Jason Wachob: CEO & Co-Founder of MindBodyGreen.com

Today on the podcast I sit down with Jason Wachob, co-founder and CEO of MindBodyGreen.com- the internet's primary destination for all things wellness. I first crossed Jason's path back in 2009 and we have been fast friends with him and his wife Colleen ever since. I love his vision and am so excited to share his story — and that of MindBodyGreen — with you. Not only has Jason placed an indelible mark on the new media scene with his Dumbo, Brooklyn based startup, eclipsing expectations of what a web-based health-oriented content provider can and should be, his personal journey from overstressed Wall Street Trader — his face forever memorialized on the wall at The Palm – one of NYC's most famous steak houses! — to Wellness Warrior / yoga & meditation evangelist is noteworthy in it's own right and eminently relatable. Enjoy the show! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Welcome to episode 32 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Jason Waco.

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  What's up, plant eaters, plant curious, low carbers, paleo people, fitness freaks, triathletes, runners, cyclists, MMA fighters, couch potatoes, yogis, meditators, whoever you are, all comers welcome. Thanks for checking in. This is the Rich Roll Podcast, and I am Rich Roll. If you're new to the show, who am I and what are we doing here? Well, I'm an ultra endurance triathlete. That means I like to do really long raises, or I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm an author. I wrote a book called Finding Ultra.

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  I am a dad, father of four, happily married guy, wellness advocate, public speaker, lifestyle entrepreneur, I suppose. And if you have checked out the show and you're returning, thanks for coming by again. We appreciate it. It's a big day over here today. Why is it a big day? Well, we just passed half a million downloads. Insane. It's insane. Started this podcast back in December, so I guess it's about six months ago, when my family and I were living in yurts on the north shore of Kauai in an organic farm.

• 2:40Rich Roll?

  And I was looking for a creative outlet and I love podcasts, had always been interested in possibly doing one and finally took the time to figure out how you do it and just did it on a flyer, really, as a hobby, as an additional way to kind of, I don't know, find a creative outlet, like I said, without any expectations. And I'm so amazed that it's found the audience that it has and that people seem to be responding to it in a positive way. I've been getting tons of great emails, Facebook posts, tweets, and it means the world to me. I don't have time to get back to everybody on email, but please know that I read all the emails and it, like I said, is very meaningful to me that you would take

• 3:25Rich Roll?

  the time to write down a few words, jot them down and send them my way. So, thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being a great audience. What do we do here? Well, my goal is to bring to you the best and the brightest in fitness and wellness. Maybe not the usual cast of characters, but some of the new faces, the paradigm busting personalities, people that are thinking outside the box, the outliers. I've had world-class athletes on the show, triathletes, MMA fighters, all different kinds of athletes. I've had everymans. I've had nutritionists. I've had doctors. I've had chefs. Who else have I had?

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, entrepreneurs. I like having creative people on. I like to explore the link between creativity and athletic performance, or creativity and as an expression of overall wellness, because I think wellness isn't just fitness or what you eat, it's how balanced you are in mind, body, and spirit. And that's what we like to delve into here. We like to go deep. We like to go long. I like to take conversations into new and unpredictable directions and hopefully I succeeded in that regard. What's up? Well, I just got back from New York City. I had a whirlwind seven days there. I was there to speak at the Seed Experience in Soho, which was awesome.

• 4:50Rich Roll?

  Was able to connect and reconnect with a bunch of friends that I've been lucky enough to meet along this path. People like Brendan Brazer, it was good to see him. And also, I was, it was crazy awesome to meet this dude, John Joseph, who I've been sort of following for a while. John is a legendary punk rocker. He was in the band, The Crowmags, or he's still in the band, The Crowmags, and kind of grew up on the mean streets of the Lower East Side in the 70s and 80s. He's led an unbelievably colorful life with crazy ups and downs and has kind of found himself now as an advocate, ironically, as an advocate for plant-based nutrition.

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  He's a maniac, triathlete, Iron Man, and loves to just talk about eating clean, eating well, taking care of the body, being sober. And he's got a huge personality, like the size of Texas, and a great outlook on life. And I'm definitely getting him on the podcast next time he's out in LA. I wanted to get him when we were in, when I was in New York, but things just got too busy. He's written a couple of books. He wrote a book you might have seen called Meat is for Pussies, which is sort of the kind of book about plant-based nutrition that only a hardcore punk guy could write. And I believe his life story is being made into a movie. It's currently being developed, I know that for sure. Anyway, he's bigger than life, can't wait to have him on. I'm gonna have Brendan on too, of course.

• 6:16Rich Roll?

  We've just had scheduling issues trying to figure out when we could sit down together. But it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. I did record some awesome interviews when I was in New York. Today, we have Jason Walk, founder of Mind Body Green. I'll tell you a little bit more about him in a second. But also interviewed Ronnie Selig, who's the Director of the Health Wellness and Medical Unit at CNN. She's got a huge job there. She's basically overlords over the entire Health Department. Essentially, I guess you could say she's Sanjay Gupta's boss. She produces the entire unit. And she's also crazy avid triathlete, and we talked about how she balances this.

• 7:00Rich Roll?

  Super intense job with being a wife, being a mother, being a professional person, and being an athlete. And also, her passion for CNN Fit Nation and what they've done in terms of helping transform lives. So that was really cool. I went out to PS244 in Queens, the first public school in the country to institute a vegetarian school lunch, and that was amazing. I'm going to upload that later this week. And what I learned is that the headline that grabbed national attention at the beginning of the month was all about the vegetarian school lunch, but really, what's going on at this

• 7:40Rich Roll?

  amazing school is so much more. Literally, they have wellness woven into the fabric, the DNA of the school's constitution. And I got to see it up close and personal with the kids, so I can't wait to share that with you. Coming up, I'm going to be in Utah on June 3rd for the Utah Valley Marathon, which is going to be pretty cool. I think I'm speaking the day before the marathon in the afternoon. I don't have exact details on when or where that is, but I will either put it in the show notes or make an announcement on the next podcast. Also, on the weekend of July 4th, I'm going to be in Pittsburgh at the Vegetarian Summer Fest there. I'm not sure exactly what day I'm speaking, but

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  I will be in attendance, and I'll let you know further details on that as we get closer. So if you're in Pittsburgh, or you're in the Park City, or, I'm sorry, the Salt Lake area, those are two events where you can come and say hi. And please do, if you're around. I would love that. That would be great. What else? Finding Ultra just came out in paperback. That was the other reason I was in New York, to do stuff around the launch. I really appreciate all the tweets and Facebook posts helping me get the word out. I don't have a publicist. I'm pretty much flying solo on trying to get the word out on this. I realize paperback launches aren't as big a deal as they once were now with Kindle

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  and audiobook and ebook and all that kind of stuff. But for me, it's a big deal. And Father's Day is coming up and hey, you gotta get Dad something, right? Well, this is a pretty cheap and easy way to fulfill that life requirement. So how do you get it? Well, you can go to Barnes and Noble and pick it up, or you can go to one of the online retailers. But if I had my preference, I would have you click on the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. It's not on the homepage. You gotta go to the podcast page or the blog page on richroll.com, but you'll see it. It's right there on the right-hand side, little black rectangle. Amazon, click through there, then pick up the paperback or pick up whatever it else it is

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  you're gonna buy on Amazon. It won't cost you any extra and it'll throw some loose change our way, help keep the lights on and keep us rocking. So what else? That's it, man. Podcast is free. It's always gonna be free. It will never be, I'll never charge you anything for it, but we do need a little support to cover our costs here. I do have some exciting news coming up about the podcast. Kind of try to take it to the next professional level and I'll fill you in more when that stuff gets ironed out. In the meantime, if you're feeling extra charitable, we have a donate page or a donate button on the site as well at richroll.com.

