Conscious Enterprises

www.Conscious.Enterprises

Jeff Bernhard may seem like your typical corporate executive. He was formerly the President of Continental Benefits, and Senior Vice President at the health insurance megalith, Aetna, where he spent much of his lengthy career in healthcare. And for an industry that is just beginning to unravel for lack of improvements in actual health, it’s executives like Jeff that are becoming the voice of reason in healthcare.

Now, as President of Commercial Markets at Highmark, Jeff still makes time for his passion for gardening, growing his own food, and sharing his experiences on his YouTube channel, The Executive Gardener. He also hosts a healthcare industry podcast called Friends with Benefits.

Beyond just insights in being a healthcare industry expert, Jeff is extremely in touch with nature. He understands the importance of wellness and wellbeing. And he is contributing to moving a giant needle in a giant syringe of an industry.

In this conversation, you’ll learn about what the healthcare industry knows has gone wrong and how people like Jeff are trying to correct it. You’ll learn about food deserts and why they really shouldn’t exist – he talks about a fantastic solution to this huge problem. And you’ll also hear about his take on health and wellness.

Click here to listen on Spotify

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• President, Continental Benefits

• Former SVP, AETNA

• Podcast Host, Friends with Benefits

• Founder, Executive Gardener Channel

• How did you end up working in healthcare?

• What do you love about working for these huge insurance corporations?

• What are some of the challenges?

• What are some of your entrepreneurial side projects?

• What inspired you to start your Executive Gardener Channel?

• "Living to work instead of working to live.”

• Disease epidemics

• Plant based diets and how they are impacting the healthcare industry

• Do you think our current healthcare industry is structured around people being sick instead of empowering thriving health?

• How are healthcare companies structuring incentives towards wellness?

• Food Deserts - what are they, what are your thoughts on them, and how can we fix this problem?

• What are the biggest health issues humanity needs to be wary of?

• How can businesses benefit from becoming aware of these trends?

• What makes businesses and leaders successful?

• How do you measure Success?

• Do you have a regular ritual or mindfulness practice that keeps you focused?

• Where do you see the world in 5 years from now and how do you see yourself and your business contributing to it?

• Valuable advise to share with other entrepreneurs building businesses today

Before joining Continental Benefits, Jeff spent 21 years at Aetna, where he held numerous senior leadership roles during his tenure.  Most recently, he was Senior Vice President, responsible for the Public Sector and Labor Union markets in two-thirds of the United States.  Jeff’s main focus at Aetna centered on providing innovative healthcare and benefit solution for his clients.

Under Jeff's leadership, Continental Benefits is demonstrating to employers how the confluence of health care innovation, savings, creativity and superior customer service can be provided through one company. In fact, we are laser focused on redefining the industry standard for what employers, and other entities that offer coverage, should always expect.

Jeff is an active participant in many national leadership groups focused on innovative delivery models, health care reform strategies, total cost management and more effective methods to bend the medical trend curve. Jeff is heavily involved in community activities and sits on several Boards with healthcare related companies.

Jeff graduated from Shippensburg University with a BSBA in Business Marketing. He has an MBA from University of Phoenix in Scottsdale, Arizona. He currently lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife of 17 years and their two daughters.

Yes, she does look familiar. If you’re a foodie or a glutton for cooking challenges, you may recognize her as one of the judges on the show The Next Food Network Star, while she was SVP of the Food Network and Cooking Channel. But that gig was just a peek into the expertise that Susie Fogelson brings to the proverbial table.

Not only is she a magnetic and empathetic leader from the corporate world, (who I happened to idolize at my first job out of college), but she is also showing major food brands how they can take a socially conscious approach.

As the Founder of Fogelson & Co., Susie is now serving the food industry by helping brands find their food story and tell it. In doing this, she is also elevating awareness of innovative food trends.

In this fascinating conversation, Susie shares her journey of following a passion for food, her experience striking major revenue-generating deals with advertisers, we dive deep into so many current trends in the food industry, the importance of being socially conscious as a culinary brand, food-tech vs agriculture-tech, and her own approach to sustainable eating.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder & CEO of Fogelson & Co.

• Former SVP, Food Network & Cooking Channel

• Judge on The Next Food Network Star

• Food Trends Expert

• How food became a passion for Susie

• Working in Advertising, Nickelodeon and how she ended up at the Food Network

• Personal favorites and challenges of being SVP at the Food Network

• Being on television and judging The Next Food Network Star

• Strategizing talent like Bobby Flay for deals with advertisers like Kohl's

• Finding the niche need for Food Marketing within Entertainment Marketing and why it's needed

• Doing business with a Higher Purpose

• Biggest Food Trends in the industry

• Transparency, Mindfulness and Higher Purpose in the Food Industry

• Brands that are shifting to wellness and wellbeing in food

• What makes businesses and leaders successful

• How Susie views her own success

• Susie's own wellness routine

• Susie's perspective on the state of the world, wellness and food in the future

• Valuable advice for entrepreneurs

Founder and CEO of F&Co, Susie Fogelson, is the former Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy at Food Network and Cooking Channel and the driving force in all aspects of strategy and marketing for both brands. Over the course of her career, Susie has cultivated and fine-tuned her expertise of the food-connected consumer and the food-marketing ecosystem. Susie founded F&Co to bring her skills to brands across categories, by uncovering insights and developing storytelling strategies to help them find relevance in today's marketplace.

Sure. I grew up in Los Angeles and I was raised by my dad. And whenever I think about why I'm so passionate about food and why food means so much to me, I can kind of trace it right back to my roots, growing up with my dad. So my dad's kind of a born and bred New Yorker and he moved to the west coast. We were in Los Angeles. We would have very specific food occasions. So every Sunday [we’d get] bagels that I enjoy at this little dump, where you waited online, it was super hot. They made the bagels on site, and we’d grab our hot, steamy bag of bagels. Then we'd go to the supermarket and we'd get our tomatoes, and we'd get our onions. And then we'd go to the deli and we'd get our whitefish. I mean, this was his ritual. We did this every Sunday.

And he had a lot of those [rituals]. And I think just growing up I realized that food was an experience and that's what makes it so personal and it is just a huge turn, on as a marketer, to be able to connect. I've marketed a lot of stuff in my life and I think food is probably the most exciting because of the connection that people have to it; because of the connections that I have to it.

I'm from LA originally. I went to UCLA. And my first job was as an assistant media planner at an agency called Chiat Day. And Jay Chiat was sort of the godfather of account planning and account strategy, which at the time was relatively new. It was a strategic approach to advertising and media.

He was also one of the largest modern art collectors in the world. (He's passed away.) So, this office was the one of the most incredible offices that I've ever been to. So I walked in as an assistant media planner in a building that Frank Gehry had designed. They paid me $15,186, and I loved every second of it. And I worked on a big account, an automotive account, and I guess the good news is that there was such an incredibly large budget, as automotive typically has, that I was able to get really well versed in all media. So that was a great foundation for me as a media expert, and Food Network obviously is media, and it's food. So understanding just how all media works, how to target, how to think about strategic media planning and thinking about how the creative makes its way into media.

This was all just great training for ending up as a Head of Marketing. And I love targeting. I think that at the end of the day, I love the idea that you could see something, or find a message from a brand, and that they would find you, and they would know where to find you. And that was sort of the beginning of my fascination with targeting.

I moved to New York three years after I started at Chiat Day, which became TWA Chiat Day, so consolidation was happening even then. And I worked on Nickelodeon [in New York]. So I got promoted and started working on Nickelodeon and really fell in love with entertainment. Funny that I came from LA and kind of ran from entertainment, and ended up working in entertainment in New York.           

So I ultimately left and went to Nickelodeon and worked as a marketing manager and had a really great run there. I launched Sponge Bob Square Pants. I'm probably dating myself. July 7th. And I worked on the Kid’s Choice Awards. So I learned how an entertainment company, TV brand [works]. Nick is so much more than television brand, obviously. How all of that works together—that was really great training to think about 360 [degrees] in a way that encompassed on-air, consumer products, digital research, press, talent relations. So they were doing everything at such a high level that I got a really great introduction to marketing at a high level with incredible assets. Nick, being the number one kid’s player at the time.

Well, it's funny because they recruit. A recruiter called, looking for a Director of Marketing at “FoodTV” [which is what they used to call the Food Network], and the woman who got the call came to me and said, “I got this call from this FoodTV, and that's all you're ever talking about. So you should talk to them.” And I was so happy at Nickelodeon, I had so much going for me at Nickelodeon. But I talked about Food Network all the time. I don't recall at the time, I don't necessarily remember that. And then once I went to Food Network, people would say to me, “of course you’re at Food Network.” I’d say, “why do you say that?” And they’d say, “because you're always talking about where are you going for lunch, where we went for lunch, what you had for dinner last night, what you're having for dinner tonight… And you’re always asking us what we ate and how it was.” And I I just didn't realize that I was that nosy!

So I went to Food Network and I was there for 16 years.

As I said, it's a marketer's dream to be able to intersect food and entertainment. And in such an inspired way. I feel like Food Network really created a genre of content, which is food entertainment. But I think there was great food programming out there, the Julia Childs of the world, even Martha Stewart, doing food at a really high level. Food Network brought food entertainment together in a way that hadn't been done. And I feel like the opportunity to market that brand everyday.

I mean, I'd walk in a half-inch off the ground every day for 15 years, and it's because of that brand. And then right there with that were the people. I mean we had an incredible executive team. It was a small, tight little group. We all reported into the President. I had an unbelievable team that I was able to oversee and work with, and I think the good news is that when you do well you get more responsibility. So for me it was started in marketing than ended up getting promoted and taking over Creative, taking over Press and Talent Relations, taking over PR. So the brand and the people for sure.

Growing. I think that when there's just a few people and the stakes are medium, you can make some decisions and you can fail, and it's not so public and it's not so costly.

And the challenge with growing and becoming a Top 10 rated brand is that no one thought you could do it. No one thought FoodTV could ever be that. But also it just becomes bureaucratic and getting things done gets harder. There's a lot of steps and a lot of processes and they're not always good for groups. So I think the challenges were understanding what we needed to do from a financial perspective, where we needed to be from a financial perspective, and making sure that the team was aware of that enough that they could operate and not work in a vacuum. That what they were doing, they understood how there was a greater goal associated. So, “X show” that we're launching needs to be successful and hit this number.

What does that mean for the quarter of our ratings? What does that mean for the financials of Ad Sales? You need to understand the importance of this show, not just because it's important, because it's this important. And in essence, you need to be thinking about the level of emphasis that we need to be putting on this. So even in your day to day, if you're prioritizing work and you're not prioritizing this A-Level priority, and making it two priorities that are at the same level, that's not strategic. So understanding the big picture I think was always a challenge; to make sure the team had enough information, but not too much information, in order to be successful.

I don't think everybody gives you the big picture. I think it should be empowering to know that what you're doing adds up to something bigger, and then you should be able to make your own decisions about how you manage your time, based on those priorities. It doesn’t matter what level, there's just a level of common sense and everyone needs to [share] and if you don't have that information, I don't think you feel part of something. Feeling empowered to make decisions not being micromanaged and feeling valued. I think it's just the key to being a good leader and, and liking your job.

It was just… kickass! I mean, how fun that I would get to have this side hustle, that was a judge on a reality show.

I had been pregnant, I was nursing, I was very emotional some episodes. I was actually pregnant and I didn't know it in one episode, and I was very emotional and then I was like, oh, I'm pregnant. I would get emotional when I was watching [the contestants] spill their hearts out, these sweet finalists. And then my boobs would be leaking! It was very much a personal journey. But it was an incredible opportunity.

I remember the day when they walked in, CBS Production started the show, they did the first pilot for us and they said, “here's a video, we're going to put it on a TV monitor. Just sit in [this] conference room and then react to it.”       

And I was like, okay. “Tell us what you think of what they're doing.” And so I just told them what I thought. I did it for a few people in the office, and I guess I did okay. And they gave me the gig.

So I think in the beginning it was like, it didn't get it. There was a pretty low budget, and then the show obviously grew and became one of the number one shows at Food Network. It was just exciting I think to be marketing it, to be thinking through partnerships and ad sales alliances, to be thinking about PR and some of the talent, to promoting the talent and the new faces that we were finding, as well as the established talent that were already in it. And it was really cool to be on the other side of it –Finding our next talent because what I did a lot of at Food Network, certainly towards the last seven years, was focused on talent brands and how we could leverage the talent brands in order to create game. And that could be an ad sales deal with Mccormick Spices or it could be a deal with Dish Networks on a particular talent, or it could be something for ad sales at Media Vest for the day. There were just so many talent means for that brand of. It was so incredible to have them as assets. And we wanted one plus one to equal three. So we did a lot. I did a lot of work with a great team of people and thinking through, how do we leverage the talent, as their own brands, combined with Food Network, to create something bigger for a great game and offer us an advantage in the marketplace.                 

It was a tremendous advantage. I think that when I got there, it was “the talent do shows, that's what they do.” And after [I was there], it turned into endorsement deals, deep partnerships, partnerships on publishing, going into consumer products with them. We did a deal with Kohl’s and Bobby Flay. We did, I think it was, 57 different talent deals with our advertisers. I'm making millions of dollars for them, as well as for us.

Next Food Network Star was such an incredible platform to show the behind the scenes of what was happening and how we actually go about it. It was so authentic in that way, but from there it really made me think about how talent represents an interesting opportunity here. I'm not sure that I would have gotten there if I hadn't had that role in the show.

I think that [it was] the timing of our chefs growing in popularity, so that they were as famous and as interesting as any top level actor or actress. But also the need for content, right?

Advertisers are just desperate to try to do something above and beyond the typical 30-second spot, that promotes the features and benefits of their product. They're just desperate to create really interesting content that they can put out across social platforms. And great content is often fronted by great talent. So that kind of bubbling up in conjunction with the brands and their lane… you know, we've got health and wellness and we've got barbecue over here and we've got Asian fusion or Indian and, and we've got home cooking and we've got kitchen tech. I mean we just had so many different types of talent, that matching up the talents DNA with a brand DNA and creating a media marketing and content story, was just right on time.

