I put you on a specific protocol, you're like, I'm not touching anything that you said, which is impressive because it just speaks to the level of detail of how you live your life, which is likely why you are successful in what you do. I mean, you make sure that no stone goes unturned. So let's talk about maybe kind of your priorities and how you live your life and like what you prioritize because how you set up your days is extremely admirable, even for me of how kind of myopic I am with my daily choices.

I mean, you might even exceed where I take things, which is just, again, impressive and speaks to how you're able to balance everything. Because obviously, as a partner with where you're at in the financial advisor position, as a partner in the volatile capital, I mean, you see probably a lot of people, you manage a lot of people. You're really improving someone's wealth, but what I see what you do is extremely well is really drive health, which then creates more wealth. So talk to me about that.

Yeah. Well, I feel like I feed off of you. So there's kind of like this feedback effect where you're doing something, I want to learn more about it, and then I kind of want to elevate my game, and maybe I'm doing something, and you're like, oh, I want to do that. That makes you want to elevate your game. So there's definitely that aspect of things. As far as kind of my approach, for me, I think nothing really can be done at an optimal level unless you have a lot of energy yourself.

Labs, Mold Testing, and Optimizing Health 10:42

Energy drives everything, right? So it's like, you know those days you wake up and maybe you didn't sleep well because you decided to have a drink the night before or maybe you ate too much or didn't eat healthy and you wake up and you wake up sluggish and you're not in a great mood and you're not excited to tackle the day. So what's that going to impact? That's going to impact the relationship you have with your kids, with your spouse, or your significant other, the interactions you have at work, all that kind of stuff.

So I want to start with What can I do on a daily basis that'll allow me to wake up with the most amount of energy so I'm excited to wake up? I'm out of bed at 6 o'clock, 5.30 naturally, and I'm excited to tackle the day. So there's a lot of things that go into that. Sleep's one of them, trying to reduce your stress through mindfulness and exercise. trying to limit your interaction with social media and technology. You need technology, but you want to be wise around how you interact with technology because technology can really drain your battery.

So there's a lot of things, obviously eating healthy. But to me, it's like you asked about the intersection between health and wealth. With wealth, it's amazing the compounding effect you could have if you have a long-term view. So just saving a couple thousand dollars on an ongoing basis, if you invest that properly when you're 60, that's going to be a ton of money, a ton of money. And the mistake I see a lot of people make is they're just trying to do getting rich quick. A lot of people do that, or they're trying to lose weight quickly.

And by taking shortcuts, but if you do the right things and you don't have to do everything perfectly all at once, because there's a lot of bad habits you need to unwind. But if you think of it as a journey and you try to just do incremental improvements. on a daily basis, understanding that sometimes you'll make a lot of progress, sometimes you'll take steps back, but if you want to just take incremental improvements with wealth or health, you turn 41, I just turn and you're like, oh wow. What used to be hard is now easy.

It's not hard for me to turn down a cookie. The idea of eating a cookie for me nowadays, I'm like, nah, that's not gonna make me feel good. I'll just have a piece of fruit. You know, so there are still things I want to tackle, but now it's easier now than it was before. Because I've unwound a lot of those bad habits that I had before. What are some other bad habits? Because no one's perfect, right? Perfection doesn't do this. And you're probably at a stage where you're at now because you've been able to unwind some of these bad habits.

What were some other habits that you've changed? And what did you replace them with? I think one habit that I had that was really bad, and if I'd asked my brother, he'd make fun of me, is I would just have the worst munchies at night, and I'd eat like a box of cookies. I would torment myself all day, not eat, and then just crush a box of cookies. And then I wake up and exercise or something to get all that glucose out of my system because it was killing me. I've done a really good job of being like, okay, so I'm trying to phase it out.

First of all, you don't want to eat too much at night. But I'm like, okay, well, it's hard for me to not do that. So instead of eating those cookies, I'll eat like a bunch of fruit or like a bunch of peanut butter, you know? And that wasn't good either, but I've eliminated that and I've gotten better at not eating too much at night. But it was such an incremental thing that happened over a 10 year period, you know? So it was like small little progress amounts to a big success. Actually, this is a good one.

