63. Lessons Learned: Megan Landress, Benjamin Morrell & Seema Desai

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Alright guys, we're back with another lessons learned with Dr. Darsha. How are you, buddy? Well, what's up? Good, man. Good. I'm hanging out doing okay. Weather is getting warm, man. So, I've definitely got a huge correlation between my mood and the weather. So, it's nice. I think a lot of people do. Oh, yeah. I think that's really annoying. But it's just, it's so crazy because there's no such thing as spring, like, at all. Yeah, I just want straight to summer. Yeah. I mean, that's always the case. It's such a stark contrast now, and it's just, yeah. That's the depressing part of it, where it goes from like being cold and snow, especially where I am, too, then 87 and human, so. Yeah. But the morning's nice. That's my favorite part of the day. It is. It is. Yeah. Nice, man. How about you? What's up with you? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. At least I, I get it done. Making them. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we're done with them for good. There's, oh, it's, it's funny because I tell my non-medical friends, I'm like, I'm taking my boards and they're just like, you're always taking an exam. I don't even understand. Like, are you ever done? Like, I don't know. I was like, no. Interesting. There's another one in the fall, actually, preparing for. So, there's that. What is that? Is that oral? Sports. Oh, then what? Oh, this is your oral board. That's right. Yeah. I know you were taking your sports med boards. That's right. That's right. Oral and then you have sports. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Peaman Artisize to do. Yeah. It's one of the maybe three specialties that still has two parts. That's right. That's right. Interesting experience. But, like I said, we'll see if a couple of years is still going. Yeah. Cool, man. Cool, man. Well, listen, we had a couple of amazing guests and for two of them, you know, you're flying solo and kicking butt. But, you know, first part, we'll start off because I think there are some with distinct topics, right? The first one's more in the financial aspect, you know, talking student loans, which we got a lot of amazing feedback because this is such a complex and confusing topic. And unfortunately, we only had Megan, Megan Landrish from Student Loan Planner and she has our own business as well for about an hour or so and we try to pack a lot in there. So hopefully people weren't more confused. And if so, you know, we linked a lot of good resources and we'll link it again here. But, you know, this is something that this is space that I've been investing for a long time personally because it affects me deeply. But you're one of the few lucky people who doesn't have a great manist to a dead burden. That's right. So jealous. But, uh, Tommy, man, what, what do we, where your key takeaways, like, would you learn and what follow up questions do you, would you might have, like, yeah, so let me first start off by saying, I mean, this is I think the first episode where I've gotten feedback through social media from pre-meds, medical students and residents, like my co-residents actually listened to this episode and we're like, oh, you know, I listened to the financial burden episode. I was like, you know, this is the topic of course that affects millions and millions across the US, right? So it's going to, it's going to hit the heart of a lot of people. I was just, you know, I'm coming in this blind, right? I knew absolutely nothing, you know, you're on one end of the spectrum and I'm on the other. So for me, I mean, it was a little tough, um, registering all of it, but then when I go back and listen to it again, I'm like, oh, wow, this is packed with a lot of good information. And the biggest thing I realized is just Megan's attitude towards how to handle financial debt, right? So a lot of us, especially in the medicine realm, think there's only one way to do something, right? I think I think we're also programmed that way, right? If you go to medical school, you're learning one way. When you go to residency, you're learning one way and it's tough for us to branch out a little bit. But hearing it from someone non medical, talk about money and finances in a way to say, hey, if this is your situation or let's say you're going dermatology and you probably won't do PSLF, right? Because you're going to be in private practice. Like, that doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage, right? So there's no such thing as advantage, disadvantage. There's only the right path and plan for you. And so that, I think, was one of the best takeaways that I've seen that now when people ask me, I can at least point them towards that. You know, I actually went IG live the other day and one of my followers said, hey, I'm going to actually do a free console with Megan because he's just so terrified of how much debt he's going to be and he's already in 100K and he hasn't even started med school and he's afraid of, you know, when he goes to the med school, top that off with another 400, what situation is he going to be? And that's the exact rhetoric that I used with him was the one that Megan was talking about. So it was just cool to see that. Yeah, I mean, the, I mean, everything that you mentioned is so spot on. And the other interesting piece of it is the whole student loan space. The whole landscape is so fluid, right? Particularly recently, since the episode came out and I forget if it after