From 20,000 Patients Per Year to 20,000 Per Day with Dr. Stephen Cabral

Transcription

We’ve got a great, great interview coming up your way today with a good buddy of mine. Actually, one of my first mastermind clients, Dr. Stephen Cabral AKA one of the smartest men or people you will ever meet.  I’m not just saying that because he’s a former client.

Everyone I’ve introduced him to, they’re like, “Oh my god, this guy is amazing. He knows everything,” and that’s because he’s committed to mastery.

He’s going to talk a little bit about that in the show, but we’re going to talk a little bit about how he used podcasting to grow his business. He actually sent me a text message saying, “Dude, we can’t even keep up with the number of orders coming through.” That’s the level of success that he’s endured in his business in the last few years. He’s absolutely amazing. I’m super proud of him, but let me give you a bit of context as to who Dr. Stephen Cabral is.

It all started off when he was 17 years old. He was diagnosed with a life-altering illness and given no hope for recovery. Every day, he was suffering with all sorts of stuff for years, and it was only after he traveled the world and discovered how to combine ancient Ayurvedic healing practices with state of the art naturopathic and functional medicine did he understand how to fully rebalance his body and re-energize it with life.

Today, in his online and Boston practice, he and his team have completed over 250,000 client appointments, uses functional medicine, lab testing, and personalized wellness plans to help people rebalance their mind and body to recover from all sorts of different issues, and his mission is to empower people all around the world to take back control of their health, and he does so by producing a daily podcast called The Cabral Concept, which I would strongly recommend you subscribe to.

At the very minimum, from a health perspective, it’s really, really valuable, but even if you want to see how he’s interweaving the business side of things, it’s just a really, really good example. His podcast ranks in the top 100 shows in health on iTunes, and today, he teaches over 20,000 people through the podcast how to become the best version of themselves.

I’m even more excited to let you know that Dr. Stephen Cabral is actually going to be one of five speakers at Healthpreneur Live this year.

Fewer speakers, which means there’s a lot of really good peer-to-peer stuff happening outside of the stage type of speaking, but if you want to connect with Stephen, if you want to learn from him, if you want to hang out with him for three days and myself and a hundred other awesome entrepreneurs in our space, then I would strongly recommend you join us if you’re a good fit for the event.

Now, here’s the deal. We only have a handful of spots left, and we’re about a month away from the event, which is September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale, Arizona.

If you want to join us, send me an email. I’m going to give you my personal email address, [email protected].

Send me an email today if you are serious about taking your business to the next level. Okay? If you want more information about the event, you can go to healthpreneurgroup.com/live

Anyways, without any further ado, let’s bring Dr. Cabral on to the show.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Stephen Cabral, welcome to the show, buddy. How is it going?

Dr. Cabral:                           Everything is going great, and thank you for having me on.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I’m really pumped to have you here because you’re doing some amazing stuff in the health worlds, and for all of our listeners who don’t currently know who you are, guys … okay. First and foremost, let’s give a shout-out to your Instagram. Is it @stephencabral or @drstephencabral?

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s @stephencabral.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, so @stephencabral, guys. Follow him on Instagram first and foremost. He puts out awesome, awesome info, not butt pics and stuff like that, so it’s actually valuable, and we’ll talk a little bit about this business model in a little bit, but talk to us about the journey because I mean, I’m really interested about talking about the journey of entrepreneurship.

Obviously, you’re one of our first mastermind clients, and it was awesome working together and did some cool stuff, and you grew pretty rapidly during that time based on some stuff you were doing with the podcast, and it’s just really cool, so I want to dive into that, but let’s just give our listeners a bit of context to how you got started and from where you were to where you are now.

 

Stephen’s journey to heal himself and share his expertise

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, absolutely. For me, I always say that the Healthpreneur journey didn’t start or was not something that I was looking to do when I was much, much younger. I got very, very sick, and for a lot of people who have listened to my podcast, they know this story, but I got really sick when I was 17 years old, and conventional medicine was not able to figure out what was wrong with me, so I had this mystery-based illness that was literally causing my immune system and my adrenal glands to fail. I was diagnosed later with Addison’s disease, and myalgic encephalomyelitis, rheumatoid arthritis, type two diabetes, and a myriad of symptoms.

The problem was it took more than two years just to get those diagnosis, and after that, I was just given a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to take and was told that I would have to manage my diseases for the rest of my life. Being a stubborn kid from Medford, Massachusetts, that wasn’t good enough for me, and what I did, and this is the late ’90s,  was basically just dive into natural health where I was beginning to be exposed to that a little, and read every book I could get my hands on, and eventually found this thing called functional medicine.

