Face Everything And Rise With Coach Raja Vaidya

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Hope Without Sight and the New Year 2023 for episode 21. Happy New Year, everybody.

Happy New Year.

Yeah, of course. The goal of this podcast is to inspire others who overcome challenges in life. And by the way, this is Saylor Cooper and

This is Tyler Evans. Yeah. Can you hear everyone?

Happy New Year? Yes, we have big goals for this year to hopefully start making money in speaking and podcasting. We're gonna figure it out. But the next guest we have on today. Actually, he is amazeballs as Kimberly close says it. I met him. He's He's appeared on many events. From speakers Playhouse to PapaPalooza to podcasters. connect and collaborate. He is a triple threat. Science for the mind. Karate for the body, and music for the soul. And get ready for your mind shift to tell you all about it. You should just face everything and rise. Please welcome Raja Vaidya Raja, how're you doing today?

Hey, Saylor, What's up, brother? Thank you so much for having me on the show. And you get a ring other victory bell for being so friggin awesome.

Oh, yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So tell us about your story. I read your bio, you're a you're a triple threat to a mind body, soul in music, don't cry. And you've helped people have confidence in lies to the top when they didn't think they could? I you know, I don't mean to point this out to you. But I mean, you've admitted it. I've noticed it. And I'm sure you okay. I noticed you do have a standard, which everybody, everybody has something of some soul. People can't help. But despite this one Toastmasters award award, you've spoken, and you have not let that scatter, hinder you so yeah, take it away. Tell us about yourself.

Well, here's really what it how it starts out as a kid started with, with with bullying. And first of all, say like, I gotta say, for you, like, I'm so impressed with you. Because what you do and how you how you show up and you show for your audience is really fantastic. So I give you a lot of props for that a lot of respect men, and, and so when I was a kid, I was born in India, but we came to America when I was very young. And, you know, so perhaps sometimes I can be speaking like this, I can make my accent if you like. But I can also turn that off too. And we so we, when we came to the school system here, we were first in Northeast Philadelphia. And I grew up playing with children of every single background on color, and race and ethnicity and ethnicity. And we had a blast. And we didn't know what color was, we didn't know what race was, we just know we played whoever could run fast, could play soccer better or play basketball better, we just had a good time playing together. And that's it. Once we moved from away from the city into the suburbs, I noticed that I was a one Indian kid out of a sea of all white children. And so, so some of those, some of those kids took a shine to me and had to point that out. And so I didn't realize that and so and then started my bullying stories that I got picked on a lot because I had three strikes against me I was a skinny Indian kid with big coke bottle glasses. And on top of that I had I had a I had a stutter. So you know, I was an easy target for for for for for for bullies. And as I talked about this, my God it's like it always route river triggers me again, you know, but I struggled a long time going through that and, and even at that time, like the teachers thought that I was actually mentally retarded because of my speech. So they put me in the in the like a lowest education classes, thinking I belonged. And so yes, they did. So it took them three years to finally realize they made a mistake. And so I got out of those special ed classes. I mean, I actually didn't mind because then I just thought I made a whole bunch of new friends. Because because I didn't see people that way. And, and but then finally when they saw what my grades were and what my state aptitude tests were, they knew that I needed to be somewhere else and I kept telling them as I you know, it even though I like it here, I think I can do more. And I will tell them that and teachers didn't like me because I actually stood up for myself. And by the time I got the fifth and sixth grade, I the highest score is not my class, but in my entire grade in both math and science. So then, then by the time they got to seventh, eighth, eighth grade, they finally put me into advanced math and algebra classes, things like that. By ninth grade, a lot of my friends were in the gifted program. And I asked, why wasn't I in it? They said, Oh, well, you had to be tested when you were younger. I said, Okay. Well tested me. What's, what's the big deal? Is it is it hard. And you know, guidance counselor said, it wasn't possible. I did bring my father talk to the principal, and say, Listen, I think this is where I belong. Why? Why can't they test me? They say, Oh, it's a budget issue. We're not sure if we can, if we can afford it might. Well, friggin pay for it. Get the test. So finally, when we said that, they said, Yeah, you're right. It's kind of embarrassing that we hold back a student who actually wants to learn. I said, Yeah, so they finally did all that. And they they tested my IQ and all these other other parameters. And they, lo and behold, they say, Yeah, you should have been in the gifted program all along. So because of people's perception of what of what about us about stuttering? What they think it is, you know, I was held back from a lot of opportunities. So then finally, in eighth grade, I got into the halfway through the school year, I got into the gifted program. And man, it just changed my life, because then I felt like I belonged in the right place. And, you know, I always like to smart people in life, because I was like that, you know, they're more creative, they're more challenging, they like to do more things. So I just find that it's a lot more fun, you know, because you get to do more in your life. And, you know, I joke around right now that life is short, I'm only going to live live to 150. And, you know, so I got a long way to go still. So in the meantime, I'm gonna take advantage of every single opportunity now I can, and, and even though I did, I did stutter stutter stutter stutter. Stutter stutter a lot. When I was I joined the choir, because that was the one place where I felt free verbally, because I could sing a little bit about me. And then part of the reason why I took karate, same reason, I wanted to stop the bullying. And I went to I went to my parents and asked to I had saw, I had seen the Karate Kid on TV, and I said, Oh, that's it. That's the way to change my life. Because the bullying was getting really bad. Especially in middle school, it was beyond a bullying, I got terrorized. And there was a kid, kid in my class, he would punch me in the back. No, and the teacher couldn't see it. So they would always miss it. So he got away with it for years, and you know, and at the playground, they even made a, you know, four kids thought it was funny to make a stutter is to actually make a stuttering song to talk about me. So if you ever seen any of those videos, like the Stranger Things were like, 11 is like the one kid being bullied and everybody's laughing at the one kid. That was me. So and, and it was at that moment, I decided things are going to change, I'm going to make a change because I see that the teachers don't. And they don't know how to change things. So I'm going to do it. So I went to my mom and dad and said, Hey, I want to take karate. My mom tells me betta No, you know, take karate you you. You're gonna get hurt. Dad, and my dad said, Okay, Raja, let's go to school. Let's go see. So I go to the karate school. We check it out for one class that my dad signs up for a year, Mike? Yes. I finally get to start on my journey. And so fast forward five years, got a black belt I by the time I was 16, I was a world champion. Then I decided that I was going to try for the Olympics. And so I made a two year plan to train train six days a week for five hours a day. And then three months after my 18th birthday, I won one of the major East Coast qualifying competitions.

