Moyez Jiwa: I Help Good Doctors Become Great Doctors (#284)

Moyez Jiwa: Practicing the Art of Medicine #feisworld #creator #doctor – powered by Happy Scribe

Kind of talk super fast. Get to the point. Everything is five to ten minutes. But I love these conversations. And today I have a very special guest I met through BJ Miller very recently, but I feel like I’ve known Moya’s Jiva for so long and we had this conversation we scheduled for 15 minutes. I think we talked for, like, an hour, and that felt like we could go on for days. So welcome to the show. My, so good to have you on a Sunday night.

Thanks so much. Faith monday morning here in Melbourne and the Dream Monday morning. So it’s very nice to be with you.

Likewise. My goodness. What time is it over there? Is like, 730 or something.

It’s 832.

Oh, 830. And do you feel wide awake, ready to go, or are you a morning person?

Yeah, I think generally I’m on the train by 730, so this is good.

So you had your coffee breakfast. This is now, like, rolling out of bed for you.

Crucially, all Melbourne love to drink coffee. We’ve got the best coffee in the world. So, yeah, I’ve had my coffee. I had to have it before I started.

No, we have to talk about I mean, I’m not a coffee expert, but it’s funny that you pointed that out, because I think people from all over the world believe that their coffee is the very best, and I don’t blame them. But let me briefly introduce you in case it’s not obvious. I mean, you’re always dressed up, but yet you’re one of the, I would say one of the most approachable doctors I have ever met. And I love how you introduce yourself, which is in the description for people who are hopping on right now. Please say hi no matter where you are. I’m so glad to have you on a Sunday, and I appreciate you whether you tune in for 510 minutes or the whole thing. So Moya introduces himself as, I help good doctors become great doctors. I’ve been a clinician for more than 30 years and have multiple other roles, including Professor Innovator, a publisher and researcher. And Moya’s experience has taught him that healthcare professionals can achieve astonishing results by looking closely at what is in their immediate sphere of influence. And you’ll also enjoy writing innovating and needless to say, we found ourselves both on YouTube.

I love your content and I love how raw it is, not just you, but inviting doctors that we know we don’t know into these conversations. So much to cover here. First, I have to say. I mean, we’ll get to coffee for sure. But actually, first, tell me a little bit about your commute, because I’m never quite sure where my doctor friends are working these days, telemedicine or what’s going on where you are, Marias.

So we are currently back in lockdown, which is why I’m at home. We’ve got some cold cases in the community. We’ve got a lot of cases in Sydney. So this is not my usual morning. My usual morning is that I work in a university. So I go it’s funny you should ask about my commute, because I spent all day yesterday in lockdown polishing my prize, which is my Vespa Scooter. So I get on my Vespa Scooter, ride it to Southern Cross Station, and then from Southern Cross Station, I get the train out to a place called wearby, which is where my university is based. And that’s a good 45 minutes commute. I love that time because at the time, I get to do my other favorite thing, which is to draw. I do a lot of drawing. I do a lot of portrait drawing, so I still do that on the train.

Oh, my goodness. You draw people on the train?

Sometimes. People on the train often not often. I get somebody on my phone and I draw that person. It’s something I really enjoy doing.

Wow.

Very mindful thing to do.

Yeah, that’s really fascinating. And then you say, as a result of the recent lockdown, you are working from home currently.

Currently I’m working from home, other than when I’m in practice. So I practice again in the city of Melbourne, and that’s 15 minutes walk from here. So that’s my Friday, which is a lovely way to spend Fridays, seeing patients.

Wow. So I’m excited about this conversation for a variety of reasons, and I try to relate to my own experience. And for people who are listening, who are watching right now, most of my audience on YouTube as well as on LinkedIn elsewhere, let’s assume most of them are patients or they’re not healthcare providers, necessarily. And I think in recent years, especially during COVID, there’s a different kind of anxiety that I’ve experienced going from, oh, you know, my mom had a check up a year and a half ago. We thought it was nothing. Turned out it was something she had something removed, and it was not cancerous. But that whole journey, I felt like, just took so much out of me. And then I think learning, just kind of keeping in touch with my friends, realizing that people have other fears surrounding, oh, if I do feel sick or not feel well, then am I even capable? Can I even go to the hospital to get prioritized? So I feel like our conversation as a result of that is very relevant, to give people the information or the comfort or maybe education like you have given to other doctors to understand how we can actually create a more human experience together.

What are your thoughts on that?

So I think the pandemic was very stressful, not just for patients, but also for doctors, because for many of us, we believe that the best way to see patients is face to face. Very uncomfortable, many of us, with telehealth, because often you cannot make a diagnosis and he’s supposing. You called and he said, oh, I’ve got tummy pain. Well, I can give you advice only up to a particular point, but beyond that point I can’t examine you and I cannot make a conclusive diagnosis. So it is stressful. On the other hand. It’s been very useful to pivot. To telehealth. Because for people with a long term enduring illness. It’s often helpful to see that patient and advise them rather than not have them in the clinic at all. Where potentially they can’t come in for many. Many reasons. Whether it’s because they have immunocompromised or because of the rising incidence of COVID in the community. Wherever it happens to be. So it’s a twoedged sword. On the one hand, fantastic for having conversations with patients, not so fantastic for everything else, including making a diagnosis.

