How to Channel Your Motivation for a Successful Career Part 1

Punit Dhillon

Punit Dhillon is the CEO, President, and Chair of Skye Bioscience Inc. The company specializes in the pharmaceutical development of cannabinoid derivatives to help treat various diseases including glaucoma. Punit’s experience as an executive in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and health industries has allowed him to build a remarkable understanding of key leadership, management, and development skills. He is the author of Catapult: How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience, an exploration of the important elements of entrepreneurship.

Punit received his B.A. from Simon Fraser University and attended the Executive Program at Singularity University.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Punit Dhillon’s insights on harnessing motivation for entrepreneurs
How to incorporate the principles of ikigai in your personal and professional life
The real importance of building good relationships in life
Punit shares his thoughts on productivity as a measurement of output
Extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation in business
Why the recovery process is necessary

In this episode…

It’s not uncommon to experience the driving force behind all your hard work dissipating in the face of adversity. That’s when you need motivation the most. So how do you stay disciplined when your spirit is lacking?

As humans, it’s easy to fall victim to emotions that demoralize us — even at the professional level. Although businesses are not a place run by emotions, it is a place that is capable of igniting a strong passion for your professional journey. Finding and harnessing that motivation is often a process that allows entrepreneurs to appreciate the significance of discipline.

In a unique two-part episode of The Cyber Business Podcast, Matthew Connor sits down with Punit Dhillon, CEO, President, and Chair of Skye Bioscience Inc., to discuss the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in business, how to apply the Japanese practice of ikigai to your routine, and the effects that quality relationships have on your life. Punit shares why he recognizes productivity as a measurement rather than a metric and the necessary process of recovery.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript:

Matthew: Matthew Connor here, host of the Cyber Business podcast, where we feature successful business leaders, top law firms, green energy companies and more. Today we are joined by Sky Bioscience CEO Arthur of Catapult. Lifelong athlete, Ironman competitor and philanthropist Punit Dhillon. Bennett, welcome to the show.

Punit: Hey, thank you so much for having me on. On your podcast, Matt.

Matthew: Thanks for coming on. Before we get too far into it, a quick word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx.com. CyberLynx is a complete technology solution provider that ensures your business not only has the most reliable and professional I.T service, but also has the right cybersecurity solutions to ensure your business stays productive and safe.

Matthew: And now back to our show. Punit again. Thanks for coming on.

Punit: Yeah, so I think I don't know where where you want to start. I think we were in the previous podcast we were talking about a lot of different topics.

Matthew: Absolutely.

Punit: But I appreciate, you know, it looks like you're interested in kind of the overall journey of an entrepreneur and and the stuff that keeps me having some huge motivation in life to keep getting out of bed early in the morning.

Matthew: Well, and I'm glad you mention that because so I got your book Catapult. I actually found it fantastic. You know, I'm I personally really like, you know, self-help books. I love business books. And and I love how you've kind of kind of brought it all in together. And I think you hit a lot of topics that a lot of you know, and you brought a lot of things together.

Matthew: I mean, seriously, it's it's just packed. So, you know, you mentioned things like purpose and motivation. So I'm going to ask you, you hit on it a lot in in your book. So if you could you tell us tell us your your take on on how that works with with that kind of internal purpose and motivation to keep getting out of bed?

Punit: Yeah, it's a book. The genesis of the book was a time point in life where we're really trying to I was trying to synthesize what I'd learned from my career in life sciences and also the takeaways that have had from the athletic, the enjoyment I've had with endurance sports, endurance sports. We spent a lot of time doing some solo reflection because long runs or cycling or swimming.

Punit: I was a I've done a lot of different triathlon events, so there was certainly this correlation between the hard work that goes into training for events and preparing for that as well. As, you know, naturally, I think there's a lot of people that have used that that thesis of that hard work, that is the framework for that that type of effort, like brick by brick when you're training for something is similar to the entrepreneurial world or building a new business.

Punit: So the the idea was to pull that learnings and put some structure around it. I certainly got inspiration from Ray Dalio, this book and he really it's called the his book was called Principles. And I was like, Well, yeah, that's a good way to look at the world. Like, what? What are my principles that if I was to tell the young 20, a 20 year old version of myself, what have I learned?

