
Make a Living & Life as a Functional Medicine Expert

Medical Director, Holtorf Medical Group

Founder & Peptide Consultant at East West Health
How to Make a Living (& A Life) As a Functional Medicine Expert
Regan Archibald
Full Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background 0:00
Hello is Doctor Kent hold tours for another episode of the Peptide Summit 2.0, and today we'll be talking to Reagan Archibald. Pretty amazing guy. Functional medicine practitioner and entrepreneur. So we're talking about really how to not only practice great functional medicine, but also how to make money and enjoy doing it. So, thank you. Reagan. Your turn. Your become one of my heroes. I have so many skills that I basically suck at, so I really appreciate it. You're awesome. Well, I'm. I don't know about that, but I really, am honored to be here, and and, you've been, a hero of mine for years, and and actually one of the first times we met was at one of my go wellness events when, we looked at the, the Matura that one of the presenters was teaching on peptides.
And you said, hey, that's my material. And I said, well, I'm kicking that speaker off, and you and you teach it, and that I just really appreciate your leadership in that moment. I said, this guy's a real, he's he's just a gem. He's a leader in our community. And so, I really thank you for putting on this peptide summit. Oh. Thank you. Yeah, I was in Salem. I'm like, wait a minute, this is my slides. And at least, you know, take some effort to change something, you know? Right. I'm. Are you calling me sir?
I suggest you don't come in, you know? Yeah. He was, He's never been back since then. I don't like that. Was just, you know, something that where you got to draw the line, right? And so it was, perfect. And then you just, inspired everybody, and we just that we realized we did not know all the things that you taught about peptides. And it's still to this day, you're just, a leader in the field that's been incredible to to, learn from that. That's very kind of you. It was like a sign, though, you know, everything's like a sign zone, you know, like, Yeah.
So about Reagan, he graduated with a master of science and, traditional Chinese medicine. A medical college of Hawaii. Not a bad place to be. And went on to create award winning clinic, the East-West health in 2004. He is a founding member of the Anodyne Pain and Wellness Solutions and is, on a clinical advisory board there. He enjoys working with his six clinic, clinical locations throughout Utah. I don't know you that many clinics, and managing all those clinics, which is one of his skills that we had nine franchises, 22 centers.
It is tough. It is it is hard. And I, I'm skipping Utah, Hawaii and New Mexico. His teams have successfully integrated traditional eastern, medicine and peptide therapy with regenerative functional medicine. He's also founder of the Go Wellness, which is a training and mentorship program, which I'm very impressed with, for some of the most transformative doctors in the health care field. He loves mentoring, learning from and coaching, health care entrepreneurs. He was the first ever American certified and see it, as Shinto sati.
Say, man, I will do it on Google. I know how many times I screwed it up. A system of acupuncture that balances the immune system. Everything's immune system and realign spinal imbalances. He has also had several. Vance. Postgraduate training in functional medicine. I know so much about so much. And, I know your education is is is huge beyond this, with, peptide therapy, regenerative medicine. And he is really able to see the big picture and tell you and how to implement it into your practice. Which I think is the big thing is that, you know, as doctors, we go to these lectures and these conferences and it's like, you know, theoretical.
They're going to say this, okay, it's great. I know about it. But now the how do I do it? You know, and I think that is the biggest hurdle for so many doctors. And he will show you, show you how to do it. And it's very cool to work with, by the way, he's also done the Vance training, postgraduate training and functional mentors. And we talked about that. So as career, he's been a prolific writer, speaker, teacher, instructor. He's inspired thousands of health care providers with the idea about creating, new health care for the future.
And that's it. We'll talk about that, you know, where where are we headed? I'm a little worried about what the heck's going on. Compounding pharmacies. Your branding left, so a lot of things and, telemedicine and, you know, who knows? This country is changing and medicine's changing weather, for better or worse. Well, last, the expert, he's author of seven books. I have, like, seven books, 90% completed. I could never complete them. And this created 18 training programs. And I have. Yeah, about 18 training programs that he sent.
To help practitioners transform their clinic results and revitalize the purpose, including the peptide advantage, which will be offering at, with this, summit, and the health care entrepreneur and functional medicine training. And it's just well worth it. It's just like, you know, I don't know how I might sell, but just so many doctors are just kind of scrambling, and, it gives you a feel of control, and things are so much smoother, and you don't have all those, you know, constant things that are not important, but, oh, need to get done, you know, and you can focus on what you do well, and you're basically your stupid human trick where it's like, hey, I do this really well.
I can focus on that off the deal with the stuff that I don't like to do, and I'll show you how to do that. Shares knowledge on, podcast, your healthy self and go on this radio. This purpose is to make, peptides and collaborative medicine, which I think more and more is key where, you know, I think everyone's kind of on an island before, and I think we've kind of learned that we need to stick together. It's not competitors, it's more collaborators. And I think that's such a better way to look at things.
Collaborative Medicine and Practice Philosophy 7:10
Mainstream medicine is going to heal, basically. And, so, you know, basically this is a forging, leadership in the health care field and, and the pain and chronic illness. Everyone's sick. Everyone's frickin sick. Now, you go to a party, and I can't tell you on people always come up and go, oh, my God, I'm so sick. My doctor says this. And then you say, well, how about this? My doctor says they don't have that. Well, okay, how's that working for you, you know. Right. And the health care system is broken, but, and it's, a totally separate system, so.
So you gotta treat patients and do it where you actually won't lose your mind, and patients will be happier. You'll be happier? Yeah. More actually free time and not kill yourself and practice better medicine. And he is, and he and his team have weekly live practice accelerator or coaching calls, that can be accessed that go wellness.com/park. And I'm in the, small bus, group where very dysfunctional. I have to wear a helmet and he tries to teach me, Great. Well, thanks for the introduction. So I, I'm very resistant to changing.
We'll get you there. Okay. And, sounds good, but, no, you're. I'm a big fan. And I think that, what you do is so missing, and, you know, medical education, we always think about, you know, doctors are terrible business people, terrible investors. I keep saying, why do I buy, high and sell low or do I, you know, and I get confused, but, you know, how to really it's interesting and and value your services, you know, and, I've learned that I always go, oh, my gosh, through the years, like, I like, you know, I don't know, I think I have to raise my prices.