• 10:35Rich Roll?

  And you can throw a few bucks our way if you've been enjoying what's going on. But hey, you know what? You don't have to. Just listen and tell a friend. That would be great. That would be actually the best thing you could do. Tell a friend in person or online or whatever, if you've been enjoying the content. So I got some backed up episodes here. We're gonna be bringing them your way quickly. I'm gonna get more regular with my releases and take this whole thing to a new level. Today, Jason Walkup. Who is Jason?

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  Jason is the co-founder and CEO of MindBodyGreen.com. What is MindBodyGreen? Well, it is the premier wellness destination on the website. This startup has experienced incredible growth in the last couple of years. And essentially, it's kind of your one-stop-shop for curated wellness articles. The site is comprised of user-generated, yet curated by an editorial staff at MindBodyGreen, of all sorts of articles that kind of run the gamut from yoga to meditation to diet to exercise to kind of everything that you'd be interested in relating to wellness.

• 11:50Rich Roll?

  And I first met Jason several years ago, maybe back in 2008 or so, and had the good fortune of him allowing me to post a blog article on his site. And then, more recently, I've become a more regular contributor, although I haven't posted there for a long time. I need to get him a new post soon. And it's absolutely my favorite website to post my content on, other than my own website, because they get insane traffic on this website. I get, you know, just basically crazy multiples of eyeballs whenever I post on MindBodyGreen compared to other sites.

• 12:32Rich Roll?

  And I'm always amazed at how they've been able to kind of capture people's attention and fascination. And it's just a testament to people's interest in wellness and kind of taking their health to a new level. And I wanted to find out more about why Jason founded MindBodyGreen and his personal story and kind of what's going on there and what's in the future for this site, which is playing a more and more interesting and integral role in the wellness sector online. And they've got big plans, and I have no doubt, knowing Jason, that they will all be actualized. And Jason has a really interesting personal story as well. It's kind of a Wall Street to wellness story, and he'll get into telling you a little bit about that.

• 13:16Rich Roll?

  And I think you'll find it compelling.

• 13:24Rich Roll?

  That's it. Enough prefatory nonsense. Let's just get into the interview. All right, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Walker. Aw, yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Tell me it's the place to be, or should I say, I'll say Brooklyn is the place to be.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  It definitely is. I mean, in my years of coming to New York, I found myself spending increasingly more and more time in Brooklyn, for sure. And it's the place to be. I mean, this neighborhood is awesome. I mean, it's just oozing with creativity and startups and artists and new businesses and cool restaurants and coffee shops. It's definitely hit, man.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Let's not forget the food trucks.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, actually, I didn't see any. Well, I usually come over here in the morning. So do they come? I haven't been around at lunchtime, but I'm sure there's a lot, yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  They line up here in the summer. It's pretty awesome.

• 14:24Rich Roll?

  Really? You get the cinnamon snail?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  They do come here.

• 14:27Rich Roll?

  Every time I want to eat at the cinnamon snail, for the listeners, is probably the most popular vegan hot truck that cruises around the city. The food is incredible. But every time I want to eat there, the line is so unbelievably long.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  That I end up bailing out, you know? Yeah. When I was here a month ago, it was parked, I went to go have lunch with my editor at the Random House headquarters, which is right in Midtown. And the cinnamon snail truck was parked right out in front of the building.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  The cinnamon, wow, in Midtown, too?

• 15:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in Midtown, in Midtown, like, you know, right, I don't know what it is, like 50th and 7th or something like that, or Broadway. And there was a line that there must have been at least 80, if not 100 people in line to eat there. Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Hey, if someone's not thinking change is happening, if it happens in Midtown, that's saying a lot.

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  I know, it's crazy. But of course, my editor walked right by it. He didn't even notice it. And I was like, dude, we could have eaten there. He's like, I'm not waiting. He's not plant-based either, so still working on him. So, uh, so yeah, change is afoot.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  It is, it is, especially here in Brooklyn.

• 15:38Rich Roll?

  Mind Body Green is playing no small part in that change.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  I'll take it. Yes.

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  But, uh, thanks for taking time out of your busy day. It's the middle of a weekday here and you're gonna carve a little slice of heaven out here for

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  For the podcast, right?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Of course. Well, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Uh, you know, we're, we love you and love what you're doing and love that you're a part of Mind Body Green and anything for Rich?

• 16:05Rich Roll?

  Hey, well, anything for you guys. I mean, it's, uh, been an amazing skyrocketing evolution for the company. Uh, I think the last time I posted, I keep telling you, I'm gonna give you a new post.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  We keep on waiting.

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  My paperback comes out today and my plan was I gotta have a post for Mind Body Green to come out today, the day of my paperback coming out, and I just couldn't even get it together to do that.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Well, the longer you-

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  But I'm gonna do that. I might stay up all night tonight.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Well, maybe this is a strategy, because the longer you wait, we just keep on growing.

• 16:34Rich Roll?

  That's good, right? Well, what's, what's been interesting recently is that, you know, I get requests, will you write, you know, an article for this blog or blog here or blog there? And I used to do a lot of that. And now I'm like, if I'm gonna write a blog that's not on my website, I'm just gonna do it on Mind Body Green. Like, because the traffic is ridic- I mean, I wrote a post, we joke about this all the time, but I wrote a post called "My Favorite Plant-Based Proteins" or something like that. It was just a little, simple laundry list of like five plant-based foods, high in protein. Not a day goes by where I don't see that get retweeted. And I think I posted that like a year and a half ago or something, like two years ago. And you look at the number of Facebook likes and the

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  extent to which your content gets shared, uh, virally across the internet, and it's insane.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  It is. And social's only, uh, a fraction of our traffic, too. So it's just, it's great. We have, we just have really great content that's, you know, quote-unquote "evergreen" content that lasts forever. So your piece that you wrote almost two years ago is just as relevant as it is today.

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Which is great.

• 17:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've written a few, but I gotta write more for you. And Julie wrote a post on relationships that was really great, that-

• 17:47Speaker 01

  That's still one of my favorite posts on relationships.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  She'll be happy to hear that.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  It is. We need more from her, too.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  We do. I know. I've gotta like- Focus my energies a little bit more.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Well, I know you've got, you're, you're working on a few things.

• 18:00Rich Roll?

  I know, but there's always time for Mind Body Green.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  I like it. That's a good, uh, that's a good tagline.

• 18:06Rich Roll?