It is so helpful and interesting to me to hear what the other side feels like because sometimes I don’t know how much of the vulnerability, which is what I think, what you’re into, what you’ve written about on both sides, to understand what the patients need versus what the doctors need and are supposed to do. And I don’t think we’ve shared a lot of conversations until literally I met you, I met Vicky Jackson as results V. J. Miller. I realized that it’s so important for us to share this and to not instead of assuming what works, what helps, but to actually be very open, I want to kind of jump right in. And for people who don’t know your YouTube channel, check it out. So you have two channels just for clarity. There’s one by your name, Jiva, and the other is the Journal of Health Design, which I’ve subscribed to both. And you invited doctors to talk about what they should be wearing. Is it important for them to wear certain things or look a certain way when they go to work? What did you learn that from that conversation? Were you surprised by some of their answers?

I was surprised and delighted with some of the answers because they very much resonated with what we generally, as a profession feel about how we turn up to work. And people were surprisingly honest about the challenges that they faced and the constraints that they faced, legal constraints and ethical constraints and all kinds of other constraints that didn’t allow them to do what the patient felt that they could have done because the dollars were changing hands. And so that was nice. But what was even better was to hear directly from patients and hear how much patients want a partnership with their doctors and just to realize that we are, in the end, all on the same page.

That’s so lovely. One of the many reasons why I’m excited is not only I’ve been a patient, I’ve been a caregiver. All of that is it delights me to know that people like yourself who are doctors, you have worked right away as, I think, as a primary care physician, for over 30 years. Is that accurate? Yeah. And then for this whole time I know this has started long before we met, but you’re also very much a creator. And what I mean by that is you are a content creator. You create videos, you write. You’re also an innovator. Which means you challenge the system in a positive way of how to make it work better. How to invent and create things outside of the system. Which I love because to me. You’re not waiting for the health system. Whether it’s in Australia or North America. To change or to provide you with what you need or to finally design this thing that’s going to help other doctors and therefore patients. You just started designing, and I want people to hear and know this because this sounds really unusual and even unthinkable among doctors. Am I exaggerating?

How does the resonance I think you’re.

Right in many ways that some doctors are more creative than others. But I believe that all doctors are highly creative. They are often frustrated creatives. If you think about it, getting into medical school, it’s not just about your marks, it’s not just about your performance in the exam. Often these people are very talented in other ways. They’re, you know, captain of the football team, or they happen to have been an actor, or they happen to have been a town planner. Some of them are engineers before they go into medicine. So they are very, very creative. And we often underestimate the importance of that in their lives because they bring that creativity, often in surprising ways, into the practice of medicine.

And can we maybe focus on you, for instance? I think you even haven’t really met you or spend time with you. I have a feeling you will know which tea shop or coffee place to go to. I think you know how to enjoy life and how to explore kind of the hidden gems, not just in the medical world, but just life in general. So could you talk to us a little bit about your origin story, perhaps, what inspired you to be creative in the medical field? Like, where do you seek your inspirations and that sort of thing?

Yeah, I think like many other doctors, I was a frustrated creative. And when I look back at my career, at the start of my career, I think I would have loved to be an architect, for example. And I often said it as a child. I love to be an architect. I love to build things and create things. But of course, inevitably, what happens is you do academically very well if you are that way gifted. And then the pressure is on to do something where you maximize leverage, that academic ability, and you end up in medical school, and you end up realizing halfway through medical school that the language of science is now going to be the way in which you are going to be creative. There is no difference between using the language of mathematics and physics and engineering to be a creative. You are now going to use a different language, but you’re also going to be a creative. And that’s essentially what happened to me. I became a creative in using a language that is alien to many creatives, which is science and medicine and pathology and pharmacology and all of that. And the wonderful thing about medicine, and particularly family medicine, is you can actually bring other things in sociology, psychology.

You can bring a lot of design thinking. You can look at how your room is set up, how you greet patients, what you wear, whether you show the icons of your profession, whether they’re on display when the patient comes into the room, how you terminate the conversation, how you hold that conversation, what tools you use in order to explain very complicated things to people who happen to be ill at the time. So a lot of that requires creativity, and I guess that’s what I enjoy the most about what I do. You ask, well, he said, how do you do that? How do you do that as a doctor? Well, the secret is to actually, the superpower is to give up thinking about work. So, as you say, when I’m not at work, I’m really not at work. I give myself over to the drawing I mentioned. You cannot ride a Vespa to the city of Melbourne without being mindful. You do that and you’re going to end up under a tram. So you have to be present every moment. And that’s the time that these creative thoughts come to you and then you come to your work much I wouldn’t say just refreshed, but you come to work with a lot of ideas about where to from here in terms of creating new solutions to problems that you were facing earlier in the week.

Yes, I can still relate to that. I hear a little bit of an echo. I apologize. So I think, on that note, I noticed when I was working without family or kids, I was putting my 70, 80 hours into consulting advertising. I didn’t know at the time how much it blocked my creativity. Even just my wellbeing wasn’t there. And it was incredibly difficult. And nowadays, after being a creative entrepreneur since 2016, I found myself really slowing down. Like, even at a place called Trader Joe’s, which is the chain here in the US grocery store. It’s lovely. I look at succulent, I look at plans. I wanted to buy flowers, I wanted to decorate my office. And as a result, people start to notice that. I mean, I literally got the guitar yesterday and start trying to remember how to play again from when I was 15. And this experience, somehow, like you said, when you’re not at work, you really got to find a way to cut through the noise of wanting to get back, trying to always try to constantly be optimizing, trying to be creative all the time. It’s just not possible.