And then I'm like, wait, I'm getting more patients, you know, wait a minute. I raised it again. I'm getting more patients. And and then if we can just offer some decent customer service, we get more patients. And I know that we lost like some upper in patients because we were expensive enough. You said, oh, he can't be good if he's only charging that, you know, and packages are huge. And that's been, you know, struggle for us. So well, so we're going to bring Reagan in and I said we need the, full service, muscle package.
So it's going to transform everything. But, again, thank you for being on and taking the time. I know you're busy, guy. You got it. Really good to be here. And, you know, you mentioned something in the in the intro that I think is really important, which is the collaborative medicine approach. You know, I don't think what we're talking about today, it's not alternative medicine. It's obvious. It's not mainstream medicine. It's not complementary. It's kind of like a backhanded insult. You know, what we need to do is, is health care entrepreneurs is we need to start standing up.
And actually, you know, we have all these movements going on, you know, black lives Matter and all these other things. I'm like, well, actually, we get, you know, I found that there is discrimination in health care and you have an opposing opinion. You'll get censored these days, or if you have a different degree or a different license. I tell people I'm no respecter of credentials. You know, everybody's got something to bring to the table, and that's where I want it. My goal is to make collaborative medicine, mainstream medicine, and to actually give people, a portal and an opportunity to transform their health.
Otherwise we're all going to be stuck where it's not just the pandemic right now. There's going to be multiple and there's there's other diseases that need to be addressed. And so today, hopefully I can share with some of your listeners if they go back and say, what's what's the biggest challenge in your practice? I hope that I can open up a portal so that by the end of this conversation, they'll start to have much more clarity on how to build out a practice that can actually free more people from chronic disease and free them so that they can enjoy their life again and not feel like they're under the thumb of mainstream medicine.
Yeah, and I think it's a couple of things I don't want. So many people are sick now and it's people are getting sicker. And the model and the health care model is terrible. And doctors are miserable. Patients are getting, you know, just terrible care. It's like a family practice. They don't do anything. Okay, go to the cardiologist, go to the neurologist, go to the gas for all. Just, you know, people aren't bringing all this together. And this is what the whatever you want to call it. I hate that music.
What do you do? I don't know what to tell them. I say I'm a quack. And they go, oh, why do you say that's that's a, you know, is that I really think if you take two months, you can be a better specialist then the care people are getting from their specialist. Okay. Unless it's a brain surgeon or surgery or, or something like that. But they doing the same thing for 20 years and they don't change. They don't read medical literature. In fact, an internal medicine, show that doctors are practicing 10 or 20 years behind. That's a bill in the medical literature.
It takes, on average, 70 years for a proven new concept to be accepted in the mainstream medicine, unless it's a new drug and you have a sales team. And it's it's interesting. So it's, you know, I think, like alternative. No, I think we're better medicine, you know, it's. Yeah, it's it's actually where we take a scientific approach. We say, okay, this works, that doesn't this works, that doesn't, you know, we have hypotheses and we put together theories and we collaborate as a group. And we put together a treatment strategy for patients.
And then that really gives us the runway to help solve chronic diseases. And that's that's what I see where doctors struggle the most is they try to incorporate peptides. For example, when you when you spoke at my event a couple years ago, maybe three years ago, everybody had like, whoa, like you like BPC one five, seven times better for, Apatow and what's this guy talking about? And and now I, you know, fast forward, I said, the biggest challenge that doctors have is taking these new models of medicine.
And I think peptides are the future that will revolutionize medicine if if we can keep on this trajectory. I mean, I know we have some regulatory boards that we have to consider. Yeah, yeah. But, but what I see is, is doctors struggle because they want to use a peptide like they use a drug. Okay. You've got all the symptoms and we've classified that. Oh it looks like you've got Crohn's disease. And and you've got leaky gut. Let's give you some BPC 157 instead of like, let's actually get people on, a year long program where they're using peptides to optimize their health.
And we're not thinking of peptides to reverse disease. Yes, peptides will reverse disease. But when you can start thinking outside of that small, narrow box of diagnosis treatment, then you start opening your eyes to a whole nother world that can exist. And then when you put a program together that can free doctors up where they have enough time to work with patients, versus let's try bouncing off a one for a couple of months, and then we're going to rerun your blood labs and see what your lymphocyte to look like.
Yeah, it's it's, it's interesting and, and it's also changing the patient's expectations and what's really needed there we go. Yeah. You don't need the stream for for one month. I didn't notice anything. Okay, stop. You know, where it's, you know, you you need to stick with it and be a partner in health, you know, yeah, that's and that's the the brilliant thing about it is when you in your programs, you know, I'm going to ask everyone to, to look at what you're offering your patients right now. And if you're offering them a fee per service model, you are stuck in the dark ages of, conventional medicine.
If you say, hey, how much is my office visit, you got to pay me every time you come to see me. Now, you owe me for the peptide. Now you owe me for the IRBs that I put you on. Now you owe me for this lab that I ran you on heavy metals. You know, what you want to do is you want to take all those services and create a whole unique process that you take your patient through. They will love it. You're going to get better results. You're going to feel more freed up because you and now have some runway, you know, if you want to, if you're going on a long flight, you're going to have a big old plan and and if you don't have a long runway, if you having a fee per service model, that's where doctors bury themselves.
They get burned out. They're always selling their patients on the next thing, the patients expect a quick fix. And we're practicing this, this, this functional, this new type of medicine. But so many of us have taken the same mindset in, into this, this new medicine that we carried with us from the old version of medicine. So the new version is memberships. It's putting programs together. It's having it's having a plan that patients will stick to. And, and I read a study where it's actually patients or really people in general.
They are more stressed about making a decision than after making the decision even it's the bad decision. Right. So and I think about so we send the patient to the front desk and we'll have ten things or less. How many they got to say do I want this to do I want to come back? I don't know if I can afford this. Every month is every month. And they got to just decide every time. That's so stressful. They just go, I can't do it. And then they talk to their husband and go, oh, you spent what? You know, instead of, like, they made a decision.
Look, I am going to commit to a year. They're more compliant, they're happier, the outcomes are better. The doctor's happier. That is not to like talk about prices. You know, every visit and sound like a used car salesman. And, it just it's a win win win, you know? Yeah, it's it's a fun way to practice. And so, you know, I think each one of you can look at the way that your, your business is operating right now. And the crazy thing we forget is we get held hostage by our own policies, by the by our own ideas.
