Building a New Venture on Purpose Passion and Profitability

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Jason Wachob, who is the founder and CEO of Mind Body Green, a media brand dedicated to health and happiness. Great thing to be dedicated to, by the way. Early in his career, he was a prop equity trader and investor in senior health care. He has a BA in history from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and German Shepherd. Jason, thank you so much for doing this. I know you must be incredibly busy right now with your book.

Jason Wachob: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here, and I love that I can tell from the start I am on a business show because you used the phrase crop equity trader. I know you speak the old language.

Anita Brick: And by the way, I didn't mention, but the name of your book is wealth. But I have to spell it wealth. Delta. So excited to be talking to you about this and really about how you combined your purpose and passion into a profitable venture. Why don't we kick it off? We had a lot of questions. The first one is really so boost-like like many of us, a booth and this is an ABC evening students said you started your career in investing and trading. How did you know that it was time to start your own venture? And how did you prepare to manage the financial hit?

Jason Wachob: I knew it was time when I started checking out mentally. You know, I actually love trading. I was an athlete, I played basketball, Columbia and thought trading as an extension of playing to some degree. It was a new game every day. It was highly competitive. What you put in, it was generally what you were going to get out.

And I love the competitive nature of trading and excel trading, I would say 911 played a role in let's think it did for a lot of people. It really started to question, you know, what am I doing here? I began to leave work early more and more, especially in the summer. Five days to turn three days and turn into a late after lunch.

Slowly but surely, I was just thinking about other things. I read about all these people who were so passionate about what they do and work all the time. I can't get enough of it. Yet here I am, I'm looking at the clock and can't get out fast enough. After lunch, I thought there's got to be something more here.

I had one foot out the door for a couple of years and then finally left. I think it's a very difficult thing to do because you start to get those golden handcuffs right. I did not have a family. I did not own a home. Very cheap rent. Like I mentioned, I had one foot out the door for a couple of years, and then finally I felt I just needed to stop trading altogether because it was a crutch.

I was good enough where I felt I could just two days a week, trade my money and generate an income, but I would never be able to fully commit to getting out of this. I would always be slave to trading, and I just decided I had to go all in and it took quite a while. The cushion lasted for a while, but I eventually ran out of money. The hardest thing was finance. The golden handcuffs. What do you start to rise? You start to, you know, make serious money and you start to have commitments that it's very hard to walk away from, starting at zero.

Anita Brick: I think you're right. I know that in the book you talked about moving back home before it was a popular thing to do.

Jason Wachob: I'm not a millennial either. I'm 41. I did this ten years ago.

Anita Brick: No, you were ahead of the curve on a lot of things. There is an alum who looks at this a little bit differently, and he said, I grew up in a family where career choices were in a narrow range of safe professions, which is one of the reasons I am a CPA, MBA. That said, what are a couple of things I can do to look for ways to make my passion practical?

Jason Wachob: Passion can manifest itself in different ways, and I think it's creating a life. Even though a lot of people have difficulty defining themselves greater than what they do professionally. I think it can be that if you're an accountant, sure you're passionate about other things and numbers, whether dining or traveling or fitness or whatever or whatever it is, but I believe you can build that into your life and not just building, the base, building a lifestyle and finding things that you love and fitting that into your life.

Anita Brick: How do you incorporate your passion into your lifestyle? I mean, I guess the two options are try to bring it to work or you work to create cash flow and then bring it somewhere else. I mean, where do you see it?

Jason Wachob: Worker. I believe in combining those. Not everyone can do that, but I believe that combining passion and purpose to profit, so to speak, is my sweet spot for me. I can't feign interest. It's hard for me to. Even though I do try hard. I put forth the effort to do something professionally or personally that I'm not really into.

That's me. I do think more and more people are like that. So, you know, for me, I can just show up at a job and go through the motions all day. I probably could for a little while and probably work my ass off, but eventually it would end for me. For people out there, it's taking inventory of what they want .

