Surviving the Side Hustle

From Psychiatrist to CEO: One Doctor's Mission to Fix America's Mental Health Crisis

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 90

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Dr. Tamir Aldad takes us behind the scenes of his revolutionary approach to mental healthcare through Mindful Care, a network of mental health urgent care centers now operating in six states. As an addiction psychiatrist who saw patients waiting 6-8 weeks for critical care, Tamir identified a dangerous gap in treatment access and created a solution that's rapidly scaling across America.

The conversation dives deep into the realities of mental health treatment today. Tamir explains how his centers provide same-day assessment and treatment pathways for patients in crisis—accepting Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance when most competitors won't touch government insurance. This commitment to serving all populations comes with significant economic challenges, as reimbursement rates often don't cover costs, creating a constant balancing act between mission and sustainability.

We explore fascinating insights about addiction, including how substance use disorders often begin as attempts to self-medicate underlying conditions, and how behavioral addictions—from workaholism to exercise dependency—follow similar neurological patterns. Tamir candidly shares when these behaviors cross the line from healthy to problematic, offering practical frameworks for self-assessment.

Perhaps most compelling is Tamir's raw honesty about entrepreneurial life. Behind his impressive success—expanding from one location to ten in just five years—lies constant pressure, missed family events, and persistent self-doubt. "If anyone looks at me and thinks this guy has it together, it's completely an act," he admits. His advice for ambitious entrepreneurs? Set boundaries, practice saying no, and be comfortable disappointing people temporarily while building something meaningful. The world needs more leaders willing to make sacrifices to solve critical problems—Tamir shows us what that journey really looks like.

Ready to learn more about mental health services or get support? Visit www.mindfulcare.com or connect with Dr. Tamir Aldad on LinkedIn.

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Speaker 1:

What's going on, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. I'm super excited for this episode today because I've got this guy who's doing some crazy awesome things in the world. Tamir man, I'm excited to have you on. How are you doing, dude?

Speaker 2:

Great, yeah, thanks for having me Excited to be here share with you what we're up to, what we're doing. Lots of good stuff getting done in the world of mental health and breaking down some barriers and moving the needle so really cool stuff and glad I could be here to share it with you.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, yeah, so hinted at there with a little bit of mental health. Let's dive right in a little bit about your background and how'd you get to where you're currently at, or even, if you want to share, start off by sharing where you're currently at and the things that you are doing, and then maybe we can dive into how you got there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm an addiction psychiatrist by training and after medical school and residency and fellowship I was a researcher for many years.

Speaker 2:

I'm doing biomedical research in the world of behavioral health and felt that access to care was an issue, particularly patients having to wait six to eight weeks to see a provider. In that time they could relapse. If they have a substance use disorder, they could be a danger to themselves and others and really wanted to do something to change that. So I ended up going to business school trying to come up with an idea that would impact the mental health crisis at a very large scale. I knew I wanted to do something big and came up with the idea of a mental health urgent care, which is Mindful Care.

Speaker 2:

The company we currently have Brought that concept to New York five years ago opened our first center. Now we've scaled it to 10 centers across New York, new Jersey, connecticut, michigan, illinois and Florida soon to be Wisconsin so growing and scaling quickly with the hopes of having a real positive impact on the mental health crisis. So it's been really exciting, certainly challenging, especially the rapid growth that we've had in terms of expansion, but the problem is significant, the demand is there and we're trying our hardest to meet it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, that's incredible. You said 10 different states. How many states was that you?

Speaker 2:

said 10 different states. How many?

Speaker 1:

states was that Six soon to be seven, six soon to be seven. Wow, that's incredible. And all within five years. I believe you just said right Five or six years, dude, that's some incredible growth. What's helping you grow at such an explosive rate?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's bittersweet. The demand is really what's pushing us forward. There's no shortage of patients that need care. We accept Medicare, medicaid and commercial insurance. A lot of our competitors don't touch Medicaid, so the population there is neglected. That was this big chunk of the group that waits six to eight weeks to find an in-network clinician, so there's a lot of market share to capture.