No, it isn’t. And the more you force yourself to think of a solution, the more elusive that solution becomes and the less you realize that how powerful our brains are. Our brains are capable of finding solutions even to the most complicated problem if only you’d give yourself a chance to allow that to come to the surface. And that’s what riding a vespa or drawing or going for a walk or talking to family, whatever it happens to be, that’s what that does for you. It’s not that you’re not working at the time, but you’re allowing your brain to do the work and enjoying life, which is at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

Yeah. So, you know, you have a smile when you talk about this. I think we can all feel how much you enjoy what you do. And I want to dive in just a little bit deeper into how you interact with your patients because as you know, sometimes the first few seconds can make a world of difference. And perhaps what I have learned in the past 18 months or so is that people come to me for issues such as, hey, how do I build multiple revenue streams? How do I make more money? It will be nice if I can reduce costs. So everything is kind of I wouldn’t say optional, but it’s not necessarily urgent. Whereas I know sometimes maybe like an annual checkup, everything checks out, people are happy. But there are also times I know that primary care doctors are the ones who identify a potential need to look into certain scenarios and situations deeper. So there are pretty stressful situations in the US. Primary care doctors also look at the Cat scan and say, okay, at least over here you collect the results. You have to interpret and help patients understand that. So how do you manage stressful situations?

Do you meditate? Do you condition yourself before you turn around to say, oh man, I actually care about this person. I don’t have to deliver the news? How do you handle that?

So I actually wrote about this in a book I wrote called The Art of Doctoring. And I talk about the importance of routines when you’re consulting. So the first part of the routine is that you have to be present and you force yourself to be present. So at the end of one consult, as you type in the notes, as you put that away, you have to create a routine. And the routine is you go to the sink and wash your hands because you’re going to have to wash your hands before you see the next patient. You do that mindfully. Then when you greet them, we greet our patients in the waiting room and then bring them through. You stand in a particular place. You stand in the same place. You call that patient’s name and you don’t move until that patient has looked you in the eye, acknowledged that you’ve called them, and walked towards you. And then you walk side by side with that patient into your consulting room. In the old days, we used to shake hands. We don’t shake hands anymore because of COVID and all things like that. We were all moused up.

We were gowned up. There’s all kinds of interruptions in the flow, but nevertheless, it works. And you’d never, ever sit down before the patient sits down. That’s critical. These are the little things that make a difference. We’re not talking about spending 2 hours with the patient. We’re talking about spending a maximum of 15 minutes with the patient, as happened here in this country. And so when they sit down, then you move away from the computer. You must not spend the first two minutes well, I don’t I say must, but this is my routine. I will not spend the first minute or two with the patient looking at the computer. If I haven’t looked at the computer already, then that’s the fact that I have not been present. I already know enough about this patient. I know what they came in for last time. I have a rough idea what medications they’re on. You then look at your knees. Your knees must be pointed and your elbows must be pointed at the patient. If they’re not, your mind is somewhere else. And if it’s somewhere else, you’re not going to get the best out of this interaction.

Now, bear in mind, this isn’t about the patient. This is about me. This is about me enjoying what I do, getting the maximum that I want to get out of this interaction. It may be a fantastic experience for some of my patients, but that’s not the intention. The intention is for me to feel that I’m going to get something useful out of this interaction with this patient. And that useful thing is why I went into my profession. I went into the profession in order to be helpful. And I get a lot of joy out of being helpful. I do not interrupt the patient for the first minute or so, maybe minute and a half. And in that sometimes pregnant pause, I get to the truth much more quickly than if you’re firing questions at the patient. The first time they say, I have a cough and saying, you know, are you producing sputum? Is it green? Blah, blah, blah. All this, have you got a temperature? Have you lost weight? If you keep going like that, you’re going to go down a rabbit hole. Whereas often they tell you, really? What’s the matter? Within the first minute and a half.

Yeah.

And then you ask permission. You say, I’m now going to enter some notes onto the computer. I’m going to turn myself to the side. Is that all right? If the patient is comfortable with that, then you start to do what you have to do. And of course, I mean, I can go on about this, but you always examine the patient in some way, shape or form, whether you take their blood pressure, or whether you lay a hand on their abdomen or you listen to their chest, whatever happens to be that’s important. And then when they leave, the same thing applies. You’re present, you stand up to greet this, to say goodbye. You walk down to the door, you don’t sit down at your desk or turn your back until you shut the door and the patient has left. That’s what a good interaction to me looks like.

Oh man, this is so much to learn for anyone, because we are interacting with people in ways that I guess it just kind of by default these days. There’s so much that our parents can teach us, where we are the average of the six, seven people around us. And that’s really true. This reminds me of my colleagues, friends and clients, barry Alexander in Cosmopolitan, New York. Every time I’ve been to restaurants with them, and it’s always the case that they greet, they go in and say hi to everybody. Sometimes they even go into the kitchen. And this is before COVID as well. Shake hands with people and they tip generously, not because they’re millionaires or it’s because they feel it’s necessary. Now, both of them are in their sixty s, I would say probably late sixty s. And to me that’s a lesson learned. And guess what? We always have the best food when we return to the Singh restaurant in the middle of New York City. No matter how busy, we always find a table. And it’s very, very genuine. On our way out, after a full meal, they do the same thing. They take the time to say thank you to everyone.