Wow.

So you did you go into the world Olympic system Olympics.

I qualify for the 94 will will will will Winter Games. But at that time, my mindset wasn't really very positive. My parents told me Well, you got a you got a scholarship to college. You know, forget this karate stuff. So I listened to them because they thought what was important was me being a doctor, lawyer, scientist engineer, something important like that. So they didn't understand karate, and they didn't understand like, Oh, why you want to be like Bruce Lee said, No, that's not what I want to be. I just want to I just want to compete for my country. but they didn't understand that. So I was dissuaded from that. So that's one of my missed opportunities in life that I wish I could go back and say, at age 18. Man, I should have gone out to Colorado Springs and trained for two years. But, you know, but my parents at the time didn't understand it. And you know, us being first generation in America, there was a lot of barriers to getting into stuff like that. And part of it was my own is that I thought I wasn't good enough, because of my speech. I'd have to talk to a lot of a lot more trainers and people and judges and I said, I don't want to, I don't know if I want to go through that embarrassment. You know, if I could do something where I don't have to talk, and I can just compete, I'll do it. Yeah. But I a part of it. Part of the reason was, I was tired of people judging me for an hour. And what's odd is that now, when you look back at what I've done now, now I'm a 66 year Game Master Black Belt. I've been a world champion. I'm in multiple Black Belt Halls of Fame. I've done a martial arts movie called The martial arts back in 2018. And we're now filming the sequel. It's on IMDb. And there's also a martial arts, the month to month in martial arts comic book series. So we've already released three issues. Wow. Now, also, I've been a cancer scientist for 25 years. So now as I as I pivot out of research, and I go into mindset coaching, and what I really do is I help introverted executives and introverted entrepreneurs to use bullet. There's these five steps to creating blackbelt confidence. Wow, I can do it. I think anybody can do it. Oh, yeah. And you hear me now? I'm still not perfect. That's okay. What are some people now is like, you know, sorry, not sorry. Yeah, I used to apologize for my stutter. What the hell am I doing? Why am I apologize?