Speaker 2:

It's certainly not easy, though. The reason nobody is in the space doing what we're doing is because the economics are very challenging to work in. Reimbursement is not significant enough. You're not properly incentivized as a mental health professional, and we provide a ton of services. It started with the urgent care, but now we do individual therapy and group therapy and medication management and we do substance use counseling, and across the board there are insurances that pay very, very low reimbursement rates, where it sometimes doesn't even make sense to accept that insurance, which is sad. It's sad for the patient that needs our help, and that's something that we struggle with. So I would say the demand is what pushed us forward, but it has been tricky to grow this quickly because we need to balance the economics with the growth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of different directions. I'd like to bring the conversation, but first I want to just be like. This is also kind of perfect timing, I guess, I would say, because it sounds like you just opened up right before the pandemic and when everything started going crazy. And I feel like during the pandemic, I think as a population as a whole, I think we started paying a little bit closer of attention to mental health in that role. So I want to bring it back there. I want to start ahead of time. What got you into the mental health in that role? So I want to bring it back there. I want to start ahead of time. What got you into the mental health in the very first place? Is it true that during the pandemic, that's when things started to get a little more paid attention, or has it always been there and am I just now bringing it to awareness?

Speaker 2:

No, no, it is very real. We saw a huge spike during COVID, during the pandemic, the number of patients that either relapsed on substance use, if they have a history of substance use disorder. There was a lot more attention given to panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder. A lot of those really started further manifesting during the pandemic. So it's really real what you're saying and what you experienced. And I would say that if we were scaling this company again from scratch, I don't think we would be as successful as we are today. If it wasn't for the pandemic right Meaning if we had to do it all over again, things would be very different if we didn't have that spike and that boost that we were given because of the pandemic.

Speaker 2:

In terms of what got me into mental health during medical school, I found that I connected very strongly to patients during my psychiatry rotation, getting to know them, appreciating their situation. A lot of times I felt that as a population they were neglected or they were stigmatized and I was curious to understand why and wanted to be there for them. And that compounded even more during my training in addiction psychiatry, where I felt like that's a really misunderstood population. And once I started realizing that with the proper care, a patient who has substance use disorder can recover and go back to their regular life. I thought that was extraordinary, right.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of times, if you ask someone what comes to mind when you think of a patient who has alcohol use disorder or opioid use disorder, heroin use disorder, painkillers, things like that, you're picturing an individual sitting on the corner on a sidewalk intoxicated. And that wasn't the people that were coming to me as an addiction psychiatrist. It was doctors, it was lawyers, it was teachers, firefighters, your next door neighbor, and it bothered me that that stigma exists and I really wanted to be a part of a solution. So that's what really drove me into it that these people are getting misconstrued and not appreciated, and I want to be there to change that.

Speaker 1:

Wow. So if you could, could you walk me through what is actually happening when someone does have an addiction? So I understand something chemical is driving them to kind of move them, to kind of continue or I guess an escape or something. So why do people get addicted? I guess is what I'm trying to ask.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's difficult to capture in a couple of minutes. I would say Super high level, I guess.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, super high level at the very beginning. Usually, substance use disorder happens for many people that are trying to self-medicate. So that means individuals that, let's say, have ADHD and can't focus try to take substances that will help them focus. People who are depressed try to take substances that will be uppers and improve their mood. People who have anxiety try to take downers to calm down. So for a lot of people, it starts with self-medicating, trying to treat an underlying mental health condition and symptoms that they're appreciating Eventually, what happens, though, is there is a level of dopamine that keeps getting kicked up every time you use, and that's what encourages further and further use, right, so you end up really wanting that dopamine hit, and it creates a pattern right In a cycle where you're constantly looking for that over and over again.

Speaker 2:

And then, if you look at neurotransmitters in general, where you're having an effect, eventually, with addictions that worsen, you constantly, at the same, need a higher dose to get the same effect of the same neurotransmitter, right, and then that's called tolerance, where you're constantly needing more. And then, with some substances, you also get withdrawal symptoms, which means, if you don't take that substance, you have a physiological response to not taking the substance, and that's when you know that there's likely an addiction here.

