Joe Sanok 00:00:00 What are you doing? October 1st through third. I want to hang out with you just south of Nashville, Tennessee, down in Franklin. I’m going to be key noting the Mental Health Marketing Conference, and I would love for you to be there. We are also sponsoring the clinical track, where there are going to be tons of amazing trainings, all for you in private practice. This is the national gathering for marketers and clinicians in mental and behavioral health. You’re not going to want to miss this awesome conference. It’s the one conference I’m keynote ING this year. And you can read more over at MH marketing. Org. Also, Steve over at Mental Health Marketing has given 25% off to any practice of the practice. Listeners that want to come to this, whether you’re coming in person or online, you’re going to want to use promo Code Joe at checkout to get 25% off. I would love for you to come in person for my closing keynote on Thursday, October 3rd at the Mental Health Marketing Conference, but if you can come online, that works as well. Joe Sanok 00:00:57 Can’t wait to hang out with you in Tennessee Hennessy again. That’s MH marketing. Org and use promo code Joe at checkout to hang out with me October 1st through third 2024. This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sarna, session number 1026. I’m Joe Stanek, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. I am so excited to hang out with you today. We are going to be having a robust conversation around entrepreneurship, around AI, around healthcare, around all sorts of different things. It’s really going to be an exciting one for you today. if you have not caught this summer, we are doing a ton of episodes. Back in May, we had our Psychedelic Assisted Therapy series where we interviewed ten different professionals in the field and people that were working on policy and access and site principles from maps. So really exciting series if you missed that. We then after that had our Movers and Shakers series, which we covered a lot of different ground there and lot coming up for us. Joe Sanok 00:02:15 We’re doing these episodes 5 to 6 days a week, and it’s really because we have some amazing guests and some amazing sponsors that really are just rocking it out. So this fall, we’ve got some things coming up that’s right around the corner. We’ve got Level Up Week. That’s going to be the second week in September. You can read about the details of that and get on that waitlist over at practice of the practice.com/level up. We’re going to be doing 16 live webinars with top consultants and business coaches and marketing experts, as well as panels of your peers around each phase of practice, whether that’s solo starting a group or group practice. And then also I’m Keynote, the mental health marketing conference. I’m doing the closing keynote there that’s going to be in early October. MH marketing. Org is where you can read more if you use promo code Joe at checkout. They’re giving our audience 25% off. So a bunch of amazing clinicians. There is going to be such a fun conference in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Joe Sanok 00:03:10 So all sorts of really killer things going on in our world. But today I can’t wait to introduce you to Feisal Hawk. He is the founder of shadows for Next Chapter and other companies. He’s also a three time winning founder and CEO of his technology company, as well as a Wall Street Journal bestselling author for his books Reinvent. In his book Lyft and his other book, Everything Connects, his book proceeds all go to help cancer research. Welcome to the show. Faisal Hoque 00:03:43 Thanks for having me, Joe. Excited to be here. Joe Sanok 00:03:46 I’m so excited to have you here. You know, as we were talking before we started rolling, there’s so many directions we can go in. You are an expert in so many different areas that we may or may not get to, but I want to start with the personal. You were sharing a little bit about your son and what’s been going on with him. Let’s start there. Faisal Hoque 00:04:03 Sure. Look, my son is now 21. he was 18, when he got diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is a type of blood cancer, and it’s rare for his age group. Faisal Hoque 00:04:17 he was in, freshman year college student, and he was going to Hofstra during the pandemic. And, he comes home sick with, we think it’s, Covid. Turns out it’s multiple myeloma. So since then, he’s doing fine. Now he’s you know, he is. You know, what they call is and 95% or 99% in remission. And, he’s doing all right. but in the course of doing, you know, going through that, I’ve got heavily interested in, you know, health care, particularly in cancer research, and utilization of new technologies such as AI. so it’s been a it’s been an interesting journey. I was, you know, when he got sick, I was about to start writing lift, and I almost didn’t write it, but then I ended up writing it for his generation. with the thought that, world is changing place and how this next generation folks are going to get, you know, adopted and and thrive in a changing world. And so that’s kind of where I am. Joe Sanok 00:05:32 Yeah. We were talking before we started recording about how you’re working on a new book around AI and health care and some other things. I would love to just start there. So, like, sure, I love the process of writing a book. I feel like, just to follow your curiosity and you don’t know how it’s all going to land and, you know, just gathering research and like, you could go so many directions, but it’s such an editing process of ideas. Tell me a little bit about the writing of that book, but even more like what are you discovering about AI in the process of writing this book? Faisal Hoque 00:06:02 So let’s let’s take that