You know, I climb a lot. So it's like, you get there and you're like, oh shoot, I got to climb that mountain. It's a long distance, but then you put your head down and you take one step at a time. Next thing you know, you're at the top. Everything you are saying echoes exactly how I speak to my patients, which obviously you being a patient, you get it. You are just literally amplifying everything that we talk about. And one of my biggest struggle, which still remains in some capacities, eating late at night.

The problem becomes priorities because we prioritize everything else during the day. What you've done masterfully is been able to prioritize your life. So you dictate your schedule, you decide when you're going to choose to do certain things versus others where it's just kind of reactive. Like things happen, you're like, oh, okay, I have to do this first, do that. And then our health takes a back seat. And I've seen your health journey tremendously proliferated in the last few years because of how you've made your health a priority.

We were just talking with another former climber who just came in here prior to you. And I was almost bragging, like you would send us these shout out videos, these testimonials on top of a mountain. And to me, that is the epitome of life. Like you're living life on your terms. And that's, I think what I really appreciate the most, how you've been able to prioritize living life. And that's also translated into your kids with being a father. I mean, I have tremendous reverence with what you're doing with your children and exposing them to the nature and the elements and really kind of exposing them to a different form of stress, which is a healthy form of stress and having them kind of grow in that sphere and normalizing that environment.

So again, I applaud you and kudos to you for being able to do that. As far as your morning routine, because I think you're pretty dialed in, what does your morning routine look like? There's a few things. It starts off when I go to bed and what I eat at night because that dictates when I wake up and how I feel. So don't eat at night or eat little or something healthy if you're just going to need to do it. Try to go to sleep no later than 10 o'clock or be in bed at 10. I'm not always perfect. I had friends over yesterday.

I went to bed at 11. which means I woke up later than I wanted to. But let's say I can get to bed at 10 o'clock, that means I'll naturally wake up between 5.30 and 6, which is a big win for me. And I didn't overeat or didn't eat anything healthy, meaning I'm waking up feeling light with energy.

Daily Priorities, Energy, and Habit Change 16:48

I want to get up and I like taking a cold shower because that's a good way for me to just get going. Some people drink coffee. I like the cold shower. And then it depends. I want to be able to spend some time in the morning with my kids. because that's just an awesome time to be with the kids and engage. So today I played a little bit of horse with Noah before he caught the bus to go to camp. That was awesome. And then, you know, I do, I've really tried to optimize my mornings, but, you know, if I could wake up early enough, I want to do like a meditation, yoga type of session because that allows me to kind of get the blood flowing.

And you wake up at 41, things start to get tight. Your neck gets tight and all that kind of stuff. So you want to get the blood flowing, get the blood flowing to the brain, try to clear all that negative energy or thoughts that you might have in your brain through meditation, and then kind of focus on what you want to accomplish that day. And then I go to work. And usually, my thing is I want to be proactive in the mornings, not reactive. And there's things coming into your inbox that you feel like you...

And that's endless. That's always going to happen. So I try not to look at my emails in the morning. I try not to have my phone on. I try to have a few big projects or the priorities in the morning that I need to tackle that I can do with a clear mind. So I'll do that and then, you know, see how the day evolves. I think the big thing for me is that I'm trying to work on is when you do turn on that phone and you have that inbox flood of things you have to be reactive on, you kind of get kind of attached to your phone after that.

And then that really spending too much time on your phone, looking at your emails way too often, your text messages can be depleting. So that's something I'm trying to work on. On a macro routine though, your strength training here, you've been consistent. Is consistency kind of what holds supreme for you? Because I know you're being the success you've achieved with climbing. I don't know if you consider yourself a professional climber or a recreational climber. I'm a professional wealth advisor.

I'm a professional dad too. You guys have to see these pictures that he sends me. I mean, it's like, what's the highest peak that you climb? You know, honestly, it's not my peak so much, but I've done some pretty intense adventure stuff where you're in very remote areas. a lot of training that goes into it. I mean, it's risky stuff. I mean, you make a mistake, you could die, you can get severely injured. So I take that very seriously between training with my climbing partners, thinking about risk, planning ahead.