Speaker 1:

So just feel free to just kind of like correct me or not, but is it possible?

Speaker 1:

Can you actually be like a workaholic is where I'm kind of trying to steer this conversation, because we talk a lot about burnout and a lot of different experiences and stuff with other entrepreneurs and such on the show and myself. I went through a period where I was just burying myself in my schedule and it got to the point where I was denied a full schedule and I had to actually sit and reflect and I was like what's going on? And it was almost like a moment of a breath of fresh air because I was like wait, it's been how long since I had a day off? I literally worked three years straight, seven days a week with 15-hour back-to-back personal training sessions when I was heavy, heavy, heavy into fitness. So I'm curious there must have been some of the similar types of things of addiction, because I knew hitting certain milestones it was definitely getting the dopamine excitement, new clients bringing on all that stuff. Do you ever see any of that, or is that just made up workaholism?

Speaker 2:

no, I mean three answers come to mind. One um, I might meet criteria for workaholic. I work a ton. So if I take the the addiction psychiatrist hat off and I look at how many hours I'm in the office, it's really long days. I travel a ton, I work a ton. I don't know if it's healthy, uh, and that's coming from someone who specializes in addiction, so that's kind of why it's true. The other answer is you know, wouldn't someone who has a uh is considered as a workaholic? Would they come to me? They wouldn't. I don't know. That isn't something that makes it to an addiction psychiatrist.

Speaker 2:

But the third one, the third answer that comes to mind is behavioral addiction. Is behavioral addiction real? The answer is yes. We see this a lot with gaming. We see this a lot with pornography. Both.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of addictive behaviors there. We also see it with eating disorders, particularly excessive exercise. You mentioned personal training With body dysmorphia, for example. We see this in a lot of men that have body dysmorphia and they're getting jacked and they're getting bigger, but it's never big enough. And that's a real thing, right? They've developed this cycle where they can't get out of it and they're almost never satisfied with their success at the gym. All those are examples of behavioral addictions.

Speaker 2:

But then the follow-up question there is well, when is it a behavioral addiction? Right? So if you are, if you're working, let's use the workout example. If you're working out and you're training and you're meal prepping and you're taking supplements, so far sounds okay. And let's say you're going to the gym twice a day because you're training for a competition, also sounds okay, because there's some sort of goal there and the behavior is kind of designed to reach the goal. You're measuring and weighing your foods. You're calculating your macros. You're measuring and weighing your foods. You're calculating your macros Also still okay. Where it's going to become not okay is you are late to work, you're not paying your child support, you've lost your job, you've run out of money and you need to start stealing money to buy more protein powder.

Speaker 2:

Now we're seeing an issue, right. You're losing sleep, your appetite is changing, your mood is changing, your appearance and your dress is changing, your frustration, tolerance is changing. Now you're starting to see that this is unhealthy behavior, yeah. And then it crosses from what seemed like controlled to what now seems to be having impact on someone's ability to function. And once it impacts someone's ability to function. That's when we start exploring. Well, is this behavior addictive? Is it paralyzing? The same thing applies to all the other examples I gave. Once you see that major change, it's when you get concerned.

Speaker 1:

That's good to know. That's very helpful and helps a lot for me personally understanding it a little bit better, and I know a lot of listeners are going to kind of be. That's, uh, very helpful and it helps a lot for me personally understanding it a little bit better, and I know a lot of listeners are going to kind of be able to look at that and kind of reflect, at least to kind of check their own schedules and habits and things. But I want to kind of bring the conversation back over to you and kind of the business world of things, because you we were talking about how you originally started and it was just kind of like an urgent care for mental health. Could you explain what that kind of looks like and can you then explain a little bit more on the different products or services that you provide at these locations?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So originally I wanted to create a product where someone has same day, next day treatment, meaning, if you have symptoms, you come in and we assess whether or not you should go to the emergency room, you should go to detox, you should go to rehab, or we could treat you as an outpatient.