Well, on the heels of the work that I did with a lot of brands at Food Network, when I left, I really felt like there was a need in the marketplace that was related to just how explosive the food world had become. It seemed to me that food marketing was actually a thing, just like sports marketing may be, or even music marketing. Maybe you could say it's all entertainment marketing, but there was a specific facet that is food marketing, and that brands needed help thinking through this food culture—the food ecosystem. And that could be products on shelves, experiences, recipe content, instructional content, YouTube videos. I mean it’s just everything. There's just so much food content out there. So how does your brand represent in that culture? Understanding the food connected consumer.

Because gone are the days where we call people “foodies” anymore, right? Foodies are an exclusive, small scale little group of people that are connected to food. Food is anything but that. It's inclusive, it's global, it's big, it's young, it's a specific mindset, but it's broad. So the food connected consumer and food culture are these specific things in marketing. And the idea that you would need a strategy and some help storytelling seem to make sense to me. So I started focusing on a code to do that. So what I say is I help brands find their food story and tell it. And this is really food strategy and storytelling and we've had a lot of traction with big food.

I think there were 1100 mergers and acquisitions in the food space in 2017. At a total of $77 million dollars. So big food is purchasing small food startups. Like Nestle, Unilever, Kraft, etc. purchasing small, artisanal, specialty foods. Because big food, no disrespect to Oreos and Doritos, they do a huge business, but food needs are changing. People's curiosity and their desire to take care of themselves are changing. And that food maybe in the picture, but there are other options that need to happen. And I feel like big food sometimes can legitimately go there and sometimes they need to borrow equity. So they're buying and gobbling up and acquiring and incubating a lot of small food brands.

So [I’m] helping big food figure that out. Working with private equity. I mean there are a lot of food and beverage focused, private equity and venture capitalist firms, right? They're looking for the next Kind Bar. So the idea that we would work and help them make the right bets made a lot of sense. So that’s a food strategy.

Well, we're working with some startups, that are thinking about plant-forward cuisine, that are thinking about grab and go convenience. And so the idea that there are venture capitalists looking to invest in those startups as well as big food looking to invest in those startups; that's a really interesting. The ecosystem is really interesting.

And then restaurant groups. I mean, you've got this sort of blurring. Fast food, casual dining, fine dining are all blurring. Fine dining is now doing take-out. And a fast food is now doing fine food. So “fine-casual”. And everybody wants to grab and go, but they want it to be delicious and a high quality and affordable. So fast food has transformed. Shake Shack is a great example of really good food, really quick and easy. And the demanding consumer wants that convenience.

Casual dining is in a bit of a challenge because it's not grab and go, but it's not an hour of fine dining. So what do you go to Applebee's for? Why are you spending 45 minutes to an hour there, when you can either grab and go, or sit and have a great meal. Why? So we worked with Applebee's on a big project, which included how to bring their signature menu items to life, how to create a richer experience inside the restaurant.

We worked with their signature menu items. So the idea that they have these hot performing items, foods that people love, (everything from their fiesta chicken salad to their appetizer sampler platter), but making that even richer of an experience. So we played with an idea called “Family Style 2.0”.

We all know that hot pots are really trendy, right? Everybody wants to sit around a table and make their own version and share with each other and say, “hey, try mine”, and do it together like that. That experience is important to people. It's so much more than just going out to eat. It's a shared experience. So we’re trying to borrow equity from that idea. I always think the quintessential food that I think started this was Fajitas. It comes deconstructed. And you can make your version and you don't like peppers, but I do and I want you to take that, I did mine with beef and I want you to taste mine and you're going to do yours with chicken or pork. So this simple idea that we're actually creating Family Style 2.0, and making these experiences feel like barbecues, like celebrations.

And then a simple concept that I think a lot of restaurants are doing is bringing stuff tableside. It’s sort of peeking behind the curtain. So when you order a dish, it doesn't just come made and served; you actually have an opportunity to watch it be constructed and to hear a little bit. There are many restaurants that have been doing versions of it. Guacamole has always been served table side. Some Italian restaurants do Caesar Salad. So we just borrowed equity for some things that were obvious winners. And for them, they needed to transform quickly, so they needed ideas that were [easily] doable.                 

There's long-term and then their short-term, and I feel like these were some good short-term solutions that are testing in markets now.

You know, I’m always thinking about that. Smart with the heart is what I hope good leaders are thinking about -- how to add value. We're a small company, so I mean, there's companies that have scale that can move the “good needle” much faster. But I would endeavor to say, we're working with brands that can be thinking about how they can impact, right?

So if we don't necessarily have scale right now per se, but we work with brands that have scaled. If I'm working with a restaurant group or I'm working with a food brand, [I’m looking for] where is the soft underbelly within the marketing, within the campaign. Is there a way to think about doing good in the idea that also drives business? And I think that there is. So it's not a specific answer, but I think it's always thinking about a cause.

Cause Marketing is not an option, you know? Cause Marketing is not optional. Really good brands are thinking about how do we do business and impact the environment or consumers, and how do we impact them in a positive way. So choosing to work with brands that really get that. Also, I think taking on a pro-social client, pro-bono is a really good way of allowing our expertise to benefit an organization that is out to do good.                

So we have some proposals at play right now that are with childhood hunger organizations, and we would take those on obviously pro-bono because we feel we could add value and we believe in what they're doing.

I think that's probably the biggest right now. Transparency. So it's everything from food safety to food trackability, to clean labeling. Every brand is trying to think in some way, how they can be forthcoming about either where their products are from or how their products get to you, , in a way that's truthful and authentic.                                                     

Not every brand has that story, but I think most brands are trying to think about it. I think what was the catalyst to it though—Mindfulness is not just something that I go do an hour a day in my yoga studio. Mindfulness and self care is something I think about from the moment I get up. And, and if you’re parents, you are thinking about it for your kids, if you’re a child, you might be thinking about for your parents. I think everybody's thinking about how can I care for myself? Again, I don't mean just meditation. I mean what I eat, how I treat the world and given the choice, millennials will always opt to purchase products, the large cross section of milennials, will always opt to purchase products that are doing something. They want to support causes not companies.

So what you do matters and it's not just about the bottom line. There is a triple bottom line that does include the environment. And I think people are thinking about that. And it comes from, probably a mistrust.  I think there's a mistrust a politically, I think people are frustrated. I think the #MeToo movement, I think women feel they need to advocate more than they have before to be heard and be taken seriously. I think that people are demanding transparency in order to make good decisions for themselves. And I think that is probably one of the single biggest trends in food. And I think it comes in this form of mindfulness. But it really comes from a place where I need to care for myself, and brands that get that and are willing to show themselves, will win.           

So many of these small artisinal brands. I'm just talking to Abbott's Butcher, which is a plant-forward company we’re hopefully going to be working with, and the ingredients are natural, plant based, provocative, delicious, and honest. And everything about the way they present themselves, it's exactly that. And I and I love the idea that you don't have to be vegan to enjoy plant-forward meats. That you just might want to make a good call today. Just want to have something that is a little lighter today, little better for the environment today. Just make a good call today. And I think that's manageable and I think that's smart, because that's the way that you can scale. I think if it's a finger wagging “you have to be vegan or else”, [you're going to lose half the people], or you'll never get them.

I feel like brands that are thinking about that. I think Coke is doing really cool things with regards to water and providing clean, drinkable water, globally. They have this one campaign that they don't promote enough that I thought was really interesting. I think that there are some packaged goods companies that are trying to think about how they can impact restaurants –and not restaurants with consumers per se, but the back of the house. So how can some of these packaged goods companies, that distribute products to restaurants, think about the health and wellness of the back of house kitchen staff. It does matter that the dishwasher feels good about being at the job are present and that there is a sense of care and concern for them.  

So this idea that the kitchen is a place where health & wellness or mindfulness matter – corporations are really thinking about that. So I think there's numerous brands doing good -- it's not an option anymore.

Well, I'm fascinated by them and some people I know are on Whole30 and I'm always just amazed that they have the discipline to do it. I eat everything. If someone has made something for me, I will never not eat it. I know too many chefs to push food away, especially when someone has made it for you, whether it's in a restaurant or not.

Food waste is probably my biggest issue. So I'm like the crazy that takes leftover food from the table to home. And then I will somehow make it for lunch the next day or take that chicken and cut it up and put it in a wrap for my daughter. Like zero waste is [my goal]. It’s just devastating there's enough food. It's not that there's not enough food, that's not what people are hungry. It's a process issue. And I just feel like access to good food [is the problem].

It’s funny, I grew up in LA, as you know, and so I ate a lot of strawberries and tomatoes year-round, and came to New York and tomatoes are here for a couple of months. Strawberries are here for a couple of months and they're not available unless you bring them in from Chile, you know.            

And so I just have learned that I'm going to just enjoy my tomatoes for those few months a year and I'm going to teach my kids that too. I do the seasonal. Tastes better, better price and, and I don't need something to come 8,000 miles for me. That just feels wrong when you think about the exhaust blowing out of that plane, ship or car, in order to get that here. It's like, I'm good. I'm going to wait for it. And I'd like to even grow it if I can. Which is a huge trend.  Agriculture. [The urban farming and all that.] So I guess I subscribe to it, sounds cliché, local. I do subscribe to it and it's because I can wait, I just want what's good and I don't want you to waste it.

So I'd rather we eat what you have grown locally so you don't have to waste any of that. I feel like I'm probably more vegetarian just because I like vegetarian food. I like vegetables a lot. And I like fish and seafood a lot. And I probably don't eat pork and beef very much. But I will. I made cheeseburgers for my daughter and her friends the other night and made killer cheeseburgers. If I’m going to do it, do it up.

I don't like to buy meat that's not a humanely raised. I mean we've all seen enough of those videos. I think this has been proven, so it's not necessarily my idea, but the idea that you would be eating meat that was frightened and tortured does not sound delicious. In the cells of that animal is fear and pain and that has got to do something to the way that it tastes. It's the muscles. All the blood is flowing through those body parts and the way they treat animals is so foul that I can't support that. It makes me upset. I can't support that.

Exactly. And I think it sounds a little precious to say it because I know that the world is eating meat from a variety of sources and I likely will have partners that are, so I don't want to be a walking contradiction. But I really feel like we've got to figure that piece out. I just don't think it's good “juju”. I don’t think it’s good karma for the universe. [There's definitely gotta be a better way.] There is. I mean slaughtering animals is just part of our existence. But abusive slaughtering, So that's my take.                   

Well, F&Co , when we think about a brand, then we think about what's happening in food culture. We think about the food connected consumer, we're thinking about trends and what's happening in the marketplace that we can use as a blueprint to help you, X brand, find relevance. So for instance, we're talking to Keurig now. Keurig, their K cups, are going to be 100 percent recycling by 2020. Which is really soon. So Keurig might not have had a socially conscious kind of culinary angle, but they will.     

So this is an important trend. Socially conscious culinary is a really important trend - back to what we were just talking about. It's not just mindfulness and transparency at restaurants. All food brands need to be thinking about how they can do something that's good for the bottom line. So Keurig might not have been able to fit into that scenario. That might not have been a trend that they could be invested in yet. But they will be. So it's really important to think about what's going on with that brand and what trends can they legitimately align with because if they're aligning with the trends then they're relevant and if they're doing it in a transparent and honest way then they're going to win.

So the brands that we speak to have to be thinking about the trends and that's where our expertise is. And hopefully our expertise and their brand's goals can line up. But it kind of begins and ends with the trends for us.

It's a good question. I mean, I don't want to keep using this word, but I do think transparency. I was reading Jeff Bezos’ letter to his board, he sort of writes annually and he's been writing it for like 19 years. It's just such an honest transparency about what's working and what's not. I felt like if that's how he runs his business, I mean he's obviously an incredible example of a leader, but I guess I feel like it kinda goes back to what we were talking about. Having enough information in order to be able to feel like you're adding value, ultimate value, but also not being bogged down with too much detail.

I was in Portugal last week and we were in this area called Belem, and it's just beautiful and historic. I don't remember the name of their President, the Uber driver told us that his palaces were across the street and that he's always walking around. This was a little waterfront area with little shops and little trinkets. And he's always walking around. He just walks around and I said, “wow, that's a really cool thing for the President to do.” He said he's the first one that's ever done it. And I think that like that shows a really interesting accessibility. It doesn't mean that he's not smarter than everybody else and it shouldn't be the President, but it means that he gets that people are sort of the engine that drives his needs and why he's where he is. So I like that. I like leaders that are accessible.                           

I like leaders that are honest. Brooke Johnson who was the president of Food Network for many years. If I had a nickel for every time she said, “Hire people that are smarter than you, and then let’em rock.” You know, that's a really hard thing to get on board with, to actually hire someone that is not overall your experience, but in a certain facet is smarter than you. That's a really, really big way of thinking about doing well. And time and time again, that has worked for me. So hiring people that are smarter than you being transparent, being accessible.

I read an article the other day about the woman, the CEO from Spanx. She said every day her dad would ask her, what did you fail at today at today? He didn't want to know if she’d got A's on papers, didn't want to know how many soccer goals she kicked, he wanted to know what she failed at today. He wanted her to obviously get comfortable with the idea that you fail, you figure out why and then move on. Just such an interesting orientation. So I thought her dad was kind of a cool leader.

That’s a great question. I think, to be honest, I'm just too hard on myself, I'm not in there really. I think that it's interesting to hear you talk about it in the beginning, like how what I had accomplished, you wanted to aspire to.

It makes me think, I guess? I knew it was a cool job. I knew that there were many envious people that would love to run Marketing for Food Network. But to me it was never enough. And it was never not enough. Even doing Food Network Star for 11 years. People think that it's so the “ultimate”, being on TV. But it was just like, it was my jo. It was part of my job.

So being successful obviously means attaining a certain amount of professional success and money. And money is good because we all like options and money affords us options and privacy I would say. Which is nice when you live in Brooklyn.     

So I think for me, I'm too hard on myself to think that I've ever arrived. I feel pretty strongly about being a good mom and I think being self employed, I have more flexibility with my schedule. And to be honest I'm just much less self important. I think when I was at Food Network, I had meetings, I was just double booked all day long and it's just like, what was I thinking? Like, taking a beat and think, you know. I just feel like I was a bit self important with regards to the frenetic schedule and it translated into how I parented. And I think the last two years, talk about mindfulness, I wake up like 5:30am and I sit by myself for a half hour with a candle and the little news or music and I get centered and then I'm with my daughter for the next 45 minutes and that's like our time.