So, yeah. Let's actually double click and underscore the component of risk. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about that in terms of both wealth management and then health management. Yeah. Because I think they definitely overlap. Yeah. Well, with risk in the markets, it's like the more risk you take, the higher the upside. It's all about kind of understanding your clients and structuring portfolios that align with their risk tolerance, what they can stomach with volatility and things like that. So there's an art and a science to having those types of relationships with clients.

I have a very high risk tolerance when it comes to adventure sports. For whatever reason, I'm just wired that way. But the more risks you take, the more training you need ahead of time to make sure that you reduce the risk of something bad happening. But you can never eliminate the risk. But then again, you can never eliminate the risk in life anyway. be watching TV and have a heart attack. That's true. That's risky. That is. Everything comes with, I guess, pros and cons. There's a consequence to all our actions.

But in terms of health risk, I think it's a question of maybe what people are not doing and what you've really, really prioritized. Looking at the forum, I know we had this discussion the other day of investing Yeah. Right. So when you're investing in the markets, um, obviously there's a specific risk profile or risk tolerance, but when you're investing into your health, I think that in terms of myself, I know you kind of, again, echoed that similar sentiment is that we don't look at it as an expense.

We look at it as an investment, not a liability. It becomes an asset, right? I'm not price sensitive when it comes to nutrition. or nutraceuticals such as supplementation or anything that I'm doing circled around my health because I'm constantly using myself as a guinea pig to test. As obviously science continues to evolve, new medicine, new formulations, new technology, I'm trying to stay on the cutting edge to ensure that we're moving the needle here for our patients to just deliver the most optimal outcomes.

I think you get it where most people don't. I'm curious how that overlaps with, you know, your people that work with you, not only your colleagues, but clients in terms of health is an investment. It's not a cost. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because it's always interesting for me to see people that are very successful, that have done well, that are willing to spend a lot of money on a nice car, a nice car house and other toys, when it comes to their health, be price sensitive. and look at it as a cost.

And I'm looking at these people, clearly they're not very healthy. And there's a lot of negative things that come along with not being healthy. For some reason, I've convinced myself that everything I do when it comes to eating healthy Spending money on kind of doing the same thing that you're doing, like spending money on supplements and all these other things like the oxygen hyperbaric chamber and the sauna and the coal plunge, it's not a cost. It's an investment because again, it's an investment in my energy and that energy allows me to be a better friend, a better friend.

advisor and that to me, and I mean, I look at the numbers, right? Like the revenue I make in business goes up consistently. So I'm just plowing back into myself, like you plow back into your business. And that tends to, if you do it the right way, that has great returns in Longren. Do you ever provide any sort of suggestions with your clients in terms of that? Like how, hey, are you considering this? Or maybe you should consider something like that too? Well, I mean, yeah, to some extent. Lance, obviously.

Lance is a client of mine. And I remember talking to Lance, and he was complaining about his back, or he had some kind of injury that he did. And I'm like, you got to talk to my buddy, Daniel. I think that's a sauna beating. It's ready for me in five minutes. Can we wrap this up? Or can we take this into there? Not a bad idea. be a tight fit. But no, Lance, I introduced Lance to you and that's been a great relationship. And I think Lance has introduced him. Lance is actually a great connector. He's introduced me to a lot of his friends and colleagues and traders that have become great clients.

But I think we've talked about that synergy, me and you, because listen, I want my clients to live forever, right?

Morning Routine and Training Discipline 24:18

It's good for them. It's good for me. So I think there's definitely an element of being able to make suggestions there for them as well. If you could compare the mindset of long-term investment with kind of long-term health optimization, what would you say is kind of the biggest similarities? The compounding effect. What seems small in the beginning has amazing dividends in the end. Again, to repeat this, it's like Einstein said that the compounding affects the ninth wonder in the world. It's amazing if you put pen to paper and you look at the numbers and you just save a little bit consistently and you invest it wisely, let's say in the S&P 500, how big that number can become in 30 or 40 years.

of health the same exact way. You make small incremental improvements on a daily basis, the gains will be huge. I mean, I just turned 41 and I feel honestly the strongest I've ever felt. Like the other day I was at the climbing gym and I did a route It's called onsights. So I onsighted a route. The onsight means that you've never seen the route before. You've never looked at it. You've never studied it. You've never seen anybody else climb it. So when you climb a route, it's like a jigsaw puzzle, right?

