Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Dr. Muhamad Aly Rifai, CEO & Chief Psychiatrist and Internist of Blue Mountain Psychiatry

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Dr. Muhamad Aly Rifai is a highly respected internist and psychiatrist serving the Greater Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. As the CEO and Chief Psychiatrist and Internist of Blue Mountain Psychiatry, he leads with expertise and dedication to mental health and internal medicine. He also holds the distinguished title of Lehigh Valley Endowed Chair of Addiction Medicine, further solidifying his authority in the field.Dr. Rifai is Board Certified in multiple specialties, including Internal Medicine, Psychiatry, Addiction Medicine, and Psychosomatic Medicine, demonstrating his extensive knowledge and commitment to comprehensive patient care. His professional achievements have earned him recognition as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, and the American Psychiatric Association. Additionally, he has served as the President of the Lehigh Valley Psychiatric Society, contributing significantly to the advancement of psychiatric practice in the region.Learn more: http://www.alyrifai.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-dr-muhamad-aly-rifai-ceo-chief-psychiatrist-and-internist-of-blue-mountain-psychiatry

Welcome to Influential Entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Dr. Muhammad Ali Raffai, who's the CEO and chief psychiatrist and internist of Blue Mountain. Psychiatry. Dr. Rifyk, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me today talk to your audience about leadership and new concepts in understanding leadership and sales strategies. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because I always love when I see people at the top of their field that really

distill down some of their expertise into understandable, actionable, actionable content. And when I see your bio and I see the letters after your name. It looks like alphabet soup. So it sounds like you have been in school for the majority of your life. And now it's like, okay, what are we doing here in the industry? So I'd love to hear a little bit about your story and background. And how did you get into the industry to begin with? Sure, sure. So by training, I'm a physician. So I'm a doctor that treat patients who have problems with both psychiatric aspects as well as health aspects. I'm an internist and a psychiatrist, and I treat the brain and the body and the soul. And basically, for the last 25 years, I've been treating patients in the field of medicine and

psychiatry and addiction medicine. And a lot of the concepts that I developed throughout my career where we did research on understanding people's feelings and emotions and motivations. And we've had over the last few years some cutting edge advances that hopefully over the next year or so we're going to bring to fruition offering some opportunities to executives in terms of being able to understand in real time what happens in the brain when we talk to people in terms of trying to convince them or trying to elicit emotions that lead to a successful outcome, whether it's a sale, whether it's convincing somebody with a concept, whether it's talking to a decision maker to have them make a decision. And I bring some of that from my own

experience, my own personal life and some of the trials and tribulations that I went through in my life. You know, it seems like some of the best lessons we learned are from trials and tribulations. And we could probably spend about four and a half hours on that one statement alone, right? But I want to dial in on some of those lessons that you learn to apply with, in your work on both leadership as well as sales because you used a unique word, which is outcomes. Because in reality, aren't we just looking for the optimal outcome, whether it is a resolution to something in the corporate world through leadership application, but also the outcome

of a sale in a professional sales environment? Absolutely. So in my training as a psychiatrist and an individual. internist. We have always wanted to see if we can actually delve into the brain. The brain is basically our main organ where we feel emotions, where we have our thoughts, where we have our decisions made. And we've always wanted to see if we can look at the brain activity in real time, something that would let us understand. What happens in the brain, for example, when somebody sees something that is trying to convince him, whether to buy something, whether to make a

decision, whether it's an emotional topic, and how does that get reflected in the brain? Now, in the past, over the last 20 or 30 years, we've been able to look in the brain, the activity of the brain, using large machines like MRIs magnetic resonance imaging, but these are large machines that take a look at the brain and can tell us to a degree what happens in the brain. But the last 10 years have brought us improved technology where we are actually able to look at brain activity in real time. And over the last five or six years, I've been basically testing. a machine that utilizes something called infrared spectroscopy. This is similar to the technology of the pulse oxymetry, you know, that thing that you

put on your finger to tell the oxygen saturation, you can do the same thing for the brain. And if we can see where there is more blood in the brain, there is more oxygenation in the brain, we're able to translate that into more brain activity, and the more it lights up, It tells us that these areas of the brain are being influenced. They're getting activated. And over the last few years, we've developed machines that can in real time tell us what happens in the brain when somebody's talking to you and they're trying to convince you to buy something. And we're able to tap out some of and map out some of these areas. And we're able to correlate that with basically outcomes.

If you activate these areas of the brain, your likelihood of a better outcome is significant. So over the last year, I've been fine-tuning and I'm hoping over the next year to launch this training for executives where we would be able to look at their brain activity in real time and hopefully also look at the brain activity of the people that they're trying to influence. so people would have feedback in real time about what's going on in their brain and what's going on in the brain of the people that they're trying to influence. And that's going to be coming soon. That sounds exciting. And I'm always a student of like word smithing. And you've said several times the word real time. So I want to dive in deeper with that because it seems to me,

it sounds to me like in the future, you know, you watch the Jetsons as a kid growing up and we all had flying cars. But in real time, in these scenarios, it sounds to me like there is some way like in the midst of a conversation, I can, you know, be glancing down at my phone or my watch and kind of see a thumbs up or a green arrow or a red era to go, ooh, slow down on this or speed up on that. Talk a little bit about how that's going to benefit in real time in circumstances. stances, scenarios like that.