But that the mornings are our time and I have a relationship with my kids that I never imagined I would working full time. And that is because I am able to control my schedule now. And that to me is one of the greatest things about being an entrepreneur. . That's successful in itself, I would say. So I think being a good mom.

Yeah, I do actually. And I never thought I'd be this person, but I am the person that leaves their house three days a week and travels 45 minutes to the gym, with a big bag slung over their shoulders to go boxing.            

So I found this place and it was very openly right when I was transitioning out of Food Network and feeling a little wounded and a little lost and I hadn't started F&Co yet. And there's nothing that could have kept me square like this gym. So I have a trainer and I box –circuit training and boxing. It’s called Mendez. It’s on 26th Street, right above Madison Square Park. And I just met this phenomenal guy. I met him in Paris actually. But that's life when you're open and can receive. He just came to me and then, so I’m there three days a week. And I use this grungy shower and sweating and punching… and it saved me for sure. It saved me.

So when you don't know what to do, then just do one thing. You can be so overwhelmed by what's next. What do I do when I leave Food Network? Where am I going to go? Even F&Co can overwhelm me. Is it gonna work? I have investors. It's like, just do what pumps you. An what pumps me is starting my day working out there. And from there I can do anything.

It's a big one. I mean, raising good little citizens. I feel like it's my most important job. [Raising] kids that don't take up the whole curb when they walked down the street. They move, we call, a single file. We single file because there's people coming. Just thinking about others and being aware of your physical place in the world. And being kind. Being kind and hardworking.

Bobby Flay, that's what he taught his daughter. Kind and hardworking. He’s taught her many things. Those are the most important things he raised his kid with. He raised his kid with kindness and hardworking and I 100 percent agree.

I feel like the state of the world is a big one, you know. It's a little scary now, especially if you watch Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, that's a little frightening. It's frightening because it’s sort of what's happening now with regards to people's rights and the far right nationalism on steroids. It’s Margaret Atwood's book, but now Hulu, I think they've done an amazing job with it, but t that's a little scary, you know, dystopian view of society. I think the world is a scary place, but things that make me hopeful… I'm really into one trend which is Ag-tech.

So Agricultural Technology… You've got technology affecting everything from plant based burgers –[for example] impossible burgers are a result of technology, food tech. But ag-tech, to me, is going to be a great equalizer. And an example of that is vertical farming. So you're able to take 100 acres, that create, let’s say leafy greens.

You're able to take a footprint of one acre, grow up and produce the same amount. But you're also able to do it in a really desolate areas. So, in cities where there are food deserts, the closest thing you can get for lunches are a bag of cheetos and a orange crush. Now there will be access to vegetables. So this is a great equalizer. The idea that we help the environment by taking less carbon footprint and we also help create access.           

I mean this to me, it's game changing and I also feel like people are going to start to become farmers. New appliances are no longer going to be a coffe maker. It's actually going to be a little farming unit for your kitchen. Ikea just made a big investment in this technology.

So the idea that, when you're hungry, a tomato is a luxury, right? And it's just because it's just so far away from what reality is for a lot of impoverished people. But this [ag-tech] becomes a great equalizer. There's a company called Plenty that Jeff Bezos just invested in and they are vertical farms. There’s a big one, Aero Farms in New Jersey. There are a few great companies that are doing it. And that makes me hopeful. That access to good food - that is not a luxury. And doing it so that it's better for the environment, I mean hell yeah.

I think the best piece of advice that I got, if I could pass on, is just don't pay attention to the noise. Just trust yourself and your mission. There are so many reasons why you could be down and you don't think that things will work, and maybe your mission isn't true a or timely or relevant. But if you believe in it, just take away the noise and really focus. If you know that it's right and you believe in it, then just go for it. And I think that's the hardest part - just waking up every day and knowing that success is going to look a lot different for me than what it did at Food Network or what made me successful there.  

Just trust in what you're doing, and don't get distracted by the noise. Because it's very noisy!

###

Luke Storey is probably one of the most extreme and obsessive, yet astoundingly knowledgeable, intuitive and charismatic people out there in the biohacking world. But above all, his entrepreneurial drive has been apparent along his tumultuous journey to where he is today.

From a sordid past of substance abuse and drug dealing (that he speaks about with refreshing honesty and humor), to complete sobriety and building two successful businesses that he runs today, Luke is transforming his propensity for addictive behaviors into a platform to expose the world to the most innovative, (sometimes wacky), yet effective practices for achieving “the ultimate lifestyle” by optimizing health, wellness and consciousness.

A former fashion stylist in Hollywood, Luke created the first-ever intensive training-based fashion school, School of Style to teach aspiring fashion stylists how to navigate the industry. And he continues to co-manage this business as he pursues growing his true passion through The Life Stylist podcast. And there is sure to be much more ahead of him, including classes and retreats, as he expands himself as a brand.

Below is our conversation about how working for Aerosmith inspired Luke to stay sober, his 3-phase business model for success, his fast-track to monetization, and what his most valuable biohacks are.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder of The Life Stylist Podcast

• Founder of School of Style

• (bio below)

• Beginning a career as a Hollywood fashion stylist

• The Life Stylist Podcast and how it came to fruition

• Profitability

• A history of substance abuse, drug dealing and how an encounter working for Aerosmith inspired him to stay committed to sobriety

• What made School of Style so successful

• Luke's 3-stage business model for reaching profitability super quickly

• How to get major sponsors for a podcast

• Lukes favorite bio-hacks

• Valuing success and what creates success

• The importance of conscious intentions

• Advice for other entrepreneurs 

Luke Storey is a former celebrity fashion stylist- turned public speaker, podcaster, and entrepreneur, who has spent the past 20 years relentlessly searching the world over to design the ultimate lifestyle through his extensive, and sometimes obsessive, personal research and development.

Using The Life Stylist Podcast as his delivery platform, Luke continues to share his strategies for healing, happiness, and high-performance living each week so that listeners can use this knowledge to design their ultimate lifestyle. 

Luke's show features the biggest experts in the fields of health, spirituality, and personal development. Past guests have included experts like Dave Asprey, David Wolfe, Ben Greenfield, Jack Kruse, John Gray and Daniel Vitalis.

Luke’s show covers an ever-expanding range of topics including sex and relationships, yoga, meditation, smart drugs, health myths and medical conspiracies, spirituality, food and supplementation, herbalism, alternative medicine, and biohacking technologies and tactics.

As a public speaker, Luke has appeared on stage with current thought leaders such as Tim Ferris, and Neil Strauss. He is known for his raw, down to earth delivery, and sometimes extreme health practices.

Luke currently works one on one with private clients and continues to act as CEO at School of Style, the world’s most prominent school for fashion stylists, which he founded in 2008.

You can find Luke and his work at: http://www.lukestorey.com

On social media find him at @mrlukestorey on Twitter and Facebook, and @lukestorey on Instagram.

God, yeah, there is a lot going on when you put it like that. Where do I start?  I do things so intensely that I create a lot of work out of projects that could be somewhat simple. For example, the recording that I did today with Light Watkins, my guest… I was running a little bit behind and I could have just set up two microphones and just had a conversation and called it a day. But if he's gonna be here, I'm going to make a YouTube video with my video camera. I'm going to post to my Facebook group on my iPad and I have a spare iPhone that I use for Instagram-Live, like I'm doing right now on this one.

And so I kind of just maximize everything, which is what you're seeing. So yeah, there's a lot of productivity going on. But The Life Stylist Podcast - I launched the first one June 6th, 2016, so I'm creeping up in a few months here on my two year mark. And the idea with the podcast was to share with the world, all of the things (and there are many of the things) that I've learned about health and wellness, on the physical plane as well as spiritual and metaphysical things that I've been exploring and practicing for the past 21 years. So there are all these people that I've read and listened to another podcast and listen to an audio programs and watch their videos. And I know that a lot of people are largely unaware of some of these people because many of them are on the obscure side.

 And if you're not really into that chosen topic, be it meditation or biohacking or whatever, you'd likely never come across their work. Especially because my background is in the fashion and entertainment industry. So a lot of my “scene” and following on social media were largely unaware of some of the things that I was into on the side. So it was a big sort of pivot that I did at 45 years old and just decided to kind of reinvent myself, even though I was into all of this stuff privately. I never tried to make a business out of it or anything like that. So the podcast was my first foray into seeing how the public would respond to my point of view on building the ultimate lifestyle, and just sharing the things that I've discovered that really helped me over the years.

 You know, it is just really good timing. And we can talk about the fashion school that I own too, because that's another huge part of my life. But when I started the fashion school, no one really knew what a "fashion stylist" was. And I had been doing that professionally for 10 years at that point. And when I started the school, I started to see that there was this trend where more and more people wanted to do that as a career. But there was nowhere to go to really learn how to do it.

No one in the industry would let you in if you were an outsider. It was very insulated. And, I didn't know it at the time, but I did my first class on November 8th, 2008 and November 9th, 2008 was the launch of a little show called the Rachel Zoe Project.

 So yeah, it was crazy, right? I, I didn't know that until years later. I started the school and I was like, wow, all of a sudden everyone wants to do what I do for a living.

And it's worked much the same way when I made the decision that I wanted to teach people about all the things that I've learned through my podcast.  I realized everyone in the world, and especially a lot of younger people, (I'm 47 now), so there are people that I'm like, wow, there are kids that are in their late teens, early twenties or whatever. And they're super into herbalism and ayurveda and acupuncture and float tanks and biohacking and meditation and ayahuasca, and all of this stuff. I mean, it's like taking care of yourself now is trendy, which is weird and great at the same time. It’s really good timing because I'm an OG with so much of this stuff being into it for so many years, I just take it for granted. Like “duh” everyone [must know] this stuff I know. But I'm realizing that I actually have a pretty rich body of knowledge and experience – that also happens to be really popular at this moment. So it's been another fortuitous kind of timing thing for me to pursue this as a business rather than just [using my knowledge to just] improve my own life and the lives of my close friends and family.

School of Style is like my first born baby, and I feel so fortunate for the timing, and fortunate that a year into it I got a business partner -- my partner Lauren Messiah who's just been hugely instrumental in growing the business and sort of filled in the gaps for the things that I was lacking as a business owner and entrepreneur.

But the bottom line is I'm not a great employee. It’s hard for me to be motivated to help someone else build their vision, you know. And so I was an assistant fashion stylist for a few years and I was pursuing music, so I wasn't really motivated to become a big stylist myself. I've watched many of my peers like Monica Rose and people like that, who are now literally the biggest stylists in the world; and I was like, good for them. I don't want to be that stressed out. So I was just playing music. I’d go on tour and then I'd work as an assistant stylist. But because it wasn't my dream, I enjoyed that role because I still got to pursue my dream and be creative and make music and be doing my meditation retreats and all this stuff I was doing.

That was before. Yeah, that was a little earlier in the journey. I got sober when I was 26 years old in 1997. Actually it was just 21 years on February 15th. That's the anniversary of the first day I woke up and didn't put anything in my veins. Other than non-mind-altering herbs – I still put a lot sometimes intravenously. [laughing because it’s true!] Strangely enough.

But I was working on myself and that's really how I became a stylist in the first place because I got sober. I mean, I had dropped out of high school and the only jobs I ever had were being a waiter at which I became totally unemployable at a certain point. I just literally couldn't show up anywhere and not be too wasted to perform even menial tasks. And then it was a drug dealer.

I drove prostitutes around and collected their money on calls. I did really weird stuff. Most of it illegal. You know what -- it's funny, I say School of Style was my first entrepreneurial venture, but actually dealing drugs was my first one. It's kind of funny, but I was really good at marketing, so I sold weed and mushrooms and stuff and I had really good strategies looking back. I'm like, I was actually pretty smart because what I would do is, I wouldn't just sell one grade of weed. I would have five or six different levels at all times. So I’d have really cheap, inexpensive, we used to call it like gas tank, weed from Mexico. Literally. Sometimes it would smell like gas because it was smuggled in a gas tank, I mean super toxic, moldy, really crappy weed. And then I'd have the most high-end, chronic, like legit weed. And then I'd have a few middle ranges.

And so I was a really popular dealer in Hollywood. I sold to a lot of the big famous musicians in the neighborhood that will remain unnamed for anonymity and protection. But yeah, I was really good at and that was really good at marketing. I would go to parties and I would post up in the middle of the party and I would just start blazing huge joints and just get a huge crowd around me. And then I started passing out my little cards or whatever and my phone would be blown up. So that was my first foray. But I digress.

I did eventually clean up my act. But how I got into being a stylist was… I had a friend that I'd met in the early nineties, when I was doing a little modeling and stuff, and her name is Keki Mingus, and she's still around but it's no longer a stylist.

But she was a stylist, and I was homeless when I got sober because that's how I rolled, and I didn't have anywhere to stay. So she offered me a housesitting gig to take care of her dog while she went on tour for two or three months with Tina Turner. And so I took over her really beautiful apartment in Koreatown here in LA, and it was like the nicest apartment I think I'd ever been in, let alone slept in! It was like Beverly Hillbillies, y’know? I was like oh my God, it's like a two bedroom just for her? I was so ghetto as the time. But as fate would have it, as I was staying there in her place and almost killed her dog and I mean, I could go on for an hour just with all the mishaps of early sobriety…

I was so damaged and deranged from harming myself for so long. I was barely functional. But, luckilyy for me, she didn't know anyone else in LA because she just moved here from New York. So she came back in town. I was still saying there. I got a little apartment. She was like, “Oh, guess what? I got booked as Aerosmith’s stylist”. And she landed [Aerosmith as a] client. So here I am like two, three months sober. I can barely put a sentence together. I'm just totally brain-dead, totally incapable of taking care of myself as an adult because I never had, really. And she, God bless her, was desperate enough to hire me to be her assistant. So I jumped right in.  I was a musician, so I was playing in bands and then my day job was working for Aerosmith.

It was just the weirdest life ever. What was really cool and another beautiful gift from the universe: They happened to be sober at the time,

Yeah! They were some of my childhood heroes. I grew up in the seventies, so it was Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, ACDC, those were the bands.

Isn’t that crazy? And it actually really helped me and inspire me because I felt like such a square and a nerd for quitting drugs, even though it was so ludicrous because I was actually such a loser because I did drugs. I felt like that was part of my identity and I was like, I'm a musician, I'm Hollywood. I'm cool. I live in the underground. I was really into the dark side, you know, the crime and bad neighborhoods, just danger and weird vibes and weird toxic stuff.

