Debunking Major Health Claims via Content Creation

Dr Karan Rajan: 0:00

And we know in the UK there's such a discrepancy and inequality in education and health education and health knowledge and health literacy and this affects health outcomes. All of these things that I do online potentially helps to empower people and that is fun. Also, I'm always very ambitious in what I do. If I set my mind to something whether it's I want to make these videos and I want to be successful, or I want to start this business, or I want to become a surgeon I have some degree of unshakable belief that I will get there. No matter how long it takes, I will get there at some point. So failure for me whether that's quite toxic or not, I don't know. It's not an option for me.

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‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:43

Today on the podcast, we've got a treat for you, aran rajan, who's a surgeon, author and one of the biggest outube creators in the country, specializing in healthcare. We hear his story about always wanting to be a surgeon, growing up, achieving that, but also finding this other mission, too, about spreading knowledge and tackling myths and misinformation. We go deeper into how is his career for him being a creator and being a surgeon and the difficulty of that, especially at the kind of scale that he's working at. How he's left money on the table and he'll continue to do so because of his ethics. Really hope you enjoy today's episode. So great to have you here today and real pleasure to do this. You've inspired so many people through your work and it's great to see that journey of what you've been up to. But obviously, when you're growing up as a kid, you probably didn't think I'm going to be a YouTuber and be doing all the stuff you're doing today. What did you want to be like growing up as a little kid?

Dr Karan Rajan: 1:37

Yeah, I mean most kids nowadays. If you ask them, they want to be content creators, youtubers, and, honestly, the cross isn't always greener. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I wanted to be a doctor. That was you know, 100% from the beginning.

Dr Karan Rajan: 1:51

My mom's a doctor. She inspired me with all the stories she told me about interesting cases that she'd seen. She'd worked in the hospital and she's worked all over the world and I always thought that's a cool thing. I want to do that. I want to fix people. I want to do something with my hands. So surgery was always up there for me, and one of my friends when I was in school he also wanted to be a doctor as well and we used to compete. He said he wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I said I wanted to. Then I said I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. He said he wants to. So I think naturally I gravitated towards medicine. I ended up being good in science more so than other things, and it seemed like a natural fit. So you know I took that path.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:29

It's interesting. What we hear sometimes from people is that when they've got family who are doctors, then they all see the negative side too. Right, and all the longer hours and the stress. How much did you take that into account when you're growing up, or did you just kind of ignore that part and focus on what, the bits that you thought were more interesting? Or how aware do you think you were?

Dr Karan Rajan: 2:45

Yeah, I mean, I'm very close to my parents, so whenever my mom did night shifts or she was on call and she had to go to the hospital and she wouldn't be back to the next morning, I always felt really sad. But then I never realized that that was going to be me as well. I'm going to be away. I don't have a family or kids at the moment. I want to in the future and definitely that is something that I want to try and avoid. When I've got kids, I do not want to be doing night shifts, I don't want to be doing on-call shifts. I want to dedicate my time to them and to all my other activities.

Dr Karan Rajan: 3:16

So, yeah, there is a clear work-life balance issue. Being a doctor, they probably have some of the poorest work-life balance. Involuntarily, you can't avoid it. I've missed birthdays, I've missed friends' weddings because I was on call and I couldn't find someone to swap my shift with. So it's a huge issue which I didn't realize so much. But now I do and I try and make it my priority to focus things like going to the gym, spending time with my family, spending time with my dog. That is the number one thing for me, not doing extra work.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:45

And it's obviously. It's one thing to want to be a surgeon and do what you're doing today, but it's another thing to actually get there. And how was that process for you? Was it something which came naturally and you felt like you're working hard and it was going well, or was it actually? This is my dream, but I don't know if I can make it or not.

Dr Karan Rajan: 3:59

Yeah, I mean, I'm always very ambitious in what I do. If I set my mind to something whether it's I want to make these videos and I want to be successful, or I want to start this business, or I want to become a surgeon, I have some degree of unshakable belief that I will get there. No matter how long it takes, I will get there at some point. So failure for me whether that's quite toxic or not, I don't know it's not an option for me. So when I said I wanted to be a surgeon, I never thought it was going to be easy.