AI and healthcare more specifically. You know, you know, this cancer area. So I’m most excited about AI, when it comes to, these kind of, you know, incurable diseases and what it will do for patient care and diagnostics because, you know, I mean, one of the challenges with cancer is that, you know, it’s very specific to a specific person or a body type. Faisal Hoque 00:06:31 So it’s hard to kind of pinpoint, you know, diagnosis, but also what kind of medication or therapy, helps that particular body type. So as we collect more and more data, what I will do is it will help us to quickly help with the diagnosis process. But also create predictive models. in terms of what kind of, therapy or medication should be applied to a particular, not just particular cancer type, a particular patient type and their body type and their DNA structure. So those will, tremendously help with, you know, the patient care and the quality of patient’s life because as, as, many knows that, you know, when you’re talking about cancer patient, what happens with them is that the, the whether it’s chemo or other kind of therapy, it has huge amount of side effect. So quality of life, you know, is challenging even when you survive. And, and this type of predictive model will minimize, that, that, that side effect and the quality of life. But it also will help you to create a, you know, longer lifespan utilization of the best, best drugs as it comes out out in the marketplace. Faisal Hoque 00:07:56 Right. So, and, you know, then you also add to the cost of care because, it is minimizing time and effort for diagnostics and minimizing, the, effort, for patient care. there’s a cost element to it too. So I type of technology will have a huge impact in terms of patient care and patient diagnostics and, and, quality of life for the patients, who suffer from these kind of, you know, critical diseases. Joe Sanok 00:08:29 Yeah. Are there practical examples of how you see companies using AI right now or what they’re researching in regards to, like, here’s one case example of how they’re saving time, saving money, increasing patient outcomes. what kind of things are people exploring right now? Faisal Hoque 00:08:43 Yeah, I mean, it is it is in every field. AI is being implemented for, time saving and process improvement and automation, whether that’s in a medical field where in terms of research, because, you know, research requires going through a vast amount of data, obviously I can help with siphoning through this data and give you, you know, the answers in a much shorter time frame and also create predictive model that will help you to come up with new discoveries. Faisal Hoque 00:09:17 So that’s one example. But it’s not just in medical field. I mean, it’s being applied in everywhere, whether it does in the defense industry, you know, whether that’s manufacturing, you name it, it’s it’s every day the use is great and gets greater and greater and greater. Joe Sanok 00:09:37 Yeah. Now you as an entrepreneur, so you’ve written all these books. Why don’t we, you know, why don’t we go through just each of the books kind of big picture what they were about? I mean, every single one of those books could be its own podcast. But I think just for the audience to understand kind of the puzzle pieces of you, to really understand, just like the vast array of knowledge you have. And then after we kind of go through your just the basics of some of your books, I would love to dig into a few different areas that I’m interested in. Faisal Hoque 00:10:06 Sounds good. So I’ve actually written about, I think, 8 or 9 books, and I’m working on a new one that will come out next year. Faisal Hoque 00:10:16 But if we just look at the last three, you know, I wrote a book called Everything Connects that focus on mindfulness, creativity and innovation. that books focus on how do you how do you connect with yourself in order to connect with the rest of the world? And, and how do you, once you have done that, how do you create a, you know, to leverage your creativity to create something of value? And the value, could be, defined as a number of things, meaning your satisfaction Financial again or social impact, whatever the case may be. So that’s a very, much of a, if I can use this word, a spiritual way of looking at your personal journey and then as a result, how you, you know, leverage creativity, to come up with innovating and sustaining value. I wrote a book, right after post, right after pandemic, called left which focus on, transformational leadership. And my argument is that anybody can be transformational, leader, whether that’s an individual level or organizational level, whatever profession you have, it doesn’t matter. Faisal Hoque 00:11:36 But in order to, be a transformational leader, you have to you have to understand how the world is ever evolving. And because I wrote it right after pandemic, I was looking at the vast change, pandemic have had on us, along with, climate change and technological change and, social behavioral patterns change. And how does a, how does any individual practice transformational leadership? By tuning to empathy and establishing a repeatable systemic process and, and, you know, leveraging the execution model that allows them to do things on a regular basis by learning newer things, over and over again. So that’s about left. And the core message and lift is that if you want to lift other person, you have to lift yourself. And the only way you can lift yourself is if you do these practices. the last book was it’s called reinvent. It’s about, transformation, more specifically organizational transformation. But it starts with, in order to transform an And organization. As a leader, you first have to transform yourself and your mindset. Faisal Hoque 