it was published or, you know, I think Biden hinted at student loan cancellation. And so now the media has taken that and it's been running with it. I think the other piece of it, you know, dependent, whichever side of the political spectrum you are on, this is a polarizing topic and in today's day and age, everything we can use to create polarity and divide and to use it, people are going to use it. And so, so for those reasons, I think the media takes it and blows it out of proportion even though when things aren't coming out, like things that we talked about about the mass headlines of that, you know, 90 something percent of people rejected and people blow it out. And so what's upsetting to me about this is I talked to so many of my co-residents and co-fellows who are so brilliant and have student loan and they just don't have any hope. They're like, oh, yeah, it's probably not going to happen because that echo chamber, as she talked about, it's just, you know, on repeat and louder and louder and louder. And with time, for some reason, when something, there's the thing that's, you know, if something's been around long enough, it tends to be more, more true, right? There's enough people who repeat it. And so people are like, oh, yeah, if that's going to happen. And, you know, she mentioned several reasons why it's here to stay, like your grandfathered in, if it's changing, if it's ever changing, it's going to be for the future generations. And it seems to happen so slow. Like we talk about medicine taking forever to make changes. This is much better. So I encourage people to go back and listen to it and she talks about all the reasons why it's going to stay. And you know, even on their podcast, they'll plug them into a loan planner. Travis and Megan, all those guys, they do a tremendous job. I mean, I think Travis has blogs on it and Travis Hornsby is the guy who pretty much owns, he's a founder of a student loan planner. He's got amazing blogs. If you feel like reading it, like several thousand words to go really deep into it of why there's no way this is going away. So I have zero doubt in my mind and that's encouraging for me. But the other side of it towards the end, she talked about, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about loan forgiveness just because that's the hot topic. But that might not always be the right thing for everybody. And people don't have to feel like they have to do that. The student that you talk about, who's going in 100k and maybe maybe comes out of medical school, it doesn't go to state school with another 250, right? So graduate to 350 400. It's like, well, you know what? I got to do PSL life. Like that, that's it. No brainer. And then your hamstring and you hate your job. And as we're going to talk about the next two episodes about how powerful how important it is to not tie yourself down because you feel like you have to do something, right? And both of our next two gets, we're brave enough to break away from that. Yeah, I want to quickly, did you get a chance to listen to the last VP ZD episode? No, not yet. Okay, so they actually talk about student loans. And so I'll bring this up here because you talk about both sides, right? And so I'll first start off, so I wrote a tweet, right? Well, actually the tweet was just putting the video up of the editing that we did, right? And I got a comment saying like, you know, obviously they were way off to the extreme and just being like, you know, this is not my duty to pay for you and etc, etc. And like you should be taking care of your own student loans. And you know, I mean, that is the rhetoric out there probably with half of the US. But you know, Vinay Prasad and Zubin Demania are talking about how a lot of doctors are complaining about the debt, right? And I think there are a generation above us, you know, not so far off, but just one. But they talk about how the lowest quartile, you know, of making money as a physician is still higher than any other profession out there, right? In the law field and engineering field and manufacturing, whatever it might be, right? As a doctor, your minimum salary is always going to be higher. And so it is more than possible to pay off our debt as physicians, right? But the one thing they don't, and so their argument is that, hey, student loan forgiveness shouldn't be a thing because what about one, the people who don't have loans or two, the people who already paid them off, like how is this fair for them, right? They're not going to, it's like, it's that classic residency mentality, like my life sucks, so your life will suck into the one thing they don't, the one thing they don't bring up though is like the emotional and mental toll it's been taking on people, right? I mean, now more than ever, now that mental health is actually being talked about. And again, we're going to be talking about this soon with our next guest. Like that whole discussion was missed, right? And that's what I loved Megan's answer when we asked her, like how do we put the health back in health care? It was really about using, right, finding the right path so that you can limit that burden on your mental health. And so that's, you know, that's the case that I would argue against people who say, oh, it's your duty, like we all had to go through this, you know, et cetera, et cetera, is that, well, you're missing this whole generation is burning out, right? There's a whole reason why a lot of us are one having or not going into medicine. So we now are now having a shortage. And then two, a lot of burnout, so people even just leaving medicine. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting. I think that that whole argument about it's not fair for the people before. I mean, I get it. I get that side of it, but I think we always, um, maybe not always, the goal in my opinion should be to make it better, right? And to figure out system better, I mean, we could also look at it like why the hell is the cost that high anyway? Right. The other interesting thing is like, okay, so I've been looking at the housing market lady, right? And it's amazing because our, you know, my parents and parents, like folks that bought homes in 1990 and 1985, like the home that they bought for $100,000 is now 500, but also going for 600. Yeah. And it's just incomprehensible to them, like how is the market, right? And so it's it, in every respect, it's increasing. And with that, like what I would say, if somebody who went to medical school 25 years ago, they didn't pay nearly as much as somebody who's going to be going to medical school next year. Um, in the way, I think, in the pay is the same, right? Like now from 80s, like it barely has increased, right? So well, you know what? I don't even argue it's less, right? Like in terms of reimbursement wise. So like in terms of procedural reimbursement, it's not quite the same, not only that, but I would say maybe the workload is greater. So the residency in training and that kind of stuff has gotten better for sure. Right. But in terms of we're talking about EMRs, right? Early mandatory retirement, right? We're talking about how are we physician? I think the BZD, those guys talk about it, right? Um, uh, oh my God, I'm liking on his name. Uh, stock related name, man. Peter Bellswell. Peter Bellswell. So Peter talks about how like, you know, I remember him posting a little cartoon about maybe before every one hour we spend for patient care, he's spending about an hour and half the two behind a computer and most people are taking their work at home. So, you know, and that's actually affecting people too. So it's like, okay, well, I'm not practicing medicine for the reasons why people talked up medicine to be. So I mean, that's a, that's a whole, another rabbit hole that we can go down and something we actually want to talk about, which is didn't have the time. But I think that overall, what I would highly recommend people is before you, before you make any impulsive decision on student loans, really sit down and either spend the time to educate yourself or hire somebody who's who's really invested in this and just understands. And because it's so fluid, it's so dynamic and things are changing every single day. For instance, like there are decisions that people make that are just permanent. You come out of medical school and you think that refinancing is the way to go and you haven't thought every single aspect of it through and then you do that. And that's it. It's gone. Now PSLF is off the table for you. Another thing that came up because of close friend of mine, they didn't know the difference between consolidation and refinancing. And we talked a little bit about that. And so if some people are pursuing PSLF and they come out of medical school, so when we graduate, I graduate in 2017, there were really four main carriers. You had an aviant, you had great lakes, you had Fed loans, and I can't think of the last one. But if you were considering PSLF, you had to have the loans consolidated and Fed loans have to house your loans. So for me, it was an aviant. And so Fed loans had to consolidate and essentially buy the loans from an aviant. And then I can be on track. Any payments not made through Fed loans do not count towards PSLF. And so some people are sitting there, like I actually know people who are like, oh, yeah, I'm on track for PSLF, but they never consolidated with Fed loans. So that's three years gone or four years gone. So now it's like, okay, well now we need to rethink your plan, because you just lost four years of residency training, particularly with COVID, with zero dollar payments. So I encourage people to really think about it, because even the language gets so mucky, like IDR is this umbrella term, but then you have IBR, then you have ICR, which are actual plans, then you have repaid it. So again, we touch a little bit on those things, different types of loans to encourage people to definitely check that out, but also follow along, follow Megan along, follow Travis along. Go to studentate.gov. It's actually straight forward website for like a government run website. It's not that disgusting. So it's not bad. It's not the prettiest, but you know, it gets the information across. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, yeah, highly highly recommend everyone to watch that episode or let's just listen to it. That was a great one. So we move on now to our next episode. So we're definitely going to just switch topics here, but some of this stuff is related, right? So we brought on someone I met through Instagram, Benjamin Morrell, who's also a physician, but interestingly, he dropped out during his second year of psychiatry residency to pursue his own high performance coaching business. So I flew so low on this, like you said, but you got the chance to listen to it. What were the things that kind of blew your mind or, you know, really resonated with you? You know, I, the term dropped out almost as a negative connotation to it. And I think he made that clear distinction that he, it's not because I think people say, oh, somebody