The more you climb a route, the easier it becomes because you know where to put your hand, where to put your feet, where to rest. First time you do it, you don't know any of these things. So it's always harder to do it the first time. I climbed a certain grade. It's called a 512, which I've never onsighted that level of grade before. And I did that 41. And I think it has to do with all these other components in my life that have led me to be able to do that. You're welcome. Thank you. No, but if someone's starting, say even let's go back 20 years, like if you were 20 years young, right?

And I think that's when you started your rock climbing career, right? Yeah, in my early 20s. Yeah. What advice would you give yourself 20 years ago, looking back, I guess? Well, I mean, to answer your first question, I think the biggest problem most people make is they want quick results. and they want the easy button. And that's the same thing with investing. I mean, like, people are constantly trying to think of get rich quick schemes or invest in this really cool stock that's going to make you a ton of money and they have FOMO and they're missing out because the AI bubble is exploding.

But if they just said, hey, I'm young, I'm 20 years old, I have a long time horizon. I just want to make smart decisions consistently, save money consistently. That is going to give them the highest probability of success long-term, not trying to figure out the next hot stock. And your health is exactly the same way. It's like you have a long time horizon. Just make smart decisions consistently, make small improvements. over time, don't try a scheme that's going to make it easy for you. Like I remember as a teenager, my brother was a little chubby and he convinced my parents to get him one of those machines that like electrocute your stomach to give you a six pack.

You gotta electrocute it. I mean, it's like that. It's like those little things, it's like, I'm not gonna go to the gym and eat healthy and get a six pack. I'm just gonna put some electrodes on my stomach and it's gonna stimulate me while I watch TV and eat Doritos. Like, don't do that. as an example. It's funny because I mean, I've always had a six pack. Obviously when playing soccer and at the level that I did is fitness, it becomes core to your existence. I've never ever put that once on. I think I cried at one time.

I got shocked. I was like, that's enough for me. I have to say that it doesn't work. I mean, there is benefit there, but I think you're absolutely like consistency is king. I see that. Consistency is king. Yeah. When you speak of time horizon, I think, um, all of us at some point, we're all looking for a shortcut. And I still allude to shortcuts when, you know, using peptides as an example to enhance like a cellular output and energy and healing, um, or different nutraceuticals or the use of stem cells.

Yeah. But see, that's just like gravy on top. Yes. That's just like, uh, another arrow in your quiver. But if you don't do everything else right, then that stuff doesn't really make an impact. Yeah, it's not for lifestyle. So it's my foundation five. You got to eat right, sleep right, move right, talk right, poop right. Okay. Once you master that, you're going to feel right. Yeah. Which is what you've done incredibly well. Yeah. So I agree there. It's the, the principle of life is a marathon. Yeah.

Right. And it's just one foot in front of the other. I think is really key. And that's often overlooked because even in a healing journey, when patients come to us, people want or expect, you know, like, oh, things are going to get better tomorrow. But the most successful patients, I think, understand that it took decades for them to get to this point, right? It's going to take time to unwind or undo some of the damage that has accrued. Yeah. And that's what cellular aging is. It's just our exposure to this constant deluge of toxicity.

And what you're doing really well is constantly detoxing. I mean, I know that we would have sauna parties, as funny as that sounds. We would go and we would sweat and really sweat intensely to make sure that we're every single day constantly trying to undo the burden that we suffer just from our modern evolution, our modern lifestyle. So again, I have to applaud the fact that how you've made health a priority. When you think about wealth. What does wealth mean to you? It means a lot of things. I mean, it means waking up and having energy and being pain free, being able to breathe, having the ability to dictate my schedule and spend time with my kids and have good interaction with them, connection with them.