Do they really want to go to a place where they're just so absorbed in what they're doing? They're finding their flow, so to speak? That is something they just love? Yeah. That's one way to, quote unquote, build a life. Build a passionate life. The other way is do you want something where you do check in and check out?

You have a nice life. You know, you're able to live an affordable lifestyle and then check out and then find your passion or just the ways that I think the end result of this, we're redefining passion for redefining this idea of wealth battle physical, spiritual, emotional, environmental well-being. Both are viable paths. It's just really taking inventory of what kind of life you want.

Anita Brick: The other part of it, and I think this is a really nice point that you made, is that just choose where people sit on the fence and say, well, you know, my passion to be part of my work. I'm just going to do this stuff on evenings and weekends. Some people just never make a decision. And I think that causes a lot of angst and sometimes resentment, which actually derails both.

Jason Wachob: Yes, I completely agree. And I think the hardest stuff is often the first step and you have to pick. And I think the back and forth is just mentally draining and puts people in a terrible state where they're sort of in flux all the time. I think you do have to make a decision and say, I'm going to stay put.

I let users pass and I'm going to build a life outside of work that I'm passionate about or, you know, I'm done. I'm going to move on. I'm going to try to create a new life for myself or get out of work, a better job or start a company that I'm really passionate about. Go from there. You can experiment and debate it internally for a while, but I think if you do it too long, it's just paralyzing.

Anita Brick: I agree, ultimately, you made a decision and one of the MBA students asked, given the many different areas of health and wellness, you could have used your entrepreneurial resources on why and how did you choose Mind Body Green?

Jason Wachob: I've always loved the media. I have always been a media guy. Also, I started two companies and consumer products was about our cheesecake company. Second was an organic chocolate chip cookie company that was distributing every health food in America. I was burned from shipping things. First of all, I was burnt from shelf life. I was someone who's always been passionate about the media. I love the media that was in my veins. And then you throw on this taste for any holding, any inventory or shipping at the time to the cost of the barrier entry is quite low. So what was the problem with the media?

Anita Brick: And this goes to a related question from a weekend speaker. And she said, we know that the most successful businesses solve a problem. How did you find a niche within health and wellness that wasn't already dominated by other firms? I mean, clearly there are people in the media space that cover health and wellness stuff, like magazines, even online communities. How did you carve out something that clearly has worked for you?

Jason Wachob: The state into my personal story, I almost had back surgery. I had an old basketball injury that was exacerbated by flies and stress. I flew almost 150,000 miles. Plastic one year and I'm six foot seven. So do the life coach seat and I have to extrude this person on my sciatic nerve. I had excruciating pain in my right life.

My right leg was like a lightning rod. I could not walk, went to a doctor. He said to me. Back surgery is non-negotiable for a second opinion. You said the same thing. There was almost like an afterthought. I said, you know, yoga therapy might help. I started to practice some light yoga in the morning and evening and started to look at things like stress, nutrition, environment.

Yoga became a big part of my life and within weeks I started to feel better and within months I was fine. And so, you know, here's this problem solution where I'm like, Holy cow, in my experience. And well, everyone's got it wrong here. The real solution to health is more nuanced. It's eastern meets Western, it's more holistic. It's a lifestyle.

By my degrees, no one's really talking about this in a way that's approachable for normal people. Like there were some players out there, but there were two angry, two new age. I found my window. Yes, I thought the market was big enough and I thought things were shifting and I was passionate about it. And we're my buddy green.

We're going to carve out our niche. And that's right. That health bar was interesting in the early days. I would raise money and be with investors and hear from people like, oh, we think, we think it's useful when you're early. I think you get that a lot. And once again, regardless of what anyone said, I was so passionate about this.

I was just determined. I didn't care about the market side as well as I thought, I love this, I think this is the future. I'm going to figure out how to make it work, even though in the back of my mind I always have a vision for a much larger company, I was prepared, no matter what, to go all that well.

Anita Brick: It takes a lot of guts. Clearly on your site you don't produce all the content yourself. Correct? And it is something that entrepreneurs struggle with because sometimes they need to bring other resources in and don't have a lot of monetary resources to use to buy those. How did you engage and get all these wonderful people to provide content on MindbodyGreen?