dropped out, they must have not been strong enough, quote unquote, to withstand the rigors of residency training or, or just not competent enough. And it was a very thoughtful, clear discussion, discussion, talk about the circumstances with his family about how he needed to do that, but not only it's just, it wasn't a fit. It wasn't what was dressed up to be as, which is a sad reality for a lot of folks. You know, I think about amazing story, right? He talked about Native American background. And he also talks about the cultural differences, which is a larger question that we ought to talk about or think more about, you know, we talk a lot about mental health. That's what these, these last two guests, you guys focused on, we spent a great deal of time on this episode, this show talking about it. And I think in the United States, that's something that we tend to address a lot on. It's bigger, bigger focus, particularly with with professional athletes speaking on it, right? But culturally in other countries, right? For instance, in the South Asian companies where we come from, he talked about Native Americans. That's really not a thing. Man, on all that is. Yeah, I'm not really sure, like, you know, you tell, you know, immigrant, which I am. And so you tell the South Asian parents, like, yeah, like I'm depressed, like, what is that? You know? And so I think that as as a physician, actually, and I've had to tell people on the other side, this is, you know, when you're dealing with people from other culture, because this is a melting pot, and you're trying to tease out into what might be a mental ill health issue versus a true organic, like pathology, like when it's a brain injury or stroke or something like that, be, be very deliberate and sensitive and how we approach it to try to tease out. Because if you bring up that thing, and you would think, oh, maybe this person's going to be open to having this conversation, they might not even acknowledge that as a pathology, dare I say, right? So I think, so I thought that was really interesting and I resonated with that. Nice. Yeah, I think the thing for me, the reason I really value Ben is that he tells you things straight up, right? So with his story, he was so confident enough in his abilities that without any certification, right? He calls himself a life coach. He doesn't have a life coach certification. And when you ask him, he said, you become a life coach by living life, right? Like, he's went through it. He's been there. He's done it. He knows perspective and the deeper perspective for that matter. So he's so confident in his abilities that he can choose to leave residency and then say, hey, I'm going to start something with my strengths, right? And his strengths being coaching, understanding mental health, and getting people out of a tough time, especially with a psychiatry perspective, which is really what he's good at. And I remember talking to him offline once and he's like, oh, what are your goals? Like, what do you want to do? And I told him, you know, after PM and our residency, I really want to get a functional medicine and a great medicine lifestyle boarded. And he's like, well, why aren't you starting now? Why don't you just coach now? And I was like, well, I'm trying, you know, waiting and what are you waiting for? Just do it, right? Like, you've got to be confident in yourself. And so I think a lot of the times, you know, people who are listening to this, you know, all of us have these opportunities that are in front of us. And we know we should go for them, or we know we should build that website or wherever it might be. But we choose not to because one we're afraid and we mask that fear by saying we need to become more competent, right? Because we understand that competence is what increases confidence. But you have to understand that you are already competent, right? Like, you become competent through experience, not just through learning. And so I was actually just listening to art of coaching podcasts on my run today and they talk about that, you know, they talk about how we mask ourselves or mask our fears rather by choosing not to go into something because we think we need to learn more when in reality, we probably already have the knowledge. Yeah. So it's interesting. You ring up that competence because I think that's one of the reasons we continue in training, right? Like, we're told that until you go through a medical school, you're not, you're not a physician, so you're not competent, right? We started the conversation about how many board exams I have to take. Yeah. So you got to keep taking them because you were not competent until you become board certified. You got to become double board certified. Oh, well, your board certified? Well, you've only been practicing for a year. You don't know anything. You just learn. And then, oh, you've been five years, you've got to get 10 years, right? And all that kind of stuff. And then it's really interesting. I actually, I'm going to skip ahead here. I was thinking about something that you and Seema talked about. How, you know, a lot of, I think, remember, she was mentioning when during her pre-medical phase, when she was going through that, she mentioned how like, we view everything through life through our own filters, right? And if we haven't accumulated enough experience, right? Then, then we lack the wisdom. And, you know, is there, we know that as you just suggested, there's nothing better in life than experience, right? A better teacher. But the question, like, I