For me, it was a journey. From the beginning, it was a journey to heal myself, and then later, I couldn’t help but want to share that information with others. That started with me as a personal trainer and essentially going from personal training to becoming a nutritionist and certified strength and conditioning specialist to eventually going back to school and getting my degree as a naturopathic doctor, so it’s been a long road. It’s been an amazing road, but really, never one that I ever expected to get into.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, it’s funny because you never really know how the bridges are going to unfold as you cross it, right? I remember when I was in school, I wanted to become a sport medicine doctor so I could play pro soccer, and then retire, and then go back to be the sport med doctor for those teams, and then very quickly after about a year in school, I was like, “Nah, I don’t want to do this anymore.” I’m just really happy that I chose the path that I chose, but we never really know what is coming down the road in three, four, five years down the road even though we visioned certain things.

I have to say, your podcast is awesome. Again, guys listening, girls, guys, The Cabral Concept is tremendous.

I believe, Stephen, you are one of the smartest guys or girls, ladies, men on the planet as it pertains to functional medicine. It’s absolutely incredible what you’re able to do for people.  How many patients did you help on a yearly basis in your practice? It was like tens of thousands or even more?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah. There’s about 20,000 appointments per year and over a quarter million people that we’ve seen and help really over the last 15 years or so.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s incredible. Guys, if you want to like tap into his wisdom, check out his podcast, but also, what I love about you, Stephen, is that you’re the true definition of what I consider to be a healthpreneur, which is someone with deep expertise, but who’s also committed to really mastering the business and marketing side of things. Talk to us a little bit about that journey because you’ve had some really great success with your podcast, but what did things look like when you first started online because I think we first connected maybe 10 years ago at a Ryan Lee event? Obviously, things were different 10 years ago, so what are some of the trials and tribulations that you went through as you started your journey online? Then, obviously, you were balancing both the clinical stuff and the online stuff. What did all that look like from the get-go?

 

How Stephen found what works for him and what doesn’t

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think I’ve been like the reluctant entrepreneur. I opened my first studio end of 2006, and we quickly scaled that to the point where we were doing over 10,000 appointments per year that first location, and that was it. I was maxed, and I was like, “This is amazing. I really love it.”

I have a great team. Of course, I couldn’t do this alone, but I want to reach more people because it’s great to be doing that, but 10,000, the grand scheme of things, when there is seven billion plus people on earth and you feel like you could affect maybe a little bit more, when you know something that works, and you just want to share it with more people, so I said, “Okay. Why don’t I create an e-book of exactly what we do?”

That was very popular around 2007, so I said, “Okay. I’m going to learn how to do this because whatever I do …” I actually don’t do a lot of things, so it’s like if I choose something, I want to go deep on it. I want to learn it in-depth so I can share it with more people, and that’s always been the goal, but I really had a distaste for the online marketing world and the e-book world where it was basically like, “Okay. Sell an e-book for $7, and then try to upsell someone for another like $39.95, and then put them into a recurring revenue model.”

First of all, that was way too much work for like what I wanted to do, and the second is that I felt no connection with the end-user. There was nothing there. I wasn’t talking to them through video. I wasn’t talking to them with voice, and so I actually left this space. A lot of people don’t know that, but I had an online newsletter that I’ve been doing at least once a week for the past 10 years, but I left in about 2010 and didn’t come back to the online world until about 2016, 2015, 2016, and that’s because it was moving in a direction that I didn’t like where it was going, and I didn’t know a lot of people on a more of a relationship-based level like yourself that were doing good things that were actually trying to help people. All I saw was the … just lazy marketing. That was basically it, and I didn’t want to be involved with that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, I get that. I mean, it’s funny actually because our journey is very similar because we both had a health crisis at 17. You took a hiatus from the online world in 2010, which is when I had my breakthrough after 3 years of struggling online, so I could have gone the same route because I was sick and tired of all the nonsense as well. It’s just cool to see how it’s come full circle back to you to where you are now, so what made … What was the moments or the occurrence that happened that made you say to yourself, “All right. I’m going to get back into this game, and I need to figure this out because I have a bigger message to share?” What was that moment, and what did that look like?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, that’s, I mean, a really great question as well, and so what happened was by 2015, I had already opened up my second location. That was in 2014. I opened up my functional medicine practice, and that was a very large wellness center that included the work, functional medicine, specific types of massage therapy like manual lymphatic drainage and Ayurvedic massage, so we had a lot going on, and that’s when we doubled … We were doing another thousand appointments per month, so we were doing 20,000 appointments now per year, and I said then, “Again, this is fantastic. I really enjoy it, but I would never open up another location.”

I had more than 20 people on my team. Again, all of them amazing, but at some point, when you have a larger offline, it comes a lot of human resources like your … There’s a lot of people. It is great, and it’s amazing, but I said, “Even if I opened up 10 more locations, I can only serve so many people,” and then at the same time, podcasting, which had been around, was now starting to really grow, and I saw that as a medium that I was starting to enjoy and that I could now express my vision and words I felt on a more intimate level rather than through writing because although I love writing, I just didn’t … I never felt a connection there like we’re having right now.