Punit: This was a moment in time in terms of really documenting that. And in fact, it wasn't meant to turn into a book. It just then translates into because I got really obsessed with the process of it putting structure around it. Then I was speaking to a few people and friends and and my wife did it then inspired me to take it even further and part of it was the work that I do on the philanthropic side with the organization and seeing that, okay, well there is an audience for this kind of material because a lot of people would maybe be interested in hearing from someone that that's been, you know, trying to do the kind of the natural hustle that comes with the entrepreneurship world and how how they might be looking at those decisions earlier on in their life. So that was a key part of the framework and achieving kind of the ideal principles that work with this correlation between resilience that you learn from the athletic world. I took it up a notch where I tried to build the importance of purpose. Like you, you emphasize the that's been a big part of what I am. I think have I have had a better appreciation for the last decade of my my career is that you're a certain amount of joy that comes out of work around the joy of fulfillment, around the work that you're doing, and having alignment of what that purpose is.

Punit: So it seems to be very baked in with life sciences because you're working on drugs that are addressing an unmet medical need. So there is certainly this altruistic side that comes with the business of life sciences. But a lot of people, you know, don't have that same opportunity. You know, you could be working in another another industry where it's not as apparent.

And certainly even in life sciences, there are challenges that come up in life sciences where you're sitting there pulling your hair out and trying to figure out, you know, how are we going to address that obstacle. So that journey of having a purpose driven is really leveraging some of those challenges, obstacles to learn from that resilience to move, move that needle further.

Punit: And that's that was a big part of implementing some sort of a work plan for an entrepreneur or in the book, well, we're going to categorically call on the corporate athlete to to define that for themselves. So I tried to define that into a few pages of what took me, I think, years to better appreciate. And I'm still still working on appreciating that.

Matthew: That's great. Well, I mean, that kind of brings me to my next question about Ikigai. So I thought that was a great, you know, portion of the book. I mean, honestly, there were probably 100 portions of the book. I mean, we could spend hours just diving in, but I'm going to try to limit. Can you let me just ask you, what is ikigai?

Punit: Yeah. So, you know, thanks for touching on on each guy. It is certainly a a big part of alignment with purpose. So this is a Japanese term and it's it's a good example of of of that. You know I guess of a reason for being in terms of the way that it's I think the direct correlation or the direct definition is and there was a like an interesting case study of like these these people that are from Okinawa that had a longer life span and there's I think there's a term for this where it's called the green zones around the world.

Punit: And and there's a certain lifestyle that know fosters a much stronger correlation with people living longer and having, you know, a stronger definition of purpose. If a guy is this whole satisfaction and homeostasis, I would call it with satisfaction of having like a very common confidence in what you're doing, the comfort around your profession. You are in line with your passion and your mission.

Punit: And it's it's a lot of like what you call concentric circles that create that homeostasis. So it's a it's seems like a very complex formula when, you know, you look at it on on the book, I have simplified it in the book to be broadly defined as purpose. And the simplest way to think about purpose is what do you identify with to really motivate yourself to feel fulfillment and motivate yourself to get out of bed.

Punit: And I and I have an outline the structure in the in the book to do a kind of a workflow of doing that. There's a set of questions that a person can ask themselves to help put kind of the raw data points and then work through the data points to then help yourself identify with a purpose statement. And then once you have a purpose statement, then use that in a constructive way to outline a plan.

Punit: It sounds very like categorically, okay, you're turning something that should be just naturally bringing you joy into a chart. But I think that there is a component of deliberateness that is required and Ikigai, I think is a good example of the deliberateness around that. Here is a culture in Japan that is living long and a happy life, and they have been very purposeful in terms of that joy that they get with family and friends and community and that structure that they've established in terms of what they love and their profession and the happiness and passion and other things that they're that they're enjoying, that brings the most out of that.

Matthew: Yeah, Well, I think it's really fascinating because, you know, you hear all these studies where they'll say, like, you know, they find that that part of longevity, especially, you know, as we get into those those older years, is is that the quality of the relationships you've had kind of throughout your life and at the later stages. So if you're if you've been a bit of a hermit, the odds of you living to be, you know, 80, 90, 100, not very good now.

Matthew: But if you've got a good if you've had a great, you know, relationship with your family, you're tied into the community. These people live these, you know, kind of fuller lives, this kind of, you know, kind of embodying ikigai, which it was foreign to me until I, you know, heard about it in your book. And then as I started looking into it seems that it's a pretty it's a pretty great concept that kind of breaks that down, you know, to kind of include all of that.

Matthew: It's not just relationships, but it's can you you do a great job breaking it down in the book, piecing together all of these different aspects of your life and if you will, kind of I know it's like you made that joke about the Gantt chart, but it's you you kind of do have to engineer your life to be you know, you can't and you know, you can't expect your car to work if somebody didn't engineer it.