00:12:53 And how do you use that as a cultural driver for organizational DNA and and transform the organization? for more sustainability, innovation and and, repeatability by utilizing technology. So that was my, very last word. And right now I’m working on a book on AI. But more specifically, how does AI, how can we use AI to unlock our human potential, but also put guardrails so that we don’t destroy, our society and planet as we know. I’m going to stop there, so. And you can, go in and a number of ways. Joe Sanok 00:13:34 I love it. I mean, so sometimes when, when I interview, like, authors or content creators and when they have a vast array of work, I just if you were to distill everything you’ve learned into just actionable things to live a better life, to have a better business, to to be smarter. To find more joy, to find more groundedness. what does it distill down to for you? Faisal Hoque 00:14:04 Well, you know, I mean, each of these, you know, I mean, you know, we just talked about my books, but even on the business side, every venture that I have taken on, it was very much driven by, you know, a personal situation and personal, calling, if I can use that term. Faisal Hoque 00:14:23 Right. And I found myself, as I’ve grown older, I’ve been an entrepreneur since, you know, I mean, in my teenage years, and now in my, in my 50s, you know, if I look at just last ten years, you know, it’s very much grounded in a, you know, how can I make an impact for other folks. And what can I share with the planet that will make a difference? kind of a motivation. So, you know, this book proceed goes to cancer research because of my son situation. And the business that I am in is to, make organization better and more. More recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work with our US government and various agencies so that they can serve the citizen better, serve our citizens better and as a result, have an impact on a, on a global scale. So I think, you know, it’s a, you know, as you grow older and as you grow through life, you have many levels of transformation at a different, you know, time of your life given whatever is happening. Faisal Hoque 00:15:34 And you can look at those moments of change and sometimes those changes are positive, sometimes those changes are negative. But how you react to it, to, to to you know, ground yourself so that you can create a positive outcome is what creates a better life, better community, or a better family, whatever, however you want to call it. So not, you know, you know, if the trick is not to crumble under these, you know, these changes and things that happens in your life and, and have it, positive outlook so that you can create something positive for not just for yourself, but also for others. You know, that’s kind of my motto of life. And I’ve kind of learned that in a, you know, hard ways by facing lots of adversity along the way, just like any of us do on a regular basis. Right. Nobody’s adversity is greater than others. Life is about life is messy and life is full of adversity. How you react to it is what makes you who you are. Joe Sanok 00:16:39 Yeah, I like that. when you when you think about having that mindset of bettering the world while you’re entering into a counseling practice. So most of our listeners, so I’d say about a third of them are solo practice owners. So people that it’s just them doing counseling. They may have an admin or a biller or someone like that. And then probably about a third of our audience are smaller group practices. So, you know, under 5 or 10 clinicians. And then the other third are larger, you know, probably 20 to 50 clinicians in their practices. and so we’ve got people that, you know, typically less than 50 employees total, and they’re trying to better the world through counseling, mental health access, all those sorts of things, and oftentimes haven’t been trained in any business at all. Maybe through this podcast, they get some some knowledge with that. Maybe they have started reading some books or doing some courses. When you think about these people that they start from a place of wanting to help the world and what business skills they really need to develop to do that well, to to make a profit, but to, you know, stay sustainable. Joe Sanok 00:17:45 What advice would you give them? Faisal Hoque 00:17:48 Look, I mean, obviously you have to be passionate of the area of practice. You know, we are all practitioners of one kind or another. It doesn’t matter what profession you are, especially, but more specifically people who does these type of work, meaning your audience. They do a, you know, they’re they’re they’re much needed, you know, impactful work for for many of us who, you know, that that needs that help. and so, so from that point of view, they’re very caring. I mean, all of these folks are usually very caring, but caring and passion doesn’t necessarily always build a business. Right. So, so, you know, basic fundamental of any business is that you have to come up with a unique value proposition, and you have to become. And when you are a, expert or of of some kind, You have to, showcase your expertise with some level of thought leadership, which kind of allows you to create a brand, for your, you know, for the audience. Faisal Hoque 00:18:55 You’re trying to, reach out to. Right? And once you have that brand, you know, with that unique value proposition, you have to create a repeatable process, of getting your customer and serving that customer and be highly organized, while you’re adding value to those customer. because in order to pay your bill and make a living, obviously you need a, a, a set of clients, and you have to have some sort of a pricing model, you know, and, and have your customer be able to afford it and pay for