|int| Teimojin Tan's Guide to Navigating Survival Medicine and Personal Finance | Ep 92

* Check out Teimojin's Early Bird Registration on the link below*

Prepare yourself as we journey into the heart-pounding realm of survival medicine with our esteemed guest, Teimojin Tan. This Canadian veteran, doctor, and finalist of the ninth season of a survival show, Tan enlightens us with his wisdom from his new book, "Survival Medicine 101: Your First 72 Hours." He illustrates the pivotal role of the initial 72 hours in any survival scenario, and how managing our emotions can make or break our survival chances. Tan's insights will definitely leave you better prepared for any unexpected emergency.

Ever wondered if it's possible to launch a book and a business without any financial resources? Challenge accepted. As we attempt this audacious experiment, Tan shares invaluable techniques like box breathing and grounding to help us keep our cool under stress. This episode will also open your eyes to how survival needs can differ across regions and socioeconomic backgrounds. You'll be riveted as Tan shares a piece of wisdom from his mentor that will help you maintain your composure in nerve-wracking situations.

Survival isn't just about physical resilience. It's a mind game. Tan walks us through his journey and how a shift in his mindset helped him and his friends tackle challenges and beat anxiety and depression. We also touch upon financial success and money management, sharing contrasting tales of two individuals with different income brackets but surprising financial outcomes. Tune in and get ready to gain a wealth of insights on developing a resilient mindset and planning for unexpected emergencies. Plus, learn about the vital role of mindset and control in personal finance. Now, who's ready to master survival?

Early Bird Registration link

The plan is to go through each chapter of the book as you are  learning the content so at the end of the online book reading you will know how to save lives and survive!

Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Thad David: 0:09

Welcome to another episode. I'm here again with Timogen Tan, a Canadian veteran, a doctor, survivalist, in fact, a lone season nine finalist, and we had him on previously. If you didn't check out his previous episode, you need to check it out. It's an incredible interview. He shares a ton of stuff. Timogen, how are you doing?

Teimojin Tan: 0:29

I'm great, so happy to be back here. Thanks for having me.

Thad David: 0:32

Do it, of course. Well, and I know you had talked about it previously and we were just chatting the other day and you mentioned your new book that's getting ready to get released Currently. The name is going to be Survival Medicine 101, your first 72 hours. Did I get that right?

Teimojin Tan: 0:48

Yes, super excited to launch this. This has been in the books for about three years now. I started in late 2019 and I've just been putting every single bit of knowledge, both from a survival standpoint and also from a medical standpoint, and filtered it down to what the average person needs to know for their first 72 hours, and I'm so excited to share it with everyone.

Thad David: 1:11

Oh man. Well, I'm excited to deep dive into it. I know just from you sharing little bits and pieces of it. It sounds absolutely incredible. What was the spark for it? What was the catalyst? I know you started a few years ago. What made you want to write this book?

Teimojin Tan: 1:26

Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about this the other time, but one of the things that I want to give to my kids is basically a manual of all the things that I find interesting, all the things that I'm super passionate about, and I think outdoor skills, survival and medicine is all the things that I really find super cool, and I would love my kids to at least get a glimpse of what dad's super excited about. And this manual is for them and for all the families out there and to kind of explore the outdoors and adventure with a little bit of peace of mind and allowing people to not only tread carefully but tread with confidence.

Thad David: 2:07

Well, and I do remember you sharing it quite a bit, and just for anybody that may not have listened to the last episode, I appreciate you catching them up to date on that and then tell us about the book. I mean, it's the first 72 hours. Obviously, the goal is to get out and read the book, but what can you tell us about the first 72 hours? What's so important about that?

Teimojin Tan: 2:29

So the first 72 hours is a critical point for rescue. 80% of most search and rescue teams are finding you within those first 72 hours. So, knowing what your priorities are, your gear selection, things that you might be thinking, okay, I'm just going on a day hike, which is the number one demographic of people being rescued. They just thinking they're going on a day hike and something happens whether they get lost, they lose something, they fall down and they get stranded for a lot longer than their backpack intended to.

Teimojin Tan: 3:01

So we go through your survival priorities and I do take information from different experts out there well known people like Dave Canterbury and I put a little bit of my two cents on it because there is survival, definitely, but when you look on it from a rescue standpoint, from a medical standpoint, there is a little bit of things that are lacking in that information. So I'm hoping to fill that void, fill that gap, and to allow people to understand survival and the physiology behind it a little more deeply. So that kind of bleeds into the type of kit they choose, the type of priorities they prioritized and also how they adapt and improvise. Because once you know the science behind things, then you're like, okay, I need this, I know how to make it, and that just changes the game, because you go from being helpless to like, oh yeah, I need that one thing and I know how to make it. So it really turns things around, and that's what I'm hoping for for the audience.