  All right. I expect royalty checks on that one.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  We're working on that.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  All right, good. Uh, so you're a Wall Street guy, which I think makes this whole thing kind of even more interesting. You know, you come from a pretty traditional educational background, kind of on that, uh, you know, track that a lot of guys get on. And I was certainly on it. So I want to hear, you know, a little bit about your background and, you know, we'll get into kind of how you arrived at founding Mind, but Mind Body Green.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Sure. Uh, so you can't really tell this because this is a podcast, but I'm, I'm six foot seven.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  I was, yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna preface it by saying you were six foot a billion. Jason's very tall.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  So I'm six foot seven and yes, I did play basketball. I played college basketball, Columbia here in New York. And like most people who go to Columbia, they become attorneys or doctors, or they work on Wall Street. And for me, I wanted to be a trader.

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  A good Jewish boy.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I might've been Jewish.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  But I, but I, I quickly, uh, I didn't come from money, had a mountain of debt. And I wanted, it was something I wanted. I wanted to, to make money and to make money from freedom. So I became an equities trader. I always say I was a trader, not a banker. There's a very big distinction, you know, one has intuition and the other, you know, takes from people.

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  We're not, we're not gonna even get into that.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  That's a whole nother conversation. Um, so I became an equities trader and this was in 1999. And I traded for five years, had a couple of really good years. Um, nine 11 happened. Changed a lot of things for a lot of people. And for me, uh, one of the things that changed, and I had done well enough at that point to pay off that mountain of Columbia debt that I accrued. I became interested in other things.

• 19:56Rich Roll?

  Right. But let's, before we get into that, like, walk me through kind of a typical day in the life of what it's like to be a trader.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Sure. Uh, get in very early. I would get in around seven 30. Do my, you know,

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  That's only considered early in New York.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I know. You know, do all my homework, read the journal and look at charts and, and research and any news that happened overnight. It was an equity trader, the market opens at 9:30. So, and it's pretty, it's pretty fast and furious. There were definitely days I did not leave my seat.

• 20:29Rich Roll?

  Is it like, you know, what you see in Wall Street where you're in this kind of, you know, trading floor environment, you know, with a terminal, a monitor and a cubicle kind of thing?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're doing long stacks of desks. There was no personal space. It's one seat right next to each other. You've got a couple of monitors and you're literally glued to the monitor.

• 20:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. From market open to market.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, market open to market close.

• 20:50Rich Roll?

  You can't, you're not going out for a long lunch.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  No, there's none of that. Later I did more of that stuff as I started to wind down my career and stop caring as much. But you're glued. I actually really loved trading. I loved competing. I love basketball. And there was, it was, it was a transition. It was like I wasn't leaving. I left basketball, but there was a lot of that.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  You take that competitive nature.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. You're playing a game every day.

• 21:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And you're there to win. And there was this great camaraderie and there were really, the place where I worked, there were, it's now defunct.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  But a lot of great, really smart guys and it was fun.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Were you trading securities or commodities or equities? Okay.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  So NASDAQ and then a little listed as well.

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Back in the dot com, 99 to 2004. So I saw the NASDAQ go all the way up, run from two to 5,000 and come back down. Which was, I saw a lot of people make and lose fortunes very quickly.

• 21:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And then nine 11 happened. So were you downtown in Wall Street when it happened?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Away. I was a 50 broad. So I'll never forget. So with trading, you have the futures and the futures are an indicator of how the market is opening. And they're usually pretty consistent, like whether they're, the futures are up 20 or down 20 or pick a number, they kind of stay there unless news happens. I remember the futures just took a dive. Something happened. It was news. And then I'm sure enough on CNBC. They started reporting that there was a fire in the World Trade Center.

• 22:26Rich Roll?

  But you, but being downtown, you didn't hear like some

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Well, I opened the window.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Unbelievably loud.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  We were just far away enough where we didn't hear it, but I opened the window and then you started to see debris.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  It seems weird that you wouldn't hear it, though.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  We didn't.

• 22:42Rich Roll?

  Like an airplane making an impact with a huge building that is in your neighborhood.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Seems like it would be loud.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  I have a feeling it was. We were, let me see. So we were about 10 blocks away. So maybe far enough where we didn't hear it, but I saw debris flying.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  So first one hit, no one knew what happened. Then the second one hit and then I just got the hell out of there.

• 23:09Rich Roll?

  What floor were you?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  I was on the 15th floor. So there were still people deciding, at that point, it was very unclear, like what was going on. But as soon as the second one hit, I instinctively said, something's wrong. I'm getting out of here. And I just called my mom and said, this is what's going on. I'm leaving. So ran down 15 flights and ran, like started walking and running fast, like towards the Lower East Side, the Williamsburg Bridge. And then ran out and I would, you couldn't use your phone.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And just stopped at a payphone and let my mom know, like, hey, I'm gonna, my mother lives in Long Island. Was not going. I figured I'd take it. That point, the Lower East Side was a little sketchy. And if something was happening, that would probably be the last area that people would go after.

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  So literally like walked across the Williamsburg Bridge and then got in a cab and just gave the guy money and just drove to my mom's house. So I was home. All this, I was listening on the radio in the cab as this was playing out. So I was, I got home before the first tower fell. And instinctively, I just knew something instinctively was very wrong and I'm getting the hell out of Dodge. So.

• 24:16Rich Roll?

  And so how did that color or impact kind of, you know, how you thought about your career and what happened next? I mean, I can't imagine enduring something like that and not, you know, sort of doing an inventory of.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Right. Well, Wall Street is all about and trading, you're in the business of money. Your self-worth is measured every day by your P and L. That's your profit and loss, how much you're making or losing. Which was great for someone who was looking to make money and pay off college debt and have a little freedom. Like, it was great. But there's obviously more to life. So after that, I think a lot of people revisited, you know, what am I really doing here? You know, how much is enough? What am I, what does it really mean? I was not rich by any means. I'd made enough where I could pay off my debt and I had a little in the bank. As I like to say, like the handcuffs had come off, where I could, I had the freedom to do something else. So I started to explore other things.

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  Right. And this led you into the world of entrepreneurship?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yes. So I got involved with startups and first was one from healthcare to consumer products. And then the last company before my buddy Green was an organic cookie company. And that was when everything began to come full circle. It was a seven, five, it was over the course of seven years. So sometimes the path is.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  And what was your experience kind of being in the food world?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I loved it and hated it. Not the business for me. I learned a lot about that business, which it just required a lot of travel, which, you know, I'll touch on later and what that did to my body. But I loved the organic world and I loved really learning about that and opened my eyes up to what was going on with food and how important it was and the healing process and it kind of led me to my buddy Green. So it was very instrumental.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  So during the course of kind of growing this cookie company, you know, let's tell the story. I mean, you, you, you know, started to have to endure quite a bit of air travel, right? And let's get into kind of, you know, what that was like and where that led you and get to where we are now.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Sure. So the cookies were organic chocolate chip cookies. They were in every Whole Foods in the country. So I've been to probably 200 Whole Foods, this was years ago, and it meant insane travel. So I flew over 150,000 miles domestic.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  And six foot seven body in a little coach seat was was not, my body was not having fun. And it turned out I had two extruded discs in my lower back pressing on my sciatic nerve. It was probably an injury that I endured playing in college, but I've been exacerbated by all this travel and compression and not exercising like I had used to. And these discs were causing excruciating pain. So I had excruciating pain running down my right leg all the way to my toes. There were days I could barely walk. It was awful.