That means having the financial flexibility to take my kids on a trip. It's not material goods. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have stuff. They're just like anybody else, but that doesn't actually bring me that much joy. I try to have less stuff if I can, but it's hard nowadays. It's interesting because everything you reference doesn't speak to dollars and cents.

Risk, Investing, and Health as an Asset 30:28

To me, that is fundamentally so profound. Because in an era now where we're in a consumer mentality or a capitalistic society, which I don't want to undermine anything, how things have evolved in that capacity, the principle remains though, we're constantly on this rat race to achieve more. And I'm victim to that too. I mean, I want to grow the practice to be able to help more people. And so we have certain goals that we want to achieve, but often there's a kind of an underlying tone of, okay, what about financially, right?

We're always thinking, okay, to make more money so that we can do or buy more stuff. I think between you and I, what we have this common understanding is really to experience more, to trade in dollars for experience and to be able to live life on our terms. which I know you mentioned that some time ago is like, my ability to take an extended vacation with my family. He's like, I don't know that anyone can go, can leave for that long, right? Like, how have you been able to do that? But beyond that, it's just a question of priorities, right?

Are we prioritizing family or friends, you know, or whatever you want to do in your career, right? Your ambition, your drive just to be able to learn to grow. What does that look for you in terms of kind of carving out your future? Do you have specific plans that you want to achieve? Not only kind of from the wealth financial horizon, but like in terms of the intersection again with health meets wealth, like what do you want to do? What do you want your future to be like? Anything specific on the horizon that you're excited about?

Don't get me wrong, just to preface this, I'm driven to a fault to some extent from a business perspective and growing it. That's not always the healthiest thing, but it's just part of who I am. I try to temper it with all these other things that I do. I think I have a lot of goals. I want to be able to grow my business. I enjoy that. I want to be able to travel with my kids and maybe take extended trips with them and disconnect for a little bit longer if possible, because that's nice to disconnect, although I feel like it's very difficult.

in today's modern age, and I'm definitely addicted to responding and trying to figure out what to do next and what to improve within the business. I'm connected, just like anybody else, but it'd be nice to be able to disconnect for a period of time. That'd be nice. We've got some big fun climbing trips coming up. I'm going to the Cascades with my girlfriend in a couple of weeks. We've been training pretty hard to climb in this area called the Forbidden Peaks in the Northern Cascades. Very ominous, the Forbidden Peaks.

It's a three-day trek across snow and glaciers and some technical rock to just this beautiful place on the summit in that area, so that should be fun. You know, did we talk about misogis? Remember? We did some time ago. We wanted to do a yearly misogi, which we still have to get back on that track. Yeah. So this is kind of like my misogi. It's pushing the limits. It's something I've never done to this length, this length of time of actually being out there for three straight days. So that's, I want to be able to do kind of that kind of stuff on an annual basis.

anything that would prevent you, like within kind of how you design your lifestyle structure, how much you've been prioritizing your health of kind of accumulating wealth. Wealth is, I understand it's just kind of the background compounding effect of just investing. It's almost like, set it, forget it. Well, no, I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, no, I mean, maybe parts of it are, but I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into building the business, which is- Sure. No, no. Yeah, yeah. I guess the business aside, like, is there anything you're doing differently or specific to prepare for, well, for a three-day event that you said?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been... Yes, a lot of training lately. I mean, we were just out in Washington a couple of weeks ago just to kind of prep and get used to the environment. You know, strength training with you once a week, you and Mason and making sure I'm healthy, focusing on the kind of things that could prevent you from being out there and enjoying it. You're hiking with a very heavy pack, so making sure your knee strength and you're doing things that you're not going to injure yourself with your knee.

So I'm very focused on that and doing things like knees over toes. Me and Mason, one of your trainers, focus a lot on knee health. That's a big part of it, along with elbow health and all that kind of stuff. I'm at the climbing gym consistently, ramping things up. I'm constantly hiking with a heavy pack, increasing the volume every single week. Um, until really probably this weekend will be my last weekend of really increasing the volume. I'll be in Devil's Lake training out there. Um, and then the rest is you kind of want to taper and then kind of focused on making sure you're healthy, making sure you know what you're, you know, you're, you're focusing on what lies ahead, the actual like logistics of getting there and making sure you have all the right gear.

