289 – Getting Into The Flow State with Vikram Raya

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been on an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership. What makes the best leaders so good? After running companies small and large over the last 20 years, today I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name is John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. Welcome to tomorrow’s leader. 

John All right tomorrow’s leaders. I’ve got Vikram Raya here. Great guest. I loved this interview and this conversation with them. Conversation? I mean, not even an interview. We just kind of talked back and forth about some really cool stuff. He thinks very much as I do around leadership. He’s the founder, and managing principal of Viking Capital. He’s a high-performance coach. He actually runs a business where he works specifically or mostly with doctors who are looking to do something outside. To start a business, be an entrepreneur. And he kind of works with them on their transition and teaches them how to do that. 

John Really, really cool stuff. Great conversation. All about how the most successful people use their time. What do they do? What do they not do? How do they say no? I mean, all the kind of stuff you’ve heard me talk about before on podcasts. Coming from a guy who lives in himself and teaches other people how to do it, I think you’re going to really get a lot out of this. Here’s Vic on. All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dove deep into all things leader related to leading yourself and leading others. I’m John Laurito, your host here with Vikram. Vikram, thanks for joining the show again. 

Vikram John, I’m pumped. Let’s go, man. 

John Me too, man. I loved our conversation the first time so much. I’m like, I got to have this guy on with more time and we can get into more depth and put you on the big channel here. So let’s jump into this. There’s a lot that I really want to get into with you. And you’ve had you know, you’ve had a lot of success with several different businesses. You’ve influenced a lot of people. You’ve found your niche. I want to get into that a little bit, kind of how you got into that. But we were talking just before about some things that I think are really meaningful to leaders out there. There are so many leaders that get caught in kind of a busy, crazy, chaotic mode. I see this all the time. It doesn’t matter what industry. I see this with senior-level executives that have been doing this for years and years, and they’re just all over the place. And somehow they kind of feel that that’s a sign of, okay, I’m doing the right things. And in reality, you know better than that. I know you have a really strong feeling and perspective on that. Let’s talk about that. What is what it should it look like for the right type of leader in terms of how they really run their day or their week? 

Vikram You know, Gary Keller wrote the one thing and it’s a powerful book. I’m sure most of your executives have read it. If they haven’t, it’s a must-read, and also listen to the audiobook. In it, he did a survey. I think there’s some published research that shows that they gave all these CEOs, executives, and C-suite folks a stopwatch that they hung around their neck and literally they had to go through. And when they’re actually doing real work throughout the day, they had to press. Yes. You know, try and stop the stopwatch. And then when they stop doing real work, they turn it off. And then there are all those other things that fill their day on average. Guess how I think if I believe the numbers are right from my memory, how long do you think they actually worked in the day? 

John I’d say like three or 4 hours. 

Vikram I think it was like 2 hours. 

John Yeah. 

Vikram That’s sort of true. The 80/20 (eight-hour) workweek, you know, 2 hours are really spent doing quality. It’s 80/20 again. So 20% of the things these executives, and corporate leaders are doing will be yielding 80% results. The rest of it is what we call face time and not the time face time for your iPhone, but the face time. And I’m in front of people showing up, being present, but it’s not leading to any, you know, manageable or measurable outcomes. Yeah. And, you know, the famous president, Dwight Eisenhower, has this matrix he created because people were so impressed with how efficient he was in life. And I think a lot of your listeners may have heard about this, but it’s really these four quadrants, right? 

Vikram There’s the, you know, the bottom. If you think about it like a square for blocks, the bottom right block is, you know, not important, not urgent. Well, the bottom left blocks are you know, it’s urgent but not important. The top left box is, you know, important and urgent in the top right box is in it’s not urgent, but important. We spend, you know, a lot of time in the bottom two blocks. And that’s the number one thing you want to do so that we have this obligation that we have in our work, in our personal life. We need to eliminate those completely. If it’s not a hell yes, you must make it or no, if it’s not. And, you know, if you depending on what business system you use to track your life, you know, I use us, which is, you know, based on rocks and, you know, quarterly goals and then leading to your yearly goal and then three or five-year tenure, etc.. So. If whatever the quarter you’re working on the 90 days and you have maybe 2 to 3 goals, maybe we can just stick to professional for now. If those things you’re doing are not really going to make an impact on achieving those goals, you have to learn to say no. And that ruthlessness will create radical exponential growth. Mm-hmm. And so I think that something like that, some kind of model of a framework, John, would probably be very helpful for your executives. 