Matthew: Right. You know, So it's things have to be engineered.

Punit: Yeah. Because it you know, that's that that's a challenge I feel like in today's society when like I also put an example of Maslow's hierarchy in the book, right, in Maslow's hierarchy is a great baseline food, shelter, clothing or, you know, what are the what are the key needs. So in today's society, most people that are working, they, you know, they can fulfill those those components.

Punit: So it becomes very clear very soon that, okay, you met your basic needs. So where do we go from here? And there is another author, David Brooks, that had talked about this in terms of the I think it's called The Second Mountain, where, you know, a lot of your first part of your life, you're focused on focusing your energy to check off the boxes.

Punit: You're getting yourself through school, you're establishing yourself in your career. You're maybe doing post-secondary or other graduate studies and then perhaps family and then buying a home, maybe having kids, like getting a car. Like there's like this automatic automated checklist. I can certainly agree that in today's society there's a little bit more fluid fluid ness around that, certainly.

Punit: But when I when I was growing up, I think I was pretty much ingrained in terms of that's that's what you do. Yeah. And that's a little bit different than how we've been very open with I have kids and you know, we've been like seeing how they independently kind of think about their own stages in life. But once you've checked off those so-called boxes and you have to kind of try to define for yourself, well, what's what's next?

Punit: And that's where purpose and wanting to have another reason or or like that structure we're talking about or deliberateness around the next stage of growth for yourself has to be there. And it's almost requiring the same amount of pressure. It's not like you take your foot off the gas pedal, you put your foot on the gas pedal in different ways that are challenging you to try something.

Punit: It may not be that you have to worry about going to classes anymore or school, but you might want to still have personal growth in different ways. Maybe you will enroll in a in a class to further education or help yourself an ancillary education to help you with your career. These these are all important characteristics of the next, quote, needs of life.

Punit: So that Maslow's hierarchy is is a good reminder that we are pretty self fulfilled and we have to then adapt to pushing ourselves into the comfort zone. And that's why this this concept of the high, it's the name and the nomenclature and some of the things we use in the book is.

Matthew: Is pretty cool. You use the the corporate athlete high performance Trapezium. Yeah,

yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Punit: And I'm not in marketing, but that was certainly.

Matthew: I liked it.

Punit: The best way you can characterize this and say something.

Matthew: And I like it because it really did kind of modernize, you know, because I think we all

kind of grew up with with that the idea of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I think everybody kind of relates to that. But I think it was, you know, maybe for an earlier time and now it's a little oversimplified. I think he did a great job bringing in the, you know, this this new idea with this trapezium that you put in the book, you know, to to kind of modernize it.

Matthew: And how does this apply to to us once you've you've established those basic needs? Well, what's the higher stuff? How do you do that? And I think that's why we have so many kids now with, you know, you know, anxiety problems and people have, you know, the level of comfort you get just, you know, just being let's say let's assume that most people are listening and watching this are you know, are are in the United States.

Matthew: I mean, the level of comfort that they have, even the, you know, most of the very

poor people in the country, they live a very it's 1% compared to the rest of the world. You know, the people who are poor in other countries, it's it's tough. So you're in such a higher level even when you're on a low level in this country, that I think that, you know, there's not enough education of what you're trying to get across in the book on on how you how you can proceed in life and the things you've got to be be kind of working on and and designing for yourself.

Matthew: So I really love that about the book that you really kind of give people this practical step by step kind of guide to kind of move them in the right direction and be like, Oh, okay, let me answer these questions and go, Yeah.

Punit: Yeah. And the tools available. Like that's why the athletic side was an important there was an important tool available for people to, to, to feel the stress, to put themselves into this stress place. Maybe it's physical capacity, So you're increasing your physical capacity, which by nature of just doing that, you're applying expansion of your mental capacity. You might need to bring in more emotional awareness in order to take those steps.

Punit: And those are to mean those are immediate tools where you're you're you're recognizing,

let's call it growth that then is an example of how that can be translated in in other aspects of your life that are maybe non-athletic. So there's the learning of the resilience that comes with the direct correlation with athletics to real world day to day business or other examples.

Punit: Now, I'll say that since I published the book, I've also experienced the, the, the inverse of that, where I have had a better appreciation for the challenges that come across at work and new obstacles. I've been busy working on restructuring the company over the last few years and we finally hit just hit our mark on and we're we're moving along on drug development at a pace that we're very confident and confident about and comfortable with.