Speaker 2:

And I thought that would be helpful, because the alternatives right now are either you wait six to eight weeks for an appointment or you go to the emergency room. There's no one to assess you and give you their opinion, and that was the urgent care appointment for us for you to come in and be assessed, for us to see what really makes sense in terms of the acuity and the severity of your symptoms. After that, we'll make a recommendation that, if you need medication, you would go see a med management specialist, which would be a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner or PA. If you need therapy, we have individual therapy. It could be group therapy. Or if you need substance use counseling and MAT, which is medication-assisted treatment like Suboxone for alcohol use disorder or opioid use disorder, that's its own track as well.

Speaker 1:

Interesting and as you continue to, as you went from just the urgent care into adding more services, what does that look like from the business structure standpoint when you first were getting started? What kind of things Do you have to go through different filings and different things to get things established? What was that like?

Speaker 2:

Do you have to deal with a lot of people. Each question here could be an episode in and of itself. How to build the business? Uh well, first we needed money. That was the big thing. So we raised the series c round. To raise it was small, it was only a couple hundred thousand dollars. But to to establish the actual entity legally, open our first location, hire our first employees, have enough working capital to pay them even though we weren't generating revenue, those were the first steps. Once we started generating revenue, things changed and we were able to dip less into our savings, the money that we raised. And then we were blessed. The demand was extraordinary. We got very busy. We had enough money to open our second location. As we opened more and more locations, we had to dip less into our savings. And then it continued going on from there. I think if someone was asking me for advice, which I think is more the question- even before I'm thinking because I'm in my head.

Speaker 1:

I know of an individual, a buddy of mine, who's got this vision of creating and opening these giant, essentially schools all across the country. And he's kind of getting into the stage now where he's thinking like, okay, well, where am I going to start this? How am I going to branch this out? Because he wants to have multiple locations across the whole country and he wants to have them all being successful and stuff.

Speaker 2:

So, before anything that I said, I would do what's called a feasibility study, where you're really studying the idea, where you're able to articulate what is the problem, what is your solution? How does your solution solve that problem? Why has nobody else thought of this solution? What alternative solutions currently exist to address that problem or similar problems? Who is your target audience? Why are they your target audience? What is the total market share that you can actually capture? What are the economics of this business? How does this business scale? How much upfront capital are you going to need to get this off the ground? When do you make that money back?

Speaker 2:

I mean, all that would be a part of the feasibility study and that's where I would start, even before business plan right, a true study of how feasible is this concept.

Speaker 2:

And sadly, most ideas die with a feasibility study. I'm a judge for a lot of these competitions and I'm normally a really nice guy, but I got to tell you the truth. You want to be a real jerk when you're a judge, because God forbid you know an idea is going to fail and because you feel bad telling the person. They go out there, they think they're going to take over the world and they fall on their face, and that happens because they weren't prepared. So if they do the work, which is the fetus ability study, and you do it well, and then you see that this idea is going to kick ass, go for it. Go for it, but do that work, because if you try to cut corners, you're either going to burn a lot of your money or if you fundraise, you're going to burn a lot of other people's money and then you're going to burn those bridges. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then you're going to burn those bridges, yeah, yeah, well. So that's got me asking since you are growing at such a fast rate and you're in all these different places, where are you trying to get to?

Speaker 2:

What's your next milestone for what you're working on and what does that look like? Yeah, ideally you want to have a strong regional presence. So in the Northeast it's New York, new Jersey, connecticut. In the Midwest it's Illinois, wisconsin, indiana and Michigan. In the South currently we're working in Florida, but strong regional presence, and with a regional presence we feel that the brand could be very strong. A lot of our competitors have national presence, but in each state they're weaker and we really want to be the brand and the organization that people trust. And that's with referral sources, that's with patients, that's with the community. So focusing on that and focusing on the relationships that are important here across the entire behavioral health continuum is where we think is time well spent.