Thad David: 4:05

All right, it's excellent, it's funny. It just made me think of just yesterday. I was doing a workout with my wife and this family friend of ours that our kids play together, and we were doing this workout and I was sharing with them this marathon that I'm doing next weekend, and they started telling me about this woman that was out trail running and she was on just a normal trail run and ended up getting caught on this massive forest fire. It was a huge ordeal, but I think it made me think of it when you just said that it's the vast majority of people that are. Just I was out on a day hike and then, all of a sudden, here I am, and so this is stuff that we need to know, because if I'm just out on a day hike, you are more than likely going to be one of those people that are susceptible to it.

Thad David: 4:47

All right, so what would be your go to? I mean, what's the first thing once you realize you're in just this? We're in the middle of it, something bad's happening. I'm going to be waiting for a rescue. What are the top things that come to your mind right away that you're like we got to make sure this is good, because for me I was, and what makes me ask is I was thinking 72 hours, I mean, how long can? We can usually survive for a pretty long time without food and water. So is that a problem? And obviously I don't know. I'm asking you as the professional what are the go to things you're looking for?

Teimojin Tan: 5:14

Absolutely so. The things that will probably kill you in minutes are immediate medical issues, but also panic A lot of people, when they first realize that they're lost or something bad happened, their blood rushes, they get that tunnel vision, they're in the black and sometimes they're just running forward. And sometimes forward is not the direction you need to go. You can get lost even further, you can fall down and injure yourself. So, knowing how to systematically go through okay, this is my priority one, two, three, four, five of a medical emergency and once that's okay, really taking that breath in and controlling your emotions to shift from that emotional state to that thinking state, developing a plan and then delegating tasks if you have people around you, and then seeing how you can signal for help, because ideally you want to be out of there within the first 72 hours. That's when the majority of search and rescue teams find people and successfully rescue people without fatalities.

Teimojin Tan: 6:15

Now let's say you have a priority of food and water after a certain amount of days. That's fine, but it's different in different contexts. So I would say, if you are incredibly heat-strokeed out and you need some rapid cooling and some water, that's going to be different than your three days of water. When you're conserving, you're in a shaded area, you're all set up so things hit you at different times. So it's always important to contextualize things and to give scenarios, and that's why not only does the book go through a lot of this, but a lot of what I'm hoping to do in my online courses is throw people into a lot of different scenarios so that their minds can start thinking of these things, so that the guidelines are there, but your thinking is always fluid.

Thad David: 7:05

And that's again why you're the expert, because I don't know that I would have thought about panic, but immediately I could see somebody, because once you realize you're, in that moment I could see a very, very simple somebody's going to freak out.

Teimojin Tan: 7:18

Yeah, just take one example like yeah, people who've been in the military learning nap for the first time, guy with the map, first time leading, leading a troop. Well, what does he do? He keeps on marching on. When did he take a knee and figure out what's going on? Right, we've all been there, we've all made that mistake and he is like booking it into the bush, wacking through there and he gets everyone lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The same is only amplified with people who are not familiar with the terrain, know that they don't have a whole lot of food and water and have people relying on them, and they're they were supposed to be the lead, the dad, the person who's the outdoorsy person, and they get everyone in trouble, and sometimes they get everyone in more trouble if they Let that panic set in.

Thad David: 8:06

Well, and it made me think of too, the moment you brought up the land nav was like that night land nav when you're just out there yeah, you got a map and a compass, you know trying to, you can't see five feet in front of you and you're trying to navigate. It's a. It's a scary situation. I would imagine that that's it's a great thing to bring up, because I could see it's gonna cause a lot more trouble for you Right along the way. So I'm curious as to why, what is the why 72 hours? Like, why is that the rescue? Is it because they stopped searching after 72 hours? Just, you know what I obviously I'm sure they keep searching, but to why is a 72 that number?

Teimojin Tan: 8:41

so 72 is basically looking at North American kind of averages on how fast people get found. So it's not saying after 72 hours give up, like people are can be found two weeks out. It's just the likelihood Statistically from rest, search and rescue data out there is, the longer you're out there, the longer it is or it's, the less likely you are to be found. Is it possible? Absolutely? Is it Probable? Maybe not likely.

Thad David: 9:13

Okay, and that makes sense, that Definitely planning on 70 and hoping that within that 72, knowing this now, yeah, hopefully I'm getting myself found. Absolutely. You would share two people that that are gonna pick this up, that they're gonna get several iterations of this book going forward. You're gonna be making some additions to it. What's that gonna look like?