Dr Karan Rajan: 4:31

I've spoken to a lot of senior surgeons over the years who suggested it's very difficult. So if you want to do it, you know you've got to put in the work and it is not easy. There are loads of tick boxes that you need to do so research papers, audits, you need to show evidence of commitment and there's so many things interviews, exams and but all of those things are just small obstacles in the way of this lifelong dream of mine. I'm going to be doing all of those tick boxes for a few years and then I'm going to be a surgeon for 20, 30, 40 years, and that is the ultimate goal, so for me it wasn't really a problem. For me it's very difficult, and if I had to do it all again I would think about it a bit more carefully. But I don't regret being a surgeon now and going through the shit, as it were, to get here.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:16

Where do you think that confidence comes from? Because I think when I've looked at people in the past, sometimes it's something they've done before and because they've been successful at something else. So for me, for example, I did karate. So because I got to a higher level at karate, that gives me the belief I can do anything. Where did that come from for you? What made you believe this thing that everyone's telling you is really hard, you can do it?

Dr Karan Rajan: 5:35

Honestly, I have to put 100% of all of my thanks and everything to my parents. So my parents, especially my dad, everything to my parents. So my parents, especially my dad, have given me essentially unshakable confidence in doing things and every time there is. You know I'm quite an emotional person and sometimes I can be quite reactive, and that's good and bad, and I can very easily catastrophize situations in my head. If there's something which is a small blip in my head, it becomes a major calamity and I overthink things. And this is a flaw of mine and sometimes it's a strength.

Dr Karan Rajan: 6:14

But often you know if things don't go right you need to be cool and when I was younger I definitely was not cool and it was always my dad which would reassure me. He'd say you know, things happen for a reason. You know you got this, you can do this, and it's the support more than just like those empty words. Words are one thing, but then they backed it up with support. Helping me with homework, taking me to swimming lessons every Saturday morning at 7 am, making sure I go to violin lessons, taking me to school, helping me with you know issues at school. You know funding me to do all of these exams when I'm a junior doctor, when I'm in medical school going to courses. So I think they just gave me full, 360 degree support and honestly, aside from the surgical stuff, even the social media stuff. I don't think I would be here today if it weren't for them.

Dr Karan Rajan: 7:02

Like I'm just riding on their success and their support.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:05

And going to the social media stuff as well. So obviously you've picked a hard path in the first place to do video surgery and then trying to do a side hustle at the beginning. What was behind that? Was it initially? Was it the idea okay, I'm going to try and build this and make it a big thing? Or was it more for fun at the beginning? What was behind even starting?

Dr Karan Rajan: 7:22

Yeah, it was started off as a bit of fun. I enjoyed the process of being creative, scripting, filming, editing, that whole production side of things. I just love that because in school I love drama and once it started getting traction online I thought, hang on. This is actually becoming a whole beast on its own and it's becoming a second career. And then there's some pressure which comes with performance, people now expecting good value and entertainment and views and likes and interesting things. So there's a degree of pressure which comes with it which sometimes takes away from the fun.

Dr Karan Rajan: 7:58

And I had a small period, maybe a few months, where actually it was less fun because I put pressure on myself to make it fun for other people. But now I've claimed back that fun and I'm back to being relaxed about the stuff I do in social media. It started as fun and it's involved into this thing, which is fun but also gives me a chance to educate people, empower people with health knowledge and we know in the UK there's such a discrepancy and inequality in education and health, education and health knowledge and health literacy and this affects health outcomes, asian populations, people you know there's a gender gap as well. Women in medicine are underlooked in research, et cetera. All of these things that I do online potentially helps to empower people, and that is fun also.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:44

And for people not familiar with the channel right what do you cover on the channel?

Dr Karan Rajan: 8:47

So I started by covering just weird medical facts. You know just interesting things like saying you know your stomach acid can dissolve razor blades. Your human body contains more microbial cells than human cells. So are you really human? Just interesting, weird stuff like that? And people enjoyed that. And then I realised there's loads of misinformation online COVID vaccines, gut health, brain health supplements and I thought hang on, that's all bullshit and it's taking money away from people who don't have it in the first place and I started debunking myths. Then I started offering simple health advice. Like you know, if you increase your fiber intake by 10 grams a day, you can lower your bowel cancer risk by 10%. So almost I cover everything that interests me in science, health and medicine, whether it's sleep health, brain health, gut health. You know common myths that we see every day about probiotics, everything. So if you're just interested in improving your own body or just learning interesting things about the body or science, I cover that.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:43

And you mentioned there about the pressure right and a much smaller scale. I felt that myself, right. So when I first started writing then it was fun, because nobody's going to read it anyway, it doesn't really matter. But what you're doing in the health space is even more pressure right, because there's real, realistic life and death potential outcomes of some of this stuff and if people are misinformed or they read things, misinterpret things, then there's a big risk that comes with that. And you mentioned that that pressure was building over time for you and you claimed it back. What did you do to claim it back? How did you go about that?

