Empowering Self-Care Made Easy for Entrepreneurs

Dr. Tamar: 0:00

Are you an entrepreneur feeling exhausted, stressed and like your brain is in a fog? Are you ready to reduce stress, boost energy and productivity and reconnect with your intuition? Then you need to hear this episode. We're talking about overcoming burnout through holistic healing. Get ready to transform your health, happiness and success. The path to recovery starts now. Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics, part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrigenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient-focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Align your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise the script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Before you listen in, I want to thank our listener of the week, the Efferless Life. First of all, I love your hand, bill. The Efferless Life Don't we all need that? Well, the Efferless Life says this show is a must-listen for pharmacists. It's packed with in-depth knowledge on ways to expand your practice that goes beyond merely dispensing medications. Tomorrow is an engaged host with such a refreshing take on what it means to provide true patient-centric care. A heartfelt thank you the Efferless Life for this review. It means the world to us. Your appreciation fuels our commitment to creating quality content for our pharmacist community. And on that happy note, let's shift gears. Remember, your review is not only fuel my motivation, but they also help more healthcare warriors like you discover this treasure trove of knowledge and inspiration. That's right. So when you leave us a five-star review, you just might be our lucky listener of the week. So keep the love coming and get those reviews in. Thank you, hello and welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. I'm Dr Tamar Lawful, doctor of pharmacy and certified nutritional genomics specialist. Today I'm excited to bring a very special guest to you Kavita Sahai, a seasoned entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in delivering impactful business and life hacks for entrepreneurs like you. With a deep understanding of business, investment, coaching and healing, Kavita puts her immense knowledge and expertise to work to help entrepreneurs attain exactly what they aspire to Less without burning out. As a trusted advisor to over 500 startups, her work and agenda extend to creating social impact and touching thousands of lives. Her business, Kavita Sahai, stands as a beacon of hope and inspiration and a testament to her powerful work. Today, Kavita will share her insights on empowering self-care. She believes, and rightly so, that the path to striking work-life balance lies within each one of us. Her wisdom and ancient wellness practices, coupled with her practical experiences, will provide you with not just a perspective shift, but also actionable tools to manage stress, increase productivity while creating a successful business and nurturing your network. So buckle up, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, as we dive into this enriching session on self-care with Kavita Sahai. Kavita, thank you for joining us today on pivoting pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Let's just kick this off by diving into your story. What exciting journey led you to where you are now?

Kavita Sahai: 3:51

Well, thank you so much for having me. My journey is that of I think you could say probably burnout. I thought a long time ago that I wanted to be Richard Gere and Pretty Woman. So when I saw the movie I was like, wow, what is that? What is it that he does? And it turned out it was private equity. And so I structured my career, which for women in that time was pretty unusual to be in that sort of finance roles. So I went into mergers and acquisitions for defense and aerospace, then did private equity for technology, got my masters and then did it in consumer product turnaround. But through that whole period of time I think I had a total of 10 home cook meals and lived on coffee, just basically lived a very stressed, unhealthy general lifestyle until I hit a wall and I just had post-its everywhere. I couldn't remember anything. It was just a real bad case of brain fog, as well as not being able to wake up with any type of energy or vibrancy. So I'm young, but yeah, I wake up feeling exhausted, and so at that moment I really knew that something had to change, especially when I went the medical route and everyone said well, your blood work is fine, you're great and I'm like this is not what great looks like, and so that sort of kicked off my journey into natural healing remedies.

Dr. Tamar: 5:10

Well, thank you for sharing that, and it's so true. It's like some we can manifest, without the lab work being irregular, will not have that energy, and so not everything is picked up in our lab work. So something else is definitely going on. So thank you for sharing your personal experience and where you are now with us, so going through burnout yourself. How do you think the path to recovery differs between someone who's in a standard job role where they clock in and clock out for another company, versus somebody who has branched out as an entrepreneur, like ourselves?