Teimojin Tan: 9:39

Absolutely so. This book. What I want for my viewers is to come on a little journey with me. So it's first 72 hours, but wouldn't you want to know what to do on that week? One, week two, week three, let's say you're out there for 63 days like on a loan. What is that gonna look like for you?

Teimojin Tan: 9:58

We get into that scope of long-term maintenance of your health and Also long-term maintenance of your mental well-being. So we go through a lot of the psychology of things starvation, what to expect. So you know how hard to push, how to anticipate what you need to get done. So it is a spectrum of Information. So first 72 hours and then that information just grows and grows and grows.

Teimojin Tan: 10:24

What I have right now is my medical team going on for the immediate 72 hour problems, the immediate kind of a medical emergencies, but after that they're gonna be adding things like chronic wound care, like Things that are related to chronic disease and things that you should know how to manage.

Teimojin Tan: 10:42

And if it just prevents you one ER visit and waiting six hours in the ER room, I'm happy with it. So if you have that knowledge in your head to be like, okay, it's not that bad, or I know what to do, or I know when things are a must-see for it for a physician. Then that's kind of where we're heading, and my challenge to myself is can I launch this book, can I launch this business, without any money? So I don't want to pull away from my family because we're just settled in. So I'm asking my Followers and my viewers to come on this journey with me and in exchange, I'm going to be offering every iteration of this book for the first year before it's published, to all the people who support me in this process hmm, well, and I what it makes me think of too.

Thad David: 11:29

I love that you're doing that for the next year, because I just did, and I think his interview is gonna pop up Next week. But he wrote a book Called killing chaos and he talks about that, the struggles that veterans deal with when they get out, and, and as we were unpacking Some of it, he was telling me all the ahas that he had after the book was released that because it went straight into hardcover, he couldn't.

Thad David: 11:51

He couldn't go in and add exactly as a part two of the book, and so that's what made me really appreciate this is you're gonna be able to add to it and all those little ahas that you had after the fact. Everybody that gets it early on is going to be able to jump in and have those, knowing that, anything you add to it, they're gonna get as well, which is a huge bonus for anybody and what I find fascinating is, even in North America, the climate, the landscape and even the socioeconomic kind of difference between people.

Teimojin Tan: 12:19

Their questions are different, their needs are gonna be different. So to compile that all into one community to really get people that information, that's, that's what I'm most excited about learning about people's struggles or concerns and also seeing what we can very Realistically do with not a whole lot. So what can we find in our local pharmacy? What can we? We can find out what we need to do with the Jerry rig, with our own stuff, to get what we need out of that survival and medical situation.

Thad David: 12:50

Well, and getting back into because you had mentioned panic, which still still really just shocked me what does one do to prep it's a not panic? Because it seems like that's. It's so obvious. To me. It was a big light bulb like how would you prep somebody to not panic? Because I feel like that's just a great life skill in general.

Teimojin Tan: 13:08

Panic. What is panic? So when you look at the brain parts of what is involved in a significant emotional response, whether it's fear, anger or so forth, it is a very deeply rooted Brain kind of position so it's almost automatic. You know it is very hard to control. Now, the newer part of our evolution and our brain development, that's a lot of the frontal cortex. Once the emotional part of your brain takes over, it's very hard for that frontal corvette cortex to operate. So a lot of what you do to train your mind to Listen to you and to listen to your intent is to transition your control from that emotional state to that thinking state and there's many different ways to do it.

Teimojin Tan: 13:55

I'll tell you what I typically do and what I typically recommend to my students is as simple as what do we do when we shoot? Right? We I think a lot of people who've trained in the military know how to box breathe. Trained how to box breathe Kind of learn how to bear down. And what's that doing is a few things, both physiologic and Based on the tension network in our brain. For the tension network you are saying shit's hitting the fan, but I need to focus on my breathing, right? So you're. You're consciously making your brain think about one thing, and that may be just breathing in for a certain amount of seconds, holding it for a certain amount of seconds, exhaling for a certain amount of seconds and then holding it again. And number two this comes into the physiologic part is what is that actually doing to your body? There is a nerve that's your rest and digest, your vagus nerve, that goes from the base of your skull to the majority of your body. But there are access points from your neck, so there is a vagus nerve on your carotid bulb, which is over here, and there is also tracks on either side of your lungs that go on the inside of the lungs. So actually, when we're inhaling really big and holding it, what that is doing is using your lung tissue that's inflated like a balloon and pushing it on that chest wall and it stimulates that rest and digest nerve. Same thing for when that nerve innervates all of our guts. Why do we bear down before we take a shot? It's because we're increasing the pressure inside our belly, in addition to our chest, to stimulate that vagus nerve and together that systematically reduces your heart rate, your tremor, when you're trying to take that shot and you're relaxing but also using your brain to focus on a thing. So that's like two ways to really calm down very immediately.