And you see the joy on these people’s faces. To be cared for, to be seen and be heard. It just is incredible. That’s one of my reflection. The other is being Chinese. And my Chinese background has taught me a lot of things. A lot of that really is very unnatural for the US. So, for one thing is, like you said, this was maybe a moment ago, when we invite guests over, we are never standing inside the room say come in. We’re always going to the door and greet them. If there’s an elderly person, you hold them. I know that can be a little too much. It’s not that they cannot walk on their own, but you basically you hold them, want to make them feel really at home. And like you said, you sit down after they sit down. You drink, you eat after they have been taken care of. And it just kind of made me realize that when I’m so kind of accustomed to that for so many years. And sometimes I drop some of the habits because, you know, I feel maybe a little too Chinese. I can do that. But whenever I do it, people here that will freak out be like, oh, is that a handwritten note that you should you see them pause.

And it’s a really beautiful thing. Gotta remember to do that.

You’re right. And it’s not just about them. It’s about you as well. You are getting as much out of it.

Yeah.

You’re getting as much out of it as they are. You are getting that feeling that you’re enjoying the interaction more because they they respond. People respond. Your patient smiles. You know, your patient for me in the clinic, the patient smiles. They want to know your name. They’re interested in you. Suddenly, the conversation seems to almost swap, and you’re going to go, hang on, hang on. You’re here to talk about you. And you know then that you’ve got a powerful relationship, which is going to be therapeutic and which get the maximum benefit for them and for you. And at the end of the day, that’s what we want. We want people to get better. That’s why they come to us.

Yes. And this is so fascinating, and I must ask this question related to telehealth in general, this greeting, walking with people really paying attention, how do you translate that? Over virtual meeting systems such as Zoom Go hang out. What can we do to learn more and to give people that attention that they need doctors to patients, but also for us creative entrepreneurs with clients, with prospects. What are your thoughts?

I think the same kind of things apply. If you’re doing a Zoom call and you think that once the cameras on, they can see you, that’s fine. But you’re focused over here, and you’re busy writing and you’re moving and you’re doing, you are losing that critical interaction with that person. And they then realize that you are distracted, that your mind is somewhere else. So that’s the first thing. Where are your eyes focused? Where are your elbows pointed? Where are your knees pointed? And do you realize that? And the wonderful thing about Zoom is you can see yourself, that you can see yourself looking in another direction. So that’s the first thing.

Yeah.

And the second thing is to take the time to let that person tell their story. And you soon realize, because the timers on, you can soon you can actually see the timer. You can see how long it is before you’ve interrupted them or how long you’ve been speaking.

Yeah. It’s so beautiful. These lessons apply to everyone. For people who are watching right now, who have any questions, please drop them in the comments wherever you are, and I will pitch them to Moyes. Go ahead, please.

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s essentially it. That’s the first place to start. And the same things apply. You ask the person what brings them to this call, and you make sure that they’ve had the chance to have the last word before they sign off, in the same way that you see them through the door and they’ve decided to leave and you’re not just shutting the door in somebody’s face and those kind of things. I know there are books written about how we should interact on Zoom to maximize the output, but it’s still it’s still some of the basics that we’ve been taught as doctors and as good hosts apply.

Absolutely. So I want to give you the opportunity to talk about some of your recent projects. You have the Journal of Health Design, which is an ongoing project. You also design this prototype I don’t even know if there’s a word for it, to help medical students and doctors to do better, to be more self reflective. Could you tell us a bit more about that and where people can learn more about your projects?

Yeah, I mean, the General Health Design was created as a platform to amplify the voice of patients, patient advocates in particular, and physicians. So it’s an opportunity for people who don’t often get to speak in scientific circles. So essentially, the journal is a scientific peerreviewed journal. And what we often say to advocates is it’s better to go to a conference or to a meeting and say, as per my paper in the Journal of Health Design, than to say, as per my blog post, or as per my YouTube channel. YouTube channel is a different thing, but as per my blog post, this is what I think it is far more powerful to be able to do that. And unfortunately, often these people, the advocates in particular, and often the physicians at the Coface, are excluded from publishing in peer reviewed journals because peer reviewed journals are designed for another purpose entirely, and that is to sell peerreviewed journals. He who pays often calls the shots. We wanted to create a platform that was free to use, free to access, and that where we could help people and find reasons to publish rather than reasons to reject.

So the Journal of Design very much is an attempt to democratize science. Great thing about it is we’ve got an army of people behind it. So when you go on the journal, you know who’s paying the cost of all this? There are no hidden people in the background. That’s the great thing about it.

And how do you go about approaching other doctors or users on the website? I definitely have seen some familiar faces and I wonder how you go about selecting the right voices or people who are kind of pioneers in the sense that say, I’m going to give this a shot and I want to share more with the world and my patients and the world.

Yeah, I think this goes back to the thoughts of Bernadette, my wife, and Seth Godin, and they feel very much that when it comes to building. A platform. You don’t go about doing it by sending out blank emails. You don’t cold call people, so we don’t cold call people. A lot of the people who come to the Journal for interview or want to publish with us come to us because somebody else has recommended them to us, and they feel that they’re on the same page. And that’s how you build a community. That’s how you build a niche market, as it were. You go with the people who you serve. You actually have to serve above all else. We are in the service business. We’re not in business. We’ll stop. We’re serving this community. And that community responds magnificently, as you know.