Speaker 1:

So, from a business standpoint, how do you measure or quantify some of those things like trust and presence? How do you quantify that?

Speaker 2:

It's difficult. I mean, the question you're asking is brand awareness. How do you measure brand awareness? And it's one of the hardest metrics for our marketing team to actually quantify right. They'll do surveys, they'll assess from referral sources in the community how many of them know us versus how many don't. But I would say it's one of the hardest metrics for us to measure, especially when, from a attribution perspective, when I ask for reports as to what percentage of patients came to us in each state from where those that just knew the brand, is very difficult to explain how you can't tie that to an actual initiative. How did somebody know to Google our name? Was it the billboard? Was it the TV commercial? Was it the interview? Was it an op-ed? Somebody wrote it's difficult to measure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can imagine that. So, other than measuring that, what are some other things you're kind of running into or do you foresee potentially being issues down the road for the business?

Speaker 2:

So I think the biggest obstacle for us since we want to really treat everyone, we're committed to that affordable and accessible mental health care as our mission is making the economics make sense.

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, the rates that Medicare and Medicaid pay for a lot of these services are very low, to the point where they don't even make sense. And what we have to do is balance it because we feel a very strong responsibility to our patients to be there, especially because we've made it clear that we are this organization that treats patients 12 and up, every diagnosis, with every insurance and every level of acuity, and nobody wants to hear well, your insurance company isn't paying us enough. So it's a huge balancing act. Some of the rates that we get are offensive. We have to see, essentially we see the patient at a loss and I don't know if patients even know that or appreciate that. But it's a real struggle for us because it hurts us a lot to turn a patient away if we know we're not going to get reimbursed for the visit. But sometimes we have our hands behind our back when insurance companies aren't willing to pay and it's a real predicament.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, I can see that being like a really tough situation there, but so I want to kind of flow a little bit more into you specifically. So you had mentioned before when we were kind of talking about addiction and how you are a bit of the workaholic. How do you balance all the different things and directions? Because before we started recording you were saying that you were also on another media thing you were doing, constantly growing. You've probably got meetings all the time. Everywhere you got personal life. You got to juggle. How do you hold that together and how do you make sure that you're still showing up at a strong manner?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it is very difficult. I think if I told your listeners that it's about self-care, they would roll their eyes, because everyone says that. You know it's like such a cliche answer. Find time for yourself and meditate and go to the gym, and sure you know I mean that's such a. If you ask Chad GPT, that's what it would tell you also. And I do find time for that. That's what it would tell you also, um, and I do find time for that, but I don't know if that's helpful to somebody.

Speaker 2:

What I think would be helpful for people to know is two things. One, being in the position that I'm in is very scary, and if anyone looks at me and thinks that this guy has it together and he's crushing it and he's on tv and he's publishing op-eds and he's on these podcasts, let me be the first to tell you that it is completely an act right Inside. It is very exhausting. A lot of people depend on me, I have a lot of pressure not to screw it up and there are days where it is very scary. So if I'm giving off the impression that I'm super cocky and have it together, that's not true. It's completely an illusion.

Speaker 2:

But what I would say then what do you extract from that? What do you extract from that is that it sounds like imposter syndrome, right, but what you extract from that is you have to fake it till you make it, and that, even though that's cliche, I would say it is very true that wake up in the morning, whether you want to or not, use positive affirmations to convince yourself that you are going to kick ass. You are the best, you are the strongest, you are powerful, you are going out there and you're going to have your chin up and you're going to take over the world, and even if inside you're scared, shitless, which is very normal, you cannot let anyone else see that. And I'm telling you as somebody who has grown something in the last five years. I still get that feeling every day. It is very real, but you must bulldoze through it and walk into that meeting with executive presence, commanding everyone's attention and acting like the boss, and eventually it will come to life. But you cannot be your own worst critic, because you will break yourself down.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that you started that by sharing something that it's tough. It is tough and I was speaking with somebody who's experienced in a tremendous amount of success in their world and somebody was asking them recently something similar and his answer was the first thing you got to really do is you got to ask yourself if this is what you actually want, because a lot of people do see a lot of the movement and the action and the different things going on and people immediately jump into like, oh, that'd be cool to do, or I wish I could do that. But then they don't think like, okay, well, what expense am I losing this for? Like social life, this, this and that?