There's a lot of gear that's involved with their, with that, making sure you have all that. Making sure that you kind of are, you have all of your thing honed in with your systems and your safety. So there's a lot that goes into it. How much are you considering hydration when you're out there? Yeah, I feel like hydration to me is like if you're not drinking alcohol, you're eating healthy. There's a lot of hydration that comes from eating healthy, like eating fruits, eating vegetables. So if you're not eating packaged goods, it's all like just, there's no hydration in it, and there's a lot of salt, and you're getting dehydrated, as long as you're drinking normally.

Like, I actually find this funny. You know, you have that, but it was just fine. Like, I remember with the climbing gym the other day, this guy comes around, and I've seen this, like a new thing, a water bottle this big. I'm like, who needs that much water? You really don't need that much water, but out there in the elements, you have a filtration system and you just literally go to a stream and fill it up

Compounding Returns in Long-Term Health 36:38

and you filter it. That's your water. Which is actually so interesting because that's naturally structured water. Water that's kind of going over minerals and rock formation adheres to this now natural structure that the body does so much better at absorbing. People think just drinking water is drinking water, but often what we're drinking is distilled dead water out of any sort of minerals in almost this chaotic form. And Dr. Jared Polk, who's been brilliant, I think he's out of Washington, who realizes now this stage four or the impact of having a structured water and how that impacts cellular hydration.

So water to me isn't as simple as just the water that comes out of our tap, even though most of it is full of contaminants now, or this RO distilled water, like water in its natural most purist element, ideally devoid of a lot of these heavy metals or contaminants, obviously chemicals. is extremely hydrating, but it's funny when you say that. Like this type of water? Well, preferably in a glass bottle, but if you're drinking kind of like that. I like Green Mountain. Huh? Green Mountain? Yeah, we talked about it.

Mountain Valley, I think. Mountain Valley, that's the one it was. I'm always looking at kind of where it has the least amount of particulates and contaminants, so I'm very myopic with water. When you mentioned carbohydrate, people often vilify carbohydrates. The whole thing now is keto or carnivore and carbs are bad for you. No, it's always in the context. Carbohydrate. It's in the name. You're absolutely right. So if you're eating right, you're going to naturally rehydrate. So carbs to me. especially healthy vegetables and fruits is going to help with that representation.

So again, everything you're saying is exactly discussions we have with our patients. So I know you've been able to, it's funny because when you walked in today, I think you were like bowing down like guru or tutor. Hello, are you following me? Guru, guru. Guru, guru. Yes. We joke, but you get it. Like you've learned it. And so your health is a representation of your discipline now. Yeah. And obviously I see, you know, we've imparted a lot on being able to get you to a much better place, obviously in terms of kind of mold and breath work and making sure your blood chemistry is also optimized from working on kind of the internal components that were kind of impeding some of your progress early on.

So this has been an incredible partnership in the sense of I love seeing you progress. Like when we get these videos and testimonials, the other one I think was like a week or two ago where you were at whatever, it was like 12,000 foot elevation and you were doing a cold plunge in some lake that was like, I don't know, 20 degrees or something. Alpine lake, 40 degrees. Yeah, so needless to say, I mean, it's... I think that that to me is how I define living epic. Yeah. Right. Living life on your terms, getting in touch with nature because it's tremendously healing just doing that.

People don't realize that the impact of grounding. I mean, we're always looking, you mentioned tech, you know, and people can get lost in that. There's benefits to PMF, PMF pads that people do, but grounding is free. Getting out in nature is free. Just walk barefoot on the grass. It feels so good. Completely free and tremendous at reducing the excess hydrogen ions that's built in the body recharge with. with the electrons and so the body can again reduce that inflammatory load and simple things like that.