Yeah, absolutely. I love how you brought up the fact that Bernadette was a name I’ve recognized for many, many years. And when we connected, you mentioned she’s your wife. I was actually in shock because prior to that, I followed SAF Gonzale today, all his teaching, bought all his books, read many of them more than once, daily blog posts for the past 20 years. And so I would love to know, actually, since I know Bernadette has been working with that for so long, could you tell us how has maybe Seth Godin’s work influenced you? And, you know, after that, the question is, how has Bernadette’s work influenced you as well?

Well, in many ways, they are one and the same question, because Bernadette has been working with Seth for, I think, a decade at least. There about maybe not as long, but it feels that way. And a lot of what she’s written about reflects his thinking. And thinking is very much that you don’t call, you build from. There’s a runway. When you’re building something, if you’ve got a cause, it has to be driven by passion for making a change. And that’s essentially where we started. We wanted this message that we are in the business of serving people to start off the momentum on this particular pathway. And so that’s essentially how it all pans out. If you look at how we built it, it’s essentially, we hope, how Set would have built it. One person at a time, one day at a time, to the point where it then has a life of its own and takes off.

Yeah, permission marketing at Purple Cow back in, I think, 2009. And the idea of permission marketing that people come to you and you’re genuinely servicing them as opposed to you’re just there to get paid, makes a huge difference. It makes marketing so much easier. And for me, one of the reasons not even an experiment of running YouTube is once my channel took off, which is something that I’m like moya, I want to show you how to do this. I know it’s possible for you I would love for your channel to take off, knowing the type of authentic creator you are. And now brands now, I would say a year. And a half later, brands are proactively reaching out to me with a subject line, this is a paid gig. And you open up the email, they know what they’re talking about, there’s a dollar amount and open for negotiation. And literally this happened a year ago. And I sat there just in awe, thinking, for the first time in my life, I don’t need to sell myself, I don’t need to elevate or pitch to anybody. And that is incredible. So I guess I’m going to change my question up about you and Bernadette.

Because you’ve been married for a long time and you have kids together. I’m sure we can go on for different episodes. I’m sure they’re all doing great things because I heard Bernadette talk about very openly, like in these short clips of how joyful she feels as a mother to raise kids and to see them thrive. But at the same time, you both are doing great things. I would love for you to talk about maybe the dynamics of being in a power couple relationship right. And how do you inspire each other. And people are probably very curious to.

Know that I’m extraordinarily lucky because I have my mentor and my best friend as my partner in life, and that makes such a difference. So, you know, the mistakes I could make are circumvented. Well, early in the season, I think so when I have the sense to listen to good advice, I have to say yes. But it’s very much like that. We spend most of our weekend going on long walks. So we would walk literally 510 15. Melbourne is so walkable. It’s fantastic. And a lot of the time we’ll stop off a coffee three or four times in the course of that walk. And we’re constantly talking about not in a direct way, but about how we feel about things and how things are unpacking. We try not to talk about that. We try not to do the managing of our jobs at that time. A lot of times, much higher level conversations about why we’re doing something or how we feel about it, or what we could achieve, or what we think the goal is in this particular project or venture. And it works really quite well. And a lot of the time it isn’t to do with any of that, it’s to do as Berdette says, it’s about the children.

And children children are a great way to take you to ground you, because their problems are very real and they’re now it means that you are out of that office environment, you’re out of thinking about work, you are thinking about something that you both love and care about. And that is another source of our creativity. It is being a family, it is enjoying the environment we’re in. And it is about, as you say, we’ve been married well over 30 years and sharing all the memories of that. And, yeah, it’s great.

Well, I love the idea of taking long walks. And clearly you both do have the privilege to do that as well. Being able to work in an environment together, not just share a home, but actually really sharing a life. So I would encourage people who are watching this, young couples, especially young couples or older couples, to find yourself in those situations and be just kind of make time for yourself. And it’s funny that you mentioned walk because it seems so mundane at the same time. It is the most effective way to grow with someone. I often hear couples say, find a babysitter. They have to find a fancy place to go to. They have to buy meals of a certain price. They have to go on a vacation. They have to live in a certain hotel. And then they come they come back, or they come back, they’re unhappy. And it’s just it’s really interesting that people feel like I’m doing this thing. I’m putting together this how come it’s not working? We’re not happier. And yeah, I mean, does this sound familiar to you?

It sounds very familiar. And Seth talks about this a lot. He says if you’re living for your two weeks of holiday, you’re in trouble. Because essentially life isn’t about the two week holiday. It’s about all, every single day, every single moment that you’re on this earth and that you’re able to spend time doing something that you feel is worthwhile. You might think, well, it’s all very well. He’s earning a fortune. He’s a doctor. He’s this, is that. And she’s successful, so and so we don’t see it that way. Without going into any of it. We don’t see ourselves as wealthy, particularly. We see ourselves as rich in some ways because we live in an environment where we can do things that are almost for free but are fantastic. You can walk into an op shop here. You can walk into any number of secondhand book shops and buy books for a dollar or two, which are fabulous. So it’s not as if you have to spend a fortune just to have a good time and to get out of your head, which is essentially what this is about.

Yeah, exactly. We’re also talking about here is if you surround yourself with the right people, and I want to really get deep into that this is not just a quote that looks good on Pinterest or in a book, but I noticed just how much fun I’m having with my friends, with my mom, who is an artist, as you know. And she and I recently discovered thrift shops which we really were not really kind of in a habit to going to. And she would discover these little hidden gems and we start thinking about, like, if this is a necklace, who worried before to what occasions? And like you said, things are very inexpensive and yet you’re making great use of them. It is better for the environment as opposed to buying new things constantly. It’s really powerful. I also love the fact that I was reading a book. I think was it even this is Marketing or that I think it’s one of Seth’s Maybe podcast episode. He was sort of making fun of the reality that in New York City, on average, upper class people are having their weddings. On average it’s like $90,000 per wedding.

