Mike Van Thielen Podcast Transcript
Mike Van Thielen joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Dr. Mike Van Thielen. Dr. Mike Van Thielen is a PhD holistic nutrition doctor of oriental medicine, certified in homeopathy, and also the medical director at ClarigenZ Health, an innovative medical company with a new pill providing all the benefits of Adderall without any of the harmful side effects.
Best-selling author of Access to Success, book focused on optimizing productivity and focus and creating a stress-free life. Founder of the Health Freedom Movement, he is also a treating physician for Boston Neuro Pain and Psych Centers, helping tens of thousands of patients with chronic pain and mental health conditions and has over three decades involvement in the best optimal health practices, anti-aging and regenerative medicine, sports performance, supplementation, and biohacking strategies.
Well, good afternoon, Mike. Welcome to the show!
[00:01:10] Mike Van Thielen: Thanks for having me, Brian. It’s a pleasure.
[00:01:12] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. This is awesome. And thank you for jumping on, making the time, hailing out of the great state of Florida today. I know you’ve traversed the globe and done a lot of cool things in the sport of swimming, but we’re not going to talk just about swimming today.
So, Mike, we’ll just jump right into your questions here. You’ve got quite the career in athletics and high performance as a coach, author, senior executive, Now the Medical Director of ClarigenZ Health. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:48] Mike Van Thielen: Yeah, good question. I think there’s a few foundations that really need to be in place before somebody really can be the best they can be. So, I would say the first thing, Brian, is we all need to know what our purpose is, right? We need to be passionate about something. And unfortunately, most of us are not living their dreams, their goals.
They’re going with the motions. They’re going to a job. They don’t like just to make ends meet. So I think that’s where the difference lies. You really need to stop and take the time to identify that purpose. So, there’s a fire in your stomach. And once you have, you know, your goals, you know, your dreams, and obviously.
You need to make a plan, so you know what tomorrow is coming next week, next month, next year, and you have a plan to achieve those goals and dreams. Because at that point, obstacles only become opportunities and steppingstones closer to those goals and dreams. And that’s a crucial foundation because if you don’t have those, why would you put in the extra effort?
Why would you not give up? Why would you not? You know, just be mediocre or ordinary. And so step number one really is identify that purpose, finding your passion, your goals, and your dreams, because then things are going to much easier as I said, obstacles become opportunities. And then number two, I think from a foundational point of view is really know what that comfort zone is all about that people talk about.
Because obviously this life is giving us a lot of conveniences. And so, we got to go to work and then we come home, and we got all these conveniences, technology and TV and computers and we’re entertained, right? But we’re well, we’re really not fulfilled. We’re content, but we’re not finding fulfillment in life.
And later on, that’s going to give us all regrets. So, I think people need to understand that. Yes, we’re in a comfort zone. But if we want to be extraordinary, if we want to grow, if we want to find that purpose if we want to be the best thing can be, then we need to step out of that comfort zone. And so, it behooves us all to understand where we end up if we leave that comfort zone.
So, we first end up in the fear zone. That’s why most people don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Then we get to an, into a learning zone where we have to acquire new skills, surround ourselves with people that are a step ahead of us. And then we’ll end up in what we call a growth zone. But eventually that growth zone becomes our new comfort zone.
So, we constantly need to be aware of where we are. And then, we become content again into that new comfort zone. And then we need to leave that comfort zone again. And that’s how we continue to grow, continue to find new purpose, continue to be the best we can be, even in different areas of life.
And I think those will be the top two foundations to really be the best you can be, find fulfillment in life, share your abundance, help others and be happy.
[00:04:35] Brian Thomas: I love that. You summed it up in about two minutes, which is amazing. We all know that we do better when we are growing, when we have some sort of fulfillment or purpose in life.
So I appreciate you sharing that. And that’s certainly a message that resonates with our audience and also a sentiment of many of our guests. So thank you. And Mike, there are probably a few definitions out there on biohacking, right? But what is your definition of biohacking?
[00:04:59] Mike Van Thielen: Yeah, there’s plenty of definitions.
My definition of biohacking is upgrading the body, the mind and life. And from a health point of view, it would be objectively reversing our biological age, increasing our lifespan.
[00:05:13] Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Again, look it up the definition before the podcast and everybody’s there’s so many definitions out there. So I appreciate you sharing and tying those altogether. Most appreciated.
Mike. The next question I have for you, if you could maybe share with us how you supercharge your productivity to crush your to do list in half the time.
[00:05:36] Mike Van Thielen: Yeah, that’s another step-by-step process that I explain in my new book, The ISOP Methods.
It’s about unleashing that superpower and all we always talk about productivity, right? So, I can give you seven quick tips on again, the most important things that we need to implement in our life in order to be productive. The first one, simple again, plan and prioritize. Once we have our passion, our goals, and our dreams, we really need to plan.
So we know what tomorrow brings that we need to prioritize. Prioritize with that I mean is many of us are involved in many projects and we do many, many things and we need to ask ourselves which one of those projects do not contribute to my personal goals and dreams. And so we need to learn to say no, we need to get rid of things, mostly projects that really don’t help us.
And yes, we like to help out other people, but we need to start to learn to say no to certain things that don’t contribute to our goals and dreams. I would think that’s number one, plan and prioritize. Number two, we need to stop multitasking because multitasking is a mistake. If we have several projects to work on, we need to start one and finish the first one before we start the next one.