Teimojin Tan: 15:42

In the meditation realm, again, you're training your attention, so ideally you want to be incorporating as much senses as possible. People call it grounding, that form of meditation. So what I really liked about one of my mentors he said and this is for medical people, he had no military background or whatsoever but an ER situation, a surgical situation, a trauma situation, is quite scary, especially for people doing it for the first time. And you feel it because everyone's looking at you for answers and you might be a very young intern with zero experience and someone's actively dying in front of you. So the first thing that he told me is to catch your breath and that reminds you to do that box breathing, to do whatever breathing exercise that you've decided is going to be your go-to.

Teimojin Tan: 16:30

And number two, get your footing. So that mean some people when they're nervous they kind of feel a little bit wobbly. But what his meaning is to feel how your feet feel in your shoes, how your shoes feel on the ground. Again, you're bumping your attention from your breathing to the ground, to your feet. And then he said check in with your heart, just feel how fast your heart's beating, how hard it's beating, and just recognize it, to acknowledge that it's a stressful situation. But again, you're training your mind to bump into different attention points that you consciously say. This is what I want you to do right now.

Teimojin Tan: 17:05

And the two part of checking in with your heart is checking in with your purpose or your reason to do whatever it is that may be your mission, the person you're fighting to come home to, the person that means the world for you that you want to protect.

Teimojin Tan: 17:17

And then this doesn't need to take a long time. In reality, when I'm running a code, this literally takes me on the scale of seconds, so less than 10 seconds. But once you're able to do that, then you can control your attention to be like OK, this is what I want you to do next and that next part is what I teach in the book your survival priorities and more specifically, even before things become a survival priority, is what are your medical priorities? So we go through the March algorithm and the adjusted March algorithm, which I called March, which I include as extended exposure, and also debility, which correlates with how we treat a trauma in the civilian side, because there are some things in the March algorithm on the military side that we don't necessarily go through on the civilian side. So I extend that so that our viewers have a huge, huge range for what they're able to evaluate and address.

Thad David: 18:10

That's absolutely incredible and I know you mentioned earlier from the trauma side that if somebody can just avoid a trip to the ER you know unnecessary trip to the ER that immediately my mind went to. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old running around and I don't know what it. Every now and again something will happen where I'm just like OK, like we, and it's immediately so it feels like this right here would help me just in day-to-day parenting. It's really some good tools.

Teimojin Tan: 18:39

Absolutely, and I think it really puts a lot of confidence in many parents, because the majority of emergency medicine isn't necessarily your traumas, your shootings, your stabbings and all of that. A good majority is the concerned person. You know you don't know what that red flag is, you don't know why your body's doing that, and having a little bit of knowledge behind that gives you some peace of mind, but also it gives you some power to yourself and to your family as well, and it's fun to learn about the science behind things and that's what we talk about.

Thad David: 19:14

Mm. Yeah, well, I love it. I've got so many great notes. I'm excited to I'm really genuinely excited to jump in and read this book. What is your most exciting part? I mean, what's the thing that really gets you? Obviously, I'm really amped up and excited right now. What part of this book, I mean what really gets you going? What are you most excited about inside of this book to share with everybody?

Teimojin Tan: 19:36

So what I have come to realize and something that I appreciate just greatly and this goes across survival medicine, this goes beyond everything is the mindset and also the psychology behind this, because it's often overlooked. People love their gear right, they love doing all these skills, but at the end of the day, what pushes you beyond what you think you're capable of is your spirit and your mindset. So I just give some starting points for people in my book. There are so many great gurus out there and books out there, but my hope is that people have a foundation and a curiosity after reading some of these chapters to be like OK, I really need to invest in training my attention, training my outlook, and maybe it causes some people to reorient how they approach life, and that would be awesome if that's an outcome.

Thad David: 20:33

So it was really intriguing to me and it's what struck me with the last conversation that we had. I was not expecting it Was the mental game side of it, and so I love that you brought it up now, because it was even one of the clips that I shared all around very intentionally, because I love the clip of what you shared, but at the very end of it you had mentioned the power of using the words. I am and just hit me with how big you are with the mental side of it, the mental game, because it's such a, like you said, everybody looks for the gear. What's the thing I need to go by when we're far better suited to train our minds to be able to sustain? Because that's going to be one of the things that decides whether you do or don't survive.

Teimojin Tan: 21:14

Absolutely.