And so what I, what I encourage everyone to do is kind of break free and make a decision today because, I think it was, Teddy Roosevelt. He said the the best decision you can make is the right one. The second best decision you can make is the wrong one. The worst decision you can make is no decision. So you're right. And, and so, you know, if we all just decide, hey, let's practice medicine, let's elevate the standard of care a little more. Let's be the Ritz-Carlton. Let's be the Four Seasons. We don't need any more motel sixes around.
Building Better Practice Models 18:40
I can tell you that does not get the result. There's a lot of motel sixes, and, yeah, that's standard medicine. And if you break an arm or something, that's good. But if you have any complex illness, forget it. You know, it's, you know, where is all the spending in our country? I mean, we're in this $17 trillion infrastructure with health care. It's insane. So it's like, well, let's let's figure out where that money's going. Well, it's going to treat chronic disease, but we're using acute care to treat a chronic condition.
And so and then I see too many doctors bringing that same model. They want to practice some holistic medicine. They believe in it. But they they try to bring that same mindset into, a brand new version of medicine. But really, the beautiful thing about it is you don't have to you can actually create the rules. You can actually formulate your programs however you want. So the way we formulate ours is we put in all the peptides. So we put it in phase one, phase two, phase three. There's allowance for each phase we have an urban supplement bank because I'm a Chinese herbalist.
So I love, you know, using the the herbs with the peptides. And and finally a very synergistic very synergistic. It's gorgeous. I mean you can use something like cordyceps for example. And, and cordyceps is it activates the Ampk pathway similar to, to mozzy. Right. So, you know, you can you can see all these ways that you maximize that. There you go. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, we I think we forget that there are some of these ancient therapies that go so well with the the modern medicine and, but I do see that if we don't take our patients and if you don't give them a clear roadmap, they're going to be confused and a confused patient.
They go into decision making fatigue because their brain that's our biggest problem is and because we'll go through the peptides and it's like ABC equals x y, z to that. It's like great right. And like it's you know, but yeah, it's totally true. This one also mentioned about, about degrees and things and, and I agree that degree doesn't matter. It's what you do after. Yeah. And it's people continually learn. You can't. I mean, we have patients that are so frickin telling you they know more than every doctor they go to, right?
And have no degree. And then you have the super specialist that's still practicing the same damn thing. Won't read a journal, article. And, just a quick story. So I wrote a article on, HPA axis dysfunction and chronic fatigue syndrome. Published it. And I give to to a patient, and he's feeling so much better because I'm a show man of chronologies. And it wasn't out yet. And he gives the endocrinologist and he goes, oh, I read this is a terrible papers. No you haven't, it isn't out yet. And he do it in the trash.
He goes, I don't need to read it, you know. Wow. Yeah. I mean that's that's typical. Yeah. And and and so as you know, in the, community that I've created with Go Wellness, all we're looking for is an open minded doctors. You know, we're always intellectually seeking. No one's got all the answers. But I think if we if we take the right mindset with this thing, and have the right context around health care, we can be part of the solution because, you know, it's it's, I believe Abraham Lincoln. I've also repeated humanity say this, but the best way to predict your future is to create it yourself.
And so every day I ask myself, okay, the lotto tickets are going to do it for me. And that's what I find of I'm like, I'm sick of this. I buy more a lot of tickets. Yeah, here's here's your key to success. Just scratch it, you know? Scratch. Wait. If your fingers crossed and hopefully it goes well. Yeah. That's, that's what a lot of us are doing with our health. And unfortunately, we do that with our practices too. So. So we are like you, we see the worst of the worst. We have patients who've been to all the specialists and, you know, they come and they they say, wow, in the 45 minutes I spent with you, you shared with me more things than my specialist has in the last ten years.
I've been working with them. Like what? What is this? And it doesn't take any special skills. It doesn't require you to go back to school for another ten years. You don't have to go and do a bunch of crazy training. All it takes is an open mind and actually looking at things from a patient's perspective. And so when a patient, when they when they come into your unique community, they realize there's something different going on and they can feel it. And then when you have a novel medicine that you that's easy to explain.
I've never found anything that is as transformative as peptide therapy because of the way that it works with the body. It's a bypass. You know, I've thrown patients on herbs and done all the functional medicine, heavy metal, chelating NAD knives, I mean, everything. And then at the end of the day, we're like, we're still not getting in there. And then we put them on a peptide program and boom, within months, you know, I just talked to one of my diabetic patients. Well, formerly diabetic, and we took her through a six month peptide program.
She had already been through a 12 month functional medicine program. We got our hemoglobin A1, C down. She's still on the same amount of medication, but she got it manageable. And I said, that's not good enough. Managing a disease is not a win for me. It's not the result. We put her on our peptide program and she literally got off the insulin. She's no longer insulin dependent. She's on metformin. She was able to put on. So she was she was wasting away. So she's been able to put on 5 pounds of muscle.
She's got her fitness back. She's got the brain fog is cleared up. She doesn't have the emotional drops. And that would not have been possible if we didn't put her on a process. So total life changing and and essentially I would with BPC 157. It's very it's very homeostatic. Like if you have a low blood pressure it raises it. If you have high it lowers it. Yeah. Oh or if you're hyper quagga, you know, it's less if you can't coagulated it goes up. And yeah, it's kind of like smart smart meds type thing, you know, and so safe, you know, some of these you can take a thousand times a dose.
Try that with Tylenol or water even, you know, dead right. Yeah. Yeah. The lethal dose on peptides. It's like man, I know it can't find it. It just doesn't exist. And yeah, you can go and buy vitamin C and you can you can kill yourself from dehydration from vitamin C much quicker than you could ever injure yourself. And that's probably one of the safest things around. So. So what do you see in 2021? Or what are the challenges in 2020 versus 2021 that you see the big differences? I think the biggest, thing that hopefully all of us got out of 2020 is we were able to to have five years of progress occur in a matter of six months.
We put a practice that I've always kind of half assed done virtual care. And what I found in 2020 is I said, Holy smokes, people are now willing to push a button. They're willing to watch a seminar. So our marketing, we decreased our marketing expenses by 90% and increased our results. We doubled our results. So that's that's pretty phenomenal when everyone else was retreating. I've never worked so hard in my life as I did in 2020, but it was the biggest learning experience for me because I realized that, number one, I had to get my team confident.