want to ask you is that, because you did this far more than than than I do, right? Like, well, actually, you know, I'm going to ask you that question later on, I think when we approach it, what I do want to come back to is this other thing that she said, you know, she talked about the societal pressures for not being good enough, right? So, because I think that's more applicable here. So we talk about competence, so training, you're looking for external validation, right? I got to be more certified. I got to be double board certified. And once you're in medical school, you're happy. But then you get to 30 or you get to 4th year and now you got to make a decision of what residency especially you want to do. So you're like all plastic surgery or dermatology. Maybe that means you're better, right? Internal medicine, metrics, okay. Backups, right? And then if you get there, then it's like, oh, well, you're not going to fellowship. Why not? Right? What's wrong with you? Right. You got to continue doing that more because why? Because you're not competent enough. And then you got to do another fellowship maybe or something else. And so I think that it's really the challenge that I have with it, though, is sometimes you get through all that and and you realize you still haven't gotten to where you want to be. Yeah. And then that's the challenge. I think so, right? And I think, you know, as the Stoics would say, and I just listened to Ryan Holiday podcast on this as well, right? Learning is lifelong. There's no way you're going to get out of it, right? But you can't read every single book and expect to just have that knowledge and now all of a sudden you become the master, right? Like you can gain that knowledge and you, of course, need a foundation in fundamentals. And so yeah, I do think getting a certificate in some way puts some credential to your name, right? If you are trying to business, you're trying to recruit, you're trying to grow an audience, you're going to need some sort of validation or certification for others to also look. But we have turned into a society of status, right? And that's exactly where, oh, plastics, derm, ortho, if I can do that, even though my heart may not be into it, the status is there, right? It's the same reason my parents asked me, so what are you going to do after residency? Like asking what, what type of fellowship are you doing, right? And I came in to PM North and think, all right, what fellowship am I going to do? Never once did I think, what if I just went general? And now, you know, after becoming a little bit more self-aware and saying, well, what's my end goal, right? It's not about going to the best universities, not about getting the best credentials. It's the impact I want to make and how can I make that? And we've talked about this, too, right? Like starting the website, just going for it and growing the audience and just beginning now so that we have enough years behind us for when we're truly ready to launch, right? And more than ever now, I'm okay with just going as a general physiatrist because I think it's more actually aligned with my goals and, you know, really learning the difference between a specialist versus a generalist and which, you know, which of my strengths actually aligns with what? And so, oh, go ahead. No, no, finish your thought. No, I was going to say, so like the analogy I like to use is like somebody on a diving board ready to jump into the water, right? And the water being that thing that we crave the most, but we're on that diving board and we're so scared of just jumping off, right? But what we're afraid of is not being able to float. What we're afraid of is that impact for the most part, right? It's that initial, damn, this is going to be hard and this is going to hurt. But what I like to tell people is if you're going to jump off that diving board, you might as well try a summer salt or a front flip and just enjoy whatever the hell you're doing and go backwards, whatever because regardless, you're going to land and you know you're going to be okay, you're going to float, right? You're going to be able to swim. And once you do it once, you're going to do it again and you're going to do it again and again and again until you become a better diver, you know, eventually. So I think that process is what people are kind of afraid of, right? Yeah. And to your point about status is one reason I would say sometimes people also make those decisions based on their financial circumstances because they're like, hey, I got a lot of student loans. Yeah. I got to go into this higher and ink specialty so I can pay them off, right? Which is interesting with the whole NYU in Colombia now saying med school's free because I don't know how much of that's actually making an impact for people to say, oh, now that money's on issue, I can go into primary care, you know what I mean? One was the first class that that happened for. I want to say it's been a while. I think they might graduate this year or last year, because I think it was like my first or second year in medical schools when they started that. But my rationale was like a lot, I see both sides, right? A lot of people who are actually in debt are also like, you know what? I just want to do family medicine and just start making money right away. Just go general. But I've also, you know, now that people are like, oh, I don't have debt, well, what's stopping me from going into residency for six, seven years and making a resident salary, knowing that after that, I'll be living