John I think that’s great. And I think you’ve got two camps of people. I think you’ve got camps of people that know that they are spending their time in the wrong areas and they know the difference between, okay, what I’m doing is what I should be doing and what I’m not. And they’re able to know when to hit that button, so to speak, in your example there. And there are also people that don’t necessarily they’re not even aware of it. They’re not even at the point of having the self-awareness of saying, you know what, I am spending my time and a vast majority of my time doing the wrong things. How is there some kind of question or framework or lens that somebody needs to look through to be able to be more self-aware? You said the hell yes method. I mean, that’s great. I mean, there may be some people out there that are like, Jesus, there are not many things in my day I would say hell yes to. How do they make that shift? Do you know? 

Vikram Yeah. So one of the things is awareness. So to be aware, you need to figure out what you’re doing. So a lot of them, you know, top high-level people I coach and I’m sure some of the people you coach are really analyzing your day. And so we do a time study, literally set a reminder on your phone to go off every 30 minutes and write down what you’re doing and literally map out from like whatever time you get up to whatever time you sleep. How did you spend that one day then go dissect it? You know how much time was spent on health wellness, how much time was spent on my family, my friends, my kids, how much time was spent on nutrition, you know, how much time was spent on sleep, and how much time was spent doing wasteful activities and how much time was spent doing things that are actually going to move my company or my business forward. And seeing all that, then you just then you say, All right, now I’m seeing how I spend my time. I didn’t realize it. It’s time to adjust and make small tweaks. 

Vikram You’re not going to do it all at once. But there’s a really good book by one of my mentors, Craig Ballantine. He wrote a book called The Perfect Week Formula. It’s meant for high performers who have too much crap they said yes to and they need to clean up their life. And it’s not meant for people who are not. These people are already exercising probably in the morning. They’re already doing all the high-performance stuff, but they’re still not where they want to be. So it’s almost like it’s like Miracle Morning 2.0. Like we all talk about these morning routines and morning stuff. He’s the anti-morning routine guy and he told me this and I still remember when I talked to him, he’s like, stop doing the meditations, the journaling, the workouts as your first thing. That morning he goes, there’s a two-way rule water and work secret. And this is what I’ve done in my life. 

Vikram And I found it to be extremely helpful. Create a powerful morning routine that involves the first 30 minutes is doing any time not urgent but important. I’ll give you an example. If I’m an executive and I need to create a pitch to attract a potential client into my business, it’s not urgent that I do it. You know, I could still probably get by without doing it. But if I do this, I can potentially get 10 million clients in my company or something. Or maybe I’m, you know, I’m a salesperson. There’s like, got some powerful leads that I met at a conference, but I haven’t followed up with them. You know the power is in the follow-up. What if I just made sure I hit that email to them first thing in the morning? So using at least a 30 to 45-minute chunk first thing in the morning prior to doing any routine, prior to anything else that is going to measure early moving forward is huge. So that’s called magic time. And you want to do it before your morning routine. 

John I love that. That’s such a great point. You know, and it’s interesting because as you’re talking, I’m thinking, you know, there’s so many things. There’s actually as we’re talking, I’m thinking of, wow, there’s three things I can think of that are staring at me on my board, which I have in my office here that is and I actually have it labeled important, not urgent. And I keep going to that category that’s more urgent and not hitting those. So I love that strategy. You’re waking up first, 30 minutes of the day hit the not urgent, important stuff. And you made me think back. I was talking to a CEO recently, a very successful CEO, and I and a company that he took from the ground up that’s grown just crazily and very successful. 