And so we we did, stem cell IVs. We did Amazon, Apple One, we have unlimited amounts of herbal supplies. So everyone felt safe so that we didn't shut down. We said we're going to we're going to help the community here. But you certainly can't say it. You can't say, hey, this is going to help, you know? Yeah. We put a, article on vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc for one night for Covid within 24, with with 22. References. 24 hours later, FTC false. You know, fake news. Like what? Take it down. I've got two letters this year as well.
And but I am working with the the health department here in Utah. And I'm saying, look, we have a, a large subset of the population who does not believe in vaccines, whether it's religious reasons or, for other reasons. But our goal is to keep the community safe. And they, you know, so I I've been in these roundtable discussions and they are now considering vitamin D testing. So you can do a rapid vitamin D test for five bucks. Oh my God. So cutting into like these, they're like revitalizing adults.
It's like even the study like people on a ventilator. They gave vitamin D 5% mortality. Didn't give it 50%. I don't know if we should give that right. This study out of Spain was the most compelling where it was. I think it was like 300 plus patients, and and they all were tested for vitamin D, they had below 30. You know, most of them were in the teens and their vitamin D levels. Half the group about 150 got vitamin D IVs within five days. They were all discharged from the hospital, minus about two of them.
And then the other half stayed in the ICU. You know, some of them died. They ended up on ventilators. I mean, it was just like, you know, is there some common sense? And that's what I'm trying to bring to the table, not not just to get the thing that is it common sense or corruption? Yeah. And I don't I can't speak on the corruption side. Because, it's it's hard not I mean, it's, it would be just, we just be throwing mud and I wouldn't know if it's factual or not, but I can tell you that I, the common sense is absolutely lacking.
I grew up on a farm in Idaho. We we played in the mud. The crap we were like. We are exposed to all kinds of crazy bacteria, viruses every single day. That's what we need, you know? Now, now, our our our whole trajectory is let's spray all anything we possibly can and let's, let's aerosol it out. Let's let's put masks over our face. Let's not have any social interaction. You know, it's just, yeah, we're in a pandemic and this virus has some teeth, but I think it's probably some of the ways that we set up our health before the coronavirus ever hit.
That that has actually been the reason why we're in the pandemic. I have a little stronger opinions on it, which I'll leave some for a personal conversation. We don't want this taken down. So that the, with the some black helicopters coming, what's in your 17 year career? What what surprised you most? What's been the epiphany moment? You know, I think one of the defining moments that I had is, you know, as as an acupuncturist and a Chinese medical practitioner, I always worked with the neurologist and medical doctors, and I started integrating and hiring them early in my career.
But the big epiphany that I had is I remember coming home and I, my kids were already in bed, that my daughter was three and my son was one. My my wife at the time hated me. She just was like, oh, you can never work. And I said, well, yeah, I mean, it was true because I, I don't blame her because I was working literally, I was with patients. I was treating 200 patients a week by myself. I had, you know, and an administrative person, and I had that. I had the just a big responsibility. I had a six month wait list.
I was really good as a practitioner. I really know how to connect with people. And and I know it's a unique ability that I've got.
Peptides, Programs, and Patient Outcomes 31:00
But I couldn't balance my personal life. And so it's a passion, which is good. But also you need balance. You need balance. And you know, I'm on fire. I'm like, what's that? Yeah, yeah. On the on the five elements. I'm I'm 40% fired. So you know, I burn things up and I burn myself. I burn myself up. I, you know, it took a divorce and kind of this this moment, this breaking moment where I realized, you know, I, I, I need to start doing things differently. And so it was it, it was that night when I, you know, I just started sobbing.
I just had the realization that, why are you what are you doing with your life? Because I could only help so many people. And I just said, if I can just have one more person, then I'll be successful. If I just have one more person, that I'll be fulfilling my destiny. And I just had that, that wake up call. And so, you know, I went through I had a divorce and I made the decision that night that I was not I'm not I'm going to do my life different. And so I had the gifts where I could rewrite my whole future.
You know, the best way to predict your future is to create it yourself. I got and I woke up and just felt like, okay, this is a new beginning. That's it. Yeah, I had no other choice. I said, I do not want to live this way, I want it. I, you know, I have an amazing wife right now. I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. And so I made it. I made it my mission. I said, I'm going to free myself. I'm going to build a practice that can run with or without me being there, so I can still fulfill my purpose and my destiny.
But it's not going to be a Reagan show anymore. It's not going to be about me, because I realized there there's a lot of ego in that. And so I said I had to step back. And, it was really painful because my Japanese teacher, I ended up leaving the fold of the sea world, which I was, you know, I was the leader there as a first person, the first American certified in that, you know, I went through a whole religious break and and I just restarted my life and it changed everything for me. This was 11 years ago. So the beginning, like. Oh, right.
I mean, that's that's the hardest thing in life, right? Is, Yeah. If you, you know, the beautiful thing is when you free yourself up from the past. So I just freed myself up. I said, hey, Reagan, the former version of myself did things a certain way, and it got me a certain result. And I don't like that result. So I'm going to do things differently. And so I just, you know, George Costanza did the opposite. You could do the opposite to. Yeah. Yes. But I, I wanted to create a bigger future, but I wanted more freedom.
At the end of the day, that was what I was able to to call. So how did you from there make that happen? So you said, okay, I want to change. Yeah, but who's your mentor? How do you go about it? Yeah. Well, and that's the thing is I, I took every single training program I could, I hired all the best of the best in the world. I would max out my credit cards. I didn't care what it would cost. I remember being on the phone with one of the sales reps. I said, I need the coach, I need the mentorship. And, And courage showed why I was my first mentor in the group.
And, it was literally I was like, oh, we maxed out that card. Let me get this card. Then I got a third card, but I, I took everything that I was taught by my mentors and I implemented. I was a very good student. I said the only way I can free myself up is if I learn to put as much passion into my business as I do my patients, and then it's going to be a win win. And so that's what I did, and I know what I was thinking that's so profound, because I think what changed my life and I was sick and this kind of got me into this alternate, which I would never have done.
I went to every conference, had no money. So I've just, you know, I can't afford it, but okay, I just, you know, whatever. I got a blank check. Here we go. You know, whatever. And no money in the bank account, but just went to every damn conference around the world, and it it was the best thing ever. And I think anyone who invests in themselves, it's such a great investment, man. You know, I can't. Would you say there's any other thing that that you'd rather invest in than your your improvement as a human being?