it. And obviously, in this industry, there is often enough insurance company involved. So you have to have all those processes in place. And the third element of it is that how do you follow up with the customers so that maybe, you know, if you’re selling a package, let’s say I’m going to give you eight session, maybe. How do you add the next level of value? you know, and what are those values are are considered tangible and, and, you know, usable by your client. Faisal Hoque 00:20:09 That’s when you start making the difference and have repeatable customer that applies for any business. But especially, you know, in kind of service business, like, the audience you have, I think these elements are particularly important. Joe Sanok 00:20:23 Yeah. Appeal is an AI powered platform designed specifically for therapists like us. Now, I know what you might be thinking. AI and therapy. How does that work Let me tell you, uphill is a lifesaver when it comes to streamlining your administrative tasks. As therapists, we all know how crucial it is to save time whenever we can. 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So if you’re ready to experience the game changing power of AI in your therapy practice, head on over to Uphill Myojo and let I write your therapy notes for you. That’s uphill. Myojo. Get 50% off your first three months of uphill with the promo code Joe over at uphill IO forward slash Joe again. That’s uphill IO forward slash Joe. Trust me, your future self will thank you. What are you doing? October 1st through third? I want to hang out with you just south of Nashville, Tennessee. Down in Franklin. I’m going to be keen noting the Mental Health Marketing Conference, and I would love for you to be there. We are also sponsoring the clinical track, where there are going to be tons of amazing trainings, all for you in private practice. Joe Sanok 00:22:32 This is the national gathering for marketers and clinicians in mental and behavioral health. You’re not going to want to miss this awesome conference It’s the one conference I’m keynote ING this year and you can read more over at MH marketing. Org. Also, Steve over at Mental Health Marketing has given 25% off to any practice of the practice listeners that want to come to this. Whether you’re coming in person or online, you’re going to want to use promo Code Joe at checkout to get 25% off. I would love for you to come in person for my closing keynote on Thursday, October 3rd at the Mental Health Marketing Conference, but if you can come online, that works as well. Can’t wait to hang out with you in Tennessee. Again, that’s MH marketing. Org and use promo code Joe at checkout to hang out with me October 1st through third, 2024. Now when when you think about, you know, when you were just getting started, are there things that you wish you could go back and say this would have really helped you move forward in your career differently than than maybe the choices you made? Faisal Hoque 00:23:38 look, I mean, you know, when you’re young and you’re starting out or when you’re starting out, you don’t have to be young. Faisal Hoque 00:23:46 You know, what happens is that there are a lot of things that you don’t know, and and you make a lot of mistakes, right? So, so the the trick is learning from those mistakes quickly and doing course correction quickly and leveraging experts, you know, that knows something about some of the things that you’re trying to do is, is probably the best advice I can give. you know, in my, in my, 30 plus, years of, of entrepreneurship and, and, and, you know, working with sizable clients, like the I, the, the kind of clients that I have. I mean, you know, it’s a cost constant learning process. it’s a constant creation process, and it’s a constant, innovation process of what can I offer that will have a differentiation than than, compared to my competition? And does it add value to my clientele? And, and and when, when bad things happen, how do you react to it and how do you show up, strong, regardless of whatever happening in your personal life? I mean, I think those are critical factors in building any kind of, successful career, let alone when the career is focused on providing, you know, kind of a solo entrepreneur or small business owners like you are talking about. Joe Sanok 00:25:17 Yeah. No, I’m just thinking with my own business, you know, you’ve got such a wealth of knowledge and thinking about, you know, how do you scale? How do you grow? I’m wondering, as you’ve built businesses, what are some of the essential things that people that can really grow and scale their businesses, like, what do they learn to implement early on? that that helps them scale differently than other people. Faisal Hoque 00:25:40 I mean, I think, you know, so in my case, you know, I, I believe, have a deep belief in collaboration. So anything I take on and I consider these different projects, I always have many different venture type projects going on, and, and I don’t do any of those things by myself. I do it in collaboration, because you can’t do everything by yourself, and you don’t know everything by yourself. So choosing the right partner to start any kind of adventure, you know, will definitely accelerate you faster than if you’re trying to do everything by yourself. Faisal Hoque 00:26:20 So that’s number one. number two is that, you know, to, you know, there’s there’s, you can go in a very crowded space where a lot of offering similar type of offering exists. that’s hard to crack because you have higher competition. So choose a market segment or an area of expertise where there’s lesser competition. And your your whatever you’re offering has a unique, you know, value proposition. That’s the second thing. And the third thing is that, you know, rely on