That’s why I said, “Okay. This is an opportunity. I like to teach. I just feel like what I do on a podcast is teaching and even when I meet with people,” so this allowed me now to teach at a deeper level where I didn’t have to sell. Again, I have nothing wrong … like nothing against e-books. It just wasn’t for me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Dr. Cabral:                           That’s it. Again, I have no problem with it because it’s great, and we have a lot of friends that sell e-books or basically digital-based information. Of course, Kindle is very popular now, right? That just wasn’t my thing. This was the opening I needed, and that’s what I try to express to others. Some people love video, some love podcasting, or some love writing. Find out which method works for you, and then just go all in.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. You mentioned a couple moments ago you don’t do a ton of things. You do one thing or a very few things, and that’s definitely something I recognized from you like when we first started working together, and I appreciate that because even to this day, it’s like you got the podcast, you got Instagram, and that’s pretty much it like you’re not chasing shiny objects. Yes, you have some stuff built out in the backend for the products and stuff.

For you guys listening to this, this is an important message because focus is extremely important in any areas of business whether it’s online or offline. Is this something that you’ve always been able to gravitate towards, or have you really been disciplined to like really put on the blinders and stay in your lane?

 

Maximizing productivity and accomplishing goals

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s interesting because I think the reason why I left probably the online world and moved more towards the offline is that there is less to do in the offline world. I mean, like when you have a practice, it’s very straightforward. You know it has to be done, and with online, you have so many different options and different ways to try to reach people that I think it became overwhelming for me.

I’m someone that can get overwhelmed with all the different possibilities and opportunities, so I do try to stay focused in a way for me to stay on target, and that’s because if I have too many options in life in general, and that’s why I keep my day very planned, I pretty much get nothing done like I’m not … I’m a disciplined person if I have a list in front of me of what I have to do, but if I don’t have that list, I’ll just start to read. I’ll go read or I’ll look up articles and nothing gets accomplished, and it was going in that direction since I had no plan.

Now, with this, I had a very specific plan, and I had a very specific goal, so I was doing 20,000 appointments per year in my offline practice. When I went on to podcasting, I had one specific goal, and I said, “I want to reach 20,000 people a day instead of 20,000 people a year, and so that was a big … That was it, and so by going on to YouTube or by doing a lot of different guest article writing, that would take me away from my goal of 20,000 people per day, but I’ll tell you. When I accomplished that, then we’ll move on to the next thing, and I think that’s a tip that I try to share with other health coaches as well and entrepreneurs is that you can do everything that you want to do, but master something first. Build up your audience and brand there, and then you can move into other areas much easier.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I know you’re a martial artist, and one of my favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee, which is, “I fear the man not who has …” I’m butchering this quote, but like he fears the man not who has done a thousand kicks once, but he who has done one kick a thousand times.

Dr. Cabral:                           Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s all about mastery because if you’re dabbling all over the place, you’re really not mastering anything and you’re not able to go deep with any specific topic or area, and especially, as you mentioned, online, there’s so many things we’re distracted by. Just going through your newsfeed or anything else is just overwhelming.

One of the things that I’ve recognized too that you brought up is that if you don’t have the structure, you don’t really get anything done. And this is actually kind of a bit of an oxymoron and something I’ve noticed with a lot of successful people is that, we’re actually inherently lazy and not really productive unless we’re very focused on a goal and we have structure. Can you relate to that or am I, do I feel like I’m alone in this?

Dr. Cabral:                           No, without a doubt. I mean, I say that all the time is … And not only am I not productive if I don’t have that list and goals and 90 days planned out all of that. Is that I actually start to get a little depressed, and I say I’m not accomplishing anything. I’m like literally, I just wasted a week. And so one of the things too is you and I were sick, at a young age, and I think it changes you because I didn’t know how long my life would be. One had all of these different diseases. And again, I’m completely disease free now there’s … I mean I’m in 20 plus years later, I feel better than I had when I was at 15 years older, 20 years older, whatever. I mean I just … I feel fantastic and because of that, of course I want to try to share that, but at the same time I know how short life is and if I waste two weeks of just like, doing research or on YouTube or whatever. That’s … I mean I look at, the year is really not even 52 weeks. It’s like 48 because you’re taking vacations and you want to take some downtime and holiday. So I just wasted a huge part of my year where I’m not moving forward.