• 27:19Rich Roll?

  And when, how long ago was this?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  This was in 2000, it started in 2008, 2009. Not fun.

• 27:26Rich Roll?

  No. So who do you seek out to address this?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Sure. So I went to, I went to a doctor, a specialist. I had, I got the MRI and they confirmed what I had. And the, the doctor essentially said, you need surgery. And I wasn't too keen on being cut open. And I asked, are there any, anything else I can do here? And he said, no, need surgery. So I kind of stormed out of there. And I'm like, I'm gonna go to second opinion. So I go to another doctor. He says the same thing. He says, doctor number one is right. And then kind of as an afterthought, he mentioned something like therapy or yoga could help a little. It was like a total afterthought. Like, you know, it may help, but you know, you still need surgery. So I kind of ran with it and started practicing yoga and completely healed my back.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  So had you ever done yoga before, or this a completely new?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  A little bit here and there, a little bit in the gym, a little bit like in some yoga studios, but not really, not really. It dabbled with it. But this, this was kind of a last resort. And I just completely got into it.

• 28:31Rich Roll?

  And what kind of, so what kind of yoga were you doing? And how long did it take before you started to experience relief?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  So essentially, there were like four to five restorative poses that like I swore by, like it was my routine every morning and every night. I would probably do 20 minutes of like light restorative yoga, these four to five poses, like a sequence I went through. Did it every day, morning and night. After a couple of weeks, the pain started to come back up. They always say like the further south the pain goes, that's not good. The pain starts to come back up towards your butt. It's going the right way. So I started to notice that and then eventually it just got better and better. And within a couple of months, it was gone.

• 29:10Rich Roll?

  Really? Only a couple of months?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  And I was literally doing 20 minutes of yoga twice a day.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  And this is not, you're not going to some fancy class with a

• 29:18Speaker 01

  This was just at home. And then I started to do class and I started to do class with Tara Stiles here in New York. I was afraid of class for a while to go back in. Like I had, I had something that was working. Like I don't want to ruin that.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  Well, and also I want to get into that a little because I think there's a lot of other issues that get involved with that.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  With men and yoga and that kind of thing.

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  So this is 2008.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  2009.

• 29:42Rich Roll?

  2009. All right. And, and you've maintained this practice ever since?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the most part.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  And you've, and now where, where are you at with the pain?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  It's, I don't have it. I can feel every once in a while, things going. The great thing about yoga, and I will say this, why I think it's the absolute best practice is you become more in tune with your body. You just feel things when things don't feel right. And I can feel when my back isn't, it's going to that place I don't want it to go. So there's like no pain yet or anything, but I just feel like, hey, I need to pay attention to this. I need to maybe practice a little more yoga or I need to watch my posture and and just pay attention to what's going on. So like I have this, I've built in the system where my body's become very aware.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  And so now, what does your yoga practice look like, like on a, on a weekly basis? I mean, are you doing it every day or every other day?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Not as much as I'd like to.

• 30:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you're running a startup.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Now it's probably two to three days a week.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  You gotta have mandatory yoga in your, in your office, man.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Believe me.

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  You gotta walk the walk, the walk, the walk that you're talking.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Actually, everyone, most, most people are like, I'd say half of our office does yoga. Some of the other people are into spinning. Everyone does something. Like, that's the great thing about our office. Everyone is passionate about something we're doing and they incorporate it into our life.

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  But for me personally, I probably do two to three days a week now and it's evolved more into a home practice. But it's something like I feel, that's what's the great thing about yoga. All you need is, you don't even need a mat.

• 31:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  You just need a little space.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  And there's this whole industry cropping up around it. You gotta have the, you know, a hundred dollar mat and the special towel and these little things to put on your feet. It's like, every week, it seems like there's a new product.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:27Rich Roll?

  To monetize something that you essentially need nothing for.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  But that's the nature of our beautiful economy.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  I'm a capitalist, but you know.

• 31:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Hey, if it makes you feel good and you can afford it, then go for it.

• 31:38Rich Roll?

  Doctor, so, well, I think it goes, it's germane to issues of identity and it's, you know, it becomes like a thing for people. Like, this, this is what I do and.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:47Rich Roll?

  You know, they want to be perceived as such, I suppose. There's nothing wrong with that, you know? It's, it's an amazing pursuit and I think, uh, you know, we're finally at this time where, uh, you know, yoga has passed the tipping point. You know, I remember in the early 2000s when, um, you know, I first started kind of exploring it a little bit and, uh, and, you know, I was new to Los Angeles and it certainly had its foothold there with its rock star teachers and all of that. But it wasn't something that was really kind of a thing that guys did.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:23Rich Roll?

  Tons of girls, tons of hot girls in yoga classes. I always say, like, if you're a single guy, you know, then that's, that's where you should be showing up.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  Not the single bar, or the, the bars, but the yoga classes.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 32:35Rich Roll?

  But, um. But you know, we're seeing that changing, but I think that you know, there's still a lot of fear or resistance and you know, kind of mixed, you know, identity issues around masculinity that play into yoga and you're a very interesting test case, you know, nice Long Island boy, Columbia, you know, equities trader, basket, you know, college basketball player and unlikely candidate for somebody who's going to show up in a yoga class and yet like taking health into your own hands and healing your back when you know, when doctors said, you know, you were going to have to get cut open. I mean, that's a very powerful story and, and

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  I think it's important for, for men in particular to kind of hear this stuff like, you know, what do you think it is that's preventing men from exploring yoga or, you know, kind of being more willing to, you know, see what it's, see what it's all about?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I think it's a couple of things. One, one is I think time commitment. A lot of people are, you know, especially here in New York and in LA, you have so many type A people, they're overachievers, they're not working nine to five, they're working more like eight to eight. So when they hear yoga classes, an hour and a half, like geez, how the hell am I going to fit that in? So I do think, I'm like, I push back on yoga. I think there needs to be more classes that are a little shorter and geared around people who can't necessarily make yoga every day and cut out time for it. But I think there are more tools and online tools where people are allowed to do that. I also think that

• 34:19Speaker 01

  specifically with men, you know, yoga is a woman's game.

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  Right. Like that's what my wife does. You know what I mean? That's my wife's thing. You know, I'm going to go play pickup basketball or you know, touch football or what, what have you.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Right. And I would say most men probably don't love that they're getting into something where women are probably going to be better than them and there's a bit of a learning curve and men don't love to be not embarrassed, but they don't want to jump into something where they're not going to be good. And with yoga, it may take a while and there may be a woman who's, you know, five foot two and weighs a hundred pounds and she's Doing these crazy inversions that that you would love to do because men are also very competitive and that's not necessarily a good thing with yoga. Yoga is not about being competitive.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Unless you're, unless you're, unless you're Bikram.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Unless you're Bikram and that's a whole nother podcast.