Dr Karan Rajan: 10:15

Yeah, I just realized that social media isn't the be all and end all, because I got into this vanity cycle, this vanity trap, where you worry and obsess about views and likes and shares and engagement and followers. And that is only natural, because you start from nothing and you have no expectation, you don't care what happens, you just put stuff out there into the ether of the internet and then you get some traction thousand followers, 10,000, 100,000, million and then you're like, oh, hang on. And then every successive video becomes a competition with the previous content you've produced. This video didn't get a million views, but the last one did. What have I done wrong? And then you start worrying about external validation in terms of likes and these vanity metrics. And that was a problem, because that's the pressure on yourself. Creators often burn out because they feel that they need to get all of these follows and likes and views and then they feel insubstantial or less substantial because they're not getting those same metrics they were getting. But then I realized for me that shouldn't matter.

Dr Karan Rajan: 11:22

These vanity metrics are very superficial, because what I'm doing as a doctor, my real job, is a surgeon, and I compare it to that. But I also compare it to the impact I can have, and the example would be I recently posted a video about a woman who had something that looked like a pimple on her face and it turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma type of skin cancer, one of the most common types of skin cancer related to sun exposure, and I made a video about how these can often look like just pimples. So if you have a pimple that's just not going away and it's there for several weeks, probably get it checked out because you know it could be something like a skin cancer which is easily treatable in the early stages. And I got dozens and dozens of messages after that video saying I just got checked out and my dermatologist has picked up this cancer, this skin cancer, and for me that was, you know, the light bulb moment, stuff like that in the past.

Dr Karan Rajan: 12:13

That impact you can have on 12 people, on one person even, is way more important than getting a million views or 10 million views. Who cares? What's the price of saving someone's life? It's worth more than a million views. So for me that is the underrated metric that I care about now, every video I make, I don't really care about the views at all. Can it have an impact on someone's life, and for me that keeps me going going now, no matter, even if I get 10 views down.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:40

So, as you're saying that, I'm now thinking in my head wait, I've got something here, I've got something there, so I'm gonna get myself checked out now.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:46

I think I'm a little hypochondriac myself, not gonna lie, and I think that's an interesting journey because it happens to so many people where whether it's the vanity metrics of followers or money, whoever it is where you can tell them that the followers don't matter, the views don't matter, and people ignore you until they get to that stage and realize it's not made them happy as well. And I've always wondered how do you break that cycle where people go through the same pain all over again, even though you've said that, I'll say that, and people still do the same thing? And it's that challenge a like sometimes people have to go through that journey of seeking that extent of validation to realize that's not the problem or that's not the solution.

Dr Karan Rajan: 13:24

Yeah, I think it's like you can't skip puberty. To get to being an adult, you have to go through the hormonal acne, the weird thoughts in your head, the embarrassment, all that kind of stuff. You can't avoid it, it's inevitable. And similarly, I think this seeking approval or external validation is also inevitable as well. I mean, this is human nature to want to be loved by other people, and I think that's part of the journey. The same, when you know if you lose a loved one, you can't tell someone not to grieve.

Dr Karan Rajan: 13:57

They will have some low mood for X number of months or years and it's just about going through that and then adapting. You know, when I lost my grandmother in the middle of my finals exams, she was one of the closest people I had in my life and I was devastated and I still think about it to this day. But I've adapted. It's just a scar that is well healed and I've learned from those things. And same way with the social media stuff. I wouldn't have been so well adjusted about my thoughts about social media had I not gone through that period of near burnout and frustration and angst about not getting the same views as I wanted. You got to go through it. You know those moments of failure. It's not just failing, because I always used to think that failure was the opposite of success. Failure is just a building block on the way to success. You fail and you learn, and then you fail again and you learn more things, and then eventually you get to success.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:53

So if you're not chasing the metrics and the numbers now, right, and like you said, you can make these videos which make a huge difference how do you prioritize that? Because you also got the day job, like I said, you want to spend time with your family, with your dog and these different things. For the time that you are spending on the content side of the content business, how do you choose what to do now, how to spend that time most effectively?