Our friend Craig Ballantyne has a line that he says, “Discipline and structure equals freedom.” And I believe that meaning that I actually feel great at the end of the day and I have time off to go to the gym and exercise as long as it’s built into my day. And so when I’m done at the end of the day, I say, “Wow, I still have a lot more to go, but I accomplished all of this. I did my appointments, I met with my team.” But it’s at certain times of the day. I’m not checking email through the whole day. I’m not on slack with my team the whole day. I do that at certain times and everything gets done. And so that’s, that allows me to actually not only enjoy my work, but get excited to even take on new projects as long as they fit into my schedule.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What do you do when you get into a funk? If you ever have those days where you’re like, man, I just don’t want to get up today or earlier, or I don’t want to do this today. Or periods of time where you’re maybe not as focused or motivated. How do you get through those times?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, and for me. So that, it just comes with experience and going through it. That’s why if anyone’s struggling right now, this is just part of the process. Every I found myself … Well so I would get into funks every two years or so, and that’s because I realized I have a shelf life for what I’m doing, for about two to three years maximum and it starts at about 18 months and I’m like, “oh, it’s starting to creep in at two years.” And it doesn’t mean that I’m looking to switch fields. It means that I need to get myself a new challenge. That’s all. So when I get the funk I look, and again the funk could happen every other month. It could happen whenever, but I know when it comes on that I’m complacent. The only reason I get into a funk is that I like a challenge.

I used to play sports and all these different things that I’m quite competitive, not in like used to be at a more aggressive competitive way when I was younger, but again, you learn things through life and now it’s more like how can I challenge myself? And so I always look at it as, okay, I’m in a funk, what am I doing right now? What am I not getting enough of? Is it just that I need a week off? Like maybe I just need some time off and if that’s the case, fine. But a lot of times it’s that I’m not doing anything to help me to grow. That’s it. When I’m growing and I’m being creative, I’m never in a funk.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. It really is. I think a lot of people are looking for the easy way out, but as you mentioned it really is the challenges that help us rise to that occasion. And complacency is definitely something I think a lot of people can relate to. In fact, in the airline industry, the number one cause of airplane accidents is complacency where pilots are not doing what they’re supposed to do in terms of their checklist. And they kind of, they’re like, “Yeah, I kind of get this already.” So they’re not really on their toes. And I think the same happens for athletes. The same happens for entrepreneurs and that’s why a lot of businesses hit plateaus where they’re just kind of like lost the zest for a new challenge and yeah, it’s a really, it’s definitely something to think about because I think with that said, how do you balance the … Because I think a lot of people in business suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome because they’re looking for new and exciting. And how do you balance, I need something challenging, but also that’s not going to get me way off course into something that’s new and exciting. So it just for that perspective, it kind of riles them up as opposed to staying on course, but still being challenged on that same course.

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, it’s interesting. And I refer this back to our natural health practices well and in functional medicine is that a lot of people, they say, “okay, I don’t have a lot of energy, so why don’t I take some B12 and take some coenzyme Q10.” Because those things are great and they’ve been looking at this market and an article and this company says this, or maybe I should try a little licorice root as well, but what they’re not doing is looking at you need to actually have a foundation for any of those other things to work in the first place because I’ve never seen someone take just vitamin B12. I mean there’s always rare instances of course that they were just vitamin B12 deficient and it made a huge difference.

But for most people taking one single silver bullet, it’s never going to work, right? Because you need the actual foundation. So what we do and all of our practices, right? So I have a personal training, nutrition studio, and then I have a functional medicine concierge practice, is we always have a foundation and the foundation is helping people in the world. Now again, it’s grown with the podcast and everything online, more than two thirds of our appointments are all over the world over Skype. But those are still appointments.

Right. And so were their one on ones and their appointments and we do a lot of those, like that’s our foundation and then after that I have my book and I have my podcast and then you say, well how do you, how do you grow from there? Well, you never lose track of your foundation of what got you there. It’s serving people, helping people. That’s again, this is our example and then what we’re doing now is we’re adding on things that we’re passionate about and that would be like our certification to teach other people how to become a great health practitioner. So that’s how I look at it and I never take on more than one new project every 90 days and it has to fit in though with our foundation of teaching basically, serving in the form of health and fitness.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Love it. Yeah. So it’s still on kind of on that vision. Still ties in with the mission that you’re working on and not taking you off into all sorts of tangents.

Dr. Cabral:                           Right.

 

Maintaining a foundation in business and Stephen’s podcast

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s talk about the podcast because you’ve done an amazing job with your podcast. So when did you start it and did you have an expectation that may or may not have been met within a certain timeframe? And how do you approach or did you have the same outlook when you started as you do now with the podcast in terms of what it can do for your business?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, so that’s the interesting thing and I know that I keep saying it’s interesting, but like I, you have expectations and they just change meaning that you can’t get too fixed on what any one path is going to lead to in life. So you know that what you want in the future. So in my future always said is what I want it to be able to do is take what I learned in order to get well. So again, I’m not against conventional medicine or pharmaceuticals or anything like that, but what I’m pro is I’m pro people and I’m pro helping people and what I’ve also realized because again, this is completely different than what I was like growing up in my culture and in my community and my family and all of that is that one thing was always the best. That’s just the way it was.