John And I asked him, I said, what’s your schedule like? I mean, are you like all over the place? And I was really surprised by his answer. He’s like. Now. He said, you know, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in the 78-hour workweek. He said I’m just very selective with what I do. You know, I probably work 40 hours a week, but I believe in balance. And he just went on talking about that. I’m like, Oh, that’s so. That’s so spot on. Because I find that the most successful leaders are like that. You know, to your point, they’re very good at deciding what they’re going to do. And they don’t pack their day nonstop. Right. I mean, they actually have some breathing room in there and some time to reflect and think and have the creative juices going and all that stuff. I mean, you find that to like the whitespace in the calendars. 

Vikram Let’s talk about it John. Let’s talk about white space has been my new mission to actually create more white space in my schedule. And I had a friend of mine say, hey, you know, I’ve heard this white space thing that’s trying to keep up more white spaces, the new caffeine, right? It’s like this. There are calendars. You know, initially, when we’re the first half of your life you’re trying to put everything you’re saying yes to everything. You’re just adding meetings. You don’t know where the next opportunity is. You’re just going, go, go, go, go. In the second half of your life, you’ve got to be more strategic. For the first half of your life, you’re playing checkers, second half you’re playing chess. 

Vikram So what that means is where you spend your time should give you a two, three, four, or ten tax return on your money, on your time. So you’re very strategic. Key meetings don’t show up to meetings that you don’t. There’s not anything that’s going to come out of it. You know, make sure that things that are truly valuable to everyone say family’s valuable to you. I call B.S. Look at your calendar. How important is your family if they’re not on your calendar? Right. Where’s the time with your wife? Where’s where are you going? And spending meaningful time with your son, not just picking him up from practice and dropping him somewhere else. That’s called a uber, uber driver. I’m talking about meaningful time. 

John Yeah, right. 

Vikram Yeah. And then where’s that? Where’s the 3 hours on a Thursday where you contemplate the next 1 million, 5 million, $10 million ideas and you map it out and you create a mind map and you create the reasons why this is so powerful. Then you create an action plan, then you give it to your leadership team. By Monday morning, they’re like, Wow, wow, this is going to triple our revenues in the next few years. And see, that’s white space-time. It’s so valuable, but we do so little of it. And so I encourage your listeners to block that off, put that in your calendar. 

John So let me ask you and I’m anticipating a question that’s in the mind of some of the listeners right now. I love what you’re talking about. I want to do it. But I’ve gotten in this habit of saying yes to so many things. I mean, some things might be easy to say, easier to say no to, but how do I say it? I mean, what if my boss comes to me and asks me to do something? I mean, am I saying no to him or her? Is it just a certain segment of my life I’m being selective with? 

Vikram So if you’re going on a vacation, like I’m going on a vacation at the end of this week and I have so much stuff done. So like I only have a little bit of bandwidth if I know that literally, I’m only doing things that are going to like just super high yield at this point because I have no choice. That’s how the mentality you have to have. You want to put in boundaries as you should have. Like now with this pandemic and remote working, there’s no turning off. Technically, you can still work till 8:00 at night. Go grab some food or fire up your laptop afterward and crank up some more work. 

Vikram There’s no one saying as long as you have an accommodating family or friends or whatever, you just work for whatever. So it’s creating these hard stops, these buffers, where like things you have to start having non-negotiables in your life. Mm. If you, if you say yes to everything, you stand for nothing. So what is it that you really stand for? What is it? And activity is not. Productivity is a huge difference. And so as you start, you know, and one is awareness week one don’t change anything. Just be aware of how you’re spending your time and then maybe say, hey, was that if I happened to not show up for that because I had a flat tire, could that have gone on without me? Okay, maybe so. Okay. 

Vikram Or you can even start making your meetings. Like normally everyone has an hour block for meetings, but how much maybe you’re saying, hey, look, from now on, my meetings are only 30 minutes. That’s it. Mm-hmm. Now you start to have these little chunks of time. Yeah. And then it’s what you do at that time. And so a calendar technique I use is not only creating shorter meetings, but then on Saturday mornings before my whole family gets up, I do a chunk of time where I go deep on one thing that I didn’t have a chance to do during the week. And I do it maybe 6 to 730 in the morning. 