Dr Karan Rajan: 15:13

Yeah, my biggest issue right now is time. That's a rate limiting step for me and I've got such an abundance of content that I could create. I've got this paradox of choice, like if you're standing in a supermarket deciding which cereal to buy. There's 20 options. You can't decide and you get frustrated and you can't make the decision. You're paralyzed. Same thing with me. I mean, there's 20 pieces of content I want to make today about gut health or skin cancer or brain health.

Dr Karan Rajan: 15:39

I'm like, ah, I can't decide which is going to be the best one. And actually for me now I just do, because the best thing you can do is do something. The second best thing you can do is do something later, and actually not executing is the worst thing you can do. So actually, whatever the idea is that you have in your head, just do it. You know, don't overthink it.

Dr Karan Rajan: 16:01

And I think you know shortening that bridge between idea and execution is what I'm working on and trying to get better at now. So if I see something and I'm like you know what I want to make a video about, you know, bowel cancer today. It may not be exciting and there may be some other ideas, but I can't be bothered to worry about what I do. Let me just do it and do it well and that'll probably succeed. And I think that's what I try and do now and I allocate to myself. I say hang on, I've got two or three hours today that's dedicated towards social media. Outside of that, I'm doing other stuff and in addition, to help me get more time back, I am aiming to expand my team this year. You know, getting editors I can delegate the editing to them, maybe get script writers, get researchers, get a PA. Just allowing myself more time for me and being creative and not being bogged down by the grunt work.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:54

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking. com.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:31

And I think that's one of the things that people just don't realise about this kind of world is just how much grunt work there is.

Amardeep Parmar: 17:42

And it's so easy, because one of the challenges is when somebody becomes a creator or becomes a youtuber. What they're also trying to do is justify that decision to their peers, so they need to make it sound like it's always fun. It's always so amazing because they don't want to be judged for the time. Maybe they're not spending, maybe they're going down the wrong path, maybe they're not getting the views they are, but that's really distorting to people externally when they're trying to work out should I go down this path or not? And it's so important, I think, when people are able to say, actually a lot of this stuff that I do is boring, I don't really want to do it and I do need to outsource it. But obviously one of the challenges outsourcing is in order to hire people. You've got to be making the money to do that and for you. How have you thought of that, about that kind of business model of how do you make this long-term sustainable for you while also trying to be a surgeon making the real impact you're making there too?

Dr Karan Rajan: 18:21

I mean, for a long time I didn't think it would be sustainable. So I started my social media journey in 2012 on YouTube making videos, and I think I was over the moon when I was a medical student. I was over the moon when I saw I got like 100 pounds in a month from the videos. I was like, yes, but I was spending way more than 100 pounds in time, as well as the video hiring equipment and all that stuff and I thought, wow, this is really not that sustainable. And my dad was also at the time, like you're wasting so much time on this, do you think there's a future here? But I said, you know, steadfast yes, I think there is. And fast forward now. Obviously, like you know, I'm able to earn more than 100 pounds from YouTube per month. But I think people overestimate how easy it is and you know, there's some metrics I saw online. I think it's only about 1% of people who start YouTube will ever get to 1,000 followers. Okay. And then, if you keep scaling that up, I think only 0.003% of people will ever cross a million followers on YouTube. So for me someone telling me that and to realize I'm well above a million followers on YouTube, so I'm in that 0.03 and even smaller percentage is crazy to think about. So actually, for a lot of people, it actually may not be sustainable and you have to accept that, just like startups, most startups will fail and even more startups will fail after five years and we can't have any expectations going into this.