Teimojin Tan: 21:15

I think the long term training for your mindset, in addition to some of the coping mechanisms that I discussed, is redefining your relationship with failures, because you can't have great success without multiple horrendous, gut-wrenching failures.

Teimojin Tan: 21:34

And if you're able to change how you perceive them, if failures become fun for you which it is for me I still get scared about them, but I don't mind them.

Teimojin Tan: 21:44

They are almost like a game to me. And once you're able to do that, and to do that regularly, you're able to kind of shift your relationship with challenges and outcomes blindsides, and it's very interesting to see how you change as a person and how you especially how you change in regards to depression and anxiety, which is something that affects a lot of people in our day-to-day society, because a lot of people are dealing with a lot of horrible things out there and they just don't feel capable, that they are able to do things. And the only reason why I feel like I have a leg up is because I've been through a lot of shit and it took a lot of time for me to change my perspective. But now that I have it makes me very courageous for anything that comes my way and it's just something that I wish I knew the exact way to pass that on to everyone, and the only way that I know right now is to share what I've been through and what has helped me and what has helped some of my close friends.

Thad David: 22:54

What and I really appreciate how you shared that but the redefining your relationship with failure. What was it that caused you to redefine your relationship Specifically? What did that look like for you as you transitioned into almost looking forward to it and working towards?

Teimojin Tan: 23:12

it. So just to give you some background on me, I was the kind of kid that probably would have gone diagnosed with ADHD as a kid following shiny things. I had flat feet, crooked steps, I was falling all over the place and I just started to look up to people and to just like. I think the one thing that I would give my younger self credit for is that whatever shiny thing that I decided to follow, I just decided to run towards that, whether that was playing soccer when I was the slowest person or like the person that literally still tripped on himself in high school, but it forced me to be as good as some of the other kids. It forced me to learn things that if I had confidence issues, I probably would not have learned, and it was that accumulation over time that made me say like, oh yeah, I don't know how to do this, but like I wanna do it, so I'm just gonna do it.

Teimojin Tan: 24:12

It takes a long time or, if not a long time, many failures in a short amount of time to get to that place. So I don't think there was one specific moment, but there have been moments in my life that I define as huge failures, one of them being like a really bad breakup. I'm not sure if we talked about it last time, but I basically lost a lot of my stuff. My dog was kind of taken away from me temporarily and I was left living out of my car. So that was like definitely a low for me and I treated myself as someone who was not worthy of all those things, all those basic needs, because of how bad I felt about that situation.

Teimojin Tan: 24:53

And it took almost a year for me to recover from that. But when I did, I realized that I was worth something. All that time, you know, because at the end of it this was like my last year of medical school I did get onto my first choice residency program. So, telling myself, I was a piece of shit getting into that program, I was like, oh, you must be not that bad, you know, maybe we should change a few things, you know. So I think from that point on I was better at forgiving myself and better at being kind to myself. So maybe that was my one thing in the recent future or the recent past.

Thad David: 25:34

I do remember you sharing pieces of that and that specific instance in the last interview and I'm glad you brought it up again because that's such a big thing to pull, especially if somebody hasn't didn't listen to the last one, but I think it's such a great thing to bring up and it made me think of the. I believe it was Berné Brown. I don't know if you follow any of her stuff, but she's got some pretty awesome content, some really good books. But she had. It was something so simple. She talked about making pancakes.

Thad David: 26:05

And like everybody knows, like if you've ever made pancakes ever. You get the pan going, you mix up the batter and you throw the first pancake down and it's just it's always not the right pancake. You know. You flip it and it's just it's not right. And you got to adjust the fire a little bit, you got to tweak it and you do the second one and it's like, ah, that one's better, but by the third one it's good. Like we're ready to roll. Like I can start scanning out like pancakes are ready to go and choose. Like that's kind of how life goes. Is you throw the first one down? You can't expect this to be perfect. It's not going to be great. I love it, but far too often most people don't even want to have that failed pancake to get started, and so I love that. Just redefining your relationship with failure is a beautiful, beautiful thing, I think.

Teimojin Tan: 26:45

No yeah, please. One thing that I saw recently was setting goals. You know one, just like two or four words one day or day one, you know. So a lot of people don't want to do that day one and I think that just that four or five words changes everything. You know one day or day one, you know. You say that you make that decision, flip a coin and you just start, you know. And I love that because sometimes my greatest successes were because I was not prepared and I was like all right, day one.

Thad David: 27:25

Yes, that's amazing. Such a great piece. I've never heard that one before and I love that one day or day one, whereas most people sit there and saying, one day I'll do this, which is a great thing. Well, how much time do you spend on the note of goals? How much time do you personally spend with goal setting, and how important is that for you?