Vikram Now, 730 onward is family time, but I cranked out a secret chunk of time on Saturday morning without hurting anybody, you know, and it’s a very powerful chunk on Sunday morning. I plan my week. Mm-hmm. And really, it’s like. What are all the things I need to get done? What I reflect back on the week I did I hit my goals? Then I hit my goals. What did I get? Distracted was how efficient was I on point? And you know what I learn and then and going forward these little planning blocks, you know, they say, you know, if you have 4 hours, spend the first 3 hours sharpening your ax before you chopped on the tree. This is sharpening the ax. 

John Yeah, I love that. And there are all different types of things I don’t one of the things I learned and everyone is different. You got to kind of figure out where you are best when you are best. I mean, there’s a lot of sense also to thinking about the time of the day. You’re doing certain things. You know, for me, I find if I, I operate best when I bundle things together, you know, if I, if I did a meeting for half an hour and then a half an hour break or whitespace, a half an hour meeting, a half an hour whitespace. That doesn’t work for me because that half-hour meeting is really eating up an hour, whereas if I bundle it together, you know. So I think there’s a lot of sense in figuring out the little tricks that work for you. 

Vikram Yeah, I agree. Batching. Batching is key. 

John Yeah, big time. So one of the things that, you know, you’ve been through, I know a lot of ups and downs. There are a lot of leaders that are listening that are thinking about their last couple of years or five years or ten years. And some of them have had more downs than ups in reality. Let’s talk about that. Just the concept of the whole rollercoaster ride that entrepreneurs, no matter what industry or business or how the level of success that they’re riding that roller coaster and how do top leaders handle that? What is what are the things that they’re thinking or doing when they’re going through those downtimes and trying to get themselves back up? 

Vikram Yeah, I think it’s knowing what they’re fighting for. Right. And if it’s just monetary, it may not be enough horsepower to get you through the day. So it’s really you have to have such a compelling vision. You know, there are female entrepreneurs I read, including Jamie Lee Kern. She wrote the book Believe It as she sold IT cosmetics to L’Oreal for 1.1 billion. There are, you know, people like Elon Musk. There are people all over. But they had a compelling vision. So you must have that. Number two, you got to play in your zone of genius. I see a lot of entrepreneurs doing things because they should versus that. This is an intersection of skill and plus passion. Right. And, you know, I was in a business where it was a health and wellness business where, you know, I was creating the very specialized care, those cash-based, to try to help doctors and not doctors help patients all over the country. And it was amazing. 

Vikram But because I was running multiple other businesses at the time, I was constrained in, you know, some capabilities. And I noticed and there’s a rubric that I use that I learned it’s called Elf versus Hlaf. Elf is easy, lucrative, and fun. Half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. So when you’re in the flow state and you’re really in the vibe of the business and it just works and you may not be scaling or you’re not at the goal yet, but you know that essentially you’re good at it. And your patients like you, I mean, you’re your customers like your clients like you and you’re making money and you’re profitable and just a good margin and it’s just fun and you’re having a positive impact on the world. That’s what you want to do more of. But if you notice, you’re having resistance every step of the way. It’s just hard. Sometimes your dreams may not be your destiny. So that means listening to the cues that the universe is telling you. Hey, look, dummy, this may not be the right thing. This is not your zone of genius. Get into your zone. A genius. Yeah. So that’s been a wake-up call for me. 

John I love that so much. That reminds me. And somebody gave me advice a long time ago, a mentor of mine, and he said, you know, sometimes and he was speaking directly to me. He said, Sometimes you are so focused on getting to a destination. He said you need to slow down and pay attention to the signs like you said. And he said, picture yourself like floating in a kayak down a river or in a lake. And suddenly a current kind of pulls you in a different direction. Let that happen, because a lot of times when you’re in business and life in general, there are these things out there that if you’re so myopic and focused like a laser beam and got the blinders on, you don’t see that stuff and you pass by these great opportunities, which I look back and I realize I have. There were times when I had some great opportunities and because I was so fixated on a destination, I didn’t take the time to assess, Hey, you know what? There’s something interesting over here and there’s some, some compelling opportunities there. So I love that advice. 