• 35:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And so men like to measure things and yoga is not really about measuring. Yoga is about being in tune with your body and making your life better inside and out. And you can't really, there's no, it's not like you're going to the gym and say, well, I benched 300 pounds today. That's up from 280 two weeks ago.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  Right. It's this, uh, it, this internal, um, kind of, um, conflict between our human nature. You show up at a yoga class, there's 30, 40 people there or whatever, and you're looking around and it's, it's in our nature to compare like, well, he, what he's doing or what she's doing looks better than what I'm doing. And, you know, is my gut hanging out? And what is that going to look like? And, you know, all of that, which is the antithesis of what yoga is, really?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  And it still happens every day in every class.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  Well, of course, of course.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  It's, uh, that's not what it's about.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  But, but it just, you know, I think the biggest, that's a very interesting point about like not wanting to look vulnerable, which plays into issues of masculinity and identity for men. Like, you know, it's, it's still perceived as a woman's thing, you know, and not a masculine thing to do. And since I've sort of developed a practice, you know, not a day goes by where I'm not like, God, I wish I discovered this when I was a swimmer.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  I mean, my God, I think it would have really improved my athletic performance, you know, when I was in college. I mean, you know, what, you know, what would you say to an athlete, you know, having been a basketball player? Like, what are the, what are the kind of benefits that you've realized? Or how have you seen, you know, your sense of self or your, your feelings about your body change?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Right. Absolutely. I would say, I think, I do think we're seeing more athletes embracing yoga at a professional level. And I would absolutely say yoga is like one of the absolute best things you can do if you're serious about competing, if you're an athlete. I think it's, I think it's mental toughness for one. I think it's being in tune with your body. I think it's about flexibility, which you're gonna, you're not gonna get injured as quickly and you're gonna be able to recover faster. I just think it's the absolute best compliment to whatever you're doing. So without a doubt, if I were practicing yoga, probably doing a lot of other things too, when I played basketball, I would have absolutely been better. I think it's incredible, incredible tool.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's easy to look at it and go, well, you know, is it a workout? But, and it is, you know, it's an incredible core body strength workout, functional body movement, strength and flexibility. But also, all of the asanas are all kind of oriented around calming your mind and getting you into this place where you can be present and let go and, and kind of deal with negative mental impulses and kind of emotional things that come up. And it, and as you start to develop your practice, you start to develop a mastery over the way that your brain works. And you gain greater control over the thoughts that

• 38:19Rich Roll?

  you're having and how much power you're gonna put into those thoughts. And as an athlete, that is incredibly powerful because even at the highest levels of sport, you're dealing with incredibly talented athletes. They're, they're gifted genetically. They all train incredibly hard. So, you know, what's left? Well, the guy who's dialed in mentally and emotionally is gonna be the guy who's on top of the podium, or the guy who's gonna, you know, score the, score the three pointer at the buzzer, what have you, you know, that's, and I think that that gets overlooked in athletics. You're still a freak if you go see a shrink to deal with your mental game.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:56Rich Roll?

  You know, but there's so much that can be explored there. It's untapped, I think.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yep. No, absolutely. In the professional level, especially like you see it, I remember in college, like when we would play big time teams, like athletically, there was just a difference. Like the quickness and, and how fast they move and the explosiveness. But you go past that level on the pro level, everyone has that. The playing field is equal. So what separates, you know, the Michael Jordan from the average NBA, like sure, there's work ethic and talent, but at a certain level, it's, it's the, the mental toughness.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  Of course. Like, why is there that one guy who's always the closer, who you know who's gonna get it done in a pinch?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:37Rich Roll?

  You know, and that's because it's up in the noggin.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:47Rich Roll?

  Check out yoga, you guys. I'm telling you, man, it'll take your game to a whole new level. I mean, and even if you're, you know, not just in athletics, but in your professional life, in your ability to focus. And, you know, I say this all the time, you know, we have this idea that we're, that, you know, our thoughts are at one with who we are. But, you know, the more I kind of walk this path, the more I realize that there's a distinction between your consciousness or your higher self and your thinking brain, which is almost, you know, not reptilian, but can kind of, you know, is something separate from who you are. And, and you can develop tools to have control over that. So when these thoughts

• 40:30Rich Roll?

  come up, like, you know, whatever it is, like, you know, people that are professional victims are always negative and they're just looping like negative thought patterns. Well, what if you had tools to control that, reel that in and change that conversation? And, you know, it doesn't have to stay that way. Like, you can change that. And yoga is a very powerful tool to doing so. And if you can do that, then, you know, a world of opportunities opens up to you in every facet of your life.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And the great thing about yoga is it's your practice. You can take it to any level. You don't have to be great. You don't have to be doing handstands.

• 41:06Rich Roll?

  It's not about being great. It's not about how well you do a pose. It has nothing to do with that.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's about, to me, I always say yoga is about tuning in and slowing down, which are the two things that most people can't do. Like, especially, you know, New York and LA, type As, we're all good. We're all so good about going fast and squeezing more out of the day and like catching that subway and just powering through. And in fact, I think the one area we suck at is slowing down and tuning in, which is so important. You know, if you look at a spiritual level...

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Everything you read, read the, all these spiritual books, you know, books like The Secret, maybe not the best example, The McSecret.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  Right, well, he gets a lot of flack.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Where exactly, or, but so many books in religion and spirituality, everyone says that life should be easy, life should be, everything, when you're in flow, everything is, is easy. And life, life should be easy, it shouldn't be hard.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  When you're, when you're tuned in, when you're in flow. And yoga is the only practice that really helps you practice that. Every other physical practice isn't really practicing easy and slow and being in tune, it's practicing other things. So in a, I see like metaphorically, like the practice of yoga, if translated to, translating to life, should make your life easier and better.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just speaking from my own personal experience, it's that thing where I go, I don't have time for this today, whether it's meditation or yoga, or anything that doesn't seem to be moving the ball forward in my sort of limited self-will oriented perspective of my life and the world. I can't do that. I gotta call that guy, I gotta go here, it's not gonna happen. But when I do take the time and I go, no, you know, actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make the time to do this, to exercise this self-care, it's important in the greater scheme of things. When I do that and I stop and I slow down and invest in that, there's this bizarre reverse

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  spiritual jujitsu kung fu that occurs, where all those things that I thought I didn't have time to do somehow get done, and they get done more efficiently, more effectively, and in a more focused way.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:25Rich Roll?