You. And if you look at my investment history, I could retire if I didn't invest in other people. I'm serious. Yeah. No, I know what you're saying. Yes, it's a it's it's basically. Yeah. A joke. But, no, I mean, it is like, investment skills are so bad, but no, investing in yourself, it just always pays off. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. And the more you do, the more you get back. And and it's amazing. You know, I think it through, through the years I, I've had, you know, so many lessons a lot of them are very expensive lessons.
But I can tell someone else, they tell you what not to do, you know. Yeah. But it's worth it. That's and that's, that's how we progress. And so, you know, once I became successful and I realized, oh, wow, I have a practice. I remember in 2013, eight years ago, I went on a trip to Ireland, and I was gone for almost two weeks. And I came back and I said, don't contact me. You guys got it. And I came back in to see how my experiment worked out and they performed better with me gone. And that's when I realized, okay, there's some magic here.
And I got to start sharing this with other people. So so, you know, that's part of what I do. I'm more interested in the science and the medicine. I love that, but, I'm really fascinated with finding better ways to deliver and administer health care as a team. And because you can only treat so many people, how many people can you treat yourself? You know exactly. But you're showing doctors how to treat patients and be happy and be able to do it. You should go on the site sermon. I don't know if I've ever heard that you want to hurt the most miserable doctors in the world.
There's a whole thing on. Like, they're all feel stuck, but they all think there's no way out. Right? And I used to post and say, well, you got to learn something really well and get out of the insurance. Oh, that's impossible. You know, it's just like, it's like my brother who's anti Tony Robbins, like, no matter what it is, they'll give you a thousand reasons why you can't do it, you know. Oh yeah. And it is. You can. The misery is palpable and this and well and and I think it's just in our society right now I mean, our brains are hard wired 17 times more likely to listen to negativity and positivity.
And so I really, you know, I work on my brain every day. I listen to Isaac chronic beats. By neuro beats, I mean, I'm always like I try to be very sensitive to what's going on in my brain because I realize whether I like it or not, my thoughts are impacting everything in my life. What's really not in my mouth or not. And I've seen that in so many cases. And I know, you know, you got to some of you, you guys are like, oh, Reagan, come on. But actually, if you just try it, just just for a week, I have this little exercise.
I call it the Mindset morning. And the mindset morning is just where you you get wake up five minutes first five minutes of the day you breathe, you just clear your head. Timer goes up. Second five minutes of the day, you're writing down your goals, your affirmations. What am I going to do today? Who am I going to serve? And then the third five minutes, you just visualize that and you visualize what you want to feel like at the end of your day. Because emotions are powerful. We I think we forget, especially as men.
We think, oh, I don't need a face, my emotions. But that's the most powerful part of you running a business is can you use your emotions to push the whole thing forward? Can you actually use your emotions to attract the right clients and the right patients? Can you use your emotions to free yourself up so that you energy to attract or, you know, and then when I was sick and you know, this feeling bad, it's like, I didn't know I did this, but I grew up as a, you know, plus three years you have woken up and discussed like, you know, just and I'm like like I've been like, you know, like, that's not a good way to wake up.
You know, it's kind of, sets the tone of the day. I mean, if you look at everything you've accomplished, doctor, whole talk, I mean, so few people have accomplished what you have, and. And did you ever imagine you you have done all that you've done in your profession? If you look back ten I was voted to, you know, basically over under lifespan about 24. So it's all gravy now. So but I wouldn't live the way I felt, you know, and that was it. And you think you want all this money and do this and just wait until you get a chronic illness that and you go from doctor to doctor, you know, and the physician and, you know, but they don't have any words that don't believe, you know, are sarcastic.
And that's what really, you know, doctors can be so mean. You know, and again, there's exceptions. But as a whole, I think the most unsympathetic people, I guess. Sorry, we're talking about cut this out now, but this is the group of doctors that actually care, right? Know. And we're the ones that are criticized as, oh, we're not Evidence-Based. We, we're the ones staying up til four in the morning reading the journals, trying to help the sickest of the sick because they take the easy road out and don't believe in that illness because they don't be a bad person.
It's easier to say we don't believe it, you know? And the less a doctor knows, the more adamant the right. And, so the doctors on this form, I congratulate you. I like, you know, I, my thoughts and prayers go out to you for, you know, watching this because you want to help your patients where the standard physicians want. I don't blame them because they can't do it anyways. The, you know, their group, their hospital won't let them do it. So why learn it? But with a different model. It's so nice.
You can be a doctor and go read and studies and then use that, you know? Wow, I just learned this. I could use that treat. Oh my God, my patient has this, you know. Yeah. Try that in a in a big hospital group. You can't do that now. Your hands are tied. So you know, one of the beautiful things I mean, I'm really excited about our program and and giving people the tools so that they can at least start getting some of these, these peptide programs implemented. I think that's going to change it. Imagine if we could take our program and put it into hospital systems, and we just said, okay, here, you know, one of my patients is that sits on the board of one of the major hospitals here, and he keeps saying, Reagan, I want to get you in, and I want your I want to put your business model in the hospital, but we're, you know, so we're I'm trying to get inside the system so we can transform it.
The whole thing. Well interesting story. I'll try to be quick, but yeah, we had 22 centers at the fairgrounds, data centers, and that was sold. And then, we had nine franchised, but our first franchise was bought by a hospital. Wow. That was an hour north of Kansas City. And I told them, because they will never let you in there. I'm like, no, they're totally up for it. They tried to do an anti-aging clinic for like ten years. It wasn't working. So we go in, we tell what the numbers are. They're like, yeah, right. You're right. Whatever. Just come in.
And so we basically set up the program and I guess the other doctors got so freaked out, like the endocrinologist got like 15 calls the first week of, what's reverse T3? And he goes, that is, that's been, you know, and, and all these doctors were just saying, oh, they don't practice evidence based medicine. And they're, you know, they're barbaric. And so they go, they call me, and you got to fly out and show your evidence, your evidence base, and like, oh, I would love to do that, you know, which was the wrong way to go.
But so I showed that we are evidence base and actually they are not, which really made them even matter. And and like so within two minutes rheumatologist you know this is all the, the head of all the, specialties, you know, stands up without this bullshit and walks out and, and they go, and then they said, oh, yeah. Then they obie's like holding up the, the obstetric society guidelines. I'm like, okay, what level of evidence is that? Okay. You have first, you know, double blind, placebo controlled studies and meta analysis as the highest levels.