Vikram Yeah John I have this one of the guys have. Nutrition. His name is Tom Bilyeu, you know. So no company for, you know, hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars. He says what’s effortless to you that is true, you know, having an impact and positiveness in the world? That seems like a lot of work for someone else. That’s what you want to lead into. 

John Love it. That’s amazing. And you’re right. When you can find that intersection. I love Elf and Half. That’s great. When you can find the things that are easy, lucrative and fun that gets into really what your sweet spot is like knowing what you’re great at, where you love doing, what provides an impact, and what people need and can make money. You got the perfect intersection there, but most people go in those other directions and they fight through too long the stuff that they don’t like doing and spend too much of their time on that. And it leads doesn’t lead them anywhere. 

Vikram The other thing that I think entrepreneurs and business leaders do is sometimes take on multiple projects. And I’m been guilty of this, too. I’m you know, I’m from a self-proclaimed Renaissance man I love. I want to do it all. I wanna do this. I wanna do this. I don’t do this. But, you know, as I’ve become more experienced in my business career and, you know, I’ve taken some licks, you know, and what is it the quote that they attribute to Mike? Mike Tyson getting punched in the face, I guess. Yeah, you start becoming a little smarter. And so, you know, I would say live by this quote, everything you touch turns to gold, but you must touch it long enough and you can’t touch multiple things at the same time. So. Yeah, so. So I would say, like, if you’re in a business, you know, wait till that hits like $1,000,000 revenue or if it’s a million, it has to hit 10 million before you take on the second project. But really go all-in with one project and hit that certain threshold or milestone before you take on a second one because you diffuse your energy. 

John Yeah, yeah, that’s right. 

Vikram There are some people who can pull it off, you know, but most people can’t. 

John Yeah, great point. So those people that might be listening at some future point today were at the, uh, almost beginning of July. Try to think for a minute, end of June, wherever we are in 2022, we’ve been through some uncertainty, but we’re now sitting at a point where there’s a lot of uncertainty moving forward. I mean, everything from economics. I mean, we’re looking at, uh, very potentially a recession. We could be looking at interest rates going up, and inflation out of control. We’ve got all kinds of stuff from a business and leadership standpoint that a leader might be wondering, like, okay, what is going to be happening in the future? What’s your advice? I mean, what should a leader be during times like this? And I’m going to ask that in two different kinds of directions. One, for their own self, you know, should they be lurching forward and just not worrying about it being, you know, cloudy and foggy and whatnot, should they proceed cautiously? And also when they’re leading their organization, I mean, how should they be as well? 

Vikram Yeah, that’s a great question, John. You know, I’m leading two organizations right now and I know you lead your organizations. The sense I’m getting is, one, you got to steady yourself. You got to lead yourself. Leaders first lead themselves. And so extreme self-care, radical self-care. In fact, your physiology, a spot on hydration, nutrition, fitness like spot-on because that physiology will determine your state you know and you want to control that next is you know what what is your mindset? What’s your process? Are you still doing some gratitude work or are you like, man, my, my life sucks, my wife sucks, my family’s everything sucks, my, my income sucks. 

Vikram Or as you know, so watch your language, your focus, your physiology. You know, what your belief systems get all that centered. Number two, you know, as you realize, most companies during winters or economic recessions have grown. They’ve gained market share. They become an opportunistic lot on the streets, taking advantage of it and realizing this is the next transfer of wealth for the four generations. And so be ready to be a recipient of that transfer of wealth. And so you have to be smart, and opportunistic, but not compromise on your principles. Then you have to present that version of a leader to your organization. And but you can’t be cavalier. Hey, there’s not. We’re going to get through it. Don’t worry. Let it go. 