And he said if you save them money and he did the calculation, you could take two to three friends out to dinner every single weekend at a fancy restaurant, even order drinks. And that was so eye opening. He said also, the more expensive the wedding, the earlier, the sooner the divorce. I was like, so you gotta be careful if you’re, you know, choose the right people and creating the right environment for yourself. But moyenne knowing that you’re so open about these things. Another area people never talk about is sort of the failures, the frustrations of being a content creator at the end of the day. From my journey to start in 2014, people immediately said oh yeah, I heard about your podcast. How much money are you making? And becomes this thing where you better have a speech ready when you go to holidays, family gatherings. Even my relatives in China on my dad’s side will be like well, if she’s not making money, what’s really the point? A creator? But does she have family? Does she have kids? All of these things are so real and yet I’ve been very lucky to kind of deflect them in a way because I’ve been in it for long enough.

So I would love to hear your message to the content creators out there. YouTubers podcasters, teaching people to cook medicine, like what is your way and mindset to kind of get through the day to day and really build the creative muscles to keep going.

I think the most important thing is not how much you’re putting out there or who is looking at it, but what is the quality of what you’re putting out there. If you really believe you’ve got something to say that’s useful, that works, put it out there and people will find you. People will find you. Now you and I met and I desperately needed your help to say look, how do I get this? How do I get more traction on this? Not because I was in any way worried about the content, but because there is definitely assigns to doing that and I’m not decrying that. But even I wouldn’t have come to you earlier in the piece because I was busy creating something that I felt might be useful for the two minute questions. A very good example of something the two minute question is where I send a question to my podcast guests on video and I asked them for a video reply and it was only after we’d done 30 or 40 of these that I came and said, well, Faye, what do you think? Do you think this is worth spreading the word on this?

But I was very happy that those people who I had worked with on that project were interested enough to keep coming back. And I knew I had something when every time I sent a question, people were replying. Sometimes half a dozen people would reply. So I knew that this was resonating. And I think that’s the critical thing, it’s not how you get things out or where you get things out, but the fact that you’re producing consistently and you build your heart that it’s something worth doing. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing for its own reward. And the money is neither here nor there. It may or may not come, but when you go to bed at night, you feel, I’ve done something. I’ve done something useful.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes it’s hard for people who I didn’t realize. There are a lot of people who are still thinking about starting out, contemplating. And that’s one way of through these podcasts, these live interviews, to get the message out there. If you’re thinking, if you’re contemplating, there is absolutely something meaningful in what you’re going to create, like what you’re creating now. Maybe you put it away, you set it aside. It’s a recording on your phone, in your Icloud that has never seen the light of day. There is value in that. And by the way, what I mean is perhaps the camera angle wasn’t perfect, lighting was a little crappy, and you stuttered a little bit. That’s all fine because only you care about that as much as you do. It’s like this pimple on our face, and I feel like, oh, it’s the end of the world. The whole world is going to see and they don’t care. And so I think once we get over the hump of thinking that it needs to be perfect, you are going to help other people. So the way that I kind of coach and kind of help my clients is thinking by not putting these things out there, you are kind of, in a way, indebted to people who are there to learn.

They’re desperate that one video could reach the people of someone you can help today, tomorrow, and so much of your consummue and as well as mine, as much as I try to do on YouTube, is evergreen. And so even if people don’t acknowledge it today, tomorrow, next week, they will come back to you. And they will come back to you from all over the world with all kinds of accents, which is something I absolutely love.

The only thing I would say to people is, don’t give up your day job if you’re creative, right, they often say, oh, I’m going to give this up and I’m going to become a YouTuber, or I’m going to become a journal owner, or whatever other thing they dreamt up. Don’t do that. I think it is critical not to be needy when you’re putting content out. If you’re needy, you’re going to lose a whole lot of interest from a whole lot of people because that scares people. Even if in being needy, you’re actually saying, this is worth something. If you go to them with an ask, you’re going to find that they’re going to run away because you scare them off.

Yeah, the money situation absolutely true for me. I was just talking about this yesterday. I’m pretty conservative in terms of being this immigrant mentality. I admit I have it for years and not until kind of recently. Meaning when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I actually felt more at ease. I was standing on solid ground before that. I felt like, oh, they’re going to take I’m never going to have the green card, or they will take it away and they can do anything. They can pay me half the salary. And I still have to say this is all very, very real. So for me to accumulate the money and by the way, if you’re in the US. Or elsewhere, 401K, I’m telling you, even if I’m putting away $200 a month, it became a nice stop looking. And I didn’t touch that money from age 22 to age 31. When I started Faceroll LLC, that money became significant. I was shocked to see the amount that I was thinking, oh, you know, worst case scenario, I guess I don’t have to find a client for the next year and a half to two years. And that was huge.

So not having that pressure on you, somebody tells you you should have six months worth of saving, well, that is kind of irrelevant. And that number has a lot to do with whether you’re single, you have a family of four children. So we got to be realistic in a way, I think, also Moya’s, I want to kind of hear you say that it’s like once we have some sort of financial backing, which we create financial freedom, then we can really do more with our creative endeavors without having it to be our lifeline.