And that was either better than everything, you judged everything and that’s just the way it was and that’s fine. I can look back at it now and say, “okay, will that help me to have this new outlook on life.” Where all my internship is I traveled all around the world. I was in India and Sri Lanka and China and Europe and I was studying with all these great hospitals and clinics and I was simply looking for what is the best form of medicine because whatever that is, that’s what I’m going to use to help people. And of course I quickly realized that every form of medicine was able to help people. But you had to know when to use it and with who, because not everything works all the time. So what I said was, “Okay, this is one thing that I’m doing a little bit different.”

Again, people teach functional medicine. People teach natural health all the time, but maybe I can say it and help people a little different way. And so my expectation going in with a podcast is that I had a message that I wanted to share with others and people kept telling me that … Because here’s the thing. Everyone goes into things saying like, “It’s already been done, like why should I post an article? Because everyone’s already talked about super foods before.” Whatever it is. But what they don’t do is they don’t say it from your perspective. And remember, not everyone resonates with everyone. So not everyone’s going to resonate with me and not everyone’s going to resonate with Uri. And that’s the great thing is that we gravitate towards certain people. So I said, Okay, what I’m doing works because I’ve proven in the offline world and I want to share that now with others online. My expectation was actually to be able to teach then hopefully to kind of build my small community. By … So I’ll just give you the stats. The first month, every show got a couple hundred downloads. That’s it. So we’re not talking anything very spectacular, and then-

Yuri Elkaim:                         How did people find out about the podcast initially?

Dr. Cabral:                           So initially I would email out to my email newsletter group and so again, like it would get a little bit of traction there, but remember I had left those people kind of in the dust, not on purpose, but I hadn’t really communicated very well when I decided to leave the whole online space. So what I did was I first brought it out to my local community, which is basically Boston and the practice that I currently had. And then I started to share a little bit about more about it on social media with Instagram. And all I asked was that if the information was helpful for you, please just share it with one other person. And that’s always how we’ve grown. So we just grew and grew and I didn’t do a single interview on another podcast for about 18 months. And so it was literally all word of mouth.

Now the Nice thing is the people that tuned in though were really building that community from the beginning and those are the people though that you want on your side because they begin to know you and then they begin to trust you and when you make recommendations, that’s why it’s very important that you really believe in your recommendations that they will really get behind you in whatever you are doing. And so that’s why again podcasting is one of my favorite things to do is that each day or each week, and I don’t recommend you do a daily podcast, we can get into that if you want. But it is that you try to bring something more that will enrich their lives. And if you do that on a consistent basis, I think that you will continue to grow and I can share a little bit about my growth if that’s of interest.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I think that would be of high interest for our listeners. So you have a daily podcast. Two questions, was it set out from the get go as a daily podcast? Did you know what you’re getting into? And then second is how do you come up with content for every single day?

 

How Stephen organizes the content of his daily podcast

Dr. Cabral:                           So it was a five day a week podcast and then I said I’m doing Q and A’s at the end, why don’t I just break up the show to do Q and A’s on the weekends? So essentially what it is, is each day of the week is a different topic, motivation and mindset Monday, total wellness Tuesday, wellness weight loss Wednesday, training Thursday and our Friday review where I’m reviewing products and all sorts of different things that we use in our practice. And then I do a super nutrient of the week which basically teach people about vitamins and minerals and herbs and all those things and actually show the science behind it. Because in the conventional medicine world they’re like “Oh there is no science behind any of that.” Meanwhile, there’s hundreds of thousands of data points that come out every single month at all this. So I just tried to bring that to people.

And then on the weekend we answer our community’s questions and people can write in and so there’s lots and lots of questions that come in to answer. So I did set out on a daily podcast and the reason I did that is because I wanted to fully commit and I knew I had the contents, but anyone that I teach now are trying to share with now. I say, twice a week is probably a good place to start. One could be an interview interviewing guests so that your content is … The guest basically coming on, you’re asking really engaging questions and then once a week you could do maybe a solo if you chose to, which would be, you connecting with your audience. And so I think that’s a great model to start with, but it’s only one model. Again, you can do whatever you’d like. However, I had a set out and committed to do the daily podcast. And so that is where I wanted to start.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. And you don’t butcher recordings, right? You’d do them every day or like kind of on fly?

Dr. Cabral:                           I do them three to four days per week, so it used to be every day and now just how the practice is set up. Some days I’m just not able to. Like on a Wednesday, I’m essentially in my office from seven to seven and I see people appointments all day, so on that day not and then the weekends I try to keep that as just a family time, but again every once a while be recording and a podcast, so that leaves me Monday and Thursday I’m creative days, so if you really want to get in scheduled, Monday and Thursdays are no appointments and that is for me to write and to do podcasts and to do interviews and meet with my team and all of that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s cool. Let’s talk about the growth. So when you started off you had a couple of hundred downloads per month or per a prep sowed. How quickly did things change and where are you at now?