Punit: Now, compared to where we were maybe or a year ago where we had came across

certain delays and certain obstacles that were completely outside of our control, it just knocks the wind out of you and then learning from that and then I think applying the awareness of resilience that you learn from that example. So it was a very clear correlation of athletic resilience translating into the so-called boardroom or corporate world.

Punit: The inverse is also true about the corporate resilience translating into other aspects of your life and even maybe back into athletics. You know, So it's it's it is a very cyclical or correlated components of the corporate athlete high performance types. Image one structure that is is a no is is available as a as a framework. But I think everyone deserves to take the time to develop the framework that's important for them.

Punit: And you hit on a very important point about the comfort of an individual being, you know, comfortable in their own skin about that. So there's this this component of authenticity and accountability that individuals have in their own personal development A lot of times and in the corporate world, I think we are trying to impress others or working towards recognition and other things that are for someone else's benefit and for getting the individual like an introspective look at why that's important for your own personal growth.

Punit: And that that is just, I think, societal that we have to address separately. But one of the important things I have tried to emphasize in the book is coming back to the accountability you have within yourself. Again, going back to purpose. It it only helps to build the confidence and it is then can be leveraged in the in the workplace.

Punit: I was just finishing up an article that I was writing recently on this concept of busy work, like people are obsessed with being busy in this society and I think it has a huge like kind of negative correlate with, you know, no, sorry, the just people spending too much time trying to rationalize busyness and like actually, you know, just the modern society is like I think put it on put on us like technology or with technology and just the way capitalism is that the need for productivity.

Punit: And there's been this like over glorification about somebody trying to impress upon, oh, you know, I'm spending, I'm spending, I'm busy with this, but I feel like there's different types of busyness. There is like the low task type of busyness and then there's a deep, deep productivity side and and and unfortunately, people's obsession with being busy has had a negative correlation, I think.

Punit: And it ends up unfortunately, putting, you know, other consequences on terms of work life balance or relationships or overall well-being. And it in fact, it actually works innovation. It thwarts creativity and productivity. So people like I, I believe that if somebody is just authentic about what they need to achieve for themselves with regards to their work performance, their own measurement of performance that's aligned with the work environment that they're in, that's aligned with their manager, that is going to be way, way more beneficial for all parties because there's no like confusion or there's no facade around that.

Matthew: I think I think that hits on a few points that you kind of hit on in the book. And I

subsequently saw a study they did. You know, it's this intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation right now. I did this study with these these little kids, you know, five year olds who like to draw. And they gave them this external motivator like, I don't know, a cookie or whatever it was.

Matthew: And they found that the kids, even though they all like to draw once they got it, once the motivation was coming from the outside, the performance and everything nosedived, which for most business people we think the opposite. Let me just throw some more cash at it. Let me motivate you with with a pay raise, I'm a bonus. You know, a new set of steak knives, right?

Matthew: A new car or whatever it is. Right. And we think that's the key, but it's really not. It turns out that that's that's counterproductive. And and so what you talk about in the book on getting to the real purpose of it and what you were just talking about with with getting people to assess their own what what do what what should I be focused on?

Matthew: What should my goals be for that, for myself and for the company? You don't hear that every day. And another thing that I think was really great that you threw in the book, you know, going back to that whole we've got this, I think a society that is quick to conflate movement and, you know, and action with with progress because they're completely different.

Matthew: It's been around in your chair all day. You didn't get you didn't get anything done. You just you got busy. Right? And that's happening all day. And our iPhones help, but not the ding an iPhone. But technology really helps us, you know, be very active, but not necessarily going in a very, you know, in concrete direction.

Punit: Yeah. Like I am certainly a proponent of this idea of hard work pays off. But hard work in in a productive sense is it is a it's not a it's a measurement of output, not just like just spinning your wheels. Right. That's the that's what it needs to be clear clarified And that output is its own measurement. Yeah.

Punit: The other thing about technology is that I think that there is great opportunity now with way that the way that new productivity tools are and are in a great place to be adopted to help improve efficiency. So you're kind of eliminating some of the simple tasks that could have been so-called busy work and big time stuck. That takes you away from being in your more purpose self-fulfillment realm and so, so hard work is an important part of it.

Punit: I think that the book also keeps emphasizing this aspect of resilience or this aspect of adversity to help fuel the next set of expectations. So I do I do believe in that because I think that that's the way that people can. You know, expand and contract necessarily that that's necessary. You have to go through that stress test in order to to really take it up a notch or go to the next bar.