Speaker 2:

The sacrifice is huge when people see me and they're like, oh, I wish I was flying and staying at all these fancy hotels and going to all these conferences. What you don't know is I missed my son's lacrosse game. I wasn't at my daughter's recital, I barely talked to my family. So, yeah, it's cool that I'm always flying around and I don't know how even cool it is to stay at a nice hotel when the sacrifice is huge. The sacrifice is huge. Before you look at someone's social media and you're envious of them, you got to get the whole picture and realize that it's coming at quite a cost.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and I like that you have that. You were diving into some of those things Like, okay, yeah, you do got to put your big boy pants on and you got to kind of suck it up and make sure you push through when push comes to shove. But I want to ask is like we got this idea of who you are currently? Who do you or what do you think you need to do, or who do you need to become next, at the next level up or the next tier that you're trying to get to, what are the things that you see in yourself that you need to kind of get better at or improve on?

Speaker 2:

One is be able to trust people more, not do it myself. I have an amazing team under me. Right and mindful care would not be what it is without the team under me. But even better, I'm trusting people to do what's right and what's in you know to execute on my vision. People to do what's right and what's in you know to execute on my vision. Trusting people to do that is something to work towards, and I do get better at it every day. But letting go of control is difficult, especially if you're the one who started the business, but it's necessary. So working towards that is something I try to be mindful of.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. I see a lot of people who have like immense amount of control over their schedule and they're constantly back to back and then what they sometimes even need to do is like, hey, I need to stop working as much so I can kind of breathe. It, get some room to grow so I can step into that next level. I was just speaking with a client of mine who's very successful and they're at a point where they have too many clients where they don't have the systems in place yet to kind of bring on more people to help them out. So what they have to do is they actually have to take a step back and they have to turn down and even cut back on some of their clients because they need to get the systems in place to kind of get that going.

Speaker 2:

Do they micromanage the person you're talking about. Get the systems in place to kind of get that going do they micromanage the person you're talking about? Oh, yeah, that's. That's a big thing too. I I stopped micromanaging two, three years ago. It's liberating, yeah, it's liberating. You just have to be okay with 80 to 90 quality instead of 100, and once you, and once you become okay with that, it's amazing. You know, if you could just live with it being 90 of what you're asking for, it is worth sacrificing that 10 and you'll.

Speaker 1:

It's like it's a game changer what do you think it is, um, that you gotta do to kind of tell yourself that you can be okay with a little bit less of that? Because I'm thinking of a buddy of mine back in the day and he had so silly to think about now because he was just doing he had like a laser engraving business that he was doing and he got so backed up on orders for things and he couldn't just have somebody else answering the emails and answering the orders because nobody could answer an email as well as he could. And I'm like dude, answering an email is like something so simple. Like how do you tell somebody like that, Like, dude, you got to be okay with like 90% of what you're doing 100%.

Speaker 2:

And the answer is you got to look at the cumulative value at the end of the day. So if you were to do it 100% one or two things is that worth more to you than doing eight to 10 things at 90%? And if you look at it that way, you'll realize eight to 10 things at 90% pushes your business forward, or whatever it is you're working on forward a lot more than one or two things at 100%. It only becomes more and more as you add more staff and more support. Eventually it becomes, instead of you doing one or two things at 100%, 80 to 90 things at 90%.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, yeah, I feel like that was super helpful to just kind of think about, because I feel like a lot of people are getting stuck in that and get trapped into their own ways and such Well. So I know you're super busy so I don't want to eat up too too much of your time, but so you've got these locations all over the place. You're doing a lot of traveling around a bunch of different things. What are you specifically, what are your goals or your next milestones for this next business? Are you trying to get out and trying to connect with more people, or are you trying to just get on the ground and set up different facilities or like, specifically for you?