Dr. Cabral:                           So the crazy thing is this, is that we grew by about 20% month over month and still continue to do that basically to this day, now we’ve had some spikes for sure, but all it shows is that it believe it’s the Japanese principle or ward Kai Zen, right? So it’s just your every single day you’re just putting one more step forward. And then let’s just say like you and your backyard and you took one shovel worth of dirt every single day, right? You can do that. That’s all you’re doing. Eventually you’d be digging a giant pit, right? You’d accomplish something out there and it’s the same thing. You’re putting together a car, you put one piece together every single day you will eventually get that done. And that was my philosophy was not to hit 20,000 downloads a day because that would be completely insane.

So what I wanted to do though is put out content on a daily basis that I would hopefully be able to again, reach some people. And from there I had … So I have a product called the Dr. Ball Detox. And really the goal was to say like, Hey, I know I’m not going to be able to see every single person in my practice. I know that I can’t do that. I can’t do that now. All right, so what’s one thing that I can do and that I can share with someone will they get probably like 80% of the results. They would feel something right away without having to see me in person. So that was the goal and that’s the only thing that actually promoted. But I didn’t do a single promotion on the podcast. Recommendation for, I think it was five months. It might have even been six months. So the goal was to give as much content as possible, really just teaching people and then say, hey, if you want to take the next step, here’s what I have. So we grew from a maybe a 1000 or so downloads the first month to now I’m approaching 20,000 downloads a day. We’re not there yet. Hoping to have that by Healthpreneur LIVE. But we’ll see if that happens.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

Dr. Cabral:                           But we’re about a half million downloads a month and so again, never planned on that, but now that it’s there, you can do fun things like I do plan to hit a million downloads a month and I plan to get there in 2019.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I bet you will. It’s amazing.  Steven will be speaking at Healthpreneur Live September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale. We do have a few spots left if you want to join us, we’ll talk about that in a second. But I want to give some context because our blog, we get about a million unique visitors per month. And so if we compare, okay, is it better to have that type of traffic from a blog or from a podcast? I would definitely say that having a captive audience, like a podcast listener is way more valuable than a blog visitor who on average spends about a minute and 20 seconds on the site. And this is why I’m like, if I were to invest in stocks and stocks were like YouTube, podcasting, blogging, I’d be all in on podcasting because there is no other medium that I’m aware of that you can captivate someone’s attention for 30 minutes an hour or.

You can captivate someone’s attention for 30 minutes to an hour several times a week. It’s an experience really. People are like walking their dogs, they’re in their car, they’re working out. These types of conversations, if you think about … I’m sure, Stephen. I’m sure you have listeners who’ve listened to almost every single episode you’ve ever put out. If you were to add up all that time, that’s potentially hundreds of hours of audios of you in their ears. That makes a huge difference eventually when you want them to do something, right?

Dr. Cabral:                           It does. You’re also able to get your point across I think at a deeper level.

Yuri Elkaim:                         For sure.

Dr. Cabral:                           That’s the difference, meaning that they can hear the inflection in your voice. They can hear where you’re kind of taking them on a journey. They do relate to you better. I do think that it’s three ways. Basically it’s seeing something written on paper and there’s not a lot of feeling necessarily behind it, but some people are great writers. They get a little feeling behind that. Then there’s audio where they can’t see you, but they can hear you, and then there is video. Okay, so there’s four levels. Then there’s in person, right? I think as you get in person, that’s obviously the best. Video’s fantastic. I don’t deny that.

The difference is that there’s a lot more production that goes into video than there is to podcasting. I travel with a recorder, a microphone, and a wire that connects the two, and that’s it. Like it’s very straightforward. I can do it anywhere. There’s no production. There’s really no cost to it. Like you said, people are downloading or listening to way more podcast than video. The reason they are is because they can do it on the way to work. The average commute’s a half hour or so. I’m listening to podcasts all the time. I love it. I think it’s fantastic. That to me it’s only going to grow where video and YouTube has already grown, right? Like look how busy the space is.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I mean it’s so important. I talk a lot about the importance of your inputs, right? Because we’re all brought up with parents who watch the news or have maybe a slightly negative view of the world. If these are the inputs that we’re hearing or seeing for years, I don’t think there is as valuable a medium as podcasting to flood your brain with the right message. If you’re somebody who really wants to take your health to the next level, your podcast, The Cabral Concept, is a great place to flood your brain with that … But not only the knowledge. It’s not even just the knowledge.