And so to see people that were successful and wealthy and living the dream – they were huge at that time. This was like the late nineties. They were having a comeback and I'll never forget Keki - it was really sweet of her. One day she and I went over to the sunset marquis, which is where we would like post up and that's where the band stayed and we had a big suite to keep all the wardrobe and it was my job to kind of hang around there. And I even slept there sometimes because I was homeless [he laughs reminiscing almost in disbelief] I’d crash out in their room and order filet mignon room service. I mean you can't understand how dope that was for me, coming from where I came from, you know? Anyway, one day she's like, hey, we're over here. It's kind of a down day.

I'm just hanging out with Steven in his bungalow if you want to come hang out and really meet him. Because I'd been working with them, but it was like, “here's your pants, sir!”  You know, I never interfaced with them or got to know them or anything. And it was one of the most cool moments in my life. And I went over and just hung out with him for a few hours and talked about how to be sober and play in a band and that it's actually really cool to be sober. You don't have to be embarrassed. He would tell me you don’t have to be ashamed, and I could still play in bands, and be rock and roll and be cool and have tattoos but just not be a junkie. And it was revolutionary to me at the time and it was really inspiring. If and when I run into Steven, I can't wait to share that with him, that he really helped me because I was like, wow, I could go play in a band and still be kind of normal, but not behave in those ways that I was, and I didn't have to live in the darkness in order to be cool or to be rock and roll.

So, that's how I got into styling. And then I worked for her and a number of other stylists for years until eventually started picking up my own clients and was working with Kanye West and The Foo Fighters and No Doubt and all these big bands through the mid to late 2000’s. Anyways, 10 years into my career, it was when digital music kind of crashed.

And so a lot of the budgets on those types of jobs that I was working on started to just get killed because record sales died. That was like Napster and all that stuff. When music went digital, the music industry just tanked. And so I was like, shit, they're not giving me enough money on my job, these music videos and stuff, to hire an assistant. So I started hiring interns that I didn't have to pay. And I was like, oh this is dope for them. I bring them on some huge music video. They get to learn and get that experience, and then I get help that the label won't pay for. And so I was like, God, so many kids apply to these job postings that I would put on craigslist. I literally would have to run home from work and like shut the ad down. All the emails would like break the internet – it was so many people.

And I thought, hmm, there's this demand there. There's no one to teach them. No one of the fashion schools taught styling. No other stylists [are teaching styling, which is a] very competitive industry. So I thought, you know what, I had been doing real estate seminars and boot camps and things like that. And as someone who really didn't do well in school, I just hated it. Our education system is not in alignment with the way my brain works, but I really like seminars. I like deep dives, going in for a weekend and doing 12 hours a day and just go hardcore and just walking away with the information and the ability to apply it. So I thought, oh, I could do my own bootcamps or my own seminars where I give people my 10 years worth of experience in a really short period of time and then actually connect them with jobs instead of just sending them out on their own. And so I started. Yeah, I had my first class. I know there's like 12 people in there and I had a janky little website. It looked like a freaking Nigerian money laundering scheme. I mean it was totally not legit at all.

So it was about 10 years or so into my career. So we're in our tenth year now. Yeah. And I can tell you more about how that's evolved because it's pretty amazing what we've been able to accomplish and I'm very grateful for it. But anyway, I launched the class and I was like, oh my God, this is working. And so I started adding more dates and then I moved, you know, the first house I borrowed like a cool house in the Hollywood hills and a friend of mine owned as a vacation rental. And so he let me borrow it and I did a couple of classes there. Then I moved into like a real estate office in Culver City, which was super ratchet. And then eventually because I was signed with the agency at Smashbox Studios, I started renting space from them so I could bring the students into these super high end legit photo studios and there are celebrities running around doing photo shoots.

And it was a really cool experience for the students, and School of Style just started really blowing up and it was just largely due to timing and scarcity of that information. And I was able to not only teach students how to get into the industry and really behind the curtain, the behind the scenes of how it really works. But then I would contact all of my really famous stylist friends and get them to hire our students. And that was like, that was the real power move. Cause I could then use that in my marketing. Now my student roles in from North Dakota at 20 years old, doesn't even know anything about fashion, and the next week she's on a Beyonce video or working with Kim Kardashian or whatever.

I'm a really dedicated person when I put my mind to something. Once I decide I'm going to do something, there's not a lot that can get in my way. So that's part of it. Another thing was just timing and I think my initial vision of just realizing that there was this huge demand in the industry and that none of the fashion schools we're serving that demand at all, and still to this day really aren't. So I even went and worked at FITEM for awhile as an instructor here, which is kind of like the LA equivalent of FIT or Parsons or something like that. And that was years into School of Style – I just got offered the job and I thought it'd be a personal challenge. As someone that dropped out of high school, didn't go to college; I'm going to go be an instructor or professor at a fashion school, the biggest fashion school on the west coast.

I was like, that's a cool thing to explore. So I went and did that and realized that the model of teaching, of traditional fashion schools, is antiquated and ineffective and just the way that they teach is --it's not real. It's theoretical, it's not based in like the way things currently are in the industry.

And then also another thing that contributed to our success was a, as I mentioned earlier, the relationships that I had within the industry from just being in there and grinding and meeting so many people that I was able to be the bridge between our students and the industry in a way that no fashion school would be able to do because they're a big corporate entity. And I'm just this Guy Luke like, oh everyone loves Luke Story. He's cool. Yeah, he's gonna send me a bunch of interns . So the students are really happy. The stylists and the styling agencies really responded well to what I was doing because I was then sending them assistants and interns that had the right kind of training.

So I identified what those more cloaked and nuance skills weren't emphasized, teaching those to make our students more marketable to the veterans in the industry. So that was part of it. And then thirdly and lastly, I would say that I was just really fortunate to get a great business partner a year into starting the school.

Then my partner Lauren came to take the classes, as a student, she emailed me Sunday night: hey, you probably don't remember me but I was in your class this weekend.

 [She offered a lot of blunt constructive criticism like] you have no social media presence, and I would really love to intern for you and help you. And I was like, word? Shit. She kind of convinced me that I needed her help. So I hired her first as an intern working on styling jobs and went to school. And then I started paying her as an employee of the school. And then eventually, she just brought so much value, that it became clear that she was more than an employee and then became my business partner, and also eventually my girlfriend. We were in a relationship for five years. So yeah, I think that the value of just getting really lucky in getting someone who was so smart and talented and such a hard worker, and someone that was so [complimentary to my own] skill set and our talents are so opposite that we complete each other in a powerful way in terms of a business. That said, when you're also that different from someone, it's also very difficult.

That was the third piece -- having a really bad-ass, smart woman as a partner who could really take vision to a place in many cases that I didn't really see it going

Well, you know what, I'm so grateful and fortunate that I had School of Style to support me through the transition and I still work at School of Style, although I'm now going to relinquish, my CEO title and status of the company, and Lauren is going to take over as CEO shortly, just because it's more in alignment with her brand and she's still in the fashion and I'm not. I’ve totally dipped out of the industry. So, I was really fortunate when I wanted to do my podcast because I didn't have like a corporate job that I still had to have. I had flexibility with my schedule. As long as I just showed up at School of Style and did what was required, I had enough income from the school to pay all my living expenses and also to fund some of the initial expenses of the podcast when it was in the red, as it is for a while when you start a new thing like that.

So I'm really fortunate to have had that backup. I see a lot of our students at School of Style, or people that want to become, an influencer or personality or a content producer, etc. And they're in a career that they don't like, that's not fulfilling or that is indeed stressing them out or just driving them crazy and they can't escape because they need that paycheck. And there's this perpetual sort of hamster wheel that they get stuck on. And luckily for me that wasn't the case. I was able to somehow squeeze out the time and energy from the school to go focus on my podcast. And thankfully I had a business partner that, although she's gotten really annoyed with me because I haven't been present a lot and we had to work that out, we made some arrangements that made that more fair.

But she was supportive of me because she knows this is my dream and I love talking about spirituality and meditation and health. And I mean this is like my heart. Whereas fashion is cool and I appreciate it as an art form, but I don't wake up in the morning and look at vogue.com. I wake up in the morning and read a meditation book. So The Life Stylist podcast in terms of a business model… I think I've taken enough online courses and I've worked with a couple of business coaches. I got the concept that I would have to have this business go in different phases. And so it was never my intention to make the podcast, in and of itself, “the business” or “the brand”. The business is me. My ass, this mug, Luke Storey, whatever that ends up evolving into.

And then I had a strategy that I worked out with my business coach at the time it was Dave Asprey, the Founder and CEO of Bulletproof Coffee.

And so he had a successful podcast. I was working with him doing executive coaching. And [Dave Asprey said]  if you've got a bunch of recorded, put out 10 in a row for 10 days. And that way it gives you leverage with iTunes. You get a lot of downloads really fast and then you could go really quickly and tell big name guests, oh yeah, I've already got 10 shows out. Those ten shows came out in 10 days, so I kind of gamed the system a little bit and got a little push and a little momentum. And once I pulled the trigger and did that, that first phase was just consistently, (and anyone who does content will tell you) consistency is king. And I knew that, and so I just made a commitment every Tuesday. I don't care if it's the freaking zombie apocalypse. I'm putting out a show every Tuesday.

No matter what. I don't care. Literally, if I'm lying on my death bed, I will sit there and do an iPhone voice memo. “Ok, today's podcast is…” and click submit to iTunes. I'm not missing it. So I got the consistency, but there was no chance of monetization because I had no credibility and no audience. So I knew I've got to put out really high quality content with some degree of consistency and regularity in order to build a loyal enough following where I've got enough downloads to then facilitate bringing on advertisers on the show that pay. So how I transitioned from spending $2,500 to $3,000 a month out-of-pocket to produce my podcast, (which is how much it costs to do my show and the things that support it). It's really expensive because I do it right. You could do it really cheap or for free.

 [But] you're going to have a crappy podcast. And I'm just too competitive. I want to sound like, I want to be up there with Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and Rich Roll and Dave [Asprey]. I want to have one of the biggest podcasts in the world. So it needs to sound like that. And in fact, I’ve got to say my sound, even when I started, was better than some other big shows. Because I’m a musician, so I understand microphones and all that stuff. So thank God I knew how to do that.

So anyway –getting the content out. Another thing I did strategy-wise that I think was useful was I started running ads on my show from the beginning. Even though they weren't paying. So, what I was doing is I was giving brands free ads.

No, I don't ask for permission. I ask for forgiveness.

Here's the deal. So the first thing I did is get all these as big names - as many big names as I can. So I went for stretch goals. Tried to get all the biggest people in health and spirituality and stuff. And I got a few big names starting out of the gate which helped. But then I started reaching out to all the brands for all the products I use. I mean there's my clear light sauna. I have a cupboard full of probably a hundred supplements that are really high quality. I vetted them. I know all the best stuff. Maybe it's my drug past – I find the best dealer in town so I know who makes the best, the best vitamin K2, to who makes the best sauna or the best this, the best that. I pride myself in researching and finding the best people, so I started reaching out to the brands that I'm a consumer of, saying, hey, I want to do an affiliate deal with you.

So I’d sign up as an affiliate with all those brands, like Bulletproof Coffee for example. They were one of the first ads that I ran, so there was a multi-faceted strategy there. A - I wanted the audience to get indoctrinated into me having ads at the beginning of the show from the beginning. I didn't want to spring it on them after they're addicted to the show after the first year, thinking like, oh, now he's getting greedy. I'm like, no, dude, there's ads on my show. I'm doing this shit for free. Also, it made my show sound more legitimate. Does the brand give a shit that I'm giving them free advertising? No, they love it. But I made a little money. It was a weak monetization, but it was the beginning. [Eventually it became] so if somebody bought some bulletproof coffee, I made $20 or something. As the audience grew, the affiliate commissions that I get from those brands started to go up. And now I get paid - I just made $800! A couple years ago that was $8, you know what I mean? And I'm like, wow, give me a couple more years. that'll be $8,000.

I'm really excited because next week I'm taking on a McDonald's and Coca-Cola as advertisers. [Jokingly, we laugh.]

No, I think because my subject matter is so niche, my lane is narrow in a sense because I'm not talking about sports or politics or how to make a go-cart or whatever. I'm very much focused on health and spirituality. So the brands that have approached me have been in alignment so far.

My newest advertiser that just cold called me is Health IQ, and they’re a life insurance company. And I was like, yeah, I don't know, that sounds kind of corporate and weird. I'm usually advertising supplements or health devices or something. But I got on a call with one of their chiefs and he explained what they do, and the way it works is there are a broker or an agency and they shop around for a life insurance policy for you.

But what’s sIck, and what's in alignment with my brand, is you get up to a 58 percent discount on your life insurance if you're super healthy. So you can send them your gym membership, your fitbit statistics of how much you jog. If you're a vegan, it's cheaper. So it actually incentivizes the customer to take better care of themselves because it's less of a burden on the company issuing the insurance because you're less likely to die. So I was like, that's actually a business model that I really want to support. So even though it's very kind of corporate and medical, I wasn’t sure if it was going to fit, but once I talked to them and found out more [ it worked out]. But that was probably the most left field.

But there will come a time when someone's like, hey, we want to run ads on your show for this thing that I don't really believe in or is it healthy. Or if there's some lack of integrity there, then there's no way I could do that because I'm not trying to be like that. I mean, it sounds self-righteous, but I literally just couldn't live with myself to do that. I just have been working on my own integrity for too long to just take money for something that doesn't align with me inside.

But, the other piece of when the business turned more profitable, to your original question, is about six months in… I had been running these free ads that no one knew were free. And then I started reaching out to some of the brands that I had run free ads for. I said, hey, I've been running these ads for free. How are sales looking? And they're like, dude, shit, you actually convert. And so they could see my conversions because my audience is very, as we see in the industry, very compliant.

You have like people that are “popular” on social media and then you have people who are “influencers”. Being popular and having influence are different things. It turns out, for whatever reason, based on my delivery and personality and enthusiasm and expertise, my audience is very compliant. And I'm very influential when I say I've found the best thing, buy it! They buy it.

You got the JOOV! Doesn't it feel good? It's so good for your skin.