Even getting out there in the levels you are, you probably are only breathing clean air. Your lungs must just- I mean, you're at a neuro factory. Let's just say that. No factory insights. It's incredible. So I look forward, potentially, I know we discussed doing Devil's Lake here in a few weeks. So I think that the takeaway for me is we just need to prioritize that more. you have become a model for what you stand for. So the discipline aside, I mean, you're going out there and you're just exploring new terrain and obviously living life on your terms, but the component of immersing yourself in nature and then obviously optimizing what you can on the backend, the whole component of eating right, sleeping right, moving right, talking right, obviously pooping right comes with first four, you're covering all your bases and it's no surprise how you feel.

Any kind of last thoughts that you would maybe impart on our viewers in terms of, again, the intersection of health and wealth, because I know you bring a lot of experience in terms of wealth management. Maybe if you want to say something in terms of our investment, I know you suggested the compounding effect, but anything in terms of the intersection that

Wealth, Adventure, and Future Goals 41:28

you think would be core just to- Well, it's just a thought popped up, not necessarily that, but I think as a viewer who's trying to figure it out, it's like, listen, this whole world is currently designed to make it as difficult for you as possible to be healthy. everything about it, whether it's social media or the garbage that people try to get you to eat, everything is designed. So it's like literally you're waking up and you're going to war. You're going to war for your health. And it takes so much energy to be able to do it because every time you turn your phone on, you're being advertised to do this or that, then none of it's healthy, whatever it might be.

It could be porn, it could be Doritos, it could be that next hot chick that's on the social media thing. It's all difficult to do. So I think you should measure your success from just getting up and trying to do the healthy thing and whether or not it actually manifests in anything in the beginning doesn't matter. Your success is just doing it consistently, showing up to the gym, even if it's for five minutes and then 10 minutes. Just be consistent and then it'll have a snowball effect. over time.

I think that to me would be the way I would approach it. I think that's a James Clear Atomic Habits. I mean, it's absolutely brilliant. It's the small wins. It's the one foot in front of the other. People, I think we always have to plan or like think about the future, which is important, which is probably what you discuss with your wealth clients, certainly. Same I do with my health clients, but ultimately we can plan it for the future and then forget the importance of the little wins today, the little details.

So I say to me, life is certainly in the details and it's just taking that one healthy choice as you just alluded to so elegantly makes a huge impact. So the little wins make up obviously the big wins. Where can people find you or if they want to reach out or kind of get you to their millionaire success story quickly overnight? Where can people kind of find you? Yeah, so I guess besides trying to be healthy and ClientMountains, I am an advisor. I do wealth management, something I love doing. I've been doing it for 20 years.

We have a great team, a great firm, really helping clients make smart decisions over the course of their life. And regarding anything when it comes to their financial life, and there's a lot of things to think about, it's very complex. Just as trying to be healthy is complex and it's good to have a coach like you. I'm a trainer. I think, you know, once you kind of get to a certain point of wealth, it's good to have an advisor that's got your back to help you make the right decisions. So you could find me at VivaldiCap.com, V-I-V-A-L-D-I-C-A-P.com.

That's the name of our firm. And or reach out to Daniel and he'll connect you. Forbes top 100, ladies and gentlemen, but obviously more importantly, I mean, as you guys have now understood just how Ilya has prioritized his health earlier, how he sees it as an investment, speaks volumes and I think has really been the foundation of his success. So this has been a genuinely pleasure to have you here and to kind of shed some light on what you're doing, what I call, you know, a patient's success story, a patient's journey into the world of optimizing health and wellness and how that translates into wealth.

Last question as we end with all our guests, if you could have one superpower, what would it be? If I could have one superpower, what would it be? Maybe the ability to stay fully present. at all times, not to have to worry about the past or think about the future. So when I'm with my kids, I'm not ruminating about something at work or something else that's bothering me, but be fully present with them. Because those times that you are fully present with them, it's pretty amazing. So I think that there's a saying about your number one, it's the attention, the presence that you have.

That's maybe the most important resource in any interaction. The presence is certainly a gift.

Presence, Final Thoughts, and Outro 45:48

Thank you for this beautiful gift. It was a genuine privilege. I look forward to spending a lot more time outside of here as we continue to do so, have our children raised together, and hopefully I can get them into professional climbing as you have. They're just tinkering around. Thank you for your time today, Leah. This was awesome. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being.

For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.