Punit: That's the way that growth really happens. And and just like in athletics, you have to endure a bit of pain or hard work to to grow. It's the same thing that has to be applied in the in the corporate world. And that's the only way as a society. We're also going to see that next evolution. So technology is in a great place where you can adopt some great tools Now to help you with productivity.

Punit: You have to be willing to take that leap to get out of your comfort zone and hopefully it frees up a bit of space and mental capacity to then to take a step back. I don't have to be I have you know, I don't have to be showing the world how busy I am. It's more about how I feel comfortable in my own skin to be able to perform and produce the output to get to the goals that I want to see in growth.

Punit: And that's then aligned with, uh, you know, the corporate environment, The collegial environment. And if you're a student in the it's certainly there in the way that the, the most infrastructure is and in, in academics. So yeah, and I think that's the way that we figure to see the progress on the technology, on on development, on these other challenges that the world has.

Punit: You know, I put that framework at the last chapter. There's like five themes that I think of that we can push the gas pedal on. But you have to be willing to be curious to to actually make a difference in those areas.

Matthew: Yeah. And I think that's really tough. I think that, you know, you hit on a couple of things. One, I think that people are so as a society, we hear this kind of rising grind kind of motivate in the, you know, wake up early, don't get more than, you know, I work on 4 hours of sleep. The how you do.

Matthew: Okay. Yes, some people do. There's some you know, weird You know, sliver, you know, outliers. Who? Yeah. You know, it's funny, when I was in the Army, I one of I worked for a guy who got into a he got into an accident in the army, had a head injury, and after afterwards, he only needed like an hour, hour and a half of sleep a night.

Matthew: It was a total freak anomaly. Right. And from this point on, he was just nobody could keep up with him. I mean, you just. How can you can. You just can't, right? So, yeah, you get people like that. But when you get all these motivators, you know, like people on Instagram and everything saying you only need I only sleep 4 hours a night, you know, giving this impression that they're, they're, you know, some sort of super hero.

Matthew: And and so it intimidates people. And I think a lot of people internalize that and be like, well, I can't you know, they try it for a little bit. They burn out and then they think something's wrong with them. And you talk about it really clearly in the book about and, you know, from an athletic perspective, if you go to the gym and work out 2012 hours a day from couch to 12 hours a day, first of all, and you keep working the same thing every day, you're not going to improve.

Matthew: You're going to destroy your muscles. It's ridiculous. You got it. You you really emphasize the recovery nicely in the book. So then I think people don't get that. So can you tell us, you know, kind of, you know, pulling this all together in with the recovery aspect, how does that apply? Because you do a great job in the book.

Matthew: How does recovery as an athlete, how does that apply to recovery? You know, as a as a human, as a corporate athlete, how does that work?

Punit: Yeah, that's a good point. So like I in the book to emphasize this concept of, I think adaptation generally, so your body, your body in athletics has a way to have a, a natural ability to cope with stress. So you so in athletics you're kind of mobilizing the resources, your different energy systems to get through a certain phase.

Punit: You're pushing yourself into new zones in order to to adapt to to the stresses that are available in those zones. But, you know, physiologically, you you have certain thresholds. You can only deplete so much of your energy reserves before you're top down. You have to take in new consumption in order to do that. So you're building on all that and at the same time, the body, the body does a really good well through good, good, good, good job of adapting to that.

Punit: So this is the general kind of adaptation of phases, and we don't know that in the work environment really well, obviously, because people just end up going work, work, work and then realize that they're going into burnout territory and there's not a natural way for your body to shut off. Yeah, if you don't eat, you're going to obviously feel that.

Punit: But certainly it's you know, it's a different consumptive, different energy system that you're relying on on your day to day work versus if you're going to go run ten miles, you're going to you're going to know exactly when you're in your exhaustion phase, when you're running ten miles versus working for 10 hours straight without drinking any water or eating any food.

Punit: So that's the key part of it, I think is redefining success in the workplace and challenging, you know, these these day to day norms that people have established for themselves with a structure that is aligned with how they're going to be most productive. And what we learn from athletics is a good structure that if you're doing three weeks of building and then it leads to one week of recovery, it's a similar model that we apply in in in the work.

Punit: It's just called different things. You know, in the work environment. And so that's the quarter. Each quarter is your financial review or your each quarter is your performance, your overall departmental reviews or organizational kind of metrics review Every quarter, there might be a board meeting every four weeks, there might be a management meeting. There's so many different other similarities and analogs that we can apply in these different things.