Kavita Sahai: 5:42

So I think the one thing that being an entrepreneur does not that I think it's necessarily less stressful because definitely owning your own business can have its share of stress, just like a nine to five job and sometimes even more but it's the ability to structure and again, even if you're in a nine to five job but have an understanding boss, the real difference is now I could pay attention to cycles. Sometimes holidays are a little bit more stressful. I can scale back, I can scale up and down based on what I need and really paying attention to what feels right in the moment for me and honoring that. But I really don't think it was necessarily whether you work for someone or not. I think I just learned a lot of really unhealthy habits in the hustle culture, really believing that you have to hustle all the time in order to make it, whether that's as an entrepreneur or in the corporate world. And the reality is, if you are well rested and vibrant and alive, you're going to be way more productive and you can probably do in three to four hours what you would have otherwise been doing in 12.

Dr. Tamar: 6:39

Well, that's an interesting point that you bring out, especially with recognizing those cycles. So you know, at certain times of the year it's going to be expected to be more busy than others, so how do you prepare yourself for that? This is what you need to do Scale back. I like that advice right there. So could you share with us a moment perhaps, when your knowledge in aromatherapy, ayurveda, yoga, even nutrition a kind of intersect it with your journey?

Kavita Sahai: 7:04

Yeah, so it was. Honestly, it was a slow journey. So when I realized that traditional medicine wasn't going to help solve this problem, I started to think back to my roots, and so I'm Indian and my parents and grandparents had always practiced the lifestyle of Ayurveda. And so I started with small things like pausing in the moment and not grabbing my phone, which always had 100 messages, but just touching the ground and being grateful, and just almost that one moment of pause, I started to feel a little bit better. So it's the rule of 2%, where you make small 2% changes and all of a sudden you're so much better, and so I started to implement more and more things that I remembered, like tongue scraping and dry brushing, and I would just try to do one thing a day for myself that I remembered. And then it led me to think well, I really want to. As I started to feel much better and start, I was like, well, maybe I should also study it, and that's when I went to go get certified in Ayurveda. At the same time, when I was struggling with all these health issues, I met somebody who introduced me to a botanist in my town and she had an apothecary, and when I gave her all of my symptoms. She created some blends for me, and my son at the same time, by the way, was in and out of the hospital for reactive airway. So she made something for him as well. And I want to say, within three months I was completely back to normal and within six months he was off prescription meds. So I was sold, and that's kind of when I made this shift and it was like, well, this is amazing. Whatever this crazy oil is, I must know everything about it and bring it to the world, which is exactly what I went on to do. But it wasn't enough. It's like, once you know that there's this whole other wellness world out there, you want to keep learning, and that's why I started to learn about nutrition and yoga and how do they all fit together? And, honestly, the common theme is that the biggest issue people have is stress and it's the root of most disease and most emotional physical problems that we see. And so, if we can find that root cause and every one of these different modalities come at it a little bit differently, but the point is, how do we reduce stress within the day? And again, if you look at more cyclically, which are even that looks like different seasons, or even you can look at different moon cycles or even, as a female, your own particular cycle. How do you really structure your day and your life to better serve it so that you have a full cup?

Dr. Tamar: 9:25

Yeah, I like that. I love that. So most of our listeners are not very familiar with our VEDA, so would you be able to talk a little bit more about that for us?

Kavita Sahai: 9:33

Yeah, absolutely so. Are you VEDA as a sister science to yoga? And it's essentially a way to live? It's the science of natural remedies, of natural ways to you know, even for beauty, has different scriptures around all of it and it's from the same text in which you get yoga, and it's the Vedic texts essentially where a lot of this knowledge came from, which is why they say it's a sister science to yoga. But it's small ways that they say that everyone has different types or different doshas and so, based on your doshas, you are going to take care of yourself differently than someone else, and I think that in today's world with social that's become so very popular, I've also gotten really into human design for the same reason, which it has the same thing it actually integrates the chakra system from Ayurveda as well, as it takes stuff from the Kabbalah and astrology, and it says, okay, well, we have all different energy centers and, based on your energy center, there's a different way that you should take care of yourself. And I think that's so important, because if we're always trying what we see somebody else trying and it doesn't work, it can be really frustrating. But if we can just take a minute to go inwards and say okay, what really works for me, my energy type or my doshas, then we can better address it.

Dr. Tamar: 10:43

Yeah that is always reminds me of what I do nutrigenomics, because it's so personalized down to the DNA. What works for one person is not necessarily going to work for others because of how we're genetically made. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. With Ayurveda, depending on the season as well, it can impact what you should be eating. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes, that's amazing. So, from your experiences and your passion, they span both from wellness and entrepreneurship. So how do you balance these two wellness and entrepreneurship to prevent the burnout that you experienced before?