  And I can't explain it, it doesn't make a logical sense, but my experience has been, that has happened so many times in my life that I can't deny it, you know? So it, it helps remind me, like, make the time to do this. It's actually like when you protract your life out forward, you're kind of laying pavement for a smoother ride through your life. And when, it's like what you're talking about, flow. And, you know, when, you know, everybody has those moments in their life where, where everything's gelling, you know, and it feels easy and that thing, you know, it's versus like when you're trying to self-will something, you're pushing hard and it's not working out, you're meeting these obstacles and nothing's going your way. By contrast, those times where it's like, you know, oh, you know, I was just thinking about

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  you and now I run into you and now we have that conversation and that thing that I thought was going to take up all this time just suddenly got done, you know, like, things like that start happening.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  One of my favorite lines to my old coach at Columbia, Armand Till, who's now with the Celtics, he's got a ring, he upgraded from Columbia. He used to always tell us in practice, you know, if you don't, if you don't practice hard, you're not going to play hard in the game, you know, you can't just turn it on and off. And then he always said that would, that that applies to life, too. If you're not practicing hard, you're not going to work hard, like, you gotta, it carries over everywhere. And I actually think that, you know, talking about yoga, yoga, you're practicing easy. And if you want life to be easy and you want to be in flow, you gotta practice that. And yoga is like the ultimate practice for practicing that flow, practicing easy. Hopefully that does transcend to life.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  That's awesome. I've never heard it articulated that way. That's beautiful.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if you, I always give, I'm not a, like, so there are a couple, couple of our people in our office who love spinning, which is, is not my thing. And we have this running joke where they always say they, they go to spinning and they, they know that I don't like spinning and I just say it's a metaphor for life.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Do you want to be spinning through life?

• 45:19Rich Roll?

  Or they're just looping.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Whatever works for you, that's great. But I definitely feel strongly about yoga in that way.

• 45:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's great. So have you ever gone back to those doctors and said, hey, check it out?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  No?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I'm not much of a focusing on the past type of guy. But hey, it was all part, it all worked out. If I didn't have that journey, I wouldn't be here, sitting with you today and wouldn't have my money green and so forth, so.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  And it's also an interesting lesson in kind of not reserving judgment on the trajectory of your life. Like, you could, at the time, when you're having these problems with your back, you thought, I'm sure you thought, this is the worst thing ever to happen to me. And, and yet, you know, your journey through trying to heal yourself, put you on a trajectory to be doing what you're doing right now in some weird way. So I get, you know, you could flip that switch and look at it and say, well, maybe that was the best thing that ever happened.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. What's the great Steve Jobs line from your famous alma mater commencement speech? You can only connect the dots. Looking backward, not forward.

• 46:25Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, we have, again, it's just human nature. You know, you endure a certain situation and you immediately label it and judge it. This is bad. This is good. This is not part of my plan. I don't like this.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  And we don't have the information to make that judgment call.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  It's hard, especially when you think of something. I've gone through other things in my life. I know you have. It's very hard when you're in the moment to take a step back and say, everything's gonna work out.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Well, you just sound like an airy fairy, you know. So, but it is important to, when you feel that coming on, like, this is horrible. I can't believe this, to go, hey, I don't know what this means.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  That doesn't mean you're gonna overcome that emotion in that moment, but to just be able to kind of, sort of objectively step back and maybe reflect on it in a different way.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  Can be powerful.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  So, all right, so your back's healed and the Cookie Company, what's going on? Like, how do we, let's get to mind-body green here.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  So, the Cookie Company, this was in 2009. And so with the Cookie Company, I really started to pay attention to eating organic and the importance of plants and also all the crap we were putting into our homes and bodies. And I also happened to meet my now-wife around that time and started to revisit spirituality.

• 47:49Rich Roll?

  Another Stanford grad.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, another Stanford grad. They're everywhere. So with the healing of my back, it became really apparent where I had these series of moments where I was like, wow. Having a spiritual practice, incorporating mindful movement, preferably yoga, eating more organic and closer to nature and ridding our homes and bodies and environment of all these toxins, this is a solution to health. Everyone else has it wrong. It's not about weight loss or disease management. This is it. It's this lifestyle. And no one was really talking about this. Everything out there, native print was essentially about weight loss,

• 48:33Speaker 01

  which is not health. And the web-

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  Wait, native prints?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Native Print Magazine. So, your big print magazine.

• 48:39Rich Roll?

  Native Print, I gotcha.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Essentially all about weight loss, you know, flat bellies, quick. And like, all that stuff's great, but that's not health. And the web was dominated by disease management. People searching for, I've got this wrong with my arm. What do I do? And, and you know, information is power, but information can be really bad.

• 48:59Rich Roll?

  That's a recipe to go down the rabbit hole of despair and darkness.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:03Rich Roll?

  Diagnosing yourself online.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  And the only, the only sites out there that were really talking about wellness in this way were, you know, a little too new agey and weird and angry. And if I were to show to a friend I played basketball with in college, they would say, Jason, you've lost your mind. Are you serious? So the idea with Mind Body Green was to create a platform and a place to make this lifestyle, holistic wellness, approachable and accessible to the, to the masses, you know, in a way that, that talked about it from the perspective of health. This is all about health. There's a global health problem and I think we've got it wrong. It's all about preventative health. 90% of disease, I think for the most part is preventable with this lifestyle. And it's

• 49:46Rich Roll?

  Right. And we, we give lip service to preventive medicine. You know, the pundits do and the politicians do, but there's absolutely, there really just isn't any significant movement in that direction, really, in terms of healthcare and the way doctors function for the most part. Of course, there's, there's exceptions and it's incredibly frustrating, but it's almost like our, systemically, we're set up to make that very difficult to happen because of just the way, just the way the money works.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It's from every level. The government has it wrong. The system has it wrong. Healthcare companies have it wrong. Doctors have it. It's, so I, I think we're at this really interesting point in time where people are starting to wake up and they're getting fed up. And you have things like the healthcare crisis here and, and people talking about obesity and, and people.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Taking things into their own hands and exploring this lifestyle. And then you also have culturally like celebrities, you know, speaking out about their yoga practice or acupuncture or going vegan or eating organic. So you have this whole kind of this, this huge wave, I think, that's occurring right now within health. That's happening and, and we're happy to be a part of it and hopefully leading the way there. We think that this lifestyle is for everyone. It's not just for people who live in, you know, Venice, Boulder and, and parts of New York City.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  You know, be, this is beyond the bubble.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and you definitely have made, you know, a huge imprint on this discussion, just, just based on the numbers that you're getting alone in terms of your traffic. I mean, you get create, I mean, how, can you speak to that?

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Sure. So this is, we're in May, so we are at 3 million unique visitors a month. And that's up from this time last year, we were, I think around 800,000.

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So we've grown quite a bit.

• 51:49Rich Roll?

  It's, it's astronomical growth and it's, it does speak to what you were saying, this need and this desire for a real sustainable solution that isn't, you know, a transparent, easy fix or some kind of fad diet oriented thing that everybody knows, you know, doesn't work and it's just the flavor of the month.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is all, we're all about empowerment and finding what works for you. If going vegan works for you, that's great. You know, that's not for everyone. If going paleo works for you, that's great. Whatever works for you. If you like yoga, that's, that's incredible. I think it's one of the best things in the world. But if you like running, go for it. I'll add that I think, you know, within this community, people can easily go down the rabbit hole of creating stress around the very activity that is supposed to be making them healthy.

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  Right. We were talking about that earlier today, right?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, we were talking about like grocery shopping and how confusing it could be, you know, soy, is it good or bad? Is it GMO versus non-GMO? And all of a sudden you have someone who You know, is living a healthy life and they're freaking out about grocery shopping because there's

• 52:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're getting conflicting messages and it's easy to just throw your arms up in the air and say, well, forget that. You know, it's like, you know, even they can't figure it out. So, you know, they don't know what they're talking about. So, and then grab the Cheetos.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, you know, with food, I always, we were talking about this earlier. It comes down to, you know, the great Michael Pollan line. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. It's about finding what works for you. You have to enjoy what you're doing because if you're, if you're not, you're creating stress around the very thing you're doing, which is negating the positive effect of it.