And then you get down to, you know, to withdrawal. And then you have, you know, basically anecdotal, cases. What's below that is societal guidelines because was shown to be 20 years behind. There's shown to be bias rational and not change. So you're arguing with that. And I showed you 20 studies that what I'm saying is right. So you know, so that and they go, you got to go talk to the CEO. He's he's so pissed. And so I go up to him like, okay, I'm going to get beat up here.
Virtual Care and 2020 Practice Shifts 45:00
And he's like, yes, listen, my wife has been sick for 15 years going to all these specialists and hasn't been better at all. Two business at your clinic, dramatically better. I will take care of these doctors. Don't worry. I'm like, you won't I go? I guarantee it. And they had an emergency, staff meeting. And by that time I had flown out. Or actually, I went to the satellite clinic. It was a pediatric clinic. And the doctor was, like, open to it, like, oh, this is cool. Then all of a sudden, a nurse says, oh, you gotta, you got a vertical.
I was like, what? And it was the OB saying, don't talk to him, you know, don't listen. Conspire. That's crazy. And then so I fly up and I'm like, oh, and you know how to go. And you said, well, it was like Frankenstein movie with the pitchforks and, and and torches. And they just said, you know, they have to leave, you know, and it was a threat. And I said, oh, they think they're better than us. Wait, you were just saying we don't practice evidence based medicine. Now you're saying, oh, we think we're better than you, you know?
Right. And I talked to the guy who goes, I told you I grew up there. They won't let you in, you know? But it's it's interesting, you know, it takes a lot of courage. I mean, that that says a lot about you to stick up for yourself. Because you could have said, okay, well, let me just do things your way, and and, that'll be easier and make things nice, but but, you know, I think it it it stands to reason that the more of us that do that, that actually stand up for this medicine and talk about it because there is discrimination that's going on no matter what you want to call it.
But we literally need a movement, and we literally all need to start standing up and saying, hey, we've got like, if we really believe in evidence based medicine, I can guarantee you we've got not only evidence based medicine, but we got the results to show with millions of patients. Yeah, the problem is Big Pharma owns the world. You know, they certainly own, they own the political scene. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we've got, we've got some things, we've got I think this once again requires all of us to be our very best version of ourself, because we can make a big impact, even if it's not on the CNN.
We have an underground movement that's going to be very powerful. And so I'm I'm on and I worry, you know, it's like patient driven and because, yeah, the media doesn't, you know, give it any credibility. And but the patients see the results. Yeah. And that's the difference. So how do you use peptides in your, in your programs. So typically what we'll do and I kind of was mentioning this a little bit earlier, but yeah, we will, we'll put together, different phases of care and based on what we're treating, we'll have specific peptides, get a patient on the right track.
We'll have a supplement in Burbank. We use acupuncture. And then we have, you know, vitamin IVs, vitamin sticks. They have health coaching. So we have, a whole health coaching series that they go through, and then they get, some type of, whether it's trigger point injections, acupuncture, regenerative medicine services, if they have some musculoskeletal conditions, those are all part of the plan. So we we package all the services they need and we bundle it together. And so a patient has one decision to make, you know, do you want to get the best.
You know we'll we'll give them a two options. You know here's our basic and here's our comprehensive. Which one looks best to you. And the majority of patients will say I want the comprehensive and, comprehensive plan. I want to do whatever it's going to take to get me better. And so, so that's what our programs include. And then I run what we call our weekly health accelerator course. And so every week I take patients through challenges. So I've got a group of thousands of people who we get together and I do live coaching. And then at the end of thousands and so we have sugar is our our big.
So I give them a weekly challenge. So this week it's like no sugar. And so you know everybody's getting options. We have we had a push up challenge the other week. You know let's see if we can. Oh I lose all that I'm do as I say not as I do I Skittles for breakfast and well yeah nothing wrong with a few Skittles and and I'm so dedicated I'm passionate about exercise. Just no matter what, every four months for eight minutes, you know, range. I'm proud of you. That's bad. If we could double that and do it every two months.
I don't want to Overtrain I've seen people overtrain that could be. I mean, you do not want to raise your inflammatory markers. That's it. So I'm safe. I'm a. Yeah, but I find if if I get the community engagement and accountability that's. You have 1000 people on the call. No, not at the same time. But we have we have a group of about. Oh, actually, we have, I don't know how many 15,000 that are engaged on some form or another reading our blog. They're they're engaged in the content and participating.
And then on our calls, I'm not sure how many we have on our calls, but but the number is growing every week. But what I learned just because of this is like a I think I have, but I keep going. Oh, is that so from, you know, doctors listening okay. How do you keep those people engaged? How much work is it to do blog, do a call, do a webinar. Like what? Do you need to do? And and that's where it is not as much work as you think if you have the right team work. So I'm great I can, I can I love creating content and I love thinking of the challenges.
And I reach out to team members and health coaches and like, where's our patient struggling? And then I reach out to the marketing team. What are people most interested in? Oh, they're interested in fasting now or the ketogenic diet or whatever it is. So I put challenges based around those those topics. And then, I use my weekly podcast and my weekly podcast becomes my blog, and my weekly podcast also starts relating to my challenge. And so there's not I don't have to do it strictly. There's multiple channels.
It becomes our social media posts throughout the week, and then it becomes my post when I'm tagging about, you know, I'm doing my push up challenge, you know, and I, I did a, a PR for one of my peers and our physical therapists and me doing a this pushup competition. Who could do the most push ups and fun. So if, if you can get engagement in your community and if you can actually show, because one of our core values is we walk the talk. And so if you can show your patients, you actually do these things.
You know, I'm doing peptides all the time and I'm showing my patients, injecting myself. And I want what Reagan's doing. And so they said, well, cool, I want to get on board with this. I mean, it's just, it's those little things that make a big difference. Nice, nice. I have the problem of, like, perfection is the enemy of good enough and, like, so the marketing team, they'll write something and they won't send to me more because then they make it into a 12 page white paper, you know, so we have to have, like, we can't, you know, it's also like a talk.