It literally, has all these white papers on how it removes wrinkles. It heals scars. It is as it prevents acne. It's insane.  Red light therapy is absolutely scientifically vetted up and down. You cannot disprove its efficacy. It is just absolutely 100 percent legit.

And then the next phase in terms of monetization was to roll out a coaching program where I worked with people one on one, which I've been doing for a long time anyway. I just never talked about it. That’s still a means to an end.

I knew that it wasn't scalable nor really sustainable to do the coaching, but, it helps support the other things that I'm doing. And so I'm still kind of in Phase 2 there, and coaching as part of that. And then another part of phase two is speaking at as many events as I can be in other podcasts, sharing my expertise as an individual.

And then I have my first online class coming out this summer, which is kind of moving into more Phase 3, where there's a paid online communities and online courses and doing paid retreats and things like that, which I'll get into.

So the first class that I'm going to be presenting it's a course that teaches every single thing I've ever learned to minimize the negative effects of air travel, car travel, hotel travel. Because I love to travel, but it just wrecks me. So for the past 10 years I've been adding all of these different devices and supplements and practices to my protocol and I put all of it into this crazy online course. So I'll see how that one goes and if people respond, which I think they will, then I’ll start making more of those and do things that are more scalable. Because I find with the coaching, it's fun and it's rewarding to really help someone move through blocks on different levels, metaphysically and physically. But you can still only help one person at a tIme. And I know I have more to offer than just getting on a skype with someone once a week and kind of guiding them through a period in their life. I’d like to be able to do that for 10,000 people at once, you know. And also the retreats, like going somewhere really special. Bali or Costa Rica or Hawaii or wherever, and having a full immersion for a couple of weeks where I take people and sequester them from their phones and their lives and teach them the the ultimate lifestyle in person where they get to do it more experientially.

Absolutely, my number one non-negotiable is meditation. I do that twice a day. And it's free. That's the ultimate biohack.

I’ll get people that email me asking, How can someone improve their health and well-being for, for cheap? And I'm like, dude, meditate! Meditation is the most free and most powerful thing that you can do to benefit your life. So I literally meditate every single morning without fail for at least 20 minutes, usually about 20 to 30 minutes with the exception of days where I'm going to my 9AM kundalini yoga class.

So meditation number one. I would say number two,( and I'm going to throw in one that is not cheap or free), it's $7,500 and that's a device called the Ampcoil. I feel like I have a freaking Ferrari in the garage and I've only just turned the key on, I’ve only just revved it up a couple times. It's got a lot of potential in terms of the different things that you can use it for. But the Ampcoil is a combination of what's called biofeedback and PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field). So, essentially it sends sound and vibration frequencies into your body through a magnetic coil. That's a really great delivery system to get things deep into your cells. And the frequencies do different things from nourishing organs to balancing your chakras and your energetic system, to cleansing pathogens and metals and things like that.

So it's like a cleansing device, a nourishing device, and also a very transformative consciousness device because of what it does to the nervous system and your brain waves

Lastly, I mean honestly it's kind of superficial, but drinking a Bulletproof coffee after meditation. There's an asterisk there -- after meditation. Don't drink caffeine and then try to meditate. It's not gonna happen. So you have to wait until after. But when I started on Bulletproof coffee and my friends make fun of me because I've been the poster child of Bulletproof and I've done a lot of work with them and stuff.

But when Dave Asprey kind of invented the idea, slash got the idea from these mountain people in the Himalayas that make a yak butter tea, whIch is essentially like a hot herbal drink with really good healthy fats in it. He saw that they had to sustain energy and he thought, maybe I could get healthy fats into coffee and make a delicious coffee. That gives you this amazing sustaining energy and all these healthy fats. When I got on that coffee, which was probably six years ago my whole health just totally changed and I stopped craving carbohydrates and I stopped craving sugar, and it just made me kind of by default to ketogenic.

So I pretty much stopped eating gluten. I cut down on sugar. I lost a bunch of weight. I had this crazy energy all day. So whether or not one would drink a bulletproof coffee per se, or just a really great herbal elixir hot drink. The point is you want something medicinal which caffeine and the coffee bean has medicinal or some kind of herb or mushroom. But combining it with the healthy fats like the Brain Octane Oil, which is a derivative of coconut oil. It's a, it's a certain type of MCT.

It gives you such mental power and physical energy and it lasts for a really long time and you don't get that anxiety and the crash and the mood swings that a lot of people get from coffee.

Oh, that's a great question.

I think for me, success is relevant to and contingent on how much I'm able to love and accept myself.

That's helped me gauge my own success. When I look in the mirror, how much shame is still there. You know? How much self-loathing and all of that nastiness is still present. The more that I can overcome that, the more successful I feel inside. So success is not so much for me about what's accomplished in manifest externally, and it's not even about what I do. Like, oh, I do this cool podcast and I run this fashion school…. It's more about who I am becoming, the man that I'm becoming and that I have integrity that. I am who I say I am and that I'm real.

I'd much rather be respected than liked. I don't really care if people like me. And just what some feedback that I get a lot, which makes me feel successful is people say, man, I love your delivery because it's so real. You're so authentic. I get that specific feedback so often and that's such a high compliment. It warms my heart to hear.

So I think that when I am able to care about myself and respect and love myself enough to be authentic and real and vulnerable, that feels successful to me because I'm becoming someone that I'm able to really accept. And I acknowledged my faults and weaknesses to myself and outwardly to others, but I also appreciate the talents that I have, the skills that I have, and the things that I've been able to overcome in my life.

Yeah. And I've struggled a lot in my life where just being addicted to approval and wanting to be popular and be liked and to be accepted and all that stuff. And I used to be such a people pleaser and a doormat in so many ways and just going along with what other people wanted a lot when I was younger and it's just like, I'm not having that anymore. I know who I am. And how I want to spend my time, and the people with whom I want to spend it. And so the more it can really just be true to myself and kind of have a hard line there, I think I feel more accomplished. But then the funny thing is, the more I'm grounded in that state of being, the more success I have on the outside with business and finance, things like that!

It's like things just sort of start to come my way and it happens without much effort. There really is such a correlation between, how much outer success, material success I really feel at the core that I deserve, not in an entitled way, but it's an earned deserving ,that the more shows up, because the universe is like, oh really? You think you're the shit? All right, we're gonna pay you like you're the shit.

Well, the intention is everything. I think in any endeavor, whether it be entrepreneurial, business or otherwise, even entering into any kind of relationship, be it romantic, friendship, a business, whatever it is, the intention is everything. And that's going to determine not only the outcome of success, but the outcome of inner fulfillment and reward for that venture. In other words, if I'm entering into a situation because I want to get something out of it, I'm going to lose. Because the inherent, a quality of selfishness can never be satisfied no matter what milestone you get to. You feel like you've never arrived, because that selfish, insecure, rapacious, taker energy is present. The number one thing would be setting the intention as I want to contribute as much value as possible in any given situation. And that also means that I want to receive value and compensation out of it too.

So that would be my advice - setting the intention and contributing and giving. But also in addition to that, and this is really a big one that I've had to teach so many School of Style students… It sounds so corny, like every entrepreneurial seminar speaker says something to this effect, but the paralysis of analysis will kill you. You just, you just have to do it. Launching your thing and doing it wrong is a million times more successful than waiting and planning and planning and planning and then doing it right. Because no matter how long you wait and plan to launch your venture, it's going to come out sloppy anyways.

So why don't you just start now and just be hella-sloppy and just totally suck. But at least you’d be someone who's doing it and sucking instead of someone who's talking about it, planning about it, trying to be a perfectionist at something [that never happens].

### 

Meghan Asha is living her dream. She is an exuberant woman, obsessed with food, wellness and beauty products, and she has built a platform to bring these brands to market and help them grow. But her business plan wasn’t always so clear.

Today, working in her sprawling SoHo loft office, Meghan gauges her happiness and her success from the vantage point of her 90-year-old self. And it was insight from her 90-year-old self that gave her the perspective to make her very first step towards what would become FounderMade.

In my conversation with Meghan below, it is so apparent to me that she lives every day in a state of wonder and excitement for what she is building and how far she’s come. Every entrepreneur should be so lucky to operate from this state. And with her advice, you probably can be.

Below, please enjoy this refreshing conversation with Meghan Asha about how embracing uncertainty and taking small steps have led her to create the business of her dreams.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder & CEO of FounderMade

• Entrepreneur Magazine Contributor

• Former Hedge Fund executive

• FounderMade's mission and the big brands they have helped to grow

• From hedge funds to finding happiness to turning happiness into a business

• Conversations with Meghan's 90-year-old self

• Little steps that add up to living your dream life

• Learning lessons and growing from them

• The importance of communication and transparency

• FounderMade's higher purpose

• Meghan's personal wellness routine

• How Meghan integrate's wellness into her business

• How do you measure success?

• Meghan's 10 year plan

• Advice for entrepreneurs beginning new businesses today

Meghan Asha is the CEO of FounderMade, a platform and conference series that connects best-in-class consumer brands to retailers, distributors and investors. Under her leadership, FounderMade has partnered with innovative brands including Estee Lauder, RXBar, BulletProof Coffee, Vital Proteins, Target and Starbucks. 

Inspired by her entrepreneur father, Meghan has always had a passion for building and empowering companies. Over her career, she’s experienced entrepreneurship from every angle: She’s worked as an analyst for a venture capital firm, interviewed leaders of technology companies for a weekly internet talk show, and built her own digital media platform.

With the firm belief that entrepreneurs need support and connection, she began bringing together business contacts from those earlier jobs as part of an intimate dinner series — which eventually evolved into FounderMade.  

When she's not helping consumer brands thrive, you can often catch Meghan on national TV shows like CNN, The Today Show, Fox Business News and QVC. She has also been profiled and quoted as an expert and entrepreneur in business publications like the New York Times, Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Meghan currently serves as an advisor and investor in several consumer product and technology startups and is a partner at FounderMade Fund. She received her BS from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

FounderMade + Meghan Asha has been granted numerous awards and accolades, including:

· Entrepreneur Magazine Contributor

· Alive Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Wellness

· Featured Entrepreneur in Gary Vaynerchuk + PureWow’s Captain Crush It RoundTable

· Tory Burch’s #EmbraceAmbition Entrepreneur

· Inc. Magazine “The Death of the Tradeshow”

· WWD “Beauty Companies Mingle with Potential Investors at Foundermade Event”

· ELLE “How This Fitness Studio Led by Ex-Cons Ended Up in Saks”

· AlleyWatch “The Founder Stories You Need to Know From FounderMade”

· The Daily FRONT ROW“Juice Beauty, BirchBox, StyleSeat & More Attend FounderMade Beauty Summit”

So our whole mission at FounderMade is to discover the best consumer companies in food, wellness and beauty, and help them build. The way that we do that is through a conference series, executive summits, and then we also have a trade show that basically discovers best in class brands and connects them to retailers, media, distributors, anything that will help them drive commerce and build their business.

Dave Asprey from Bulletproof Coffee, Daniel [Lubetsky] from Kind Bar. We had the founder of TRX, Randy Hetrick. We also had Todd Harper, Bobbi Brown; we had Alli Webb from Drybar, Sarah Michelle Geller and their team at Foodstirs. So basically any of the cool consumer companies, and also the big innovators in the space. We love featuring them because it really just inspires everyone.

So I’m from Silicon Valley originally, and my dad is part of my story and my journey… He came from India with a backpack and nothing else. And when I was a kid, he had bought a patent from Hewlett-Packard and [from then on] it was “daddy's company is going public”.

So we literally went from an apartment to a house, and then his company did [go public]. I watched that entrepreneurial journey, literally going from nothing to something. And so I always say, success isn't linear, just be a good person. And so, that kind of inspired me.

I started off [my career] trying to be the proper firstborn daughter. So I actually started in hedge funds, thinking that was my mission and quickly realized that I really wanted to do something a little bit more in the center with what my family and my dad's legacy and everything.

So basically, I started digital media platform. Then I went to business school and was asked to lead a couple of startups, but really didn't know what I know what I wanted to do next.

I really started FounderMade as a dinner series. While I was juggling two jobs, I asked myself, “when you're 90, what will make you happy?” And it started off as dinners. I did it in the gym complex in my building, and it was like a small dinner, and oh my gosh, it was just my friends. And I was like, I just really love this. It was my friends in tech and trends and consumer and all these founders. I didn't really know what it was, but one of my best girlfriends, she said, “follow the bread crumbs”. Like, you may not know what this will turn out to be, but if this is what you love, just to do it. So I just thought this was kind of like a side business and then it just evolved into something more.

A lot more! Now I get to live my dream business life, and I get to help people build their businesses, and I get to work with an awesome team. [she says as if still in awe of what she has accomplished.] But it wasn't clean or easy. It wasn't an easy journey figuring out what I wanted. I was always stressing about what I wanted, or what I should be doing, or how I should be doing it, and why I’m not there yet. It’s hard because everyone's just say to relax and you should just enjoy the journey. But I think those little steps – nothing is little – take those little steps, because you never know where those are going to end up.

It's so funny because there are so many different points in my journey that I look back on. I'm like, oh, that's why I had to have that lesson. That's why. So it’s a combination of things. One was having a partnership that didn't work out.

So I started a company and it ended up being a hard partnership to have and it felt almost like a divorce when we [parted ways]. And I remember I questioned myself, I question my intelligence.

I had to go to business school just to prove that I was OK. And then I realized that those types of things and those types of situations will keep mirroring themselves over and over again until you get the lesson out of it, until you face it in the way that you're supposed to face it.

It's interesting. [I think the lesson was to] overly communicate. I think that communication is a big, big reason why certain teams don't work out or certain things aren't executed on. I think that being able to overly communicate, having transparency, trust, integrity with your team is everything. And I think that it was just an early journey of, hey, you're my friend, let's be partners and let's start a business; and that sometimes isn't the right thing.

Well, to us, it’s such a big thing – especially because this is a start-up helping start-ups –our big mission is [to help entrepreneurs]. For entrepreneurs, the journey is just – it’s not for everyone. And to be able to help someone, who is just beginning, to get their idea out into the marketplace, and then help them scale, and then help them potentially if they want to get acquired, or get them funding, or get them distribution, those are the success stories [that validate our purpose].

I was just at a conference and I run into one of our exhibitors and she says, “hey, from your conference [Consumer Discovery Show], I got into Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters!” And I video [her] I send it to the team.

