The School of Greatness - 693 Wellth vs. Wealth with Jason Wachob

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

THERE'S NO ONE SIZE FIT ALL FOR WELLNESS. Jason is founder and CEO of mindbodygreen.com which receives 12 million visitors each month. He’s also author of the book Wealth and has been featured in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Vogue. Jason has a B.A. in history from Columbia University, where he played varsity basketball for four years. He was suffering from terrible back pain from traveling constantly and was able to heal himself through yoga, sleep, and nutrition. Jason knows the importance of building a life, not just a bank account. In this episode, Jason shares with us the definition of his revolutionary word “wellth” and how it’s different from “wealth.” Discover all that and more on Episode 693. In This Episode You Will Learn: The meaning of the book title “Wellth” (00:42) How Jason created MindBodyGreen (1:57) How Jason healed his back pain (2:49) Why Jason loves what he does (5:22) The one thing Jason has to be careful of (6:14)

This is 5-Minute Friday! Our guest today, his name is Jason Wacup. He is the founder and CEO of MindBodyGreen.com, which is a huge health and wellness site that gets over 12 million unique visitors a month, has over 4,000 contributors. It's really the authority in the health and wellness space online. He's been featured in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Fast Company,

and Vogue and all over the place. He has a BA in history from Columbia University where he played varsity basketball for four years there. four years there. I think that wealth is a blend of mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and environmental well-being. And so, you know, I think the way I see true wellness, it's this blend. I don't think it's just, you know, self-help. I don't think it's just fitness or just nutrition or just the environment or just business. I think all these things are interconnected and becoming our best self. And so I sort of leave the building box. I think, as we touched on, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to anything.

And so I think that each individual has to decide, you know, which elements are important to them, where they're lacking, where they're not, and decide, you know, where they need to make change in their life. In a lot of ways, I think wealth is the book that I wish I had 15 years ago when I was going through this, where I would just go to Barnes and Noble and just read anything I could read on becoming a better person a healthier person and uh you know and I think that was important to me when I did this yeah how do we reach people who who aren't in this space right right so how did mind body green come about then sure so so I left I left wall street became an entrepreneur had some things that that didn't work.

The cliche is true. You learn more from the failures. And so I was running an organic chocolate chip cookie company that was in every Whole Foods in the country. That sounds amazing. Yes and no. Cookies were fantastic. The business of making cookies was hard, huh? The business, and it's the only business, the natural products business, where what you invoice is not what you get paid.

Right. Yeah. That's hilarious. It's fascinating. And you don't get paid for six months. Oh, God. Net 30 is like net 90. Oh, my goodness.

It's tough business. So I was running that business and doing a lot of flying that year. I flew almost 150,000 miles domestic. I'm 6'7". That's misery. It is. You have a back problem just from that year well yeah so my back got really bad so i had two extruded discs pressing on my sciatic nerve so l4 l5 s1 so went to a doctor he did an mri an x-ray and you know said you have these extruded discs you need back surgery not negotiable it's like okay let me get

a second opinion yeah so i saw the second opinion uh he said same thing eat back surgery you know maybe a cortisone shot will help uh I tried that didn't do anything um and he said you know maybe some yoga or therapy could help but you still need surgery right so I was like okay you know I'll try yoga I'll see what happens so started doing some really light yoga you know 10- 15 minutes in the morning, at night. Started to explore, like, stress, sleep, nutrition, the environment, all these things affected health. And so this is all happening simultaneously. And I'm starting to feel better.

Yeah. So I'm starting to feel better. And then over the course of weeks, you know, starting to walk better. The pain is moving up the leg, which is always a thing with back pain. Like the further south it goes, the worse further north it goes right and then over the course of months i'm fine so i've never gotten surgery no surgery totally fine yoga practice sleep nutrition nutrition you know i was a guy who you know i looked great at the time but i was a mess like fast food everywhere i i so i ate so much steak and i still eat meat but not a lot of

it i ate so much steak at the palm steakhouse on but not a lot of it. I ate so much steak at the Palm Steakhouse on the west side of Manhattan that my caricature is on the wall. Wow. One year. So it's like Adam Sandler, Joe Namath and me. No way. Yeah. Wow. That's how much steak.

So my idea of health was steak and like 10 martinis. Oh my gosh. And so started eating more plants, like started to look at like the power of spirituality and having you know and and the environment and all these things were interconnected and i was like oh everyone's got this thing wrong like i was my mind was blown because this happened to me and the other thing like a spiritual level you know i started i found out about the chakra system and i read something like the root chakra the lower back is associated with like money worries and like i was broke at the time and getting engaged i had no money to buy the ring i'm like oh my god this

stuff all makes sense it's not crazy well it's like one of those things where you say things like out there a new age then when it hits home you're like holy shit there's what else is what you know and you can't get enough of it and i was like everyone's got health wrong everyone every print magazine's about vanity and weight loss and it it's this lifestyle. It's mind, body, green. No one's talking about this. We're like the normal people, like me. And then launched the site and the rest is history. Wow.

What year was this? 2007, we had the idea for the site. It's awesome. I love what I do. You know, I think energetically from a people perspective, I think you are a combination of the five people you hang out with most. people perspective i think you are a combination of the five people you hang out with most and in the past five or six years i've gotten to meet like some of the most amazing awesome people like yourself and health and wellness like doing amazing things and you meet these people rituals yeah and we're friends and we hang out and like you just can't help but like feel the

energy and be inspired like it's just it's like, someone over here, it's like, you're writing another book and he's doing this. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, awesome. You know, it's just, you can't versus like in some environments with friends, it's like, what are you doing? How are you going to make money? Or what is that?

You know, it's just a different conversation. So like, I'm continually inspired and fulfilled by the community, which is just awesome. So it's been great and then growing a business has been fun and great and challenging and all that stuff i think one thing personally i definitely have to be careful of is i love what i do so much and my wife works with me i work a lot to be 100 so it's like i've had moments from like all this wellness is making me sick you know i gotta find time for myself you know it's great if i'm helping people change their lives but i gotta also take care of myself

make sure you continue to do your own practice right meditation yoga you know going to the gym i've evolved and i will continue to evolve i think a lot of people in wellness have that problem too it's like they love what they do and they work so much but it's like what happened to my practice yeah right whatever that may be They love what they do and they work so much. But it's like, what happened to my practice? Yeah, right? Whatever that may be.