Yeah, you need to be able to pay the basic bills, and then it’s not that expensive. If you live in a modest way, it’s not that expensive. Then you can be creative. You cannot be creative when you’re hungry or when you’re worried or when you’re constantly looking for the next dollar or you think you’re a failure because you’re not a multi millionaire a year after starting your YouTube channel. That’s the problem.

That is such a problem. My goodness. I think that just how do you feel like Moyes? I feel like there’s so much noise still out there. And I know for a fact that people will in a heartbeat, most people will go to these huge YouTubers with 810 million subscribers, like they’re doing something right. Let me definitely buy their course, join their mastermind. So maybe I will get my they got 10 million maybe I’ll have my 1 million learning subscribers, learning from them. But oftentimes the opposite is true. All these kind of things links, kind of keywords triggering you to click. And then Seth often says, when you see something like that, you know, the alarm goes off. Don’t click on it, because then you’re going to just be fed into this algorithm even more. How do you stop yourself or nurture yourself to choose the information you want to consume? And I guess another way to say, where do you get most of your information, whether it’s on medicine or creativity, to kind of stay level headed.

Yeah, I would say something quite radical, and that is I don’t look for that kind of information. So because I’ve been doing this for a while, I’m constantly meeting really interesting people with interesting ideas, and that’s where I go for the information that I want. So I’ve got tons of people that I work with that I interview, that send me papers or if I’m doing a project, if I’m going to do research, I go to a reputable place to do that research, whether it’s PubMed or whether it’s Google Scholar or somewhere where I know that I can get that information. I would not do clickbait stuff. I would avoid Instagram. Avoid Twitter. Avoid Facebook. I don’t have a Facebook account for that very reason. I don’t want the algorithms to somehow contaminate my thinking.

Yeah, it’s so interesting that we are I literally said the exact same thing yesterday on another podcast that I also kind of in a lazy way, I seek information from my friends. I have friends who are doctors, digital marketers, through all walks of life. So for me, I often either by following them or even just ask them straight up. So that’s maybe a tip for people who are watching now or later, that you can actually talk to your trusted mentors and go to them and still have it’s important to also think independently eventually. But when you do have a question, I often go to them, and I’m so, so grateful. I think about my mentor, Dori Clark in New York. I think about Chris was Sarah Cooper. But so many these are some of the no names, but I interviewed well over, I think, 150 people on my podcast, and I see all of them, regardless of their origin, their age, somebody as young as 17 to teach me a ton. So that is so meaningful. I realize one thing, though, that really I know we’re coming up on the hour here, but I noticed that one thing we talked about last time is that you have kind of an unusual name, and that makes you very memorable.

So could you based in Australia now, could you tell us maybe your upbringing, why you have this accent where you actually grew up?

Yeah, I guess I would think of myself very much as a product of our time. So I have Indian origin. So my grandparents were placed were from a place called Jamnagar, which is in the northern part of India. I’ve been to India to do a talk but I’ve never actually been there any other capacity? They were brought to East Africa by in the British range in order to open up the trade routes for the empire. So my father, my parents and myself were born in a place called Nairobi, which is in Kenya. I spent the first eleven years of my life there. And then because of the rising nationalism in Africa generally it was felt that it would be better for us to get an education overseas. So we moved to Ireland as it happens, the only country that would take migrants at the time who are not, who are migrating other than for as refugees. And so I was raised in Republic of Ireland, which is why I have this interesting accent. And then I did my training there, my medical training there, then I did my postgraduate training in Scotland so there’ll be some Scottishisms come out there.

Then I did a lot of my MD, I did in my PhD, my MD in England and then I’ve lived in Australia since 2005.

Wow, what a journey. How many languages do you speak other than English? Do you remember your well, I understand.

Probably about eight languages enough to I don’t actually speak those languages because I haven’t practiced speaking them. I’ve been speaking Gujarati more recently because one of my favorite restaurants has a Gujarati waiter and I love going in there speaking to him in Gujarati. But all up probably I probably have eight languages somewhere swirling about my brain. So I was taught German at school, then I did French in high school, then I did a smattering of Irish and then I have some people say I speak English sort of and then there are all the Indian languages. I watch a lot of Hindi films so I understand Hindi and then there’s Gujarati and I have smattering of Punjabi and so on. So Heali was the first language I ever spoke.

Wow. Is your first and last name considered? Are they of Indian origin or something? Other than that?

They are interesting because they’re not traditionally Indian names. So I think Moyes is actually an Egyptian name. How I came to have the name Moyes is probably because there’s some Muslim influence in the family and Jima wasn’t my grandfather’s surname, that was his first name. And the tradition there was that you took your father’s first name as your surname. So that’s how we ended up a clan of jiwas and I think there are hundreds of us somewhere in the world.

That’s so funny growing up and since you were eleven you traveled to different places and I think it was quite perhaps a cultural shock. But what was it like in the beginning? Did you get used to eventually? I guess my question really is what you’re kind of such a hodgepodge of cultural to you. I mean, did it confuse you sometimes at one point, or did it delight you most of the time? What was it like to be you?

I think that’s a good question. So I would consider myself and I still consider myself Irish in the fundamental ways, in the sense that my cultural baggage, as it were, is Irish. I have a lot of Irish influence in how I think the people who influenced me in my formative years in my teens and in my 20s were Irish. And I feel very much at home when I’m in among my Irish friends. In other ways, I’m very much Indian because I like Indian food, I enjoy Indian music, I enjoy Indian culture. So there’s the east and the west that’s mixed in there somehow. But of course, at the end of the day, I am now an Australian, and if we go to a football match or a cricket match or to a swimming carnival, I will be shouting for Australia. So there you go.