And if you don't mind me asking, What's your schedule? Like? Did you ever get speech therapy once you stutter worse than it is now?

yours? Yours a speech therapy and it would go from like, totally pointless to maybe help a little bit. I even got this device called a fluency master they put around your ear that helps connects to your to your bone conduction. So you could actually try to hear so faster than what you actually hear yourself speaking to try to change your voice patterns. I also went to a four week intensive up in SUNY Geneseo place called the Dark Starbuck fluency, fluency linic. It was a it was a four week intensive program over the summer to to retrain how you speak now, a lot of us don't realize speaking is a very complicated process. So if I say, so if I say I can't say the word stop, stop. But say the word stop without touching your teeth. You can't do it. No, you can't do it. No, right. It's a right. So I say say unique New York. You see how your mouth opens and closes? Yeah, neither, like say the word first. First, you have to purse your lips. Now what you're doing is you're doing different kinds of sounds. You have vowel sounds, you have unvoiced vowel sounds, you have consonants EMFs, you have you have explosive sounds, you have unvoiced consonants, and all these things are kind of a mismatch of how you use your teeth, your soft palate and your lips in combinations. That's why children when they're young, and they lose their their front two teeth, they have a hard time say stop it. Yeah, but the instead they say puppet puppet, because it can't get that s out.

And that's known as temporary.

Temporary. Yeah. And they kind of work their way out of it as as their teeth grow back but but that makes you realize that wow, that can be effective. So for me speaking, concentrating on speaking fluently is a lot like you concentrating on your breathing now you don't have to you don't have to focus on your breathing. Yeah, I do that what I do is I have to slow down. I have to control how am I going to attack my EMS I can do it doing a lie to them. So I'd say Mother Mary came to me. Rather than getting stuck, I can allied into it. My essays and F's, my unvoiced consonants, I can slide into that I can. I can also talk flow like Marilyn Monroe, who had a speech impediment and she talked like this, so she wouldn't get stuck on blocks. So I guess

bleeding issues cause stumbling is what I'm getting.

I don't know I think I think stress and anxiety really cause A lot of it, but, but also, I've been under severe stress and other things and you know, if I yell or scream or sing something, I don't have a problem. When I do accents, I don't have a problem singing or speaking. So all these strange things and you know, like, for example, yes, yes, yesterday, I was on a speaker's Playhouse and like, God, I couldn't say my name yesterday. Yeah.

And so like, Kimberly Crowe is like saying, like, Oh, we're here. And here's an amazing speaker, Raja Vaidya is so amazing. And I'm like, I can't say my name. You know, and, you know, so it's kind of in the weirdest thing about having a speech impediment and, and my heart goes out to anybody who's ever dealt with it, because you can't help but become a compassionate human being, by having some sort of a challenge like this, because, because you see, you feel the struggle yourself. So then you you can empathize with other people that are going through their struggle. So all employers and especially corporate companies out there, make sure you hire someone who has any sort of challenge because they will be the most hardest working and most empathetic I have ever you will ever have

Coolblue companies don't see that. Unfortunately

No they don't see any. And one of my mission statement Saylor, is that even at my last company, I worked the past 11 years for Johnson and Johnson, I worked on big name drugs in brief because I tiga DARS lacks, actually Darzalex was my baby, I was a worldwide clinical trial operation leads for over three years for that I actually made the kits being sent out to the, to the clinical trials for over three years worldwide. So I actually made the kits from scratch from raw ingredients. Actually, I actually conjugated the antibodies, QC them did this to stability testing, ship them out event. So I mean, from end to end process, I did all of that. And after three years, when we finally got the results back, it became FDA approved. A DARS lacs, which is for multiple myeloma became a $5 billion drug 5 billion with a beat. Wow, I can put my stamp on that. You know, I'll give myself the victory bell for that, because that's one of my big wins while I was there, and since then, my gosh, we released even in 2021, I just got FDA approval for for a tit for for to cluster mad that's a antibody therapy against multiple multiple myeloma, and also convicted, which is a cell therapy against against the tomato, Mama, my llamas. Wow. And so if if I can do all that, and but still, even at a big corporate company like j&j that has over 130,000 employees worldwide. They do not include speech disfluency as a protected disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Nice. Yeah, they should do that. Because that