Teimojin Tan: 27:50

I try to wake up with a goal in mind and I also go to sleep, and I did this very aggressively when I was on a loan and I am coming to realize that I need to do it more in my regular day life, because I love how many things I could get off that list and also to feel accomplished with my day-to-day things. So what I would do is I would number one, list out the things that I'm grateful for, just before going to bed and thinking about the one or two things that would make my life incredibly better. So what do I wanna do for myself, what needs to get done?

Teimojin Tan: 28:27

And you can go through whatever different elements or categories in your life, whether that's how do I be a better husband, how do I be a better doctor or employee, what are we doing for this, this and this? And you just pick that one thing and in the morning you decide what that one thing is gonna be. It's like today, am I gonna do that one thing for my health? Am I gonna do that one thing to be a better husband today? Am I gonna do that one thing for my business today? And typically we have a huge list of things that probably don't get done on a timely matter. But if you just pick one thing every day or changing how you improve by 10% every day, that's where I see the most growth. You have to get into that mind space where you're consciously making decision to get better and without that dedicated time five, 10 minutes in the morning, five, 10 minutes at night you forget about it.

Thad David: 29:21

Yeah, when I think that's how everything kind of becomes that one day type thing is until we identify it it's just one day, and then the moment you say we're doing it, it actually becomes day one, and so I love that. How much of the book is mental game related?

Teimojin Tan: 29:40

So right now it's about, I think, five or five to 10 pages right now, but that chapter is in bullet points, so I need to expand that quite greatly.

Teimojin Tan: 29:51

But yeah, it's something that I'm currently developing, because one thing that I find pretty interesting is just business in general, or financial stability, and it's really cool to see how survival psychology intermixes with, like growth mindset. There's just so much similarities and I find it very interesting because I'm not sure if you're in that space, but there was a guy and I have his book on my desk actually. So Russell Brunson is like a business person, right, and a lot of what he teaches both on mindset and just business, I used a business book to get on a loan, right. That's how I got onto the show, using marketing tactics. I learned from him and how I shaped my mindset to develop a business is how I approached survival on the show, which was mind blowing to me that the two could even translate. So, as I'm going through my own business journey, a lot of what I learned from personal growth and mindset I'm sure I'm gonna be translating into that book too.

Thad David: 31:06

And again that ties to, I know you said the bullet points and that's where, as you're adding to it, everybody's gonna get it, which I really appreciate. I didn't catch the book. What is that book that you shared? I know you held it up. You said yeah.

Teimojin Tan: 31:21

So this book is quite interesting. It's called 30 Days and the premise is Russell Brunson went up to a bunch of the most wealthiest people he knows and said if you had no money and 30 days, how would you build your empire? So it's really cool because he goes over so many different demographics of business types. So you got your brick and mortar things, you got your e-com stores and just so many different strategies on how these experts in different fields would make that first million dollars in 30 days. So it just gets your mind rolling on what would fit your circumstance. And that was just like one of his books expertsecretscom secrets, traffic secrets all those are excellent, excellent books and something that got me on a TV show.

Thad David: 32:17

Which is wild?

Teimojin Tan: 32:17

right. If you read a book and was able to get on a TV show that you've been admiring since you were a kid, that would have been worth your two, three hours reading a book right.

Thad David: 32:27

Yeah, for sure, but I think too is so many people and you get Jim Quick is where I heard it from, but he always talks about the difference between self-help books and shelf help and then we buy the book, we put it on the shelf and we don't do anything with it, Whereas you clearly read the book, did something with it and surprise, surprise, it actually works. And, gosh, you want a TV show, which is fascinating. What inside of it? And I very much feeling a lot of what you said with how much the survival mindset relates to growth mindset, just in life in general. And you said there were so many similarities. What are some of the big similarities that stand out to you with the two correlations?

Teimojin Tan: 33:08

I think stoicism in general in both kind of realms is a huge factor.

Teimojin Tan: 33:15

You see a lot of people having a really bad relationship with control right, and if you don't have a whole lot of control or you don't know the path, you're going on going down.

Teimojin Tan: 33:27

There's a lot of fear that comes into that. So, in both contexts, just practicing what you can take into your own control whether that's your own emotions, whether that's your actions right in front of you and going from there and whatever badness that comes your way, whether it's, I don't know, not getting the loan you needed from the bank or not getting the animal you wanted on a loan Just knowing that that doesn't mean a whole lot about who you are as a person, routing things in your identity and taking control of what you can control and letting go of everything else. And when you have all your brain output specifically on things that you can control, the actual output of what you do is so much more than worrying about everything else. I worry about things when they are right in front of me typically and when I have to handle them, and that has worked for me in multiple different aspects of my life and I'm sure it works for a lot of other people in business and in survival too.