Kavita Sahai: 11:18

Well, for me I've combined it to my entrepreneurial journey is to have wellness products. So I have to practice what I preach. A lot of it is I can't tell if I want to be working all the time when we're talking about wellness, and it's really good to ground yourself and make sure you are practicing what you preach, but again, it's really paying attention. So I think one of the things that we've gotten away from is our general intuition, like people wear a watch, to be like did I sleep well? Like don't you know when you wake up, did you get a good night's sleep or not. So, getting back to really trusting our intuition of am I tired today? Do I need to? You know? And there's a difference, I know, between being like am I tired or lazy, but it's really starting to get in tune with what your needs are. And so I've gotten really good at really respecting that, knowing that I never want to be back at that same place of feeling just exhausted and like I couldn't remember anything, like my brain didn't work. It was the absolute worst feeling. So I think knowing I didn't want to be there again makes me very intentional about how I structure it, and it's not like I spend hours on self care right, I'm talking about 10 minutes, 20 minutes a day, but being very intentional about it and taking small breaks to help remind myself to stay in sort of a calm state.

Dr. Tamar: 12:27

Right. So taking those breaks and being intentional that's what I'm hearing. Right, we have to be intentional with what we're doing day to day and how we are taking care of our health. Now, when it comes to the scientific evidence that backs the wisdom that you're sharing with us here, do you have some examples of how that scientific evidence actually supports it in the contents of the products that you've created?

Kavita Sahai: 12:52

Yeah, absolutely so. Again, being a numbers person, I was really interested in the science behind it all, like why does this work? Why is it? And with aromatherapy it's really these powerful molecules. So one drop of essential oil is really one whole pound of plant material, so it's really really very, very concentrated. But when you inhale them, the molecules, they travel into the olfactory nerves and especially impact your emotional center of the brain and it helps to immediately relax it. And if you do it for example, if you use aromatherapy and you meditate, but then you just use aromatherapy that same one throughout the day it's going to bring you back immediately into that calm state. And there's a ton of scientific evidence around it. But it goes direct into your bloodstream, it goes direct into your olfactory senses, which no other thing will do. So I think part of the problem that I had when I initially had that burnout is I also, from all the coffee and eating out, had a leaky gut, so none of the supplements were working for me because, again, I had a leaky gut, so I couldn't absorb anything. But the essential oils go directly into your bloodstream and so it bypasses that leaky gut to help you get relief and start the healing process and so again, it's just one of those really interesting scientific things that I actually never realized before studying Like why does this work and this didn't work? And then, once I was able to heal my gut, then of course, then the supplements and everything else was a great support.

Dr. Tamar: 14:15

So the aromatherapy is a good transition modality until we heal that gut and then at the point we can start absorbing those nutrients.

Kavita Sahai: 14:26

Exactly, and then ongoing to just help with stress, because, again it all comes down to, we're never going to heal or stay away from all of it if we don't control our stress.

Dr. Tamar: 14:35

Yeah, so true, and the fact of the matter is, stress is part of life. How we handle it is different from person to person.

Kavita Sahai: 14:42

It's how we react. It's like can we, you know? For me it's always rolling it on, taking a deep breath and then responding Right. Is there a way? Some people count to five? Is there some way to stop us from immediately getting into fight mode?

Dr. Tamar: 14:56

Right, going from zero to 100. We don't want to do that Exactly. So, okay, vida, you have a passion right for helping female entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs. Now what self-care advice, especially tailored to the unique challenges that female entrepreneurs are faced, can you provide for us today?

Kavita Sahai: 15:14

So I always advocate that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of your business or your family, and I think a lot of times, female entrepreneurs want to do everything and we want to do it all perfect, and there's this comparison to Pinterest life that I always tell them to shy away from, like you can have it all, but just not at the same time. So pick your season or your year and then focus on that particular thing that you want to, and then, regardless of what season it is, I think taking five minutes for yourself in the morning to really be ground and become intentional about either your day or gratitudes, whatever your practice might be that five minutes and then have some little reminders. So, whether that's using a rheumat therapy throughout the day or little, even reminders on your iPhone just again to put you back in that relaxed state, yeah, I like that.