Because if we multitask, not only is going to take it much longer to finish those two projects, but. By going back and forth, it will take longer, but also the end result. It will be subpar. It will not be as good. And so, we need to stop multitasking. Thinking that multitasking is a skill, thinking if we can get more time, more things done in the same time, it’s just an illusion.
So, think about stopping that multitasking, number two. Number three, I think, is one of the first things I do with many of my mentees, is we need to free up valuable time during the day. Right? Talk about productivity. We need to get rid of those time wasters. And with that, I mean, is, a lot of people that come home are tired.
They sit in the couch, do nothing, or they start, scrolling on social media without any purpose. Or they Netflix a few hours in the evening, and that’s such a waste of time. And then you have the busy businessperson that will tell you, Mike, you know, that’s not me. I, I’m busy, busy, busy.
I’m flying here doing this. I don’t have time for Netflix. I don’t sit down in the couch. Okay. How many meetings did you have today? Oh, I had two meetings. How long were they? Well, we schedule our meetings an hour each. Oh, well, there’s a waste of time. Why can’t you executives make a decision on a certain topic within 15 minutes?
Do yourself a favor and everybody else on the meeting and schedule them 15-minute increments from now on. So, we save that person, that executive an hour and a half each day just by, shortening their meetings. So, we need to really start freeing up a lot of time. I would think that’s my number three.
Number four is we really need to start scripting our life, right? Based on what we learned already. Our goals, our plan the multitasking, freedom of time. We really need to get control of our agenda. Control of our calendar, don’t overlap our tasks, our to do list, and really our calendar is probably the most important thing that needs to be organized, that needs to be clear because clarity reduces all stress, right?
We always talk about stress even businesspeople, if we can get our calendar clear and organized, there is no room for stress because we know what’s coming tomorrow. We’re very clear on what we’re doing. We’re very clear. We’re not wasting any time on things that do not help us because we, again, have a clear calendar.
So, we kind of almost have to script our life that way. I guess two more I can share. We need to fix our focus, right? We know we’re all distracted, especially today with social media and any other distractions. So, we need to learn about dopamine, dopamine overload. We need to make sure we, with our diet and with our social media, we’re getting control of that.
So, our five intelligence hormones are optimal and in sync, which means we can get into the zone. we can get things done without being distracted. And so, there’s many tips and strategies we can implement to focus again, because as you probably already heard there’s many statistics out there that say that we get 80 percent of our things done in 20 percent of the time.
Well, that’s not good productivity, is it? So, what if we really could work? Where we are really productive and focus. So, we need to fix our focus. And then maybe the last thing is automation, right? We know we have standard procedures. Standardization means how do we do things? And once we figured out how to do things, we need to optimize it.
Can we do it more effectively? That’s optimization. And then we need to go to automation. Can we Automate this process in other words, is there a software? Is it there a technology that can make this process, automatic and then can we outsource this, right? And so we need to look at automation.
We need to look at virtual assistance. Or virtual intelligence and artificial intelligence. It’s all available to us today. So how can we utilize those to not only save a lot of time, but be more effective and get reliable, consistent results. And we have all those things we need to create. Ultimately, we need to create what I call power routines.
And I, for example, I have a morning routine and evening routine, a dream routine, and a biohacking routine. And so, all those things my day actually. Is split up in all those routines, routines that are things that I can count on each and every time to be maximizing my productivity. So those would be the top tips I can share with your listeners.
Brian.
[00:11:08] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. And it’s very kind of you to share those tips. Obviously, we want everybody to go out and buy your book, but I appreciate that. That helps a lot of us today that may be struggling with some sort of productivity or inefficiencies in our daily lives. So thank you. And Mike.
Are you leveraging? You talked a little bit about A. I. But we want to ask all of our guests. Are you leveraging any of that new and emerging tech in your business? And if not, maybe there’s a cool tool or app that you found useful. You might share with us today.
[00:11:39] Mike Van Thielen: Yes, sure. Obviously once I have a process automated, I’ll look for, a cheap workforce or a virtual assistant to implement that for me because our time is much more valuable, right?
So, we just talked about it. Make sure you standardize, optimize and automate your processes and create systems. That can be run by others or virtual assistants. Number one. Number two. Yes, there’s a innovative AI precision health 360 that I use for many reasons for my personal health for communication with my business partners even in my relationship.
And this particular AI. Can be as different applications again, relationships. They have an application for schools, daycares, educational administrators. They have fun for parenting or for caregivers and guardians. They have one for healthcare professionals to implement this precision health app into their practice to help their patients.
They have one for owners of gyms and health clubs and fitness centers. And they also have one for corporate wellness. And that’s what I’ve been working on with some of my clients because this AI, it’s hard to really fully understand AI, right? But we were just playing it with the other day because it will identify what my communication style is.
And also the people on my team will tell us what their communication style is. So, we learn very quickly how we should communicate with each other. And it would otherwise take a year or a lot of, one to one communication to actually figure that out. So, AI can be one of those tools that is already available to help in many aspects of life.
Whether it’s with your business partners, whether it’s communication, relationships, or just your health. So, on my websites on the shop here page, I’ll list all these applications of the AI that I use. I don’t have any products that I sell myself, but I do recommend everything that I use to my clients.
And so if you want more information on there your listeners can check it out on my website.
[00:13:44] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you again. And this has been the year of artificial intelligence. I think every podcast I’ve done about 200 podcasts this year, and we’ve seen just every conversation just be filled with machine learning and AI and chat GPT and others.
So, I appreciate the share on that. And again, Mike, I just want to let you know it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:14:09] Mike Van Thielen: Sounds good. Thanks for having me.
[00:14:11] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Mike Van Thielen Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