Thad David: 34:36

I want to make sure that, because I feel like I grasp exactly what it was. But you said people having a bad relationship with control. Would you mind, deb? What do you to find that for us? Does anybody listening? Just make sure? What does that mean to have a bad relationship with control?

Teimojin Tan: 34:51

So, in my head, if you have a bad relationship with control or if you feel like control or lack of control is something that stops you from doing something, that is something that causes fear in your life.

Teimojin Tan: 35:04

It prevents you from actually doing something. So if you're scared of doing something because you might be embarrassed or you don't know what you're doing, you don't fit in, that is more detrimental than saying, okay, don't control that, but I know how to walk in that direction. I know this thing, or I know how a person that knows that. So I don't, I might not know it right now, but I know this might be the step in the right direction and it may seem very simple to say and it might be hard in reality, but it may be simple. It may be just simple, you know. If you take that fear away and just like I honestly don't know, and you're just willing to look it up on Google or say, okay, I don't know, but who might? Is a step in a direction that most people don't walk and that's how you get that leg up, in whatever circumstance Got it.

Thad David: 36:03

No, it's absolutely just incredible. I love it. This is, I love the mindset stuff and that's really what gets me going and again, that's what I love to. I really appreciate it about our last conversation it's really cool stuff, especially to hear about how you used it inside of a loan and how you used it in a real world scenario. It's pretty awesome.

Teimojin Tan: 36:26

Absolutely. I mean it's the real world that I think gets more people and I think it's why a lot of people struggle with mental health right now is because that mindset and, to be honest, finance is not really taught in school. Like you net, like, if you don't read it, you never learn that and that's scary. Like I see my family members who are a lot older than me just like never diving into that, never taking control of their own life, never realizing who they are as a person or fighting for what they desire, because they've never spent time to figure out what they really want in life. You know that's a huge shame and I'm hoping that more people take that time for themselves because it's important.

Thad David: 37:13

And I'm very interested in asking about the personal finance aspect of it too, because I think there's so much to unpack with that.

Thad David: 37:21

Somebody just recently recommended this book to me with Winning in Mind, just the other day, a guy that I respect and just a tiny he's actually one of my, he's one of the marksmanship instructors in sniper school.

Thad David: 37:35

Really, oh yeah, so somebody just hold up in a really really high level. But he recommended this book and the guy's an Olympic the author, olympic athlete, gold medalist, world champion and rifle shooting and he said after he won the Olympics he got really depressed. And he said the number one thing is he spent so much time with this big goal in mind that the moment he achieved the goal, it was like almost immediately he was just depressed and it was because he didn't put that next goal up. So he even goes so far as to say, like, put the goal out there that you want to hit and then also know what your next goal is going to be too. So that way, when you don't get bogged down afterwards because you're going to hit that goal and get depressed with it, and so it's really important. It's cool to hear it from different people on different levels.

Teimojin Tan: 38:22

Absolutely Like. I think having peaks and valleys and having that target is so important because otherwise, what are huge milestones like as a regular person living in North America, right, is it getting your first car? Is it getting married? Is it having kids? And that might be, that might be the thing for people, but there's just so much time in between, right to make that life exciting, worthwhile. And some people think ambition is a bad thing, but I absolutely love it. It keeps me going.

Thad David: 38:59

What do you think? Some people think it's a bad thing.

Teimojin Tan: 39:02

You know, I think a lot of people, especially very wealthy people and this might be their own personal kind of battles is how are they balancing between being a multimillionaire, a billionaire, and being a good parent or being a good family person and that's definitely something that we see all the time like how many millionaires get divorced? How many actors and famous people go through marital issues? And how often are people really wanting to be a better partner or actively doing things to be as good of an Olympian, a business person, as a good dad or a partner? Are they actively saying like, hey, my wife or my kids really need this, or I should be this person to do this? I feel like ambition in that sense where it's just related to one singular goal that doesn't necessarily elevate your whole unit, maybe an issue, and a lot of people have a lot of my family have caution and they don't just focus on this, because a lot of people in our family are divorced, so they already know that that focus can be detrimental.

Thad David: 40:15

And I always. What it just made me think of, too, is getting back to that one day thing. There's so many people sitting in that one day mindset is looking at ambition as a bad thing. It makes my one day mentality also okay. It makes it okay for me to sit in the space of not making it day one. I'm sure there's a ton of stuff. And back to the survival nature of it. You can't put any one person in a box as we unpack any of these conversations, but it's really really great stuff. I love all of this stuff. I really appreciate you stepping in. I'd love for you to share. Where can people find your book? Where can they find this content? I know that it's going to be released here pretty soon. Where is it they can find you. Where can they find your book so they can get their hands on it?