Vikram That’s not being smart. That’s being foolhardy. It’s saying, hey, look, how do we cautiously navigate any uncertainties? Can we have cash reserves on hand? And I got an internal memo from Sequoia Capital, one of the top venture capital companies in the country. And in the internal memo, they said, you know, look at an opportunity there. Look at trends. Learn to play a little bit of defense while you’re building up cash reserves so you can play offense in a short amount of time. And it’s like this kind of thinking. All right. This is what the top people in the world are doing. All right. Let me follow suit. And, you know, maybe this is a time where you double down on things that don’t cost money, you know, things that you haven’t had a chance to do because you’re in growth mode now. It’s like, hey, it’s fortification mode. It’s let’s take care of the foundation. Let’s is customer service, is it R&D, is it whatever that is, and get all those departments up and running and get poised to launch. Because I believe that, you know, for every one year of recession, it’s like six or seven years of expansion. So get ready for that expansion. Yeah. And I think that’s the mindset. 

John I think gets really smart, you know, I mean, just that advice, you know, building up cash. I like how you put that to be able to aggressively play offense and quickly play offense when the time is there. I think that makes sense. And to your point, you know, I think I could not agree more about the importance of self-leadership and really taking care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, making sure that you’re in a really strong place. I’ve never seen a leader who has not done that become successful or be successful in influencing other people. And that’s a simple question. Would you want your people in your organization to not prioritize self-care? Of course not. 

John So if you’re a leader, why would your answer be any different than that? So that’s great. So I know I want to still squeeze in as much as we can in the short amount of time that we have together. But one of the other big things that I know leaders deal with is just the whole concept of stepping outside their comfort zone when you’re when you are. Everything we’ve talked about in reality from managing your time, making changes with how you do things, I mean, this is just it’s uncomfortable when a leader is going from the startup phase too, you know, growing the organization to 100 people and or now taking a role as a CEO in an in a whole new industry. I mean, there are all kinds of versions of that. What’s your take on that? I mean, how how how does a leader navigate discomfort successfully? How should they be thinking about it? What are the lessons, leadership lessons in that now? 

Vikram I believe leaders already because they’ve defined themselves as leaders and they’ve sort of stepped forward as a, hey, I want to be a leader. They’ve already said, hey, look, because being a leader is uncomfortable. So they’ve already taken that first step. That’s number one. Number two is you don’t have to do it alone. There are people who are already on before you look and role model best practices. So if there are a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs you just take them from one organization to another and you plop right in. And within a couple of months, they’re leading that organization and they’re there are outsiders, if you will. 

Vikram And that’s remarkable. The question is, how do they do that? How is that like, you know, as, you know, a software executive going to lead an automotive company, you know, like that’s these are the kind of things that I ask. And what I’ve seen is there are common principles that are true. No matter what business you’re in, like John, you’re a high, highly sought-after business executive who helps consult with, you know, Fortune 500 companies. But you don’t necessarily know the business of that Fortune 500 company. How do you do it? You understand general business principles. You understand structure. You understand, you know, the game of business, cash flow, profitability, development, and customer relationships. And then you adapt all that and you figure out the challenges that are. 

Vikram And there are usually common challenges in all organizations or businesses, right? There are internal changes to the personnel and there are external challenges to the company. And so it’s understanding all that and then having a framework to attack it. One of the frameworks I use is something called RPM. Our RPM is really, you know, what are the results? I’m going after that. So as a result are central results. You know, P stands for purpose and then for massive action results-focused, purpose-driven, massive action plan. You know, I’ve learned this from some of my mentors. So the result is really, you know, what is that organization or that leader trying to accomplish and be very specific name the the the problem or the challenge or the outcome and then timestamp it. What’s the timeframe you want to attack it by? Figure out the reasons why this is valuable. 

Vikram This is a worthy challenge for you that you want to go after and then include all the stakeholders and involved, and then finally come up with like ten, 20, 30 items to attack it. And this is really more of a brainstorm data dump. And then you do the pre-roll right, you extreme pre-roll. I mean, what’s the one thing out of this list of ten to 12 to 20 that would get me that result in the shortest amount of time and then do that and then, you know, be collaborative. A leader is not. A person who leads it is not a dictator. A leader is one who enables other leaders and organizations to rise up. And that’s what you teach as well. John, So it’s really getting by in an engagement and empowering others to help solve these problems because at that point, you know, the leader can go higher in the organization as he brings other leaders with him. 