Dr Karan Rajan: 19:53

I've managed to carve out some sort of longevity. I've been doing this since 2012 and successfully, I would say, since 2020. So in my fourth year of successful content creation. But now the sustainability comes in other ways. How can I move away from content creation in 10 years time? Can I start up some businesses based on what I've done online? Can I be an advisor to companies based on my experience and knowledge from this? Can I write books, and I've written online? How can I leverage this knowledge and experience with other things which can provide me different income streams? That goes beyond just me grinding to put out videos every single day, because that is not sustainable when I'm 50, with, you know, three kids and putting them through school, and two dogs and a cat or whatever. I don't want to be making videos every single day. I want to be chilling somewhere, you know. So I think you need to find a way to balance life and sustainability.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:52

I think one thing people should be aware of, too is the incentive structure of people online. If they've got a course about selling YouTube, they're going to tell you that YouTube is amazing. They've got a course about LinkedIn, and just think about that too is the best creators I know and the best creators who've built huge audiences. They will try to get people not to buy their course in some ways, who they know it's not going to work for, and that's always something. Just try and be really careful about that, because people are going to try and butter you up and they're going to tell you oh, you can make a million pounds a year, but they're doing that because then they can get a cut off that. So you just got to be really careful as a people listening in the audience and you mentioned there about your book right? Was that something? I had this certain people would say I've always wanted to write a book, but I don't know what's going to be about. They don't know why they want to do it. It just seemed like as a tick box for them and yours obviously so impactful and what health outcomes it could bring. What was behind the book for you? Was it something which, when you're young, it was on your what was, what's the word that people always use? A vision board kind of idea or something which came about more as an opportunity and you decided to take it?

Dr Karan Rajan: 21:51

Yeah, I mean I, I remember I always loved writing stories like in english, fictional stuff, never really nonfiction.

Dr Karan Rajan: 22:00

remember I used to get really wild and creative with the ideas and for a while I even had like an English tutor to really get me to improve my writing even more and he'd sit there and coach me and I'd like really kind of, you know, refine my craft in the storytelling like fantasy, sci-fi type, fiction stuff, and I love that. And it was only, you know, a few years. Back then I started writing like newsletters and that was a regular thing. And when my social media took off again, I think people underestimate the power of the written word. When we're in the world of short format social media and videos, right. Written word there is still an audience for that and for me when I was approached by all of these publishers, I thought, wow, like they want me to write something.

Dr Karan Rajan: 22:45

And then when Penguin came calling, I immediately got nostalgic and I was thinking about all those Penguin classics that I used to read when I was a kid and I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity to write something that's almost immortal. A book feels immortal, like it's always going to be there in the British Library for as long as the British Library is going to be there and that's probably going to be there a few hundred years at least right? A copy of my book exists in libraries across the world, free for people to read and pick up. It lives inside people's houses, it's on their Kindles, it's in their ears on their audio books. So for me that's a pretty transformational thing to have that closeness with someone in their day-to-day life, more so than social media, where you're just one of a million bits of data in their endless data stream. So for me it was a no-brainer writing a book and I love to get creative again and kind of, you know, feed into that younger experience I had of writing stuff.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:41

How was the actual process for you? Because obviously you're scripting all the time for your YouTube videos and you're doing the writing of the newsletter, but because you know that book is more permanent for some people, that freaks them out. How did you find that? Was it something which came quite naturally or was it quite a lot of hard work there?

Dr Karan Rajan: 23:56

It's definitely a lot of hard work, balancing it with my day job as well, and the whole process for me took over two and a half years. And you go from kind of conceptualizing the idea what is it going to be about? And maybe lean into some of the stuff which has given you success online these kind of health tips and I knew that had to be a component of that. A lot of my success is also based on I like to be a bit cheeky and a bit, you know, humorous with some of the words I use and I thought you know that's also got to be in there. So it sounds like me and feels like me. And then putting it all together in like a readable way.

Dr Karan Rajan: 24:28

And the book is, I would say, the most difficult part of social media. If you see a book as an extension of social media, right, it's a social medium platform, just in the written form. And how do you make people read throughout? You know, in social media and the videos, creators are always looking at audience retention. How can you make them watch up to 60 seconds, up to one minute, up to two minutes? The same with the book. How do I make people read from page one to page 305 without stopping. That's the aim.

Dr Karan Rajan: 25:00

I want this book to be unputdownable and it's got to be a story. It can't just be didactic. You know, to improve your life by drinking more water, doing this, doing this, doing this. It can't be like that. I don't read books like that. Even though my book is nonfiction, there's a lot of anecdotes and stories in there and it feels like someone is just talking to you and I see some of these reviews on Amazon and people are like I read it in two days. I couldn't put it down. It actually ruined my sleep because I was sleeping. I was like awake all night reading it and so, yeah, that was the process for me.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:34

And do you feel like there's more books in you in the future?