And they were like “Whoop!”. That, to us, is [the reward], it's helping their dreams come to fruition. That's what I want on my tombstone: “We just helped build. We helped other people build their businesses.”

Yes. For probably for the last 10 years, I've been doing this gym class called 30/60/90.

Yeah it’s high intensity interval training. So basically, you have steps, your weights, and I jump higher now than I did when I was a cheerleader.

I’m doing high jumps like really crazy. And I bring all of my interns and everybody, our team, and we all do it, and they're like, “what is happening here?” [At the sight of her high jumps]

And for me, because I do it every morning, it's become extremely meditative. And I also, when I'm jumping, I think about my 90-year-old self, and I think if she sees me going through all these times where you have to find patience and perseverance through things. And so, that's how I, even through the gym class, I [realize] I need patience in this part of this class. Or some days are hard or some days you don't feel like doing it, but you just do it. And that I think is the lesson in it. Yeah, it gets you started on those endorphins and you're taking care of yourself first and then you're building your business and you can help building others.

I always say this is the climb, just like when you're climbing a hill, you need to take breaks, you need to look at something… Some days you're climbing a hill and you're like, this is a hard track. [she crosses her arms grumpily] I just want to sit here and sit down on the mountain and not do this!

And so I always, in terms of integrating wellness, I’ll always say to our team, if you're not feeling your best, you need to make sure that your energy is good. We are building this altogether.

So it's really important that you take care of your health. So part of it is, right now, we're trying plant-based in the office and doing a bunch of fun stuff. But that's also a personal thing.

So, it's interesting. I have a very big vision for this thing. So we're definitely at the first foot of the hill. It’s hard because it's a combination of just looking at where you want to go and then pacing yourself forward.

I feel like we are successful right now because we get to do what we love, which is such a gift. We get to work with people that we respect and admire, and we are all sharing the same vision. And it looks like incredible energy and people can see that. So, at this point, I feel like this is beyond my wildest dreams already and we haven't even really hit where I know we're going to go.

She's smiling everyday! She was smiling when I was juggling two jobs while we did our first conference.

I remember thinking, [on the day of our first conference], you couldn't take the meaning of this day away from me.

The amount of meaning that I get from this is something that you can't [explain]. No money in the world is going to give you that feeling.

I love that you're asking that. I mean, it's really interesting what's happening in the consumer sector. I always say what's the FounderMade brand—it’s segment-defining, it's innovative, it's mission-driven and transparent. And so these smaller companies are actually taking market share away. They're smaller wellness companies that are taking market share away from the bigger corporate companies. And so we want to be the feeder to that. We want to be the discovery engine where consumers, retailers, everyone is discovering these companies through our network and we kind of have a founder of stamp of approval.

I think wellness is a huge, huge movement and it’s just going to continue.

It’s so funny, I’m supposed to write my 10 year plan this weekend, so I don't know yet!

I mean, I think that what we want to do is drive as much value for the best in class consumer companies and innovations. And so, I think there's a combination of things that will happen. Number one, we'll obviously have the conferences as they stand, and continue to scale that. We have tech that we've built for product companies and that will be part of how we're scaling digitally. And also, we’ll have a fund that we’ll invest in helping and building and scale these companies.

I was really hard on myself when I was younger, and I was really self-conscious. And that was the thing that held me back. So I would say, make sure you have your superpower. Figure out what your superpower is and make sure you hire around it.

Make sure that you're doing what you are supposed to do. Don't be so hard on yourself. It’s OK to start small, but don't be ashamed of it. That’s where everything starts—small! Buildings were built [small first]. Everything that's ever been built by humans started with an idea. And that is super, super powerful. So if you have an idea and maybe that's the universe or whatever you believe in that gave you that idea. It's OK to start small.

###

Parsley Health is becoming a major disruptor in the healthcare industry. This rapidly growing medical practice is utilizing a functional medicine approach without the restrictions of health insurance; and they are on a mission to improve health and wellbeing in the most forward-thinking and holistic way.

The woman driving this movement is a true trailblazer named Dr. Robin Berzin. A graduate of Columbia University medical school and University of Pennsylvania undergrad, who has worked with Dr. Oz and Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Robin has such a refreshing, practical and mindful approach to medicine. Committed to an ever-evolving standard of problem-solving, I believe she is creating the next revolutionary wave of superior care, cutting-edge testing, and better overall health for all of her patients and Parsley Health members.

Below, please enjoy my impactful conversation with Dr. Robin Berzin as she explains how her passion for the mind-body connection fuels her, and how she has integrated these fundamentals into her innovative, metrics-proven business model.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder & CEO of Parsley Health

• Columbia University Medical School graduate

• University of Pennsylvania graduate, Summa Cum Laude

• Certified Yoga Instructor & Meditation Teacher

• Recently announced $10MM in funding

• Why Dr. Robin became a doctor

• Working for Dr. Oz, Oprah, and Dr. Mark Hyman

• What exactly is "Functional Medicine"?

• The benefits of a membership model of healthcare

• Building corporate culture

• Why the healthcare system is broken and why it limits you

• Parsley Health's approach to disrupt this model

• Dr. Robin's daily ritual that keeps her in alignment

• The imperative importance of diet

• Metrics proven results of functional medicine

• The one thing that Dr. Robin prescribes to every single one of their patients

• How do you measure success?

• Parsley Health's plan for the next 5 years.

• Health benefits of meditation

• How to succeed as an entrepreneur

Dr. Robin Berzin is the Founder and CEO of Parsley Health. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Robin went to medical school at Columbia University - where she co-founded the physician communication app Cureatr – and later trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is a certified yoga instructor and a meditation teacher, writes for a number of leading wellness sites, and speaks regularly for organizations including Stanford Medicine X, The Clinton Foundation, Health 2.0, Summit at Sea, and Further Future, on how we can reinvent health care.

It was actually my yoga practice. I wasn’t pre-med in college at all. Although when I look back I did have some interest in public health and nutrition during college, but it wasn't my thing at all. And after undergrad I was in New York, I was not loving my job. I was working as a paralegal at the United States Attorney's office – a very cool job, but it was not for me.

And I had never known anything about yoga to be honest with you growing up or in college or anything, but I started practicing yoga. And I just got really interested in the connection between the mind and the body. That drove an interest in health and wellness, I got interested in nutrition and this whole interest area snowballed.

And I was unhappy with my job at the time, so I sort of said, well what do I not like about my job? It's punitive. I sit at a desk all day. It’s an important job, but I don’t feel like I’m helping the world. And what do I love? I love yoga. I love nutrition. I'm really interested in this mind-body connection. I'm thinking back to all of the public health studies that I did in undergrad and all of that kind of coalesced for me to say: All right, well let me switch jobs. And I worked at NYU for a year in the psych research department and I wasn’t interested in psychiatry as a field per se, but what I was interested in was experiencing patient care.

And so that job for a year really gave me that. We did EKG’s, and we learned to draw blood, and we had patients… and I said “Okay I've experience this now, and do I want to get a Ph.D. or an M.D. or do I want to do something else with this? Do I want to be a yoga instructor?”

Well I did go on to do my yoga teacher training and teach yoga. For me, it just came together. I decided I really want to get my M.D. and be a doctor because I really like this patient-care thing and if I'm going to have the best foundation I can possibly have, I should get my M.D.

Yeah. During med school at Columbia, a lot of my classmates were like me, and had had other jobs, and were a little older and a little weird, and… you know I spent a lot of undergrad trading back and forth start-up ideas with one friend of mine. I had worked for Dr. Oz as a producer for his radio show, so I had a media experience. I worked for Oprah while working for Mehmet. And you know it was around the time that Facebook was coming out –and if we can even remember a time before Facebook! But it was a time that these social media tools were coming out and technology was really changing the way that communicated… and that hadn't yet translated into medicine.

So fast forward towards the end of medical school. All these start up ideas we had had coalesced around this idea: Why can't we have an app for doctors that lets us communicate groups securely and seamlessly in the hospital instead of waiting for landlines and pagers and fax machines? Which is how people, even today, communicate. And so it seems kind of basic now but it was very revolutionary at the time. We built the app and started the company and so that was my first foray into building a company. It was my first foray into building technology for healthcare. But I really got bitten by that bug and so it [entrepreneurship] remained an interest of mine. [This was during med school, during residency.]

Parsley Health is bringing together the best of primary care, the best of cutting edge—what we think of as conventional Western medicine–and blending it with an approach called functional medicine or functional health. So not a lot of people have heard of functional medicine or functional health but ironically, it's been around for a while. Basically this, to me, just means smart medicine. It says instead of band-aiding the symptom with a drug or procedure, let's try to fix the root cause and by fixing the root cause of disease not only can we deal with whatever you've got going on now but we can help you from down the road. It also says the body is an interconnected matrix; it's an interconnected ecosystem – everything, our organs, etc. In conventional medicine, we’ve sort of separated things out: Cardiology is over here, Neurology is over there, GI is over there, and psychiatry is over there… and unfortunately that's not reality. Our organ systems are all interconnected. Our minds and our bodies are interconnected, and then we are an ecosystem with our microbiomes, our environment, our relationships, our food…

So functional medicine says instead of just looking at a very small narrow view of the body in one organ system at a time, let's look at the whole body as an interconnected matrix or ecosystem.

I learned about it when I actually happened to work for Dr. Oz, I met Dr. Mark Hyman and I learned about the Institute Functional Medicine which is training thousands of doctors on how to practice medicine this way. And then later on I learned about the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, whereas the Cleveland Clinic, which is the top hospital in the country, has invested tens of millions of dollars in a functional medicine center and that's showing incredible results.

That's where I’m learning about all of this and watching this happen. And then also at the same time, in my training at Columbia and Mount Sinai, I just said OK we need all of this. You don't need one or the other. We need all of this. Frankly, the functional approach—it just makes sense. And it makes sense in today's world, where 86 percent of our diseases are chronic and lifestyle-driven. So we're living ourselves sick.

For the most part, unless you walk out and get hit by a bus, or there are things that just show up out of nowhere certainly, certain types of cancer, certain infections, etc… But for the most part, 86 percent of the time, our diseases are things we’re living our way into. And yet our medicine, from prior, is not really organized in a way that best helps us thrive. So, I don't know why, but I think it was my yoga training combined with my health tech start-up life and media training, all of that came together. And I said OK, there's got to be a way to bring all of these things together in this functional approach to help with best of conventional medicine and with a content platform and a brand right and a technology layer, and how can we bring all those things together? And that is Parsley Health!

And there’s a lot of bifurcation in medicine. There's conventional medicine, where the only answer is a drug. Then there’s integrative or eastern medicine or holistic medicine, where a lot of times it's like “drugs are evil”, and we'll do everything possible without a drug.  And we [Parsley Health] sort of say, well both of those perspectives are a little silly. If the way that you’re eating is the number one driver of diabetes and heart disease, Why don't we change how you eat?  If you have a urinary tract infection, then let's give you an antibiotic and cure that. So it's really about what makes sense.

Yes. There's so much that we do that a regular doctor doesn’t. So first of all, our doctors in and of themselves, are not only trained in conventional medicine, they’re also trained in functional medicine. And then they also train with us. So your doctor, the moment you walk in the door, has a whole other layer of training of how to use specific nutrition protocols, lifestyle change, meditation, supplement protocols, and next generation testing that regular doctors don’t do: Things like genomics, the microbiome, hormones, toxins... We do a lot of testing in the regular doctors don’t. First of all, in your membership you've got access to a kind of doctor that has a completely different training, on top of the regular training. Then, from there your membership includes all your visits with your doctor. So you get five doctor visits. The average time is about 50 minutes, and the first visit is 75 minutes.

Most people spend 15 minutes with their doctor, not an hour and 15 minutes, ever! Let alone just as a first visit. That's just our first visit where we do a really in-depth intake. We do a physical exam. We put a personalized plan together for you. There's no extra co-pays or anything for that. Then you also get a personal health coach. And a health coaches have really proven their value. Research says that people who work with a health coach achieve their goals twice as often as people who don’t. And so in addition to your membership, it includes (no extra fee) visits with your health coach. And your coach is there to help you make those changes. So if I, your doctor, recommend this, that, and the other thing, and you don't do any of it, well then you don't get better.

They're holding you accountable, they're making sure you understand it… Some people don't know how to cook a certain way or how or eat in a healthy way. Some don’t know what gluten is. Other people need help with supplements. Other people need help with testing. It's like your personal assistant for being a Parsley member because we want to make sure all of this is doable. And if you meet with your coach you're like, “Listen, Dr. Robin gave me ten different things to do and I'm really not going to do them, but I can start with this one thing. Well the health coach is going to help you start with that. And then on top of all of the visits, you also get so much more. You get unlimited messaging so you can write us a message any day 365 days a year.

There's always somebody there for you. You can write us the questions you have –you don't always have to have a visit to get a question answered or to get a refill or to get a test repeated. You’re a member! So anything you need in between we’re there. And then you also get a whole bunch of really cool perks and benefits. We have a lot of discounts and things with our partners: healthy food delivery, thrive market membership, free membership to Headspace, the meditation app. There's so many cool things that you get a s a member here. And then on top of all that you get this crazy cool technology layer that we fill that lets you see all of your information, message, schedule online. So it's all really easy.

In terms of the doctors, we’ve had hundreds of doctors that have reached out to us. And maybe a thousand health coaches at this point who reached out to us. So many people are looking to do medicine in this more technology driven, smarter and more whole person kind of way. When we first started out it was hard because we were so small, and now that we've grown a bit we have reputation and people are finding us, which is awesome.

In terms of corporate culture, you know, it's something that we're building every day. We have a set of team and company values that include things like “we seek to live and work in flow”, that include things like “we are seekers and solvers”. So we look for people who are really proactive, who are problem solvers, but who also want to live in balance and in flow. That’s what we look for when we hire people. And that's all brought to us by the amazing people we hire.

In terms of [the culture] we put into place, most medical practices are healthcare companies don't have annual team retreats upstate, and internal cooking competitions, and team lunches. And every single week we have speakers and experts come in to give talks to all of our doctors and coaches so that we can continue learning. We have a weekly “Grand Round” with all of our physicians together and talk about cases and learn. So we've just developed this really collaborative, supportive team base culture. You know, a lot of doctors are out there practicing medicine alone. And even if they’re in some big institution, oftentimes they feel really alone. And we're extremely collaborative and team-based, and that for me is what we're looking for – we’re looking for folks who seek and solve problems, are super proactive, and they’re here to be part of building something bigger than themselves. We want people [who understand] it's not about “them”, it's about “us” and the “we”.