Jason Wachob: So it happens very organically. You know, I have two fabulous co-founders, and we actually had the web domain in 2004 that we didn't know what to do with it. It was in beta lots of September of oh nine, and that's when I went all in. I started with a blog post today, paid myself no salary. I co-founders work nights and weekends and a couple of days off.

I was smart enough to know that I did not know everything, and so was on my health journey and was traveling around New York meeting doctors, nutritionists and yogis and what have you and starting to do interviews and build relationships. I just thought, like I was eager to learn. I couldn't get enough of it. A lot of these people in the early days became some of my best friends.

Somewhere along the line, someone made a blog post and I said, sure, that sounds like a great thing, let's do it. And so that led to five and ten and 50. And then today we have 4000 contributors who write for us for free. Wow. It's important for a couple of reasons. One is that community is in our DNA.

So I did not have a master plan to say, let's create a community. You know, where can we go? Get it all. But I get that from media CEOs because community is something that everyone wants out. I always say like, you can actually either enter DNA or that. And it also came with a very authentic place. You know today that Steve, all the 4000 contributors, we have an editorial process, we have an editorial team, we do original content 80% is from the community. We edit stuff, we turn stuff down. But communities become really powerful for us because it's one of our values. But I think we truly sit at the intersection of content, community, commerce, which I think a lot of people talk about, who are one of the only real media properties that actually has.

Anita Brick: That and the core. And this seems to be the core. I mean, that seems to be the core of everything. If you build solid, authentic relationships, people will ride out the ups and downs and actually help us write out the ups and downs. It's not a short term process to create those kinds of relationships, clearly. I mean, it took you a while to do that.

Jason Wachob: It took years. It's very appropriate to build a brand, too. I think we're at the age now, specifically with media, where you really have to have a very strong brand to survive. You cannot build a strong brand overnight. Strong brands are about trust.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. It sounds like this was all easy and I know it wasn't.

Jason Wachob: It wasn’t.

Anita Brick: And this goes along with the other students' questions. I understand it takes a while to be profitable and viable as a company. How have you weathered the ups and downs? A couple.

Jason Wachob: Of things. One, pure passion, I think as an entrepreneur is so, so rare that someone just starts a company and boils it off to the races and next thing you know, there's a beautiful exit or huge venture round or whatever that is for you. I just, I just think that's so rare. It really doesn't happen that way, at least not in my experience.

Passion is necessary because you will have the Dark Knight of the soul. You know that there will be a time when things just look terrible. You're working your ass off. You're just not seeing the progress. And at that time, you're probably going to want to give up. But I think when you run on pure passion, you will push through.

You will find the solution. Just seeing that over and over. Most entrepreneurs, including myself, are used to setting a goal and, you know, creating the plan and the strategy and so forth, and just putting your head down and just breaking down whatever door that needs to be broken down to just get it done, that works. But to some degree, other people, on the other hand, who will, you know, sit on a couch and pray or repeat affirmations, just hope that something works out because there's something larger to play.

This is where the middle part, I think if you're the first person, which I think I am and most people are, you're naive to think even though I bleed accountability and control, you're naive to think that luck and a greater force in the universe never believe you are playing a role. And so I use this example of, you know, you're trying to think of a story, you're trying to think of a story. No matter what happens, it's just not okay. You know, this is where you need part of that second person, where you have the ability spiritually to take a step back and say, okay, am I trying to break down the right door here? Is this right? Or wait, wait, is the door to my right completely wide open here?

If I wasn't paying attention because I've got my head so focused on this other door, taking a step back and walking through it, that's the ability of working hard, having a strategy, setting goals, and really putting in the work. But at the same time, having this spiritual awareness to take a step back, recognize there's something greater at play.

You can't do one without the other. So many entrepreneurs struggle with that, and I've seen that over and over in my business, whether it's been fundraising or hiring or catching a break. You know, I feel like I'm playing in my head against the wall and then I'm just like, I get to. I take a step back and then boom, oh, there's something over here. I didn't even notice. This is the right path and it's all all worked out.