mission statement is I want to do that. I want to make sure we spread the word. And we change that policy. Oh, yes. I think that I believe even at work, where people I've heard people down the hall talked, talking behind my back, like one woman I worked with, she was on the phone saying like, Yeah, I think he's got to think he's got a psychological problem. Mine. Oh, my God. No, yep. Yeah. And I remember one of the construction guys, he and his buddy, were laughing and cackling down in the hallway. Right down the hall from my office. I heard them every single word they were saying, I was so pissed off. I was about to go optimum, take him outside and beat the shit out of him. But instead, I went and told my manager said, you know, do you hear what this guy saying? I need to go to HR. And he he actually dissuaded me from that. He stopped me from doing it. He said, No, no, don't worry, just, we know you're a smart guy, you're so good at what you do. Don't Don't make problems don't you know, we'll know, you know? Exactly, that guy should have been fired, and that it was allowed to continue. So there's, in my next book that I come out with, it's going to be called hug a bully, where I talk about the six different types of types of bullying that happen not just to children, but to adults. And I'm going to add a seventh one, and the seventh one I'm going to call a corporate bullying. And I've been doing research now on it. And and talking to a lot of people who have been bullied, not just at school, but at home and also at their workplace. And you'll be surprised how many managers think just by them being able to bark orders at people that they're allowed to put people down. They're lucky Yellow people, they're allowed to, you know, change their hours at will and not compensate employees, they're not allowed to. So there's a lot of this that goes on because of titles. And employees like me against a higher level manager who you know, has support from other higher level managers, I can't see anything back. So that has to change. And so the whole, so there are many companies out there with this toxic bullying culture. That's why companies now hire me to speak at their companies, I help managers engage with employees, so they don't quit. So we can like, stop, stop the great resignation.

That's good. I really liked the work that you're doing to provide inclusivity in the workplace and spread the word that even though we may have challenges, it's okay, we can still overcome them. And those people who don't want to accept you know, what, that's fine, you know,

at some point, I realized now it's like, you know, the problem is not me to them.

So it's no,

no, go, look, look, I always tell people, like, look, I'm, I'm like a pineapple. I'm a little rough around the edges. But as soon as you as soon as you get to the inside, like, that's where all the sweetness and all the goodness is. And actually, I tell my wife all the time, it's like, you know, my wife is tough, man. She's like a pistol, you know, she's, she's like, very, very, you know, tough with the words. And I said, like, Honey, I'm sensitive, you have to talk nicer to me. And she just laughs at me. And, you know, what she knows? It's, it's, it's that, you know, um, I don't try to act like a tough guy. What I do is I, you know, especially like, in, like the martial arts, you learn, you know, tough love is the way to help people really grow because you tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear

you got it. And also, so I like how you use martial arts, to defend yourself, and maybe your parents didn't see you doing it, they thought your mom thought it would be too dangerous. You, your you, you use it to defend yourself and overcome those bullies.

Martial arts, it's not about fighting. It's about standing up for yourself, but gaining the confidence so that you can be who you want to be. The one thing I tell people that a lot of people don't understand with with a speech impediment, you're trapped in your body. There could be 10 people all around me. And it feels like I can't talk because I got like duct tape over my mouth. Because when you want to come in, you can't. And by the time that split second passage, where you can interject something or answer a question, the moment is missed, the opportunity is missed. So you're trapped in your own body. And that's that feeling of powerlessness and frustration that I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, you hear me right now, guys, there's brief periods where I'll be fluent. And then other times where I'll just get stuck, and it'll be a terrible block. And they say, Oh, well, yeah, well, it's not so bad. It's not. And I've even had people say, like, oh, it's not a real handicap, you know, other people, like, they don't have limbs or they can't see. And I say, well, it's drilled in me, I think it's a matter of perception. And I was furious at that person. So I had to kind of just take the hire and say, You know what, that's a matter of perception. You don't know what a person goes through? That's right. And and I walked away, because otherwise I would have had a lot more words to say.