It's I have 200 slides. I can't I'm paralyzed. I don't want to eliminate any slides. Other people do it, you know. Yeah. So this is I, I've, I've experienced the same exact thing. And so one of my mentors, you know, he said, look, the 80% rule is going to be critical. So the 80% rule is, what, 80% is good enough. And then you have to launch and then you have other people that fill in the 20%. So I'll have my 80%. I send it to my content manager. She puts her 80% on it, and then we send it to Cade for the final version, and then we go and it makes it so much better.
And then if I have a deadline in front of me, I work really well on tight deadlines and then that's when I show up. I'm a great person. When it's fourth quarter or down by 20, I'll show up and we'll win the game. So. So, that's, you know, we just look at each other's capabilities and we say that's, you know, having a deadline and then having a team and then understanding 80% is good enough as save my life. That's good. Yeah, I work best. Two months after the deadline. That's what everyone's always like.
And they think it's like, you know, like, what is this? You know, I don't know, I just, I, I think it's kind of added, I'm so A.D.D.. It's like you just feel it's such a big task. So you wait wait, wait wait wait, you know, and then started, I don't have a lot of psychological issues. Like, I don't know, any entrepreneur has got some brain damage, that's for sure. But, yeah, I guess. Yeah, my mom's five packs a day and Adderall to keep her weight down. Probably during pregnancy. I could have been like six for full er.
So, Yeah. So, like any particular peptides you like or incorporate kind of biohacking with peptides. And so I, I do, I have a lot of friends in the biohacking world and I love experimenting on myself. I just think it's fascinating. You know, right now I'm doing the, Sandman, which is, high dose of melatonin. Oh. What what does. It's, like 500, mgs of malic. Nice. Thanks, man. I would say 200 would be proud of that. Yeah. And it's and it's suppository. So it's like, I mean, it's, direct access.
Mindset, Mentorship, and Business Growth 55:00
I mean, it's so, that's what I'm trying right now with the EP Italian. And Milan to. I'm just, resetting my entire circadian rhythms. And. Yeah, I think Apatow talent is like, maybe the ultimate anti-aging epidemic. You know, it's absolutely, increases telomeres. It's like, especially for like one with the famous in it's, you know, improves cardio of people with cardiovascular disease, improves it less cancer increase longevity, decrease or morbidity. It's like everyone should be on it. And it will actually stimulate the hypothalamus pituitary axis.
Your hormones go back up. Can result in menopausal at least rats or turnings, to actually that, menopausal start menstruating and have children, you know, not that we want that we don't want from children, but, yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing. And the nice thing is they're so safe, you know. Yeah, yeah. I've, I've really enjoyed the sleep. I've been getting the dreams. Yeah. Just the whole inflammatory process. It's just calmed down in my body because I had Hashimoto's too. That's why I got into natural medicine.
I wanted to do anything but farm work, as an adult. And so, I said, oh, I'll be a doctor then. At least I know how to study hard, and but, I had no answers when I was in my undergrad working in pre-med. So, so I've always spot kind of that autoimmune condition as well, but, with peptides, it's made things very nice for me. Yeah, get rid of that. We don't even think about it. And, the other topic is gave, just Hashimoto's where I shows patients huge incidence of, basically anterior to cherry antibodies, antibiotic control antibodies.
And they also have, antibodies to the 90s type type two, which doesn't suppress it actually increases it. So the pituitary sees more thyroid. So a TSH goes down. So when all these doctors you have Hashimoto's and they titrate T4 to TSH, they're all under dosed. Yeah. Yeah. And and they found that you fix the antibodies patients feel. And I'm a lover of T3 and thyroid actually feel better if you fix their antibodies versus giving them thyroid T3. Well right. Yeah I mean that's going to allow for the thyroid to function much better if you take the pressure off it.
Yeah. And you get actually transported in the cell and, and all these things which. Yeah. So that's that's amazing. You've have, you've gone to a lot of stuff. It's like the, you know. Yeah. The journey, you know. Oh, yeah. I think we've all been on our own personal journey, and that's why we're. Oh, yeah. Today we're really. I'm thinking if I was on a straight path, what would I be? I'd be like, chief of staff of some hospital. I would have probably killed myself in that, right? Yeah. Yeah. No.
Yeah. But, Yeah. So you actually also, deal with a lot of people that don't have MDS, can't write scripts, and so, you know, able to use peptides that are supplements. So hopefully that stays too, right? Yeah. Especially with your line with integrated peptides. I mean, that is game changer. And then one of the things we do for some of the other peptides that are prescriptive based is we help team up, some of our doctors with other practitioners out there. So whether they're a chiro or an acupuncturist or, maybe a health coach who wants to implement some of these things into their, their practices.
We have systems in place and, teams in place to help facilitate that. So that's great. And hey, Kairos can market like they get it. And then the doctor comes in, right? And, Oh, what health coaches. You know, I've always thought about that, and I just think, you know, some extra handholding. And I think for what we do, we just kind of give people so much stuff and expect them to know it, you know? And yeah, they can call and ask questions, but it seems like if we had a health coach, like they kind of sit there, hold their hand, like things would just be a lot better and a lot easier.
And, tell me what what's your thought on kind of the health coach arena? I think the biggest way that you can free yourself up is think about the things that you repeat over and over again throughout the course of a day, and then that person, could you create a video and educate that way? And if not, then that's when you need a health coach to simplify things and a personal touch. Right. You know, it's like a how you doing. It makes such a huge difference. It's massive. And then it's an accountability partner.
I mean, I don't like talking to patients like, oh, I told you, no gluten, no sugar, no corn, no dairy, no peanut. I mean, it's like, well, why don't we just have a health coach who can, like, who loves to talk to people about their their habits and their lifestyle and have the health coach coach them and, you know, and then I do what you say to make so much sense of an agonizing over. Right? Like, if you're I want to do it, stop doing it. How about we just give everyone a little bit of freedom today?
They all those things that are irritating. Stop doing it. I like it, I like, I like do it not. Hello. Right. I guarantee you, there's someone on the planet who would love to do the things that you hate doing. Like that's the. Yeah, I found that out. And there's jobs like, I could not do that. I couldn't do that repetitive stuff. But people love it like they, you know, it's it's comfortable. They have everything lined up. If you were to see my office, everything just stacks and just. People just freak. They're just.
They go crazy when just all the papers everywhere. But like other people, I got the pens out of alignment, you know? Right. And they love that. Love repetitive stuff. I can't stand it, you know, and I it's like every job, like, they want you to, like, show up on time. Like what makes it all right, but, we're unemployable. That's, that that is true. What? I actually, I was so disillusioned with medicine. With standard medicine. I opened a beer company and had a hangover free beer, and it went well.