Dr. Tamar: 16:04

Just the beginning of the day, five minutes, and that's another way of setting your intention and it's amazing what a difference that makes. Doing it first thing in the day, how it, how the rest of your day, just unfolds, naturally, naturally. Thank you for that advice. So what wellness technique do you like to use on a day to day to help you navigate your business?

Kavita Sahai: 16:29

From a wellness standpoint. I'm really big in meditation and the use of aromatherapy with it, along with saying affirmation, so it's something I've actually incorporated even into our packaging. There's affirmations that go with it, because there's just a lot of connection between smell and the emotional center of your brain. So if you smell it and you say it, you're going to more likely believe it and therefore get into the right energy and vibrational quality to attract it. So that's always been a big part of my daily routine is meditation with aromatherapy and then using it kind of throughout the day. I find it really helps me stay calm and focused and I will say that, when it comes to the oil's, quality is really important. So it's really important to check that people are using first press because, like as I mentioned, it takes a pound of material to make one drop. So a lot of times what happens is people are pressing that same thing a couple of times. So if you think about it like a tea bag, the first time you steep the tea bag it's very potent, but the second, third, fourth time it's going to be a little bit less each time, and so a lot of times when you see all these different prices you're like, wow, why does lavender cost anywhere from $2 to $200? Well, a lot of times it's the quality. Was it sustainably harvested? Did they press it once or 10 times? Was it organic? So I just think a lot of that's really important. What we put on our body and our skin, which is our largest organ, is incredibly, incredibly important. So I would just tell people to really make sure that they see what it is and what quality they're buying.

Dr. Tamar: 17:55

Thank you. Now you have a variety of products, especially with the skincare line. So you have the essential oils, but then the other skincare products. Are they infused with those oils as well?

Kavita Sahai: 18:06

Yeah, so we have the wellness oils, which is kind of the set that helped me and sort of has just been the traditional products in the company. And then last year we expanded into face oils because I really felt like there was this need again for one step skincare, because I just don't have time for the two steps.

Dr. Tamar: 18:21

We talked about that before Although like, get real, we don't have time for 12 steps of skincare.

Kavita Sahai: 18:27

Yeah, I was just like I, just I can't. Yeah, I'm going to meditate instead. Exactly, and she's mental peace and you know it's just not sustainable. Anyway, I feel like everyone ends up with these like tiny bottles of a little, a little, a bunch of stuff. So I wanted to create the one thing, and I've lived all over different countries and I felt like a lot of the women that I felt had beautiful skin. They really just used oil. They used oil to cleanse, they used oil to moisturize. But what's different is the oils in each country are different for the people there and some other. Nature is kind of really amazing where the botanicals that are best for you generally come from the land of your ancestors. So we kind of put that into the AI so that it's not just what's your skin type, what's your skin goals, but also where are you from originally, because a lot of times, if we can match the botanicals there, it's going to be a little bit more effective.

Dr. Tamar: 19:14

And is that your customized oil? That is. I love it. I think that was. That's a great idea, Kavita. I'm excited for that, and I also love that you have these roll-ons where we don't necessarily have to have this big blown-on routine, right, but you have, like the breathe roll-on, the de-stress roll-on, detox roll-on. So you're going through our day de-stress roll on, just put that on and inhale, and I just love that. On the go aromatherapy.

Kavita Sahai: 19:41

Yeah, I really wanted to make it for the working entrepreneur who has time to mix the oils to the right amount and blend them properly and make sure they're high quality. And I was like what, if it was just super easy and fun to look at, you could just throw it in your purse. And it just made it that much easy, like a natural medicine cabinet.

Dr. Tamar: 19:57

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for creating those. Now let's go back to the other practice. You mentioned yoga, the Araveda. So how do you believe that these practices could uniquely be beneficial for entrepreneurs?

Kavita Sahai: 20:11

the practice itself. So, again, with practice is finding different ways. So I think a lot of times people try meditation or yoga and they're like it's not for me, but it might have just been that class was not for you, that teacher was not for you. And so I really encourage people to keep looking, because yoga is for everyone, meditation is for everyone, but it might not just be in the traditional form. Like meditation can be walking in nature. Yoga can just be mindful, breathing with movement. It doesn't have to be a handstand with your legs all twisted up, and so I really encourage people to experiment with the different modalities, because they've been working for people for thousands and thousands of years, like they've really stood the test of time If they weren't effective they would have never made it quite so far and look for different studios and teachers. And really, when you think about it as a practice, it really is just that you have to just practice a little bit each day and experiment to see what works best for you and your body.