Yeah. Wow. And so you So you joined Toastmasters, even they didn't care about your struggle, they accepted you. Yep. And you won an award.

I did the past two years. I won the international speech contest in my area back to back years and I went to the like a division level and was the runner up so I'm so I was like, one round away from like the the districts where they really start to get in a lot of that big name competition in there. So this year, I don't know. I'm going to try it again and see what happens. But I think also, I wanted to get out of Toastmasters because I've been in Toastmasters now, for five years, I've been the air director. I've been the president of the Toastmasters chapter at Johnson and Johnson last year. But this year, I wanted to do something new. So I went up this open competition. They had the ultimate speakers competition that was in Philadelphia, in back in June back in July, and I went there with three hours sleep and like No, no coffee because I woke up late from a because we were just at a wedding the evening before and I luckily took home a third place. Third place that trophy. So I was very pleased about that, because it was a completely cold audience and cold judges who didn't know me. So if I can do that in front of a cold audience, and, you know, a lot of them thought, like, wow, Raja, so poisoned, so like he uses pauses, so Well, I use the pauses, so I don't get stuck in a block. And I take a really deep breath, and I try to relax. So those strategic pauses that I was using in between my speech and during my speech, and you know, I think they just kind of work for me because it forces me to slow down and and to focus more on here's my, here's a, here's an explosive constant coming in, oh, here's the unvoiced vowel. Oh, here comes an S, again, you know, to make sure that we allied into the next M, so that we can go smoothly into it. So these are these things that I'm thinking. So when I tell people, you know, when people ask what it's like to feel this essay, alright, well, here's what you do. Start saying the ABCs and every single other letters, okay, stop, go stop, go. Say it again. Twice, go, Okay. Make them longer, say that one five times. And you can't even get to Z yet. And they say, Oh, my God, that's what it's like I say, yeah. So that's what it's like. And so Alexa said earlier, Silla, you know, you know, people have to stand up to their fear. I mean, the whole reason why I have training workshops, and I do mindset from mind shift mastery, is that, you know, fear stands for face everything and rise.

If you don't stand up, you're never conquered. Right? Tyler as well. Yep. Yeah. And yeah, entirely. You're still here like?

Yes, I am,

Yeah you have to stand up to the field. And Tyler, I know, you have very similar stories in school with how they put you in. They wanted to put your resource classes I'll give Thailand for that, though. Tyler tells Raja about your

Yeah,

I was blind. And that's all I was blind. And for didn't know how to teach me. And I thought that I needed resource classes in my mom said, now we're not doing that. Yeah. So yeah, it's kind of similar to your story a little bit. Except I didn't have a problem with stuttering. Yeah, you know,

yeah, a lot of that. So I'm fortunate a lot of the school systems here in the West. And they underestimate students who are in a lot of ways when they shouldn't have

to do yes, they do. And I would love to change the way teachers teach and how they understand students with with with challenges, because instead of teaching them with kid gloves, like oh, you poor thing, you're broken. And let's make things easy for you. No, I don't want that. I never wanted that. I remember in all the, all the speaker Anette networking groups that were in, you know, when they tell people like, hey, everybody gets 45 seconds. And and so somebody asked me, Hey, would you like some extra time because of your speech issues? I said, No, I want one standard. And if I screw up, it's on me.

Yeah

Nobody else

say you touch. Yeah. Can speakers play house when Kimberly policy to the mic? Just say, No, I want the same amount of time.

Hell, yeah. Yeah. Because look, nobody wants special treatment. I want to be seen for the skills I have not for the challenges I have. Yep. And here's, here's, here's one of my quotes a, I talk to my clients. Now, I started a victory mindset Academy a couple of years ago. And I've had clients where I help to shift shift their mindset because after 38 years of teaching in the martial arts, I've seen that students go from a white belt mind lock to a blackbelt mind shift. And when you when you help people with that mind shift, you know, that can translate into business, it can translate to life, it can translate to relationships. So a lot of people don't realize more than 95% of business development is really personal development. Because you have to understand people their psychology of connection and engagement, how to pay attention. I mean, God gave us two ears and one mouth but anybody out there that's a sanguine speaker, you know, they end up here talking a lot more than they pay attention to others. Right, and learning how to listen how to how to how to pay attention with empathy. For example, a lot of people listen so they can answer back Don't listen to understand.