But on top of that, we want to create this atmosphere where they get a lot of support in reverse, and we support a lot of team building.

I am lucky that I can honestly say that we help change people's lives every single day. I mean, our bread and butter is helping heal, nourish, educate, transform and inspire. And that is really gratifying; and it is just awesome to have a company that's dedicated to doing that for as many people as possible.

There are lots of problems in healthcare all over the place that I won’t touch with a ten foot pole. Somebody way smarter than me will deal with that.  But [the healthcare industry] has created a system that's really only responsive to the large insurance companies. And so what that does is it means that you aren’t paying directly, you’re paying indirectly. You are paying for your healthcare, and it’s very expensive. But you’re paying indirectly for it, so it’s not very responsive to you. It's not personalized and it's really hard to innovate; because if you think about it; if you're a group of doctors or a doctor who wants to do something differently and they're dependent on insurance dollars, well, they can’t. They're literally immediately out of business.

That, to me, has kind of hijacked our industry. And that's unfortunate because it's kept technology from keeping pace in medicine, it’s kept culture from keeping pace in medicine, it's kept new ways of thinking from keeping pace.

You know, new information takes, on average, 17 years to work its way to general medical education. And we have all these new understandings of the body that are widely available, new tests, new understanding of the microbiomes, new understanding of nutrition that are out there. And yet [the medical field] just lurks along and just kind of gets stuck.

And so, why I’m so excited about Parsley being a direct to consumer service: We are responsive to you. So we're able to actually iterate and innovate and build something that’s designed around you. That is here and now and of the future. That is truly a consumer-driven service. And by building it this way, by putting it in our DNA from the brand, to the technology, to the services we offer, that's not something you can un-do. And so from there, (in the long run we may except insurance directly) right now we help you get your out-of-network benefits back.

But right now we don’t accept insurance directly because we don't want to be the kind of business that can’t innovate because all of a sudden the old thing is what insurance pays for, and the new thing, which is a thousand times better for you, we can't do it because we can't get paid. And so that, to me, is where Parsley can have a huge impact. It’s in the way that the system is structured.

Now, the other big area is that our unique approach to health care is truly unique. We're blending the best of conventional medicine and functional health like I said. Our outcomes data is insane. We’re literally curing autoimmune disease, curing heart disease, curing gastrointestinal issues, curing infertility, by looking at the body in a different way. And that, at scale, as we grow, will shift the entire industry simply because we already have the data to prove it. So from the model to the medicine, I see a lot of people doing just the model, or I see a lot of people trying to make a medical service more technology forward. But at the end of the day, those things are just kind of like window dressing if you're not doing medicine truly differently and Parsley is the only medical service that I see doing it truly differently.

Yeah. Absolutely. If you did your car what insurance would pay for, your car would kind of be out of business, right? Unfortunately, insurance I think is essential, as it’s important for prescription drug coverage, it’s important for hospital coverage, it’s important for labor delivery, it's important for testing and laboratory testing, it’s important for so many things. However, if you're only willing to go to things that insurance covers, you have to understand that you'll be going to the lowest common denominator of the bare basics that they're willing to cover. And if you feel your health is worth more than not you may have spend a little bit extra out of pocket. And a lot of people do. It’s funny… People spend five bucks a day on coffee which equals 150 bucks a month. And yet they won’t spend $150 a month for Parsley membership. And you're like well; what if you spend a little less on coffee or make coffee at home?

They will spend 40 dollars a class on a fitness class that they do once a week and another 15 dollars on their juice, which is just spiking their blood sugar, and that all together is more than a Parsley membership, but they won’t spend it on a highly credentialed doctor, health coach and team to be their “go-to” any time they need them for their health. I also think that we, as a consumer base, myself included, we’ve all be kind of schooled, we’ve been taught to think about medicine in a certain way: We only deal with it if it’s an absolute disaster and we need it. We only do what the insurance pays for. We're not proactive. We don't have direct skin in the game. And that's not true for everybody, but for a lot of people. And you know, when you think about, in the grand scheme of things, how much money you can save by being proactive about your health you're talking about 150 bucks a month versus hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.

Omg, so many things. I mean, I do all the things… I eat incredibly well… I eat what we prescribe personally, which is our core eating plan, our plant-based paleo eating plan. So I’m eating proteins, greens, and healthy fats for every meal. I mainly eat a plant-based diet with a lot of healthy fish and occasionally some animal protein but not a lot. So I’m getting a lot of fiber, I’m getting a lot of healthy fats, nuts and seeds, whole grains. I avoid foods that I’m allergic to, like dairy, which made me break out. So instead of spending, you know, thousands of dollars on the dermatologist, I just don’t eat dairy and then I don’t break out. Which is the case for many people. Unfortunately people don't realize that they're spending all this money on peels and creams when it's really just dairy.

My diet my foundation. I mean, I’m the sort of a person [that] won't eat processed, horrible food. I just won't do it. I will skip that meal.

Well I do eat red meat, and I don't eat chicken nor poultry nor pork, but I do eat grass-fed, hormone-free, sustainably, ethically raised red meat once a month.

And it’s not that my diet has to be everybody's diet. At Parsley we really personalize it.  Some people do great using intermittent fasting. Some people, that does not work for so well. And we have to do testing to make sure that you're OK on any particular nutritional plan. Some people have a lot of food sensitivities others have none at all.

So nutrition for me is the bedrock of everything. And then I have a really regular meditation practice and a really regular yoga practice. Yoga is my love. Oh my gosh, I'm not really into vinyasa flow. I like to move, I like to sweat, I  like to twist. I like to attempt to stand on my hands, which I don’t do very well.

So I really walk the walk.

You know, I don't. My husband uses headspace every single day and meditates with our sun in the morning. Our son is one [year old], so he just crawls around while meditation is happening. I have been meditating for a long time and have some other practices that I use. I’m not an app-meditator, I’m kind of doing my own thing. I also meditate at night – I’m a night meditator. I like break all the supposed rules of meditation. Yeah but that's something that I really find game-changing.

We actually prescribe meditation at Parsley Health to almost every patient.  We prescribe it more than medication.

Oh my gosh. I mean, incredible results. We’re helping people get off of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. We're helping people understand that their gut and their brain are very connected and that you can actually resolve your reflux and your IBS and other things. They're learning to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system through meditation. We see people understanding that their brain and their bodies are intimately connected. And we know that stress is the number one trigger for an autoimmune disease. So if we help you learn how to do a regular stress-reduction practice, then - wow how cool - that you don't have as many autoimmune flair ups. So again the body is it’s own ecosystem and it all ties together. So at Parsley the brain and the body are always part of everybody's plan.

You know that’s such an interesting question. I measure success in a number of ways; personally, and then I measure it for the company.

So for the company, I measure success as: Are we living up to our mandate every single day to offer the most cutting edge, the most thoughtful, the most whole person and transformative medicine, with the best user experience that we possibly can; both for patients and doctors and coaches. I would say yes we are successful. And so I try to take the attitude every day that we've already been successful. We've already transformed thousands of lives. So if we just keep doing what we're doing that is enough. Building our new centers and building up the technology layer, hiring more team members, growing our membership and creating more online tools and programs.

All that stuff is gravy. It doesn’t mean that success doesn't look like those things too. But I just try to have the attitude that we're already successful and now just keep making it better.

And then personally, I try to remember that like none of this matters if I’m a wreck. And occasionally I’m stressed and I'm going to be a wreck because it's hard to run a company and to start something new. I'm human and I get stressed. I’m a perfectionist; and if I weren’t I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. So then I get even more stressed. But if doing this means that I'm miserable, I can't be there for my friends and family and my health falls apart. Well that's crazy, right? So my goal, at least in how I define success for myself, is that I’m calm, I'm energized, I'm free from illness, I feel good in my body, and I have great relationships across both professionally and personally. And then I’m able to give my team my highest.

I love this quote that I shared recently Instagram: You don't need to quit. You just need to rest.

Building anything is a long game. And it's a long game of remembering the going will get tough but if it happens, you don't need to quit. Sometimes you need to rest. And so that toggles on and off. I'm certainly not a master of [that] at this point, but it's something I'm very aware I need to constantly work on.

Oh my gosh. We are gearing up to really be everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. So we'll continue to build up centers across the country. To begin with, in places and cities where we already are, because there's a lot of room to grow in cities where we already exist, before we go further afield. But then bringing Parsley centers and doctors and medical care other places.

It looks like having incredibly robust outcomes data that is so powerful that insurance is being used to pay for our care because of the outcomes that we've created. It looks like having an online platform that literally, through our online tools that we're building, through machine learning and AI, through data, we’re able to serve anyone anywhere and give them support in achieving their health. And we’re building all that stuff out. Whether it's through content, through programming, through smart technology, telemedicine, I really want to be able to help anyone anywhere, even if they don't live near a center. So that's where we're going. In the meantime, we’re just try and keep doing what we're already doing every day which is offering this incredibly new and superior form of medical care.

Oh gosh, I don't know. Those are forces that are beyond my pay grade. Well, I mean we’re breaking/have broken the health care system with this massive chronic disease burden that is totally preventable and often reversible. And we're spending all this money on drug R&D [research and development] for type 2 diabetes which people could just not eat certain foods and not get. So, to me that's just crazy. And there's financial imperatives, certainly, that have nothing to do with us that drive that. But I hope that we at Parsley are able to set a new standard of care and are part of shifting the health care system to do things differently. And if we can do that, the great!

You know, I see a lot of businesses that I would call “a solution looking for a problem”. And I get that people get excited about creating things, but I would just sit down with yourself and understand that if you're gonna build something from the ground up, you have to believe in it and be passionate about it in every fiber of your being. You have to deeply understand that problem, whether it's your problem or somebody else’s problem. Understand how to fix it, and understand what's missing, and understand how you really are bringing something to the world that nobody else is, that fixes it. And then execute on that. Because anyone can have an idea. But putting an idea into motion and to get it anywhere requires incredible tenacity, incredible resilience, you have to get back up when things just do not work, when people do not do what you want them to do, when you don't have the money that you feel you should have. When a zillion things I was just describing entrepreneurs every day making 99 problems, and I fix 16 of them and 32 are evergreen and another 10 just take care of themselves if I just wait and don't do anything.

So there's just the learning of that. And if you're starting out, to get you through all the nastier parts, resilience it requires, the problem solving part, you have to be passionate about it. You have to be driven to truly believe deeply that your solution is not looking for a problem - that there is a clear problem that it’s solving, and that you're really passionate about solving that problem. Because at the end of the day you have to sort of be more passionate about the problem solving than the solution that you've built. Because the solution itself is going to constantly be changing. And that’s what gets me through when things are really stressful or really crazy. I'm constantly learning how to do things that I didn’t know how to do yesterday but I have to do today. And that is a great learning experience but it's also that I'm anchored by my passion for the problem.

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Michael Ventura is someone I have admired in the branding industry for quite some time. And after this conversation with him, I must admit that I am even more impressed with him than ever.

Best known as the founder of Sub Rosa, a strategy and design firm that serves a multitude of Fortune 500 companies and progressive start-ups, Michael has developed a program to educate corporations and society at large on the importance of empathy.

Michael has grown Applied Empathy into a movement; hosting client seminars, a podcast, a live event series, an immersive cards game, a course at Princeton University, and he has also authored a book that every business person should read.

Early in his career, while being over-burdened by stress, Michael injured his spine when he passed out at the office water cooler. This event served as a catalyst to seek a change in his life by looking inward.

From this approach, Michael fostered many expressions of himself through business: Sub Rosa and Applied Empathy, an alternative medicine practice called Corvus, an event space called And&And, and a retail store called Calliope that he and his wife own and curate.

Below, please enjoy this enlightening conversation with the ever-impressive Michael Ventura.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder & CEO of Sub Rosa

• Creator of Applied Empathy

• Author of Applied Empathy

• Podcast Applied Empathy

• Founder of Corvus

• Founder of Calliope

• Sub Rosa's mission and big name clients

• Corporate culture and Michael's strategies for having his business reflect inwards

• How Michael became trained by a curandera in alternative medicine and indigenous practices 

• The catalyst that caused him to seek out work-life balance

• Failures as growing experiences

• What was the original inspiration for beginning the Sub Rosa business?

• The fruition of Applied Empathy

• Techniques for employees to look inward

• Michael's morning ritual that sets him up for his day

• How Michael measures success 

• Attracting money

• The power of empathy to solve the world's problems

• Valuable advice for all humans

Michael Ventura is an accomplished entrepreneur and creative director. In 2009, Michael founded Sub Rosa, a multi-disciplinary studio that provides strategic, design, and implementation solutions. Sub Rosa's clients include a variety of Fortune 500 companies, as well as some of the world's most progressive start-ups. As CEO, Michael is responsible for setting and cultivating the organization’s vision, culture and growth. 

Michael has served as a board member and advisor to a variety of organizations including Behance, The Burning Man Project, The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Friends of +POOL, and the U.N.'s Tribal Link Foundation. A dynamic writer and lecturer, Michael is frequently engaged as an advisor to entrepreneurs and leaders of some of the largest corporations across the globe. He is also an adjunct professor at Princeton University where he teaches design thinking and how to integrate empathy into the creative process. Outside of this work, Michael and his wife Caroline have co-founded the New York-based retail experience Calliope, as well as its adjoining gallery And&And. In his personal time, Michael is an active practitioner of eastern and indigenous medicine, often leading workshops on how to bring these powerful traditions into a modern life and workplace.

I think at our core, what we're best at is helping brands discover or rediscover their North: Who are we, what do we stand for, where are we going, how will we get there? What are the types of people we need inside of this organization? What are the belief systems we need?

So a lot of our work sits pre marketing, if you will, at the business level, really helping leaders think about those types of big questions. And then once we cracked that code and figure out what the path forward is, then inevitably it ends up moving downstream into designing graphics. Design systems, brand identity systems or a communications program. Maybe something even as specific as a retail environment… We have architects on staff and all of that sort of stuff, so sometimes it shows up really physical, sometimes digital, or sometimes it just shows up strategically.

Goop, we did the Goop one-day Summit.