That’s so cool. I feel like part of what I’m trying to do with my podcast and my YouTube channel, I think having me or giving myself the chance to be speaking, to have a point of view, trying to be a mentor to other people. And while I still feel like I’m always learning a language, I’ve been here for 21 years. So I encourage, no matter your origin or skin color, if you’re watching this, I would love to encourage you to connect with people who will perhaps look or sound nothing like you. And it’s just tremendous amount of joy having different professions. Like, personally, I don’t find it super fun to talk to, say, 100 other digital marketers, because I come from that origin or training. So, yeah, I guess that would be a main message.

But Moises completely resonate with that because it’s part of being creative as well. And I think that’s where the creativity also comes from. It’s when you mix those things, when you realize that there’s something of value that you could learn from somebody who doesn’t look like you, sound like you, think like you, or even work in the same area as you. I think that’s where you get real value in you, bring that value back into your place of work and the work that you do, and it makes it so much more powerful.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the wilder you go, the farther you can go with the people you meet and the skill sets that you perhaps don’t possess. More creativity, more sparks, and more differentiators you’re going to see in your business. You’re going to be more differentiated, for sure. There’s so much cross pollination happening in our line of work, no matter what, and I really admire people especially in the medical profession, to pay attention to different cultural needs and to not look down on them or trying to eliminate them to say, I love it. I have doctors, primary doctors, who greet me in Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, which is very helpful for my mom because who’s, heroing English, very limited. And then to talk about the fact that they’ve traveled to certain places to try to make that connection. So this is so good. Are there any questions that I haven’t asked and then you would like to speak to or to share with us?

I think you asked me about the course that we were developing and you asked me separately before, was it a secret? It’s not a secret at all. It’s very much out there. The course is a course in clinical confidence and it speaks to some extent to what we’ve been talking about for the last hour or so. And that is, I feel very much that we do not prepare doctors who are ready for the real world. We take people who are very, very bright, who’ve been very focused on their academic achievements and other things in order to get into med school. And then we cram their heads with lots and lots of scientific knowhow, which we then go and put into we ask them to regurgitate exams. The course that we’ve developed, the course and clinical confidence is an attempt to deal with that. So what we do is we get them to imagine what it’s going to be like when they have a bad day, a really bad day. They’ve lost a credit card or as you say. They’ve got a pimple on their nose or they’ve got a painful knee or the police are waiting to interview them because the last patient they saw died unexpectedly.

Whatever happens to be and then separately. We have them sitting with a patient who’s got real needs. Who is concerned about some minor thing where they think they’ve got a serious illness. And then we allow them to video themselves, the doctor and the patient, they’re working together. They’re often medical students. They’re acting out their roles without reference to each other, not knowing what the other was going to present to that conversation and present in that conversation. And when we video them, we give them a chance to see what it’s like, how they leak that discomfort. The doctor leaks that discomfort as they are talking to the patient and to learn from that experience. Because at the end of the day, for many of us doctors, things happen which contaminate our relationship with our patients. And this is an attempt to teach that in that safe environment.

And where can people learn more about this? I hope it’s maybe in the description below. It’s one of the links you shared with me.

Perhaps it isn’t yet. So we’re currently putting these into specific, putting the course it’s an online course with 400 scenarios that the. Students working in pairs can work through. We put these two medical schools. Georgetown University is one of the ones that is currently using this. We’re using this at my own university, and we are putting it to several others. We’re also looking for a partner that might have some tangential relationship with medical students, whether that’s a financial organization or an insurance company or whatever, a medical insurance company, litigation insurance company. And we’re hoping that that relationship will then take this into all medical schools in this part of the world in Australia. But ultimately, the goal is kimberly Warner is the other person involved. She’s a film director. The course is directed. The course is actually in honor of her father, who is a cardiologist, who was this wonderful doctor, David Warner. And we are hoping that this will become his legacy into the world.

Oh, my goodness. I didn’t even realize that I interviewed Kimberly two days ago on Friday. I didn’t realize her dad was a cardiologist. I do remember he passed away when she was young. Wow. This is incredible. Actually, since you talked about it briefly, but for people who are watching this right now or later, what are some types of help, perhaps, you know, connections that, you know, we can provide you with or assistance, whatever that may be. If you could give us a sense.

I think if you enjoyed this conversation and you’d like to learn more about the whole philosophy of doctors doing something small in order to improve outcomes in healthcare, then hop onto our YouTube channel, come and visit us the general SelfDesign. If that’s something you enjoy and that’s something that you would find of value, the best that you can do for us is to hop on there, join us, join the conversation, tell your friends about it for no other reason other than that this might make a difference to somebody out there in the world. That’s what they can do for us.

Oh, absolutely. That’s very generous. So thank you so much, Moyes. It’s been such a pleasure. I feel like we covered so much in this onehour conversation and really look forward to learning next steps. And I love checking in with all my guests since seven years ago just to see what people were up to. And maybe we have some of the follow up conversations. Maybe we collaborate on a short video for my YouTube channel, but we’ll take it from there. Thanks again so much for being here with me.

It’s been an absolute joy speaking with you. Ferry. You’re a very generous, kind soul, and it’s been a pleasure spending time with you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. All right, bye, guys. I’m going to take us offline.