What I think happens is like when you listen to interviews or inspiring audios, it changes the way you view the world. It changes the way you view yourself. I think you start taking action in a much more empowered way than any other medium. I mean video’s powerful as well, but the rate of consumption I think is so much greater through a podcast in an audio format. That’s why I’m so pumped to have you talk about this at Healthpreneur Live. You did a breakout session on podcasting at last year’s event and everyone was like, “That was absolutely amazing.” We’re like, “You know what? Let’s have you up on stage. Let’s have you share the goods.”

For all you guys listening, right now as we’re recording this, we have probably about a half a dozen spots left. Maybe a little bit more. If you do want to join us, I’m going to give you my personal email. Okay? If you’re interested, Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com. Send me an email. Again it’s September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale. Dude, I’m so pumped to have you speak at the event. It’s going to be amazing.

Dr. Cabral:                           I just want to say, I was at last year’s event. I was on a panel, but I was in the audience and I was just absorbing all of this information because that is … I just believe that people should become a master of their craft, whatever that might be. Do it to the best of your ability. You don’t have to compare yourself to anyone else, meaning that there are other podcasts with more downloads than mine, but this is my journey, right? This is what I want to do with my life and I want to do it in my way.

What I have grown faster if I were to have done more of an interview-based process or tried to get people aboard, sure, but at the same time, you’re pulling everything that you want into your life I believe at the right time. We started to grow too fast when I went on other people’s interviews. That’s kind of like all the process well. I’ll teach that more at Healthpreneur Live as well, that growing too fast is not always what you want as well. Really what you need to focus on is not what you want to sell, but what you want to teach and what your message is.

If you can start to refine what your message is, like what you really stand for, then it becomes really easy because you don’t have to market as much. People gravitate to you. We spend zero dollars every single month in marketing. Literally zero. None at all. Every once in a way we might boost an Instagram post just to again reach more people, but we really don’t market anything, the podcast. That’s the amazing thing. I have no problem with marketing. No problem spending dollars on advertising. If people come to you rather than you searching them out, it’s just a totally different ballgame.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh yeah. 100%. I don’t think anyone loves knocking on people’s doors, but having people knocking your door is a good position to be in. Stephen, this has been awesome. Before we finish off, we do have the rapid five. Are you ready for it?

Dr. Cabral:                           I think I am. I don’t know what’s coming, but I’m ready.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, buddy. Here we go. Five rapid fire questions. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Dr. Cabral:                           Biggest weakness is managing other people. I’m just not good at it. I’ve known for a long time that I’m not good at it. That’s why since 2009, I have always had a different manager for each facet of my company. I’m a teacher. I know that that’s what I am and so I stick to that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. What’s your biggest strength?

Dr. Cabral:                           Biggest strength is just consuming massive amounts of information and just trying to distill that in a way that I think can reach people. For me, I have more of that obsessive-based personality and it’s very easy for me to just sit down with a book and consume it and then figure out what the details are that really matter.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What’s one skill you become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Dr. Cabral:                           That I became dangerously good at?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Dr. Cabral:                           I think that’s why if people go back and listen to The Cabral Concept, the first 50 to 100 episodes were really not that great. I think the content was there, but my voice wasn’t there, meaning that I was a little bit more timid. Just I wasn’t able to really be my true self. It’s funny what happens over the course of 900 podcasts, and I think that got a little bit better. Again I’m not going to resonate with everyone, but I am talking in my own unique voice right now.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. I want to just highlight that for a second, the first 50 to 100 episodes. This is such an important take home message is you don’t have to get it perfect. Like you just get better over time. I think that’s a great example of not allowing the need to be perfect stop you before moving forward.

Dr. Cabral:                           I just want to add one thing to that because not only will you not be perfect, you can’t be because you need to learn all the mistakes that you have to make. Think of any sport that you might have entered into. Anytime you learned to do anything, you can’t do it well because you have no frame of reference of how to do it in the first place. You have to be willing to be poor at it in the beginning. That’s okay and then move forward. That’s the nice thing is when you only get a hundred downloads an episode, only a hundred people are hearing it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Exactly.

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s better to get in those practice reps first.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally. That’s great advice. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Dr. Cabral:                           First thing in the morning I have the same exact routine every single morning. That’s one of the ways that I stay out of a funk. That’s basically I do my daily fruit and vegetable blend, my greens in the morning. I get ready right into the day. A lot of people like to read and they like to … I don’t know, because I ease into my morning, but I actually just get ready for the day. I shave and shower and get right into it. Then at that same time, I’m actually listening to a motivational-based podcast or a video or something like that to get my mind in the right place. I grab a smoothie and I’m out the door. I really just get right into my day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Finally, complete the sentence, I know I’m being successful when?