Punit: It's up to the individual to then take that and say, okay, I'm going to be be setting myself up for that success. I think the accounting team or the finance team does it best. They in a public company, they then have to meet critical deadlines that are set by the SCC. And when they meet that deadline, they also take a couple of days off because they they work tirelessly to get to that year end or that quarter deadline.

Punit: And then so every group and every organizational structure think has has their own way of redefining that. Yes, there's a certain automatic physiology that happens when you're in training. We have to learn how to build that safety net safety test or safety toggle for your body in the in the work environment.

Matthew: Absolutely. Yes. So you mentioned the with your in terms of the sleep, you know how you go about it. You you know, and you're notorious. You've been waking up since 5 a.m. forever and that's just how how your body set right which is don't but I would.

Punit: Say that that hasn't been that insistent recently either for me I've I've had challenges I don't know if it's because of daylight savings or my alarm alarm still goes off but there is like two days this week that I wasn't able to wake up on that time. But I, I do like that patter, you know, and it's something that you, you can certainly get into a habit on.

Punit: But but there's so many different factors. Like I had a proposal that I had to complete earlier this week up until late at night. I mean, I'm not going to wake up at 5 a.m. that morning on 4 hours of sleep that my body is not going to function. Your age and other things are factors in that. But that structure has certainly been a key thing for me.

Punit: It works for me. It doesn't it doesn't work for my 13 year old, doesn't work for my wife. No, Everyone has their own way to and that's perfectly normal. Like, I think that I've been one of those people that are like that early start thing. And for me it's a good time because nobody else is bothering me. I can get my workout in and I don't want any interruptions.

Punit: Other people like, you know, doing stuff like that later in the day.

Matthew: Well, I like that you normalize the sleep and not just, you know, rise and grind and, you know, you hear the Rockies. The guy I got, you know, he's up at posting at two in the morning and he's like, then he's up at four. Like, really? I mean, like it drugs. Are you taking that you can do this, right?

Matthew: I mean.

Punit: Come on. His workouts on Friday nights, like, really impressed me because I was like because I, I really enjoyed the Friday night for me is my holy night where it's the one night where I like to just unwind, usually go and watch, watch movie with the kids or play games or just something chill, and then whenever I see his posts on working out on Friday night, I'm like, Should I be working at like, you know, like.

Matthew: His workouts.

Punit: Are just so extreme. Yeah.

Matthew: It's nuts.

Punit: Yeah. So I try to get my workout in on Friday mornings, on Friday nights.

Matthew: It is funny because you see, you know, all these superheroes and movies and all these people on Instagram are it's just diet. You guys get to get your diet and exercise right. I'm like, okay, first of all, okay. Not with a body like that. It's not diet. I mean, yeah, once you've got, you know, the right steroids, then it's diet after that.

Matthew: But come on. But you know, you talk about diet in there. So I want to I want to touch on that real fast because yours was you were you know, you you're eating. What are you you what is your you know, you you've gone through and done the competitive stuff. You're a now while you're running a business. So for the corporate athlete who's not, you know, also maybe doing a marathon or ultra, what do you recommend in terms of diet?

Matthew: What's what's what should somebody be looking for there?

Punit: Okay. Well, this has evolved for me over over the years because I've tried a lot of different things. And when I'm in training or I was training for a long endurance event, then it gets really dialed in for very some some some very specific things. But I've noticed that that's never meant you never maintain that over a long period.

Punit: So certainly at this point in my life, it's a lot about moderation. I have a really big sweet tooth. Anyone that hangs around big nose of my my sweet tooth, I think I I've made it apparent that I like chocolate chip cookies in the book. But the the the thing that I've gotten comfortable with is this idea of like, don't diet and just, you know, work on moderation and try to avoid refined sugar.

Punit: I think that those are the the kind of the basic of try to avoid processed foods and and refined sugar. If you can make your own meals, that is going to be a great way for you to have that check and balance and I do have like a structured meal plan that I try to leave to that to to to today and that is I think it works well for me and it's been adapted for what I need in order to continue train will continue to maintain my health.

Punit: But I will say it certainly has evolved because I will obviously, you know, still indulge and and I don't I don't really drink. So that's that's an easy one for me. But I my sweet tooth is around chocolate chip cookies and ice cream, and that's where I have a certain weakness. You know.

Matthew: I love it. Yeah.

Punit: But the planning ahead is the key thing. So it's it's been the is the biggest challenge is like I learned like if you do your meal planning and and you just get into a routine around that it just makes a huge difference and and it saves money so eating out you know.

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