Dr Karan Rajan: 25:42

I think so. I really enjoyed the process, even though it was hard work, and same with social media. I've just got all of these ideas that I would love to make into books and it's not been done before, so why can't I do it? And yeah, I mean I can see myself every year or every couple of years writing a book, putting it out there. Don't really care if it's not bought by, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, but it's there and I've left a piece of my work in the world and I could be in I don't know Indonesia somewhere just having a nice little hut writing a book and then I send it to the editor and it gets published, and I could do that for the rest of my life and not make any more social media videos. I love it.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:20

One thing that stands about you compared to many other content creators is the reputation you have for integrity because I think we all know this and we won't know many names, but there's a lot of people who take money from some organisations which, even though with their expertise they know it's a bit dodgy, they know maybe it's not the best thing for their audience, but they see the dollar signs and they take it and then they push that out to the audience, whereas you've been very intentional about who you work with and why you work with them. Can you tell us a bit about that philosophy there, because so many people could say, for example oh, you never know what's going to happen, just take the money, get rich and then retire. How have you kept onto integrity and made sure that you haven't been like so many other people out there?

Dr Karan Rajan: 26:52

I think there's a lot of privilege I have in my life in that I've never struggled with money. My parents have always been able to support me on that front and you know, even though there's all these junior doctor contract strikes and doctors are historically in the NHS, haven't been maybe paid what they're worth it's still a salary that allows me to live. Okay, I can go on holiday, I can buy like a new laptop if I want. You know I can order takeaway. You know I live a content life, so money has never been something that I've been desperate for. Everyone likes more money. I live a content life, so money has never been something that I've been desperate for. Everyone likes more money. I want more money.

Dr Karan Rajan: 27:29

No, there's no taboo in saying that at all. You know there's no stigma in that at all. But for me it's always been slightly cringe to think I don't want to be hawking some random product that I don't believe in. I just couldn't do that. You know, a probiotic company reached out to me.

Dr Karan Rajan: 27:45

Two probiotic companies reached out to me about two and a half years ago saying they want to offer me 10,000 pounds a month retainer fee to be their ambassador. And it makes sense. Like you know, a gut surgeon promoting a probiotics company gut health, great. But actually, you know, probiotics don't really work. For most people it's more hype than health and I made a YouTube video basically debunking probiotics and I turned this company down. And you know, £10,000 times two per month is a lot of money. That's like almost like a footballer's wages but it just doesn't sit right with me. And if I ever align myself with something and I have no problem with creators working with brands at all but I would say to them does it align with your ethos, does it align with your own personal morals? And is it actually net good for the world or other people, especially if you're a doctor promoting something? Is it actually good? Can you, hand on heart, say that you would be happy for your friends, your yourself, to consume this, use this or interact with this product that you're talking about?

Dr Karan Rajan: 28:49

If all of those are yes, okay, go for it.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:51

Because we've got the interesting thing at the moment we're backed by HSBC Innovation Banking, right? And also a conversation we had last year. When someone's at different banks, you can imagine how a lot of them went right about. What they really care about is what can we get from this? Oh yeah, cool, it will look good on our D and I that we've helped out, whereas HSBC were completely different, and that's why I have that ability to talk about them and say, oh yeah, you should definitely talk to them, because what they were asking I was like, okay, how are we actually going to help here? Is actually make a difference.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:17

That's what they were judging us on is who we're reaching, how those people being affected, are we going to do something good here? And it just makes such a difference when you're talking to people in that regard of that's what they're checking us up on. They didn't really care about like, oh, how do we maximise our numbers? How can we do clickbait? How can we do these things? It's more about the quality of people we're bringing in that maybe wouldn't have been in their circles otherwise, and that's been. It's quite nice for us and I guess it's good for you with who you work with too, because you can sleep at night. Right, you know that we're working with people who are actually doing things for the right reason.

Dr Karan Rajan: 29:54

You want to surround yourself with the right people, because you know the company you keep determines how you're perceived and your ideas as well. I mean you are. We have all very easily influenced by the people around us, from the language to our thoughts, the notions we have, our ambitions. So you know, in my podcast as well, I like to get on credible scientists to talk about things, not pseudoscientists just for the sake of clickbait or views, and I think that's key. Same way with the brands as well.