It's the funnest industry ever, you know? And, but I learned that as a doctor, you're not qualified to do anything else. Like, you got a temp agency, like, they're like, oh, no, you can't file a filed me before emcee. I like, sorry, file clerks out. But I think I'm telling too much. I have to cut this out. Let's see. Yeah. So, and they talk about the virtual utilization. So. So what are the transitions we made in 2020 and that we're continually making in 2021? Is, is I still love the brick and mortar.
I love people coming in live. But I also learned that there's so much that we can do with technology where you can really multiply your efforts, and that's where virtual care comes in. So our peptide programs, we work with patients all over the country. And it's beautiful because they never have to step foot into our clinic. You know in the past it would be, hey, do you have a clinic in, in, Texas, you know, but now it's like, well, we can, you know, we've got this beautiful platform where you can work with anyone, literally anywhere in the country with peptides, certain states, you're going to have different criterias that have to be met and you've got to.
Yeah, luckily we've got integrated peptides. But but there's some amazing things you can do virtually that you couldn't have done prior to 2020. Yeah. And I think it's one of the good things from, you know, this whole pandemic has been a nightmare, but it's opened it up. But I think the horse is out of the barn, you know, that. I think it's be hard to bring that back where you had to have a license in that state, you know, and and now the whole thing has, you know, kind of advertising nationally.
Now it's, you know, more expensive. Yeah. But word of mouth is always key. Yeah. And, and yeah, it's, it's actually opened up, which I never thought like medicine would open up more. Yeah. It's there's there's been some gifts, you know, there's a big silver lining in all of this. And I think the biggest silver lining I learned is that the, people who are the most passionate, the most purpose driven, we've made huge changes. And the next five years is going to look really good. As long as we can all stay together.
Stay the course. Because we've already been censored. I mean, we already know that. But the beautiful thing is, the society has said, hey, whenever you get some oppression and one area, then this huge energy emerges on the other, like, I'm here in Utah and we have some of the world's best microbreweries because there's not been a lot of alcohol consumption. And this is not allowed to. Yeah. And so now you've got all these, you know, it's almost like this. You know, you got to have this opposing energy.
We talked about balance at the beginning of this. And I think it's a beautiful time to put it in at the end, which is yeah there's there's always these emerging energies.
Action Steps and Closing Advice 1:05:00
And as long as we we look at it and we look for the opportunities, when everybody's looking right, we look left. And we, we we're going to find opportunities that we never knew existed. That's what I found in 2020 and spent a beautiful experience. And in 2021, we're just carrying that with us. I think that's a good point. And that's where, you know, even look at, you know, the rich elite, they make their money and says, yeah, it's you know, it's when you, you know, buy low. And also yeah, you say, well there's this, you know, basically counter, you know, I think about squeezing a sausage or something.
The male part comes out. The other side is people, there's a backlash. Thank God. Yeah. Because and I hope there's more because it's getting pretty squeezed right now. So hopefully we come out the other end better. Yeah, that'd be great. So, just kind of closing three action items, to implement peptides and practice. So, you know, action item number one is look at your programs. And in every single one of your programs, put in a peptide bank a peptide allowance. I think that would be probably a, a great action item.
Can can you describe that a little a little more like what you actually mean by that in detail. So think of a phase one, whatever that patient needs in phase one, whether it's, you know, repair. And Claire, you know, whether you're the or you're doing re inoculation or whatever phase you are, if you're working with autoimmunity or if you're working with joints. But think about phase one, phase two and phase three. What does that look like? And think about a proper peptide allowance for each one of those spaces.
And then sell that single to that. Don't don't sell individual peptides anymore, but sell the entire amount that the patient is going to need. And then put in your functional medicine visits or office visits, put in your health coaching and whatever other services you do. Put it all into one program. So that would be action item number one. And let me ask you, do you, like you said, it's virtual. You can't do IVs and things like that. But like is that something you potentially add. And yet supplements to that do you add you.
Yeah. Supplement Bank is very good. So you basically give it an allowance. That's it for a certain amount. Now what if person, you want to give them more or less what happens. You just change the number, if you know how to use Excel. No, I mean no. So do you charge them different? Because now they bought a package. Now, are you in charge of this or let's say you don't get as many. There was a lot of do they get a refund? They get a refund or they get a credit. But in most cases you're going to go through it.
You're going to have carries over. And then yeah, the way we have it structured as the people love the program so much. And then when it comes time to renew, they're more than happy. They're not stressed out about it. Yeah. Not at all. Yeah. So that's action item number one. Action item number two is look at your marketing message. And just clean it up a little bit. Like actually start talking in ways that your patients can relate to. And just see if you can't really start using some of that emotional energy that we talked about today and help them see that there's freedom on the other side when they work with you.
Same thing with your I mean, think about what you went through with all the knowledge you have, but with your chronic illness, like you had to do a lot of searching on your own and so landed huge leg up on these patients, you know. Right. But it was still a challenge for this thing, what they have to go through. Right. And so speak to that person. So that's challenge number two. And then challenge number three is is set bigger goals for this year than you ever imagined. Just set a goal. That's scary.
It's not taking the easy way out. Your comfort zone is just there to make you feel comfortable. But it's the worst place you can stay in. So if you're not working on something that's scary, then you probably don't have big enough goals. And so we need you now more than ever to set some big goals, set some big intentions, and really get engaged so that you can build out the health care of the future that we're all trying to work on right now. Awesome. Yeah. If you're not stepping outside your comfort zone, I don't think you're growing right.
It's impossible. The universe will recycle you, your you'll you'll have a forest retirement. So. So stay outside the thing. Awesome. You're so wise beyond your years. And it's just a pleasure to work with you and knowing you and. Yeah, so we're we're offering a, peptide module as an introductory course. So, you know, a little appetizer. And then if you want to get more, advanced training and then, that's available as well. So, awesome. I love to talk, Nia. I just feel inspired. I gotta go change the world.
Excuse me, I am. I'll be back. So, Yeah, you got special gifts. And I just love talking to you and hanging with you, so I, thank you for taking the time. Right. Thanks so much for having me and for all of you. You know, you'll have access to our course. And so Cat and I will see you on the other side. Would love to have you in there. Sounds great.
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