rely on outside expertise wherever possible, because you’re not going to be able to do everything by yourself. And when you try to do everything by yourself, that’s when you start to make major mistakes, because there isn’t enough time in a day to do everything right and do everything on time. Joe Sanok 00:27:15 Yeah, I think, I think that idea of learning to take hats off and build systems that aren’t reliant on the owner is such a key for people to start to level up. what are the things that helped you or have helped some of your clients be able to to level up, and to feel comfortable taking off hats? Faisal Hoque 00:27:33 If you talk about you know, my client, I think those are those are not probably the right example because they’re a pretty large organization. Faisal Hoque 00:27:42 And when you have large organization, they’re very system driven and process driven. That’s why they become large. But when you talk about smaller organization, you know, I mean, one of the great greatest challenge of a entrepreneur or a small business owner is this idea of letting go and trusting that other people can do things better than you do, right? They they often enough hang on to everything, to themselves and don’t necessarily let go and trust other people to make those things happen. And as a result, you never scale because you always think that you’re the only one who can do this and you’re the best at it, so therefore nobody can help you. So that’s one. The other thing is that it is essential to focus 1 or 2 Things. before you branch out to too many things and try to do too many things. Too many things all at once. So the focus element of of these, you know, is very, very important, right? only when, you know, I mean, when I started out versus now, I now have a portfolio of things that I tackle, but I also have a enormous amount of support and system in place to do those things. Faisal Hoque 00:29:01 Right. So, and I and you have to build up to, to that level of expertise and resources in order to focus on, many different things. So often, you know, these small, you know, when people start out, they try to do too many things and as a result, they don’t succeed at anything. Joe Sanok 00:29:21 Such good advice. Well, the last question that I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know. Faisal Hoque 00:29:31 If you really want to Do good. first you have to take care of yourself. But if you. And once you do take care of yourself and you are willing to help others, business and money kind of comes, you just have to be patient. But you have to be keep at it. Because I honestly, truly believe and live by this philosophy that good intention creates good outcome. So if you get up every morning with that kind of mentality, even in the worst situation, things look a lot brighter. Joe Sanok 00:30:07 So awesome. Well, if people want to connect with you, if they want to follow your work, where should we send them. Faisal Hoque 00:30:13 look, you can obviously, connect with me on LinkedIn. I share a nugget of micro, you know, learning from my own, mistakes and my own journey every day. you know, you know, you can find me on LinkedIn by typing my name. Find a lot. You can go to my website dot Com. You can find my books in Amazon and Barnes and Noble. There’s a free ebook that I wrote a couple of years ago called Survive to Thrive. I’ve interviewed about, I think, a nine, ten, entrepreneur slash, survivor of, of, personal calamities. it’s free. You can download that PDF. I can share with you that link and, and, there’s lots of nuggets of information. you know, in that book and it’s a it’s free for everybody. There’s also an app associated with it called Survive to Thrive. It gives you a kind of like a daily practice, how to, you know, overcome adversity and and shoot for survival. Joe Sanok 00:31:18 So awesome. Faisal, thank you so much for being on the practice of the practice podcast. Faisal Hoque 00:31:22 Thanks for having me Joe Sanok 00:31:31 So many important conversations to have as you’re growing your private practice. You know, if you ever get confused and you’re interested in getting a little bit of help. We have tons of resources, whether that’s consulting our membership communities, IT support back end support over practice of the practice. But, you know, we have something coming up in just a little bit here in early September. We are doing Level Up week so you can get all the details about that over at practice of the practice.com/level up. And also we could not do this show without our sponsors. So our sponsor today I’m so excited about what is happening with uphill. Uphill is I that can save you so much time when it comes to doing progress notes. I don’t know about you, but I when I had my practice before I sold that progress notes were just like the worst. I would just rather do counseling and I can help. Joe Sanok 00:32:21 It’s HIPAA compliant, it listens to the session, but it doesn’t save anything. It doesn’t keep any sensitive client information. You can test it out over at Up Helio forward slash Joe and get your first two months 25% off. Also, I’m going to be the keynote speaker at the Mental Health Marketing Conference down in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. So excited. This is a national gathering for marketers and clinicians. We’re actually sponsoring the clinical track. It’s the practice, the practice clinical track as well. I’m the closing keynote on Thursday, so make sure you sign up over at marketing org. Use promo code Joe at checkout to get 25% off your ticket. And let’s hang out down in Tennessee. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter cover. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. Joe Sanok 00:33:25 If you want a professional, you should find one.