Make sense yet always in your life. I don't I don't realize this to mean. Like, I'm starting a business to it also, there's also a personal development involved as well, because then I'm learning how to understand what people want. Hmm,

gotcha. Cool.

Yeah.

And, and, and a lot of people don't realize too is like, you know, you have to continually do personal development. Or I'm sorry.

It never stops. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, look, if you asked me six years ago, hey, Raja, would you, you know, six years ago, I was just happily working in the lab quietly. And I didn't want to talk in front of my lab team, I didn't want to have to give presentations, oh, my god, man do I have to. And then, you know, one of my, one of my co workers, you know, worked on a big project together, I actually got injured from it, I hurt both of my rotator cuffs because I was doing the work of two people. And, and when it came time to do the presentation, I wasn't even, you know, asked to present it. And they kept my name off of the front page of the PowerPoint slide deck on my name was all the way the last page when half the slides up there, remind. That's what I decided, you know, I'm gonna frickin do something about this, because this will this can't happen again. That's when I do Toastmasters. So that was 2016. So in 2017, I found out about Toastmasters. I said, Alright, I'm going to do this, I'm just going to run after this full force and see what I can do with it. And you know, now I'm a level five pathway certified, like international coach, and certified coach. And not only that, now, I'm an award winning speaker. And I've done a TEDx. And not only that, I've been the president of of the TEDx of the other Toastmasters Chapter A Johnson and Johnson, I was an area director. And now I'm working on building up my speaking skills and speaking to live audiences and

beautiful. And I want to ask you, I am go, are you going to speakers play house live in Dallas, because I'll be there.

Maybe, maybe we're trying to see, well could have a My wife actually wants to go to India and take my daughter. So unfortunately, the timing doesn't work out for us. I really wanted to be there. So I will try. We'll see. Because then I gotta bring my son with me and take him out of school too. So I gotta figure out how all this is gonna work. But, but yeah, it is it is on my bucket list. I do want to be there. So we'll, we'll we'll try. But But if someone asked me five years ago, that all this stuff, you know, would you want to be a speaker, whichever one over we're write a book and being a movie. And, you know, it was after all that, I think that, you know, there's a Saylor and said, like, you know, it was a great phrase, were like, one of my mentors, Mark Hoverson, who passed away a couple of years ago. And he says, small hinges, swing big doors. And, and all it takes is a small choice. You make a choice, and the trajectory of your life can change. Yeah, quality II. It's a small choice. So right now the best thing about him about being human about having free will is you can always make a choice. You are never trapped. No back. You know, my book, which is not out yet, but working on it. Unbox me today, it's all about this box of fear that people are trapped in. And, and it's this box of fear is made by our education, by our upbringing, by our culture, by our parents, by our friends, coworkers, by society by social media, and the news, and many more things. And a lot of it are lies. I tell my children all the time. Yeah, not believe everything on the internet. No, there's a lot of fake gurus out there fake influencers, a lot of fake things on the internet and YouTube videos, which are just sheer nonsense.

And in the end, it's not always now. Yeah.