Anita Brick: Agree. There was an alumni who asked a question. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out. This alum said. He said, I have a confession to make. The business I launched isn't going the way I expected. The industry and key players in the industry do not share my underlying values, and I want to pivot. What are a few things that you've seen that make pivots effective?

Jason Wachob: You know, I do think you can carve out a space for yourself in the industry. So I'll use media. So we're a media company in parts of media and advertising in the industry. We're an industry that pays the bills for us. It's terrible, but we've carved out a niche and help them wellness within that industry. So we have our own set of practices.

We conduct business in our own way. I think media and advertising, traditionally, a lot of what got done in that world was steak dinners at the strip clubs. I think there's still a lot of that that goes on, to be honest with you. But that's not something we do at all. I think you can conduct yourself in a way that speaks to your values within industry. Do you may find out along the way that other people are feeling the same things? You may not.

Anita Brick: And that's a really good point because an industry is in a monolith. Media is a great example because clearly you found a place where the things that are important to you and your values and the principles by which you operate your company might be completely the opposite of some areas. And yet you found it. So maybe step one is look and see. Is it a monolith? Maybe there are tiny areas but that you could succeed at, or this person can succeed in where he doesn't have to compromise his values. Very tricky.

Jason Wachob: It is, it is. And the beauty of it is if you don't compromise and you stand out, setting out is all for everything.

Anita Brick: That's true. Someone once said being provocative actually helps you create a stronger brand. You just have to make sure that you can handle the backlash of that.

Jason Wachob: Yeah, it's absolutely true.

Anita Brick: So an evening student said, I love this question and the way it was couched. She said, this may seem like a silly question, but here goes. When did you know that Mind Body Green was a success?

Jason Wachob: In January of 2012.

Anita Brick: And how did you know? How did you know?

Jason Wachob: But keep in mind 2nd January 2012, September 9th data and 27. So a long time this past year. So I knew because in January 2011, we had reached 100,000 unique visitors and about so big by ourselves. And so the year of 2011, we kept on seeing an uptick in traffic. And then it had a big jump in January 2012.

We got to 550,000 unique. And so keep in mind that the 2012 Facebook early stages before Upworthy became the fastest growing website of all time. So that was a big jump. And when we got to 515 back then, that was real traffic. 515 you could sell advertising at 550 to run that inventory. We could follow people. Access to that was pretty programmatic.

You could make money. I knew we had something. That was when I said to my wife was very understanding. I thought to myself, for more than a couple of years, we have come together and then every month, suddenly traffic starts to increase. We crossed a million that summer. The summer of 2012. That's when I started to raise a little money and became profitable.

Anita Brick: You're right. The fact that you had the financial wherewithal somewhere to keep going and the patience to do it as well, because I think sometimes people think that success happens in the blink of an eye, and it does or does.

Jason Wachob: No. And especially once again with brands, we're coming back to an age specifically in media, where it's all about brand brands, any business that's consumer facing. I believe you have to have a strong brand and survive, and building a strong brand cannot be done overnight. It takes time and you have to build trust with time.

Anita Brick: I agree, I think it also takes courage. Some people waffle like they're like, oh well, you know, it looks like we're getting traction over here and over here. Maybe we move a little bit. Yeah. You didn't do that. How did you have the courage to, like, stick with it?

Jason Wachob: Well, once again, passion. This was it. I was so passionate about this. And once again, you know, I don't think it's a cliche. I lived it. If you ask yourself the question, what? I do this for free, then you're probably going to succeed at doing it. I also talk about this notion of deadlines in the book as something I believe in.

I'm working on a passion project. This idea of the moving deadline or yes, I believe deadlines report. Sometimes you have to say, you know, I don't know what, I don't know how, but I know it's going to happen. Sometimes deadlines are not concrete. And you have to say to yourself, I need to see something. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have this problem, or the metrics you're looking for have moved, or they've changed and you're just frustrated and you can't see straight.