Dr Karan Rajan: 30:18

You know, I worked with one women's health AI company. It's run by my friend who's a gynecologist, and I really believed in the product, even though he's a friend. I told him listen, I'm going to do a deep dive of your product and if I don't like it or if anything stands out as slightly dodgy, even though you're a friend, I will be able to work with you on this. And I did a deep dive. I went away for a month, looked at it, asked some colleagues of mine to use it as well, looked into their compliance and I thought you know what? This is actually really cool and nothing else like this exists. Yeah, let's talk.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:48

You mentioned your podcast there, right. So what's behind the podcast for you? What made you decide to do it?

Dr Karan Rajan: 30:54

So about three or maybe four years ago now, I was invited on my first podcast as a guest and now you've been on your best podcast, yeah, and I'd never been on a podcast before and I really enjoy the conversation with that person and I thought I really like conversing with people like this.

Dr Karan Rajan: 31:19

You know, it feels very organic and every time you interact with someone there's another story that you learn. You learn stuff about them, their life experiences, and you learn little nuggets of information that are actually really helpful. And when you're in a pub or in a restaurant with your friends and you're just relaxing with them and having a bit of banter, a bit of chat, that is essentially what a podcast is a very relaxed conversation with people. And then, if you can find a way to repurpose that into also giving knowledge for others whilst you're having a chat, rather than it being produced for something, that's great. And I thought one day I want to do this myself. I want my own podcast and I want to interview people and have a chat with them. Actually, scrap that, not interview people. Have a conversation with people and give accidental learnings to others.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:06

So you mentioned before about ideally in the next 10 years. Right, you're not on the social media training. You need to make a video every single day and you could do your own businesses. Have you got any ideas that make for businesses, or is anything that you're currently working on that you could share?

Dr Karan Rajan: 32:19

Um. So I think the health creator space is a very early space to you know, grow in and how health creators are perceived is still a bit of a gray area and how they work with other brands and companies and sometimes they don't get the value that they're worth themselves. For example, I know a bunch of doctors online who get sent these meal preps from meal prep companies and they just post it on their stories and tag the meal prep. So essentially, these meal prep companies are getting the leverage of 10s of 1000s of views and eyes in exchange for like a five pound meal. And I'm like dude, you're a doctor who's got this huge audience of 50,000 followers and you're just posting like this free meal prep thing, and I'm like man, you need to have your worth.

Dr Karan Rajan: 33:08

So something I'm working on is actually building some sort of organization where I can, you know, have these verified quality creators and I'm going to identify 20, 30 quality creators who've got good reach and have got good ethics and morals and link them to the right companies to work with for brands and the brand will get the top class creators, you know, who are not dodgy and who have good ethics and morals, and these creators can also get what they're worth and be a bridge between that. That's something I want to work on and, from personal capacity, I want to work on something which can maybe educate the public a bit more on gut health specifically and maybe other things, some sort of platform, and I think about things like Zoe, for example, and I've got various thoughts about Zoe and how they run, and I think I could do something similar but even better, and that is something I would like to work towards in the future.

Amardeep Parmar: 34:05

And just before we go to quickfire questions, what's the most exciting thing for you right now, what you've got so many things going on. What are you most excited about for the next year

Dr Karan Rajan: 34:14

For the next year or so I really want to dial in more on my podcast and YouTube as well. So those are things that I'm really excited towards. And I'm doing more investigative, documentary style work on YouTube where I really focus in on a subject like vaping, for example got a video about vaping coming out soon where I expose the corruption of the vaping industry and that for me is exciting, doing stuff like that on a regular basis. But also the podcast and see that grow. You know the podcast six episodes in for season two and we were charting out in the top 30 of the health and fitness podcast charts. So for me, seeing those metrics and it's just like it's like a game, almost. You know it's a gamified version of creation. It's like seeing it climb. It's like your baby that you're nurturing and you're seeing it grow into this successful person.

Dr Karan Rajan: 35:02

And that's the same way I look at these kind of smaller things which I'm starting, like a smaller venture, you know.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:08

And I guess it's interesting too, because obviously you know how some people get into the top of those charts and what they're doing clickbait and how they're doing in the wrong way. So it must be quite satisfying when you're overtaking some of the other people and knowing that you're doing it from the ethical perspective with that integrity as well.