And so, you know, we have to protect ourselves. And part of that is people don't realize there's I was teaching martial arts, I really understood I finally understood this a difference. So no matter what challenge you have out there, you need confidence, but you also need high self esteem. And there's a difference. So imagine there's a there's a little cat looking into a mirror in a mirror. That is outward, outward self esteem. But what about, you know, the, the cat itself thinks itself of as a lion, right? What about vice versa? What about everybody else sees his gigantic lion but in the mirror, this line sees itself as like a little kitten. Now mine has low self esteem. So there's a big difference. So when we teach our children, oh, just get all A's and you'll be great. Just just win this achievement, and you'll be great. Well, that's external. That is confidence. That's what other people's attention is on you. So when you focus on external confidence, you still haven't you still haven't dived deep enough to work on an inner self esteem. And that is what will truly transform you know, steam is internal. Yeah. So so I'm not developing a new signature talk I've been I've been talking for the past year or more about how to flip your fear to to your superpower. And that's really about my journey now about how you heard back. And Senator, you were there to back in August, I found out about speakers Playhouse in what June? Yeah, join playful out in July, August, I decided, you know, what, I know people are trying to sell programs for $10,000 to get you on 100 stages in a year. That's only two a week, what if I did for a week? I can do it in half the time. So, you know, why can't they do that? So I said in August 8, for the I'm going to try to do 100 interviews in six months, and just see what happens. And I told everybody, I have no clue how I'm gonna do it. But I went from one in about I went from one training a week I was doing for my for my clients, just usual entrepreneur stuff, how to set up your copy your copywriting, how to set up your autoresponders how to, you know, make posts in Canva, how to do your social media marketing, all those kinds of things? And yeah, and so I decided to shift it into, you know, what, if I get my stage and let, and I interview more people, I think I can expand my reach and my brand even faster. And rather than trying to focus on being on somebody else's shows. So that's what I did. And I didn't do it in six months. I actually did my first 100 in about in under four months. And then last. And last week is what I hit episode 204 in five months, your podcast, right? Yep, 204 interviews in five months,

it was your podcast called.

So it's not a podcast. It's a live stream. So all my live stream show. It's called Freedom coaching live. And you can, you can you can watch all the old live streams as well all the archives in the mind shift mastery group on Facebook. So you just search for mind shift mastery group, and you'll see me on stage saying believe it and become it because that's really

the Tyler, we may do live streams too. And like, of course, when the podcasters connect and collaborate, we're in the podcasting for partners blueprint, we have a real variety station. Maybe some of the stuff is just a branch of our business, we may want to switch over the live streams eventually, which I will I'm figuring out things as they go and

I love live streams because when we're when you're live you thrive and then when you take action

that's right,

you know you get traction in your life.

Exactly. Yeah. And and Raja if you have any products you want to promote. I see some in your bio here. I'm putting these in the show notes as well. Your programs hire me varies based on time location event schedule, please show call. There's a page there's a yeah give it to us.

Yeah, actually the best thing is what I can do is I can give you my link to my to my bio and then that way at the bottom of that it has my products in there so

I haven't I have only your bio now.

Oh perfect. Yeah. So what you have down there at the bottom you see I get a free group for free Do you have there's a PDF if you want to learn the some basic like business development tools, how you set up your marketing and your seminars. I have an award winning map and remember the masterclass I do every Tuesday night and and we shift each week what we do. Last week we did mind shifting. This week we're coming up with we're going to do the speaker confidence workshop and and speaking with evaluations afterwards, and then after that, we're going to do a deep dive into more of a business mindset training and then the fourth week of each month is going to be my five I have mind shifts of a world champion. So that really goes into that deep dive out. What were the five tips that I used to have strategy that I used to become a, like a Olympic qualifier and to and to make the Olympic team when it was 18 years old?

Wow.

So and and that stuff stays with you?

It does. And yeah, yeah. And so I can participate in these courses too, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and you see, the prices are all there. It's a very low investment, it's pretty easy. If the first one I say people, like, you know, I was thinking about whether or not to charge every single month for that. I said, No, here's, here's what to do. You can either do like $19 a month, or you can just pay in $97 for the whole year. And you get four times, Tuesday, every month. So that's another opportunity to really grow into mastermind a lot.

Because maybe, if you want like we're still learning affiliate marketing on that, and maybe you and I can work. You can work with you and I can work together. We can figure out how like, Tyler helped me explain us.

How to become an affiliate for my program. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah, you can, you can pay me for promoting you. And vice versa. Yeah,

here's, actually I have links for that. So here's if you're able to grab it from the chat here, I'll post it here. Here are the two affiliate links. And you can partner up here with me. Awesome. All right. So once you get those partner links, if you sign up, if you haven't had a fairly problem with it, you just tell me. And I'll I'll just enter you myself, manually. And I'll send you the link so that way, like it will save you save you the headaches. Okay. Yeah.

Great, great. And, and so this is a journey, we're all on together. And I'm absolutely, I'm so excited. wants to come. And we all have gifts, and just things are just awesome. It's great. And now, Raja D. D work? Do you still work for a company now? And have you left the corporate world working for you?