Dr. Tamar: 21:05

Yeah, thank you for that. When I first learned about yoga, I didn't realize that there were different types. I didn't Like the type that I thought there was, like you mentioned, where I'm twisting my body in all these different positions and I just couldn't do it so and I have a lot of knee injuries, so it was very difficult. So that dissuaded me like, oh, I'm not going back, it's not comfortable to go to that yoga class, but now I know that there's different types. So you shop around guys and find the one that's for you, find the instructor that you feel that you connect with. That way you will continue going, because it is indeed very beneficial for us.

Kavita Sahai: 21:40

Yeah, now I find that when people find the right you know the right class where it brings so much happiness, everyone's like, oh, I'm not happy, I should just do more yoga, right.

Dr. Tamar: 21:49

It's better than eating chocolate cake. It's healthier.

Kavita Sahai: 21:51

Right right, it's way better.

Dr. Tamar: 21:53

Or drinking a bottle of wine. Just go to some yoga.

Kavita Sahai: 21:56

It's like a unique thing where it's like your mind, body and soul all at the same time. It's like a super efficient. We're talking about the 12 steps and one step for skincare. It's like this is a perfect movement three in one. That's it.

Dr. Tamar: 22:07

It's all you need. All you need Now a little bit more to the business side. I'll switch gears a little bit. This will be one of my final questions. For you, You've successfully raised funds and built partnerships across many industries. So, Kavita, could you provide maybe a novel or unconventional strategy you used in doing this to that could help entrepreneurs who are looking for partnerships and finances?

Kavita Sahai: 22:32

Yeah. So I just find that it's a numbers game, honestly, and there's no secret sauce to it. You have to show up in the best possible way. It's a marketing exercise. So if you're raising money or looking for a partnership, you're marketing yourself to these people and to these investors. But you also have to reach out very far and wide and listen to the feedback you're getting. So when I was looking to raise capital, probably every day was reaching out to like 20 people and sometimes they weren't direct people, sometimes it was banks asking for investors, trying to just connect and network. And I find that with partnerships and with raising money and honestly, with business in general, building your network, nurturing your network, that really is the number one secret to success. Just have conversations with as many people as you can, help them whenever you can, and you just never know who's gonna connect you. Like, the woman that actually pivoted me into aromatherapy and finding this botanist was someone who was selling me insurance. Most people would have ignored her, but I just was like I recognize that she had hustle. She called me three times, she sent me articles. She thought I would be interested. I was like you know what? I don't need insurance, but I respect your hustle. I met with her. She introduced me to this botanist who then I ended up being CEO of her company. So huge opportunity for me and all because I really just wanted to help her out is what I thought. So you just never know where it's gonna go and for me it's always been through my network. It's through nurturing my network, building my network, not always going to meetings just because I think it's gonna help me, but just going to actually authentically connect with another person and maybe I can help them.

Dr. Tamar: 24:02

Wow, that's amazing. And that nurturing and form that connection with people. It crosses over into the same thing with getting the word out there about your product to potential clients and customers. You have to nurture them as well. So I think that's a key word in business. As entrepreneurs, we definitely have to nurture relationships consistently. It's another word too, it doesn't stop, it's not just the one. And done Well, kavina, thank you so much for sharing your unique experiences and insight with us in the fields of wellness and entrepreneurship, educating us a little bit about our data and the benefits of yoga. It was a pleasure having you.

Kavita Sahai: 24:39

Thank you so much for it. It was so great to speak with you.

Dr. Tamar: 24:43

That's all I have for you today. Friends, If any part of this conversation about self-care interested or resonated with you, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Your five-star review and comments can guide others on a similar journey. Subscribe, rate and download this episode to ensure you're always in the loop. Coming up next week on the show, we'll unravel the mystery of fatigue and brain fog, Symptoms all too familiar to many pharmacists and health care professionals. Right, We'll dive into how functional medicine and genomics can help you reclaim vitality and clarity so you can continue changing lives without compromising your own wellness. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember in your journey as a health care professional, always raise the scripts on health, because together we can bring health care to higher levels.