• 53:30Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly. Trying to reduce the stress and repair and heal our bodies with food and with lifestyle. And then to create stress around that, yeah, it becomes this vicious cycle, self-defeating.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Which many people do.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I sympathize. You know, there is a lot of, you know, information out there and, and there's, you know, camps and teams of people that are all fighting amongst each other about this way or that way. And, and, you know, some of the science is spot on and some of the science is conflicting with other studies. And it's very easy to get lost in, in the morass of it and forget, you know, the Michael Pollan quote, which is, you know, page one of the diet book, first page and last page, done, done with book, right?

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  Tell that story. You told me a story a while ago about, you know, just being an entrepreneur and kind of being in this wellness space and, and seeing the growth and kind of dealing with the economics of it and the bankers and all that kind of thing. And being told there, there was a glass ceiling on how many unique visitors you could, you could likely expect for what you were doing.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  Do you remember that?

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of people in this, you know, and going on this path, we've been in this for four years. We were, we've always kind of grown it organically and have been very careful about how we grow. And it's kind of been methodical about it, which has paid off. There have definitely been times when I've, when I've talked to, to people in the space, whether it be investors or bankers, and you hear a lot of, well, it's not big enough. Or there's a ceiling, you know, your ceiling's probably around four million uniques or it doesn't scale and.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  You know, I see it with the interest now in our site with the growth and the comments and the engagement. And I really think there is no ceiling now. I used to think the ceiling was around five to six million uniques, but heck, we're at three now. And we're still not, I feel like we're not even scratching the surface. So

• 55:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it seems like every other week, or maybe even every other day, you send a tweet out like, we haven't, we just broke a new record for site traffic, you know, this is like constantly happening.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I just think it's representative of what's going on globally. And I really think we're amid this huge change that's taking, and we're still early. I definitely think we're still early.

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  So this starts out, I presume, like, just in your apartment, you alone, trying to figure out this website. I mean, what's the, what's the sort of garage story behind how you got this going?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  I got, it started off, I got very lucky. I have two incredible co-founders, Tim and Carver, our CTO and COO, who I met through a friend years ago. And I gave them the pitch, and they really liked the idea and liked the space, and took this as a side project. So they worked nights and weekends. They kept their full-time jobs. And so it was just me. I started doing one post a day. This was in September of 09. And met a lot of people, started with one, had no idea what I was doing. So I had done startups before, but nothing in digital. So in retrospect, I was way naive going into this one. So started

• 56:51Speaker 01

  one post a day in September of 09, didn't get to 100,000 uniques in a month until January of 2011. So during this time, I had a very understanding wife who let me work from home and not earn any money. I blew through every dollar that I had saved just in supporting myself back from Wall Street. It lasted for a while. But, and so around that time, I had started to become friends with a lot of people who were influential in the space, you know, people like you and Tara Stiles and Chris Carr. Then I could go on and on with names, Frank Lippman. People, I became friends with these people, like they'd been to our house for dinner. And, you know, a couple of them had asked, you

• 57:34Speaker 01

  know, can I, can I do a post? Can I do a guest post? And I said, sure.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  And so things kind of steamrolled from there.

• 57:41Rich Roll?

  Right, then you sort of shifted. I mean, was the original model you were going to be, I mean, what was the original plan in terms of how you were going to have content? I mean, because you, now you're this user-generated. I mean, your model really is user-generated content, right?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Curated, yeah.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Curated. So you have this sort of, you know, panel of experts that contribute posts, but then you, I don't know if you solicit, but you entertain the prospect of posting other user content that you curate and review, right?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Right. So there really was no grand master plan in the beginning. The only thing that I will say is I really wanted to make this inclusive and approachable. That was my mission, but I had no idea how we were going to do that, or what worked in terms of a business.

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about that for a minute, because I think that's a huge thing. You know, whether it's plant-based nutrition, or meditation, or yoga, or all these things, I mean, they've kind of been the purview of, you know, the hippie community, for lack of a better, I don't mean to be pejorative about that, but just, you know, sort of a more marginalized community of people that was not accessible or relatable for, you know, a mass mainstream audience.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:57Rich Roll?

  And I think the biggest shift that we've seen, what you're doing, what you seem to fully grasp and understand, and it's something that I'm always thinking about, is how can I take these principles that have been so transformative in my life?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:12Rich Roll?

  And make them accessible to people that might be, you know, maybe not intimidated, but it just doesn't seem like something that would be in their wheelhouse. You know, like, how do you communicate this incredibly powerful, helpful information in a way that's digestible for, like, the average guy?

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  And you figure that out, for sure. I mean, you have a very mainstream audience, and I think that's really...

• 59:42Rich Roll?

  That's the ticket to transforming people.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Right. I think so. And it's also, it's who I am. I always consider I'm a normal guy in a lot of respects. And I'm, I always say, be authentic. So if I were trying to do a website that was super preachy and, and exclusive, that's not me. And that's not what I'm about.

• 1:00:05Rich Roll?

  Well, you might have to cut your dreadlocks off. I'm just kidding. It's a very clean cut boy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  So I think that's, I'm very on mission. Like, this is who I am.

• 1:00:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  I live, breathe, and eat.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  And on that authenticity, I think, and I think authenticity is the other thing. Like, you've got to be authentic in this day and age. If you're not, if you're not, it's totally transparent. People can tell. They see right through it and they move on to the next thing.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  And you've done a great job of being, you know, very authentic to who you are and to, you know, what you're trying to speak to.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Yep. Absolutely. And all of our contributors, we, we have over a thousand contributors now. We try to find, you know, a lot of them have come to us and some of them we've sought out. And we try to find people that we believe are representative of the brand.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  How many, how many sort of unsolicited, user-generated articles do you guys receive on a daily basis?

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  We get about 50 a day. And we don't publish everything.

• 1:01:03Rich Roll?

  Who reads all that?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Our editors do. I used to do all of it. I don't do, but we have, we have real editors now. We have two incredible editors who are, I always say, they're journalists first and wellness enthusiasts second, which I think is important. So they're real journalists, they're real editors, and they do an incredible job editing. And I think they've done an incredible job of elevating the content.

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  And what are you, what are you looking for in the content? Like, what, what makes for a great mind-body-green post that you think, you know, is helpful and people will respond to?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  A couple of things. One, I think it's got to be authentic. You can't be a nutritionist trying to write, write about yoga or vice versa, a yogi trying to write about being a life coach. I think it's also, it's being authentic and writing about what you know. That's first and foremost. I think it's also about having a promise and delivering on that promise and leaving the writer with a takeaway. People

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Are loaded, there's tons of content out there on a daily basis. We publish 13 to 17 articles a day. So what's going to get someone? What's the hook? How are you going to get someone to read your article? You're competing with content everywhere. So you gotta really deliver and you need to give someone a takeaway. I think those are the elements of the successful piece.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  Right. And I would imagine receiving that much content on a daily basis and just kind of what your expert contributors are delivering, it gives you a pretty good bird's eye view of trends or what people are interested in in terms of wellness. So, you know, what are you seeing more and more of? Or, you know, what do you think kind of, where's the focus heading? Or, you know, what's coming down the pike that people might be interested to hear about that they might not be aware of?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  A couple of things. I think the whole, I think paleo is becoming increasingly popular.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  I think Becoming?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  So like huge.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  It's definitely, it is huge, but I just see more, I think it's seeping more into the mainstream, so to speak. Probiotics, the whole microbiome thing, which we were talking about.