Nope, I've left the corporate world. And this is just me now with victory mindset Academy. So all my programs fall onto the victory mindset academy.com Victory mindset academy.com. And yeah, and so everybody that wants to really learn about that go there. There's a free fast action mindset course, there. It's a 15 minutes long, it five modules, it's like three minutes each. And to give you some fast action, takeaways, because I think when you get fast action, that's when you get traction in your life. So take some action gain some traction.

Yeah. Yeah. Raja, you, me and Tyler, we have big goals for this year. And I know we're gonna accomplish them.

Awesome. Very good.

And listen, let me and also Oh, my God, I forgot to tell you guys. Anybody out there that has some kind of a challenge, whether it be physical mental trauma, or financial, you know, they weren't gone broken comeback or, or anything. I'm going to be holding holiday a summit, February 22 23rd 24th. And we're still looking for speakers. There's only half the slots are already taken by people that have said like, you know, please keep me in stock. Keep me, you know, oh, so I'm doing that. It's going to be it's going to be a pay to play event. And, and but, and there's also an upgrade possible for for like being in the amazing humans anthology book, Volume One. So the amazing humans anthology is going to be Aha, Volume One. So if you want your aha moment, in the AHA book, now's your chance to do it, because we're going to make it a best selling book on Amazon. Like without.

Yeah,

because it's because it needs to be heard. There's so many amazing people out there who have incredible stories, you know, and I don't want to, I don't want it just to be a rah rah book and inspire me and then nobody forgets the next day. I want it to be about inspire me for five minutes, and then the next half an hour. I want to perspire, I want to hear what's the skills what's the strategies you learned, that you can improve your business or your program or your job or your relationship? Right so it's going to be it's going to be really a dynamic it's going to be educational and entertaining at the same time. Beautiful There you go. Yeah,

I never never question I had, you know, my one of my favorite speakers play house. That music cool. ways

have you done that before?

Give it fun.

Have you have you? Have you dropped stuff in speaker's house before?

Not yet I was going to and then I got caught up with so many other things that I needed to do. So

I hope I hope to do it. I hope to do it one day.

Yep. Yeah. And I highly recommend if anybody hasn't done so, you know, join playful out. You know, that's a great program. That's part of it. And also, I mean, in in join up with my, I have a eight week course called mind shift mastery adventure, which will really reset the way you think about your life, the way you show up in your life. And that's really I think, my my core program. And it's not a cheap program, because it's good, because it doesn't give cheap results. But for the people that it's the right fit. That's where you really want to go to because that's where you're gonna find out that a lot of things that we've been doing human program wrong, and your brain like, like a computer, you can be reprogrammed. It can't break those habits and make new ones. It's amazing.

Oh, so your brain can be rewired? Wow, absolutely.

Think about it this way. I gave a speech a couple years ago, and I used this analogy, your brain is kind of like, like a train on train tracks, train train tracks. And then, you know, the train can only go where the tracks relate. But if you learn the strategies where you can rewire your brain, you can pick up the train tracks, put them somewhere else. And now your train of thought can go where you want it to go because you chose where you want to go.

That's a good analogy. It's a great analogy. Yeah. Wow. Wonderful. So I guess if nothing else that Tyler Do you have any questions for our guest? Um, thanks so. Well, I guess we'll go ahead and close out but before we do we like to ask a customer in question. Sure. They like struggling like now like, what advice would you give them?

I would say fight to live. Because no one else is going to do it for you.

You got to find for yourself.

It is your right. And that's the thing I think a lot of people for forget is that I'm giving you permission to fight for your life. Because no one else will do it for you. And that's really what it's about. And I think a lot of I remember growing up and just being very alone and lonely thinking this why me and you know, how come I'm the only person with this problem and you know, first thing is understand you are not alone. Second thing you are allowed to stand up for yourself and become more. No one can hold you back except yourself and when you decide that remember small hinges swing big doors, when you make that choice, everything will change. So go make that choice. Yes, Coach Raja, you know, Don't fake it till you make it but become

your control your life. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Amen. Amen.

All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I gotta

Give it up for Raja Vaidya in Hope Without Sight