Dr Karan Rajan: 35:22

Yeah, it's like a lower budget thing.

Dr Karan Rajan: 35:24

I'm doing it from home. I've not got a big production, it's just I've got a good camera dial in virtually, to guess, science based, evidence based, sometimes not so sexy, but the audience know it's good value. And yeah, exactly, it's even more. I guess it feels good to see it succeed on the back of something that's boring.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:43

So thanks so much for everything you've shared today so far. We're gonna go to a quick five questions now. So the first one is who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you love shut them out?

Dr Karan Rajan: 35:53

So Sanjeev Bhaskar and you know, people know Sanjeev Bhaskar from goodness gracious me that was essentially one of the cornerstones of, you know, my, my kind of 90s 2000s TV and definitely that will be compulsory cultural enrichment education for my kids in the future, for sure. You know, and Sanjeev Bhaskar is a big part of that. You know, I really listened to a lot of Jay Sean when I was growing up and he was like the first Asian guy to kind of break into this kind of hip hop scene. You know, brown dudes don't break into hip hop. There are more now in Canada and stuff like that, but they didn't really break into that scene.

Dr Karan Rajan: 36:44

And it was so cool to see this guy working with Drake and Lil Wayne.

Dr Karan Rajan: 36:48

I was like, wow, respect, and he got these good like you know bangers, these kind of like you know Friday night bangers.

Dr Karan Rajan: 36:54

So yeah, I love the you know the stuff that he did. Another funny guy I really like his work is Paul Chowdhury, the comedian, and I met him, uh, last year actually and he's like so deadpan and he's like so serious but in like a funny way and again in the comedy scene now there are I guess we had plenty, but when he was starting and when he was doing his gigs he was one of the first british asian guys to come on the comedy scene and really be a breakout star. So it's inspiring to see, in all of these diverse fields acting in the music industry, in the kind of comedic arts, performance industry to see, like these big talent who've, you know, reached the top of the game they've done, like you know, top of the charts or best tv show, like sellout comedy show. I respect and that's inspiring for me as well, even though they're different fields. It's inspiring for me to see that and that, yes, um, you know, asian guys can get to the top of their fields.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:50

I think anybody in the creative space right, whenever something to do, a comedy. There's just so much all of us can learn from that, because it's probably the hardest one of all of them and the amount of guts it takes to go up on stage and tell a joke and potentially fall flat. I think that's one of the hardest things you can do in the creative space, right. So I think there's definitely so many lessons you can take when you study the way that they phrase things, the way that they word things and the way they deliver as well. So next one is how can we find out more about you and what you're up to? Where's your podcast? All of those kind of?

Dr Karan Rajan: 38:19

So I'm active across basically every social media platform, across basically every social media platform, Dr. Karan. You'll find me on Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, Facebook and more recently I've been very active on LinkedIn as well. So I'm kind of you know. That's my next project, as it were. Podcast is called Dr. Karan Explores Chat to all sorts of guests and, yeah, you get that on the classic Spotify, YouTube, apple everywhere.

Amardeep Parmar: 38:42

And do you think that people could help you if today who are listening?

Dr Karan Rajan: 38:44

Don't fall for pseudoscience. And if you don't fall for pseudoscience, you save yourself some money and you could maybe, yeah, improve yourself. So you need the NHS less. That's what you could do. Yeah, and I don't really mind whether you follow or watch me or anything like that. You know, if you like my stuff, then you can, you know, come along. But yeah, I don me or anything like that. You know, if you like my stuff, then you can, you know, come along. But yeah, I don't really I never do those call to actions where I kind of want people to follow me. You know it all. I think it all depends on the content. If people like it, they'll like it. If they don't, you can't force someone to, you know, come.

Dr Karan Rajan: 39:16

And drink your water.

Amardeep Parmar: 39:17

So thanks again. So much for coming. A lot of fun. Have you got any final words?

Dr Karan Rajan: 39:21

Yeah, I mean I'm very impressed, impressed with you, having done this for over 300 episodes, which is incredible. Again, you know you're hard to kill and I think that's the mantra for many people in life. You know, even if things don't look like they're going the right way, just be hard to kill, be stubborn, be like a cockroach and you'll survive. You know that nuclear holocaust and you'll be there at the end of the world.

Amardeep Parmar: 39:46

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe.

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