So we have, my practice is collaborating with this company that developed this technology that's called Kernel, K-E-R-N-E-L. And it is a helmet. The machine looks like a helmet. I don't know if you watch the movie The X-Men and the character Magneto. The helmet looks exactly like Magneto's helmet. and it fits on the head and it has sensors like the pulse oxymetry sensor that you put on the finger but it has sensors for almost the entire brain and it looks at brain activity in real time

the hope is that you would train executives using the colonel helmet in real time so they would in their training, understand which behavior, which statements that they utilize would better influence the people that they're trying to convince or the people that they're trying to conduct a sale with. So if we're able to train executives in real time, they can see their brain activity, they can see the brain activity of the people that they're trying to influence, and that would teach them and they hopefully with training would understand which behavior produces the best maximal outcomes for them and which behavior will definitely lead to a sale or to some convincing that they can do with the people that they're trying to convince or they're

trying to sail to do a sale to. So are you saying that both parties are putting a helmet? on during that conversation so that you can see these results in real time? Absolutely. So that's basically the training that I aim to conduct. Once you know what you, once you know what statements that you make produce the maximum impact, utilizing the data that you derive from the, from the helmet, from the kernel, you don't need the kernel anymore.

You know exactly how the person is going to react because you've already taken. tested it. You've already mapped it out. You know exactly how a person is going to react to a certain statements. Now, in the past, basically, you had to test out. You had to basically create different scenarios and see which scenario is your best option for sales. And you may have to test out 10 times, 15 times, even 100 times to see which is the best strategy for you to produce a sale. Here, in real time, you're going to be able to get feedback because you're going to see where the areas of the brain that are involved with thoughts and emotion and convincing that light up in response to your own statements. And you would basically, basically that's X mark the spot.

That's like, okay, I got it now. Look at his brain. He is, he is going to make the sale. And he's going to buy something for me based on the statement. that I used. And so basically you get feedback in real time. And I'm hoping that I can expand that strategy. Now also, this helmet is utilized in other applications. It tells us about the age of our brain. It tells us whether we're able to basically rejuvenate our brain with appropriate diet, appropriate exercise, appropriate supplements. And we're also able, hopefully, in the future, to utilize some modalities that may boost the activity of the brain to kind of give people, what I call superpowers, utilizing magnetic

waves to the brain that will basically enhance their ability. Now, people are hearing this and they're going to say, what is this, Dr. talking about this is all mumbo jumbo this is all the no this is here this is in real time and we're hoping in the next uh couple of months that we're going to have some demonstrations for some executives so they can see what we can do with these machines with these tools that are going to be available to actually give you insight into your brain activity insight to the brain activities of people that you're conversing with that you're trying to convince to conduct a sale that you're trying to convince them to basically buy something or trying to convince them to have an agreement

about something. And also, if you see that your brain is, that basically your brain capacity is not to where you want it to be, we can utilize some of these strategies, some of these magnetic waves to see if we can boost your brain capacity to where you feel that you're optimum and you're able to perform your best in life. So really that could even tie into optimal performance and relaxation and maybe meditation type things where you can dial in the right brain wave concentration for peak state before you go meet with that prospect or relaxation for before you go to bed and things like that.

Would that be possible use cases? Actually, you are talking about another modality. that I'm going to also be offering that involves biofeedback. And this is the relaxation part. So basically the addition, the other machine is basically what looks like a cap that fits on the head, you know, like the swimmer's cap that fits on the head. This swimmer's cap has some sensors that sense the brain waves. And this get fed to a computer that involves an artificial intelligence.

module and it will teach you through different scenario how to be able to relax, how to be able to achieve maximum concentration, and how to be able to slow your breathing, to slow your heart rate, to be able to be focused, to be able to sleep better. And the machine is called Prism. And it has been around for in about four or five years now. And we're going to be utilizing it also to help executives in exactly what you said, dial in into their rhythm, dial in into their brainwaves, and be able to calm, relax, and be able to achieve maximum performance

through relaxation and through focus and concentration. You know, I think that you probably have heard some people say that's really sci-fi and high tech or out far-fetched and out there, but I know in a lot of cultures that they've got these sleep pods, where, you know, the executives, you'll go into this egg-shaped-looking thing and push a button and they'll door shuts and they take a power nap and maybe there's music or things like that. So these are all things that people are currently doing, whether it's the cap or a pod or just turning the lights down.

And really, if we can dial in our performance, the output really is maximized. And I think that's spectacular. So this is this is not sci-fi. This is real life. I'm a practicing physician, and these tools are available. They are all legitimate. They are FDA cleared. We are not talking about just kind of sci-fi or mumbo-jumbo.

These are all things that are available. The magnetic stimulation of the brain, the machine has been around for 15 years, and now we're utilizing it to see if we can maximize the performance of the brain through magnetic waves, through magnetic resonance, through transcranial magnetic stimulation, the machine that basically senses the brain waves and can help you with relaxation and improved concentration is also available. It's approved for treatment of anxiety, but we can also use it to help people relax better and achieve maximum concentration and performance, and then the machine that tests your brainwaves, the kernel is also available. So we hope that we can give executives who want to tap

in into their brain power and achieve maximum performance, maximum concentration, the tools so they could be guided to achieve maximum performance in terms of their sales performance, in terms of their presentation performance, in terms of their convincing activity, all guided with their own brain activity, with the brain activity of the people that they're communicating with, and all that is evidence-based and can produce outcome for these executives. Nate, I love it. It's just your entire body of work coming down into effective applications.

that makes people more efficient and more productive and give greater output. So I think that is a spectacular, Dr. Refai. If someone is interested in learning a little bit more about this and reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way they can do that? Sure. They can reach me on my website. It's A-L-Y-R-I-F-A-I-com, Alli-R-R-I-F-A-I-com, or they can reach my 360 website, Dr.R-R-R-R-F-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-C-com. That's D-R-R-I-F-A-I-360.com. Excellent.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. My pleasure. Thank you very much. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.influential Entrepreneurs Radio.com.

Thank you.