Speaker 2:

For me as the CEO, my biggest responsibility is to fundraise, to make sure that we have enough money to grow and expand and scale. So every two years I go out and connect with our investors and raise more funding to continue opening more locations in more states. So growth and expansion is probably the biggest priority, while making sure the vision doesn't get diluted. And then we're still living up to the standards in terms of quality and execution towards that vision.

Speaker 1:

So when you said that, that you were going out and you got to check in with the investors and stuff, that had me thinking like, hey, we were connected through a mutual friend and I'm sure you didn't just do all of this by yourself. So can you share a little bit about the power of connection or networking or communicating with people and relationship building, I guess?

Speaker 2:

Huge, huge. I would say I'm nobody. If it wasn't for the connections that I made, I didn't walk into a family business. I have a lot of friends who inherited their father or their mother's business. That wasn't me. I built this all from scratch. My first job I went and got myself. So very, very early on I realized that I need to build relationships and relationships bring more relationships. And wherever you end up going, you don't know who you can meet. I've met incredible friends on flights, weddings, funerals, I mean you don't know. You don't know where you're going to meet someone, and even all the money we've raised has come from connections I've built along the way. So it's very, very powerful and you should always seize the opportunity to talk to people. If you're very introverted, it's hard, I get it, but you have to push through and make those connections because you don't know when the next opportunity is going to be there for you.

Speaker 1:

So I'm kind of hearing you saying like keep an open mind and like being open and available and try to just kind of connect and relate with people when you do meet people for the first time might not be that helpful and the person who's dressed down in a hoodie could have all the connections in the world.

Speaker 2:

So definitely don't judge a book by its cover. And take the time to talk to people and connect and see where it takes you.

Speaker 1:

And with that I got to ask how do people stay up to date or get more information on the business and you as an individual and things that you've got going on? Where do people continue to find more info and stay up to date?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, happy to connect. I can be found personally on LinkedIn under Tamir Aldad and if anyone does feel the need, that they need access to mental health services, they could visit us at wwwmindfulcare C-A-R-E. Any changes in mood, changes in behavior, or if anyone has any questions regarding their mental well mental wellbeing, we're happy to see them and give our opinion to support them and help them get better.

Speaker 1:

Boom, just like that. That was awesome, dude. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to hop on, share a little bit about your story and different things about the business and, dude, it was like a masterclass on explosive growth and everything. So I really appreciate that. But before we sign off, though, I got to ask you. You're speaking to someone who's just starting out side hustle hobby idea. They want to get to a stage where they've got multiple locations with tons of employees and they've got these dreams and things that they want to do, but they're just starting out. What would be your first and best piece of advice that will help them on the right track?

Speaker 2:

Set boundaries and practice saying no so you could stay hyper-focused on your goal. So if that means you can't go to your buddies to watch a game, you can't go out. You can't go out with your friends, visit a family member, whatever it is. If you need to stay hyper-focused and you're on a mission and if you want to be successful at that mission, you need to know that it'll take sacrifice. You need to be able to say no sometimes. You need to be able to be okay, disappointing people sometimes. You can make it up to them later.

Speaker 2:

But if you plan on being at every single wedding and at every single family gathering and never missing a holiday and being everywhere, it is very difficult to be successful, especially early on. So you really need to be ready early on to make that sacrifice, be able to say no, set those boundaries, explain to people that I'm in my first year of growing and scaling this business right now, happy to meet up down the line when things calm down. But it is a very, very delicate, fragile time in the life cycle of the business and it needs your full attention.

Speaker 1:

I love that. That's something I'm trying to make sure I'm practicing more with is those boundaries and sticking to it, and so I resonate like deeply with that. So that's powerful information. Again, dude, appreciate you taking the time. This was a powerful episode. I can't wait for everybody else to hear this. I'm excited. Thank you again, man.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thank you Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

All right, guys, that's all we got today. We'll check in with you guys another time. Peace, peace, peace peace.