John I love it. I think a key thing is that I talk to leaders all the time that, you know, when you get to develop a close relationship with them, they open up a little bit. And they, you know, they acknowledge the fact that they’re experiencing a lot of discomforts. Sometimes it’s just, hey, I feel like I’m in over my head. I don’t know if I’m really qualified for this role. And my feedback is you don’t you have no idea how many leaders face that. And it’s not managed. It’s not a matter of the fear that somehow they just push it away. It’s just a matter of how you deal with it. It’s not that it’s not there or you don’t face discomfort. It’s how you handle it. 

Vikram The growth you want is on the other side of that uncertainty. And then the fear and I have a lot of doctors who come to me and say, hey, you know, I have imposter syndrome. Like, great. I mean, you’re on the right track. I mean, your goals and dreams are worthy enough, you know, and they’re big. They’re, you know, the bags are big, carry out audacious goals. Yeah, well, if you don’t have imposter syndrome, you’re not thinking big enough. 

John Yeah, I love that. That’s a guy. It’s a great way to look at it. I think that’s a great perspective. So I’ll ask you to leave us with maybe one last tidbit of advice in a minute before we do that. I know there are some people that might want to either learn more about you, get a hold of you, learn about your company, where can they go? What’s the best way for them to do that? 

Vikram Sure. I own a real estate investment firm that helps executives, high-income professionals, and other folks successfully, you know, invest in multiple family syndications all over the country. We have a strong track record. Love for people to find out more about our opportunities for people to grow their passive income. And that’s Vikingmultifamily.com. My company is called Viking Capital, so Vikingmultifamily.com. And then if you ever want to, you know, work with me one on one as a coach, as a client, I have a coaching program and that’s called Limitless M.D. And it’s Vikramraya.com.

John Well, awesome. We’ll put all that in the show notes. Real quick, what are your favorite books? Any good book recommendations? 

Vikram Yeah, yeah, I have a really good one that I don’t think is on most people’s radar. It’s called hundred million dollar offer. It’s by a guy named Alex Hormozi. Phenomenal book, simple book, but the phenomenal book really digs into the sales process into how to create an amazing offer and really talks about, you know, how to enroll people into whatever business or product or program you’re trying to do. 

Vikram  And if I have a bonus and another one, that’s Ed Mylett is a successful business executive, also a motivational speaker. He just recently released a book called The Power of One More. And I love the fact that he’s also supporting Uvalde. And then the whole incident out there in Texas and the shooting. And so he’s helping give the proceeds to all the kids out there. So it’s awesome. 

John That’s great. He’s tremendous. Person Excellent. My friend, last piece of advice. What nugget do you want to leave the audience with? 

Vikram Yeah, play a bigger game, my friends. With your potential and your actions, there’s probably a disconnect. So your potential is potentially infinite and you know you’re playing small and I say, let’s step up, man, and take advantage of this season of uncertainty for most and take the certainty and give it to yourself by having faith and just extraordinary effort. 

John Awesome. Great stuff, my man. You are an absolutely terrific leader. You got a great track record. You’re doing great things. And I love the insights that you shared with the audience today. I learned a lot and took away some good stuff. I’m sure they did, too. So I appreciate it. My friend. 

Vikram John, thank you so much.

John You got it. And they saw it for joining today on this episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. Great, great episode. Make sure you check out the links. We’ll have everything that Vikram talked about in the show notes. Check him out, check out his company, and check out his coaching program. We’ve been here with Vikram Reya and again, thanks for joining today. Like, share, subscribe, all that kind of good stuff. You know, the deal, go down below, give a five-star review and we’ll see you next time. Thanks. 

John Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. For suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, reach me at John@johnlaurito.com. Thanks, lead on!