Teimojin Tan: 41:10

So all my content, all my contact information is on wwwsurvivaldoctorscom and it should be labeled as Field Guide. So pick it up. People who want to just test and see what the first few chapters are, you are more than welcome to. Again, I will be sending out a free copy to about 20 to 40 people to get some active feedback in that first pre-launch period. Then afterwards, a month later, the first buyer for that ebook will have every single iteration from now to the end of time.

Thad David: 41:47

Well, I would love to get on the list to have one of those.

Thad David: 41:55

Just to jump in man, because I really appreciate it and just love all the information that you share. And one final thing, just to get on. I'm sure this is not, possibly not. I would speculate, although I've already been wrong before. But the personal finance journey. You mentioned that they don't teach it in schools. What messaging, what thoughts do you have about just personal finance in general and how that impacts? I mean, because I would imagine this gets back into the emotional state people's panic, how quickly they panic. What thoughts do you have about getting your personal finances in order?

Teimojin Tan: 42:30

So my uncle's visiting from Augusta right now and one of the things that he noticed was there's a religious group that puts personal finance and responsibility and stability as part of their actual religion. They put it right next to going to church, and I honestly think that that's how important that concept is, because what is the number one thing that people fight on in a marital thing? It's finances. What are something that can drastically change your life, your kids and your legacy is typically finances.

Teimojin Tan: 43:06

So getting straight on that and getting educated, because the government isn't necessarily set up in a way to pump people out for success in that regard. They're not training everyone to be millionaires or billionaires, and that kind of presents itself in the tax code. That presents itself in our education system and how our education system is billed and, to a certain extent, a lot of aspects of regular society as well. So spending that time to educate yourself in how to save on taxes, how to structure your business or your finances, or even, like myself, I work as an employee how do I make sure that every dollar that I am working for goes to my family and goes to things that I care about? So, all that being said, I think financial stability is a survival skill set that you need to learn Absolutely.

Thad David: 44:04

What is your favorite and, if you have one, what's your favorite resource for if somebody was listening and wanted to get on track with their finances. What's your favorite resource and you can recommend for anybody?

Teimojin Tan: 44:16

So for physicians out there, or even people who are kind of new to anything, finance white coat investor is something that almost every physician should own. Automatic millionaire is something that I've read that I really love because it's very specific to American tax and investments and retiring without like a huge income and it's how my parent in-laws retired as teachers in their 50s, so like a lot of what they teach. I was just talking out loud to them and they're like, oh yeah, we did that. I was like, oh shit, this book works, which is really cool, and from a business standpoint, definitely anything that Russell Brunson puts out. I really love reading his stuff and one thing that is free. That is just unbelievable. Why it's free is anything from acquisitionscom. So that's with Alex Hermosi.

Teimojin Tan: 45:08

He just came out with a book too, and I'm going through it because he is literally giving you a business course on how to sell anything and get marketing like on point for free, which is crazy, and I love the guy, so hopefully my business gets to a point where he would be interested in me. But yeah, acquisitionscom Alex Hermosi, his old, solid dude.

Thad David: 45:31

He's got some absolutely incredible content and I love that following his stuff, because he always talks about making your free content better than everybody else's paid content and it's like watching and he does that. It's like how are you giving this away right now? And that's what he does. And he's very transparent. He's like that's what I'm telling everybody else to do. I'm going to do it and it's a really, really cool, just a cool thing to see. So I love that you brought up Hermosi and it's awesome.

Thad David: 46:01

It also made me think of as well. I read it in a book recently. They referenced it.

Thad David: 46:09

I don't remember the two people's names so I don't want to mess that up, but they talk about this one dude that was a just a brokerage firm, just multi-millionaire, had a ton of money, all the houses, all the things, and ended up dying and his family was in debt because they just had nothing left.

Thad David: 46:27

And then there was this other family, that born at the same time. This one guy born around the same time that he was a gas-tasting clerk for 30 years, retired then, was a janitor, went through that, just did that for the rest of his life and died and his willy left his family like seven or eight million dollars and they're like what the and it just it's what it made me think of and it's kind of what you're doing with it, and to me that's the flip side that even if you are making a lot of money, you need to know what you're doing with it and knowing that you don't have to make that much money to actually be really successful long term. But getting ahead of it, getting on top of it, is huge. And, tim and Jim, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking some time and I can't wait to get my hands on your book. I definitely encourage anybody else that's listening jump in, grab his book, get a hold of it. You know what's going to be good and till next time, restoration.