the high life. So I'm curious to see what the data shows, you know, after they do this, but their whole idea was at least, hey, let's pay for, let's pay medical school for these students so that they have, so we have more primary care physicians because we're in a shortage nationwide. I'm not really sure how it's going to incentivize students to not pursue, like because I think it's funny because, you know, what you're talking about, you know, we should be thinking about, hey, like down the road, who do you want to help? What are the patient population that you want to work with? I did a little mini lecture for a couple of first and secondary med students yesterday. And, you know, I, they wanted to know what the field of PM and R was, such a broad, all-encompassing field. But a lot of the follow-up questions were about sports medicine. It could be because I'm sports medicine, but also because the two most popular sub-specialties within PM and R sports and pain, right, must go scout a medicine. And, and so I think that when I generally advise people, again, when I generally tell people to think about what it is that you might want to do a future. It's like, who do you want to work with? What kind of patient population? How do you see yourself thriving, which is what we were just talking about offline? Do you really want to do that thing that you're saying? So, that's going to be hard. Like, how are these students going to be like, yeah, just because, you know, I'm not going to pay like, because also we spent the first half of the episode in, you know, discussion with Megan. It's like, don't let the financial piece allow that to make decisions that you're going to work right down the road. So, just because it's, it's free. I'm going to do like family medicine. Again, nothing wrong with that. God, freaking need more and more, of course. But, I don't know. So, yeah, I'm excited to see that as well, but bringing it back to like what Ben was talking about, you know, another thing that he brought up that that was really interesting to me. He's talked about people with trauma about how there's two subclasses of how they react or cope, I should say, right? There's the one aspect of it. I mean, this is super broad, but there's the one aspect of it that they're looking for like some type of external means to deal with it, right? And so, conventionally, we think of these as substances that people engage in or dissociate with from reality. And the other side, which is what a lot of us physicians tend to be, he was, and I actually find myself to be in this category is just hyper focusing on tasks to escape the reality is like, how do I solve this problem? And, and when I solve that problem, I find another problem to solve. Oh, absolutely. Dude, even though when they find problems to solve, because once you run out of all the problems and you've solved all the problems, now you've got to sit there and look at the the issue at hand and like, oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. So, to again, drop another podcast that I listened to yesterday with Cal Newport's, Cal Newport's deep questions, right? And it's all about his, his book deep work and he brings a lot of the ideas in there and they talk about shutting down, right? Like, how do you shut down after work so that you just do not think about it regardless of who you are and what you do. There should be a time in your day where you say, I'm going to have my shutdown routine. And my shutdown routine involves like reading philosophy and reading other books just so I can tie it back to work in my career. You know what I mean? So, like, I don't, I don't know if I shut down. I think Mira would even tell me I probably don't, because I'm just always thinking, but yeah, it's just, it's just how we're wired, why we go in this field, I guess, too. But, you know, as long as I feel it's not, you got to be self-aware in the end, right? You have to understand how much of this is actually hurting you versus are you tolerating it, versus, hey, you actually need to shut this off for a good amount of time and then come back to it. So, it's just a balance. Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about on the, on the previous lesson, or maybe our two lessons are going to ask you is, how do you stay in the moment when you're thinking about the future and the past? We got a little existential there. You know, I, again, I tell people there's no such thing as type B in medicine, right? I mean, there's type A, and there's type A1, maybe type A2, and type A3, there's, but there's really no type B, and I'm not really sure that you could be successful and get through through all the rigors that we talked about. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to be this hyper stress, hyper focus person as well, like coming back to relating what SEMA talked about, right? There's a difference in working hard and working with intent, right? And so I think a lot of what you talk about, it's really important to tease out what I'm hearing after she said that is when you come and you read that book and you apply that to whatever lesson that you might have learned earlier is you're intently thinking how this, how can I relate to the experiences I've had? Absolutely. And what can I take from that? And so maybe the next time when you're actually going through an experience, you've, you've, you can do that in the moment. You don't have to go back. I don't know. What do you think about that? That's super, super, super, super, super accurate. That's exactly