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we were talking about that earlier. So, and I touched a little bit about this in my book, the relationship between gut bacteria and overall health, cravings, disease prevention, all this kind of thing. And you're seeing a lot more books being read, articles. I just posted a TED Talk the other day where somebody was speaking to this issue. And I think we're going to see a lot more information about that. And it's exciting because it's this way of looking at disease and health from an entirely new, kind of previously unexplored perspective of using probiotics or treating your gut bacteria as a way to, you know, improve your health. It's pretty fascinating.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  No, and I think we're, like we were saying, I think we're early on this and science is sort of catching up there.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  Right. There's a lot of work to be done for sure, but.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  And then we see specific things like what types of foods are trending and like sauerkraut, I think is huge right now.

• 1:04:09Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Yes. It's probiotic. And I'm telling you, we see, we've seen it with spices. I'm telling you, sauerkraut is going to be a superstar.

• 1:04:20Rich Roll?

  Well, turmeric is our, I think, was that yesterday's news?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it depends what circle you're in. In our circle, you know, turmeric is, or turmeric.

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  Turmeric, turmeric.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, tomato, tomato. Um, sour crowd is big right now. And you know, there are like, we think vulnerability.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  You calling your trader friends down on Wall Street? I got a hot tip for you.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Vulnerability, I think, is another big trend in writing. And I think that started with Brene Brown did this great talk. And she's written about that. And we see more and more posts where people are talking about being vulnerable.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  So there's a lot we see a lot. It's great because we kind of see the, we see all the traffic and the analytics. So it's kind of fun to see what does well, what doesn't. And we kind of have this great bird's eye view of what's really, really happening.

• 1:05:16Rich Roll?

  Let's go back to that vulnerability thing because that's, that's interesting. I mean, what, what specifically do you mean by that?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  I think before, I think people are not afraid to share. What's going on with them? And what's, and what's going on with them is not necessarily good. You know, people will share things, you know, we had a post the other day about a guy writing how he told his wife was bisexual.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Talking about being vulnerable, like he just thought out, wrote a post that three million people are going to, like, God bless them. That's great. Like.

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  Three million people this month. I mean, how many, you know?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  So it used to be people aren't afraid to share and they will be quoting, they'll, they'll tell you about their Achilles heel. And how they were, you know, you talk about the, the seven deadly sins, gluttonous, or you go through the lot. People were not afraid to share and be vulnerable. I think that's very hot right now.

• 1:06:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it's a cultural shift. I think it's, you know, that speaks to authenticity.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  As well. And that was certainly, you know.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  As long as you're authentic about being vulnerable.

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  Being fake vulnerable. That'll be next, right? The backlash. I mean, I think on a global level, it's, it speaks to issues related around privacy and the internet. And kind of a new generation of people that don't think about privacy in the same way as somebody maybe like you or I think about it. Or even being older. I know when I was writing my book, you know, vulnerability was very important to me. But that didn't mean that it was easy, you know, and that, that also didn't mean that I wasn't, I wasn't sure that was the right thing to do. You know, I had, I struggled with that and it was painful. And I'm glad that I did it. And I think there is something about. Being vulnerable and being authentic that that

• 1:07:05Rich Roll?

  that makes the reader or the viewer emotionally connect.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:11Rich Roll?

  Because it's a, you know, it's more human in that regard.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  So that's interesting. So sauerkraut and vulnerability.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't go wrong.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that sounds like the name of some Lower East Side juice bars.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  That club closed last year.

• 1:07:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, juice and greeting cards, you know, I don't know, and vegan shoes, right? I don't know. So, um, so what, what is, uh, you know, what's next for Mind Body Green? Like, where are you, where are you taking this pirate ship? Where are we heading?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  We're, we're.

• 1:07:44Rich Roll?

  To the promised land?

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Yes, we're taking it home. Uh, as I said, I think we're, we're really early in this movement and we're going to be doing a lot. I think we have a really incredible community of contributors and readers and we're still very early in making this lifestyle approachable on every level. So I think you're going to see us continue to do more of what we're doing essentially, you know, building a community around blogging and content, but we're gonna, we're gonna start to get into other things. And I think that's really exciting, you know, as long as it fits under the umbrella mission of making wellness accessible and fun, we're probably going to do it.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  So I think there are some interesting things we're working on, one of those things with you, which we can't really talk about now, but it's really exciting.

• 1:08:33Rich Roll?

  Super top secret.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Uh, very top secret. That should be, so you'll start to see in the next couple of years, you know, we're, we're going to be getting into some interesting things, you know, with that, with that one mission, we're here to make this lifestyle for everyone, for the masses.

• 1:08:48Rich Roll?

  So, right, it's great. Uh, you guys are doing amazing work and wellness certainly isn't going away.

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  You know, I'd like to say it's reached its tipping point. I'm not sure it's quite there yet, but there is a lot of energy behind this right now and a lot of people who not just need help, but want help and there's more and more solutions coming up every day. And this is not the purview of the elite. This is something that we can all do together.

• 1:09:18Rich Roll?

  And like you said, I love what you said about, you know, making it fun and accessible. Because it doesn't need to be a painful, burdensome thing. You know, this is about like enjoying your life more, right?

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. What's the point then?

• 1:09:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. So, uh, all right, man.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:09:35Rich Roll?

  What do you think?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Well, thanks so much for, uh...

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  That was pretty good, right? We did okay.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  I think we did okay.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  You feel all right?

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  I feel, I feel okay.

• 1:09:42Rich Roll?

  We should probably say the name of your website.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. The name of our website is mybodygreen.com. Can't forget about that.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  No, everybody, if you're under a rock and you've never been to the site, uh, then you must visit. Um, and pretty much if you, you know, whatever you want to, you have so much content there. Like anything anybody wants to learn more about or find out about, they can just search.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yep. If we don't have it.

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  Sign up for their newsletter. You get the Mind Body Green Daily email newsletter with stories of the day.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and you can follow Jason on Twitter too, personally, right?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yep. Twitter at Jason Wachob. W A C H O B as in boy.

• 1:10:19Rich Roll?

  Right, man. So, uh, thank you for taking the time, buddy.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks so much, Rich.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  It's an honor and a privilege to, to know you and to be associated with what you guys are doing. So I'm just happy to be, you know, the caboose on your train a little bit.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Likewise. Thank you so much. It's an honor to know you and to call you a friend and have you be part of this. We're all part of a movement and you're playing a big role in that. So...

• 1:10:42Rich Roll?

  Thanks, man. I appreciate that. All right, everybody. Peace. Thanks. Plants.