Dr. Cabral:                           When I feel like I’m speaking in my unique voice and sharing my message with as many people as possible.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome, buddy. That’s why I think you’re a successful dude because you’re doing that every single day in a big way. Stephen, thanks so much for being here, buddy. This has been tremendous. Let’s give a couple places for people to follow your stuff online. First would be the podcast on iTunes, The Cabral Concepts, right?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yes. The podcast and on Instagram. That’s pretty much the only social media place I hang out. That’s just my name Stephen Cabral. On Facebook, we have a private Facebook group where we answer people’s health-based questions. That’s Cabral Support Group. My main hub is just my name, StephenCabral.com. Pretty much you can find everything from there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Once again guys, we’ll have those linked up in the show notes. Just one final word, if you want to join as at Healthpreneur Live and actually hang out with Stephen and myself and a hundred amazing health entrepreneurs, join us. September 20th to 23rd. Again we have a limited number of spots left. You can email me personally, Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com, if you’re interested in joining us. It’s just going to be an amazing time. It’s actually going to be even better than last year. We got some really cool surprises in store for you guys. I’m not even going to share with you, Stephen, what we’re doing. It’ll be fun.

Dr. Cabral:                           It was an amazing event last year. I can’t recommend enough coming to join.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. All right, buddy. Thanks so much.

Dr. Cabral:                           Take care.

 

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Wrap Up with Yuri

Awesome stuff, right? One of the things I love about Stephen is when we’re talking about the title for his talk for Healthpreneur Live, I made a suggestion and he’s like, “You know what? I want to kind of tone that down a bit because I still really want to get across the message that first and foremost, I’m a naturopathic doctor. Not so much of like a business guy teaching you how to make money, all this kind of stuff.” I really respect that about him because he’s always … For as long as I’ve known him, always stayed true to his values, to his mission, to his place of coming from service of really, really wanting to help people.

 

Healthpreneur Live!

That’s why I’m so excited and honored to have him speak at Healthpreneur Live this year. Listen guys, if you want to be able to do what Stephen has done with a podcast, it’s possible. As we talked about in the show, it’s not going to happen overnight. I mean even with the Healthpreneur Podcast. For me, this is like a three year game plan. I’m not even looking at stats for the first one or two years. I don’t even care. I just love doing this. I love bringing great people on the show. Exposing them to you. Sharing a bit of my mind here and there.

If you have expertise that can make a difference in someone’s life, if you love teaching, if you love speaking, if you love just sharing your knowledge, there is no way better medium than having a podcast to be able to do that. I mean look what’s happened with friends like Lewis Howes. What Lewis Howes has done with his podcast is tremendous. I’ll tell you this, there’s no secret sauce. I mean there’s a couple things that you obviously need to know, but the key is just getting started, doing it the right way, and doing it with integrity.

If you want to learn how Stephen has built his podcast from like nothing to 20,000 listeners per day and how you can do something similar to grow your business, to spread your message, to get a tribe of people around you who really resonate with your beliefs, what you stand for, your whole message, and as a byproduct to that, want to do business with you, then that’s exactly what he’s going to be sharing at Healthpreneur Live. Now as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we only have a little handful of spots left. If you’re interested in joining us, here’s the thing, Healthpreneur Live is a highly curated event.

We only allow about a hundred people in. It’s only for health and wellness experts or fitness professionals as well. You have to have some existing presence online or you’re strongly ambitious to getting started online. Most of the people in attendance already have an established presence. Some of them are doing seven and eight figures in their business. Others a little bit more novice in their journey, but we bring them all together because I think there’s a lot of value there and there’s no ego. There’s no elitism. There’s no “I’m so cool I can’t sit beside you.” There’s none of that stuff.

No matter where you are in your business, if you want to be surrounded by great people who can really take things to the next level for you or be introduced to new ideas, new ways of thinking beyond just learning how to podcast effectively in a way that’s going to serve your business, but just being able to really think of what’s possible through business, then here’s what I want you to do right now.

I’m going to give you my personal email again. It’s Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com. Send me an email today if you’re interested in joining us. We have a handful of spots left. If you want to learn more about the event, it’s:

healthpreneurgroup.com/live

September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale, Arizona. Send me an email. Give me a bit of context as to who you are, what you do, what you want to get out of the events, what you can give and bring to the event as well, and we’ll take it from there. Does that sound good?

That’s all for today. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you’ve enjoyed this one. Stephen’s awesome. Hope you got some really good insights out of this interview.

I look forward to seeing you at Healthpreneur Live because the one final thing I’ll say about this event is this year we’ve made the decision that starting in 2019, Healthpreneur Live will no longer be open to the public in the way that it currently is now.

It’s only going to be available to clients that we work with. This is the final year we’re basically giving the general public the opportunity to join us at this remarkable three day experience.

If you want in, you know what to do. Send me an email and we’ll take it from there. Talk to you soon.

 

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Follow Dr. Stephen Cabral At:

http://stephencabral.com/

The Cabral Concept Podcast

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