what I tell Amira. So I was like, you know, anytime you read, anytime I watch a YouTube video, anytime I listen to podcasts, I'm there with the goal of what do I take away from this? Because it relates back to like social communication, social cues, because I realized how important networking is, right? In terms of just a career growth aspect and meeting people and how much happiness that brings to me, like for me as an extrovert, like I could talk to people all day, anytime. And one of my keys is like adding value, right? Like how do I add value to other people's lives? So if I can take these nuggets by having intent in whatever I'm doing, and I'm always thinking, well, what can I take away that I can share with someone to help improve their life? And by doing that, it's going to improve mine, right? And it just becomes this chain reaction. So when you talk about, you know, past, present, future kind of thing, that's exactly where my mind is. It's it's at intent. No, I love that. Well, man, I feel like, well, at least I've been going back and forth between Ben and Simon, because I do think that they were somewhat similar topics. I mean, they had somewhat definitely unique journeys and powerful journeys, but it was kind of one of the same in terms of the inspiration that they provided. And a dose of reality is like, okay, really take a take that they look at the mirror or 30,000 foot overview that we talked about and really evaluate your own existence and say, hey, am I on the path or where I want to be? If not, why not? First of all, when am I going to fix it? And why am I not going to fix it now? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me what you were there with SEMA. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, no, I was just going to say I agree with you. I mean, these episodes are one and the same, right? I mean, just for the audience to recap if you haven't listened to these, both of them were in the medical field and as professionals, right? So Ben was a psychiatry resident and then he left to become a high performance coach. And SEMA was a dentist, Jerry Atrop Dennis, mobile dentist, and then she left her career to become a transformational high performance coach as well. So a lot of the themes in both of these episodes mirror one another. They're just coming from two different perspectives, right? And I think that's why having them back to back is so cool. And that's why I encourage everyone to listen to these because you're going to resonate in some sort of way. So in some way that they talk about, you're going to say, okay, that's me or I've been through this because they have such unique experiences. You know, you have Ben who's kind of the generational, just resident leaving it. And then you have SEMA who's the parent trying to support two kids as a husband and then leaving that chasing her passion, which was actually coaching the whole time. And you know, another takeaway that I can relate to is I'm reading the Almanac of Nabal Ravi Khan. And Nabal's biggest thing in terms of building wealth is finding out your strengths, right? Like what is that thing when you were younger? That was specific knowledge. It was innate that your mother would always say your dad or friends would always characterize you by. Right? For me, it was always like helping out that stranger or always being like social and then relating it to sports as well. Like you couldn't get me off the playing field. I'd be practicing first one in, last one out. And so how do you take that and then look at it in terms of your passion and form something around that? Right? So for SEMA, I think it comes down to the speaking, the coaching, guiding people through meditation, the wellness aspect. And then you have Ben who's a little bit more of the high energy, also taking people through the same thing, but more from the mental health aspect, more from the motivation and discipline aspect. So when I read this book and then I look back at our guests, it's just such a cool parallel to see how both of them chased their passions in the same field with just two different angles. That's well said, men. And I think that's a great place to close out. I had other questions to ask, but I don't think it's going to add more any value speaking to that. More so that's what's already been said and what you've said. So I, like I said, I really enjoyed it. I wasn't there, so I really listened it as part of the audience. Fan of your work as well as the guests as did a great job. So I encourage you guys to go check all those out. And as always, we would love to hear your feedback. You can hit us up on social where on all platforms, email works as well, med redefined edgmail.com, the good, the bad, the ugly, it's all helpful. This is a lot of work. So if there's something that we're changing up that you're not liking, let us know. If it's nothing else, it'll make our life easier. So, yeah, anything else? So yeah, if you want to know what our guests look like, please check out our Instagram, Twitter, because we actually have videos up now. So you can definitely check out the short clips of golden nuggets that they're leaving on these episodes. So you can find us there. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need to see our faces. Yeah, we're not on there. Yeah, that's right. Awesome, man. All right, so next time. Yep, see you, man. Thank you so much for tuning into the Lessons Learned episode. Darshan and I are incredibly appreciative of your support. 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