And sometimes I believe in the invisible metric because the metrics you can't see where you have to say to yourself, listen, I need to see something here, like, show me something. It's, you know, April 1st or so. I need to see something by June 1st. I don't know what it is. Big customers come in or big pieces of press or someone pays on time.

I need to see something. And if I don't see something by June 1st, like I am just done. I continue to set goals like that. I think that's important. Sometimes when you're starting out, there are metrics that are more important than just picking out, well, you know, this is very important, right?

Anita Brick: Did you get to the point where you are going to throw your hands up in the air and say, I'm done? Did you get close to that?

Jason Wachob: It was not easy in the beginning. You know, my wife and I just got married. My wife was also passionate about wellness, working at a job at the time when she hated, you know, I wasn't making any money. And so it was stressful. You know, she was understanding, but it was stressful in the beginning. I said, give me six months, I'll figure this out six months or do a couple of years.

So yeah, there were moments when I was like, I love this, but I don't know. I don't know if it's going to work. There were moments I thought like, oh, I go back to trading. I would say to myself in my head, that just makes no sense. Once again, having this ability spiritually to take a step back, I feel like God makes me do this thing, to go back to training after all these years.

Anita Brick: Or whatever.

Jason Wachob: It just doesn't make sense. I feel like this is supposed to work. I also think, you know, this idea of capitulation in times of capitulation, sometimes a break, whether you break and there is no sign or you get a break or something comes out of that metric that you've been looking for, or finally up here is when you get to that capitulation point, you tend to see something maybe about agree or a good thing, but you tend to see it right.

Anita Brick: Then you have to face reality. Hopefully the reality is in alignment with your aspirations. Jason Wachob: It was hard getting there and I think is a Type-A entrepreneur. You just never want to lose. But right when it's time and you're just done, there's a huge sense of relief where you said, I literally I've done everything. I think it's important also to know that eventually, because what you don't want to do is walk away from something yourself years later. Well, if we only did the steps and only did that, I think you need to stop every possible avenue before you walk away.

Anita Brick: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said at the very beginning, if a window or a door is closing, is there another one opening and if not, then maybe you still have to slide under before it moves completely. But at least be aware. Do you have time for one more quick question? Sure. Okay, great. What are three things that someone can begin doing right now if they're contemplating starting a venture where passion, purpose, and profitability are all part of the equation.

Jason Wachob: I would say one, two are real inventory checks of who you are and what you want to become and who you want to become in the life you want. Take a real hard look at who you are, you know? Are you comfortable with ambiguity? If you are, and you can live with that and thrive in it, then maybe you should start a company.

If you're not that, absolutely do not. Two is I think you know, ask the question of like, what are you passionate about and why is it the type of work you're doing? Or is it the mission of their work? And I think there's a distinction, that idea of, you know, do you want to be part of a company that's serving the greater good or do you want it to be fulfilled by doing a job, that's for sure, greater good within a company.

So one thing that I think it's like personal passion versus, you know, the passion of the place you're working at. So I think you have to ask yourself, like, do you want both or do you want one or the other? And if so, which is more important? And there is, you know, I think sometimes it's really hard to make these kinds of changes in your life.

LinkedIn is the all time greatest resource for this. Poke around. Look at people who you think have a great job. Look at companies and organizations that you think are great. Look at people's backgrounds, you know, how do they get to where they were with a straight line? Did they jump around? Look at the companies that you think are doing great work.

Are people staying there for a while or are they hopping around? How are you connected? Doing a deep dive in LinkedIn can be pretty inspirational and amazing and lead you down a whole new path, which, you know, maybe you didn't even know existed. In this day and age. I think that's just an incredible tool for career exploration.

Anita Brick: Oh, I agree, I totally agree. Thank you so much Jason. This was fun and really very practical in so many ways. And having a balance of encouragement and being pragmatic is so very, very, very important. And thanks for writing the book there. It is a great book. Go check out the website, go check out MindBodygreen.com. It's a wonderful model for how to do things right and how to both create economic and social value. So thanks for doing that.

Jason Wachob: Thank you very much.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.