Goop is Gweneth Paltrow’s ultra-successful lifestyle brand, rooted in wellness, and continually expanding across categories>

So, about 500 attendees, we produced the whole event for them. There's speakers who are onstage, there's brands who are selling their wares to the attendees. There's a bunch of experiences. So executive producing that whole event on their behalf was our project for them recently.

Nike is a client we've been working with for a long time. Really helping them across a variety of both strategic and marketing initiatives. Right now we're doing a lot of work with Marriot.

Marriott and Starwood merged last year, maybe 18 months ago now. Um, so we're doing a lot of culture work to help bring those two enormous hospitality businesses together under one roof. In the next year or so, they will have as much as a million employees globally.

So how do you build a culture for a million people who probably will never meet each other? Right? So how does the culture transcend borders and languages and all that sort of stuff? So it's a super interesting project.

And then, let's see, I mean all the usual suspects have come in and out of the doors over the years. So General Electric and Google and Target and all sorts of multinationals.

We also, for a long while and worked with the Obama administration, which was a lot of fun. We had about two years of work with them. We’re not active with current administration.

About three years ago, we made a commitment to be our own best client, which is hard as a services business and you're always focused on everyone else's work. So we do a couple of things.

We do have a pretty regular cadence of communication, be that a weekly team wide meeting or a series of other weekly meetings that are just very reliably set and you know you're going to have an opportunity to sit with certain people, have a good conversation, but beyond that, something we've instituted and we refer to just colloquially as “Sub Rosa Day” – one day a month where we do no client work, where we only focus inwardly, so we'll do training and development work, we'll do updates to case studies or the website, or things that sort of often get moved to the back-burner.

And you know, the reason for that was, we said if you can't give your own business 12 days a year, you know, that seems really short sighted. So we wanted to make sure we at least have dedicated that level of attention on a monthly basis to keeping up with our own best practices.

Awesome. That's such a good idea.

So, there are essentially two other businesses that I run in addition to Sub Rosa. For me, they all kind of ladder up to the same overarching idea, which is: “How do I use empathy to get out of my own shoes, look at the world from a different perspective and provide a solution that will ultimately help someone.” So as we've just said, for Sub Rosa, that's pretty obvious how that works.

Since 2010 I've also run an alternative medicine practice where I treat in a busy week somewhere between 15 and 20 people a week in private practice.

And that's pretty normal. 15 is pretty normal. 20 would be a little busy. And you know, the ailments that someone walks in the door with are quite varied. Sometimes people will come in with low back pain or insomnia or they're trying to get pregnant or something like that. But sometimes people come in because they just kind of lost their way or lost the connection to their inner voice and want to try to rediscover that. Or they're going through a really serious medical issue at the moment. And they need to have an alternative practice to pair up with the western practice in order to keep their immune system up or things like that. So people who are going through chemo or radiation or things like that, I often end up on working with them in partnership with their Western doctors. So it's a really nice pairing.

I work in two forms – I work in a traditional form from Mexico, which is curanderos and curanderas of Mexico, who are the Mexican equivalent of a Shaman essentially.

So it's a very indigenous, very sacred, traditional practice. So I do that. And then I also work in Chinese medicine in a forum called, Qi Gong.

I trained with my curandera in Mexico. Her lineage and her tradition was passed onto me, which I'm very grateful for because traditionally it only gets passed to the curandera’s granddaughter – it’s a tradition that has gone down through the feminine line. Though I am not a Mexican granddaughter, she has taken a real liking to me over the years and we have bonded in a way that she felt safe to pass her lineage unto me.

And then the Chinese medicine, I got into because I was really broken during my mid-twenties running this business was very stressful and I had herniated discs in my back and insomnia and substance abuse issues and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Ultimately what got me better was not a medication or surgery. But it was meditation, tai chi, Qi Gong, acupuncture… So as those things got me better, I became more curious about them and ultimately trained in them myself.

And then the third bit, cause there's not enough things on my plate is, my wife and I, three years ago, started a retail store called Calliope http://welcometocalliope.com/

and it's also in this building and it's a home goods and furnishings shop. And so part of our gig is looking out into the world and seeing who's making beautiful stuff, and who’s putting the right intention into it and sourcing things the right way and are finding ways to make a house a home. And how can we be a clearing house for those things and sort of put them in a place for discovery.  It's a small little shop, but we've gained a really passionate following and people seek us out because they know they'll find something interesting there.

Well I had already started it… I started it when I was like 22, 23 and then the issues started happening about two years later because I would walk in the door and I would see 35 people who have to pay rent. Thirty-five people who have groceries to buy, 35 people who want to go on a date this weekend and pick up the tab. Right? And the stress of bringing in enough business to pay for all of those people and to make sure that they feel comfortable and secure and can do their job well sat on my shoulders and I didn't know how to deal with that stress and so I would bury it with drugs and alcohol and all these other things.

And then eventually one day I was changing the water jug and I just like – saw WHITE. And the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and I was on the ground and the water jug is like glug, glug, glug, . And I had herniated three discs in my lumbar spine and could barely walk. And it was just, in retrospect, the way I view that injury was that I had piled so much emotional weight on me that at a certain point my body just said like enough is enough. And it was a signal to change my life.

I had to change my interior before I could change my exterior. And so I think a lot of what began, after that was about self work, about taking care of this , so that this can take care of others. And so that was like the wisdom of the airlines, as I refer to it sometimes – it's like, put your own mask on before helping others, right? Sort of like that. Once I felt good and stable and secure, and I knew how to stand on my own two feet. I was able to help others.

It’s hard to pick one.

 There have been so many honestly, because, this is all I've ever done, right?

This is the only job I've ever had, I’ve been doing this for 16 years. Maybe a little bit more, and so all of my professional mistakes sit inside one company, which is kind of like a weird thing. Not a lot of people have like a singular container that all of their fuck-ups sit inside. But for me, that's sort of the way it goes. So, there have been ways that I poorly managed hiring and firing people. There have been ways I have poorly managed relationships with clients. There have been ways I’ve poorly managed my own time.

It's hard to point to one because I feel like there's this spirit of continual improvement that I've kind of embraced over the years because if you put things off long enough, you make big mistakes. But if you pay attention enough, you make small mistakes, and the small mistakes can be course-corrected before they become big mistakes. Right? So a lot of small mistakes. I try to prevent big ones from occurring.

We started to think about helping. We started to realize that brands needed help behaving more like people. Like when a brand has to actually respond to your comment they had a lot of questions. They're like, well, how do we respond? Who's responding? Who from this organization is going to actually do that and what's the tone of voice and are we going to be apologetic or we going to be sure of our comment? There was all of this stuff that we as humans learn from moment where this big how you behave and interact with people, that brands had never done. And so the emphasis really in starting was to help brands learn how to behave more like people. And that has evolved through empathy.

Four years ago, we said we kind of need to declare a major, like stand for something you really do care about and that we do well. And after looking back over a body of work, that we have developed over a decade-plus, we started to see this theme of empathy emerge when we're doing our best to work. We actually get out of our own shoes and we sort of think about problems from a different perspective, then we can feel and sense how others are perceiving something. And in so doing, we're able to create a better solution. And so we said, if that's our thing, let's commit to it. That's not just like put it in a slide stack and make it a nice buzzword, but let's actually make it a thing that we care about the stand for it. And so, we began by building a one hour lecture that I started to give, and I was invited to go down to Princeton and give it at Princeton to a bunch of the undergrads.

In doing that, afterwards, one of the deans for from the university came up to me and said, I really like what you have to say. Would you be interested in creating a curriculum and teaching a class here about this? And we said sure. And so collectively a group of us here built a 12 week curriculum, started teaching it down there, that led to a podcast that we've been doing for over two years, on a live event series that we do every month. It led to the development of a whole host of week long, two day, one day, half day seminars that we run for clients. And then most recently the, the authoring of a book called Applied Empathy, which will be out in May, out in the world.

I think there's an inward and outward way of answering that.

Inwardly, I think what we try to do with our team is to have everyone be aware enough of themselves and who they are and what they're working on, and acknowledging and very much sort of broadcasting, even in our own brand book for Sub Rosa, that we admit and embrace the fact that we are a work in progress. And so I think part of being aware of yourself and conscious is knowing that it is a journey and that we're constantly learning. We're constantly improving and if we're aware of that, you know, there is no finish line. It's a process we go through and so collectively we all kind of work together.

On a more macro level or more external facing level, you know, some people might look at some of the companies we work with and take issue with them because of some practice they might have in the past and it had been dragged through the press for it's labor practices in Asia or you know General Electric has had bad press around their oil and gas business or things like that…

But for us, that's the point of the work we're doing –if we can go into organizations that have challenges, that are trying to play on a global scale or are playing on a global scale and doing really great work in some fields… Can we help them improve some of the areas where they're not doing so well? You know, if you can make a company that's doing something that doesn't feel right, behave better, that’s almost better than, you know, working with the (while we wouldn’t say no) working with the Patagonias of the world who are already doing so much, right. Go where the problems are, don’t go where the best of the best examples are.

One of the things that we do is we have a fairly regular cadence of personal reflection and renewal time. So you'll do a self assessment a couple of times a year. You'll be assessed by your colleagues a couple of times a year. You'll have a sit-downs to really have a dialogue and a way to exchange that information so that you can understand what you're doing well, where you have opportunities for growth. But then beyond that, we do a two major day long, either off-sites or on-sites here every year where we will bring in different types of programming or thinking that will let you explore your interior world in a different way, be that in the form of meditation or some other tradition or maybe just a journaling exercise or something like how we met in part, which was through the use of those cards. [the Questions & Empathy cards are essentially like highbrow Cards Against Humanity, except asking deep questions]

[Utilizing these cards] with a colleague that you might have been working with for two years and spending 20 minutes doing that, you're going to know more about that person in just twenty minutes.

Yeah. I have a Taoist practice.  So typically, I'll get up and have about an hour of Tai-Chi, Qi Gong, meditation, and then if I'm feeling extra stiff or like just off a plane, I'll throw in some Yin Yoga as well. That’s every morning, seven days a week, for the past five years. Like, don't miss a day.

And then after that, I'll usually get dressed and I see a client for my alternative medicine practice starting at 8am. So I go from 8am-9am with a client and then by 9:15 I’m in Sub Rosa go for the rest of the day and then see another client at 6:15pm. So those two treatments at the beginning of the end of the day really book ended my day and give me an opportunity to be wholly present with one other person because when I'm at Sub Rosa and we're sitting in [a conference room], clients aren't paying us for the present moment, they're paying us for what we're going to do together or what will happen next. So there isn't a lot of value placed on the now in the commercial world that we live in. But in a treatment that's all we have. Because I can't help what happened before you come in or can I help what happens at when you walk out the door.

So all I can do is be of service in that 60 minutes that we have together. And so it's a nice way to book end of the day being wholly present of another person.

I would say, by how comfortably I sleep…

I feel like if I'm going to bed without anxiety, without my motor running, then I'm probably doing the right thing. Money is a side effect of doing what you love. I've never really thought that money is the driver. Impact. Some people will say quantity is more important than quality. So people will say quality is more important than quantity. I think that depends. It depends on what the problem is and what you're trying to change. So for me it really is like, do I feel good about what I'm doing? And am I comfortable enough when I lay my head down at the end of the night to know that I did a good piece of work for that day.

Yeah. For sure. Successful, with a lot of room to grow.

Money doesn't find you until you value yourself. And you know, I had a teacher, my Qi Gong master was talking to me about as I began practitioning. In the beginning, I didn't want to charge [money for my services] because I didn't feel I was at a state of learning enough where I could. So I had proposed that I would just do this exchange, right? Because it's what was most meaningful was that you were to give and receive and to give and receive. But if you brought me a pie from the farmer's market, that would be fine. You didn't have to pay me in money. And I had been doing that for a little while and he told me that at the end of the day, there has to be a value you put on your time and there has to be a value you value your work at. Otherwise people will set the value for it for you. And that's true in any business, right?

If you don't value your time and value who you are in the work you provide to them, someone else is going to value it for you. And there's a very high likelihood they will value it less than you would value yourself. So, you know, don't be afraid to know what you're worth or declare what you're worth to other people because that sort of puts the right vibration in the air for things to come to you and find you.

I think empathy cures a lot. If we could make the world a more empathic place, I think we would see a lot of the other changes that I would like to see in the world. People wouldn't be depleting natural resources at the same rate. Indigenous communities would be protected and thriving. And the societal crises that we in this country are going through right now from Black Lives Matter to #metoo, to gun control to everything else would have a different perspective if we could just see and convince others to see each other's angles and meet in the middle and refine a bit more. So, for me, I've elected that empathy is going to be my path into that. And by virtue of that, collectively our path into that. So, that's really where we're putting our focus.

You know, one of the early pieces of advice I got, which is true, not just for entrepreneurs, but also just humans… is to start to really find the comfort in the discomfort. The way it was phrased to me, which I've sort of evolved in my mind over the years is, if you don't get into trouble, you'll never learn how to get out of it. Right? And so do you always play it safe, and if you just do the easy thing, you're not creating any tension for growth, you're not creating any opportunity for expansion. So don't be afraid to take the hard risk or the overwhelming thing or the risky thing because that's where real growth occurs. That's where you're pushing your boundaries and ultimately will find something that's more meaningful.

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Karan and I have known each other for a long time through a few mutual friends, and it has been such a pleasure to watch him rise to the top of everything he does. With an astounding reputation in the finance industry for building and transforming companies, his newest business venture is one that breaks every mold.

The financial industry, as most of you probably already know, does not have the best reputation for being immersed in wellness, mindfulness nor self-awareness, particularly in New York City.  Which is why it has been so incredibly awe-inspiring for me to hear about the fundamentals upon which ASGARD Partners is being built.

In 2015 Karan suffered a massive panic attack while piloting his personal airplane. Below is our conversation about how this experience changed his perspective on life, the importance of holding yourself accountable, and his approach to integrating these principles into his business.

I am so thrilled to share this interview as the first in series for Conversations with Conscious Enterprises.

Click here to listen on Spotify

Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple Podcasts

• Founder & CEO of Asgard Partners

• Interim CEO of Theodor Wille Intertrade

• Wall Street Journal CEO Council

• Former President of ADS Inc., growing to $1.5+ billion

• Former JP Morgan Investment Banker

• MBA from Yale University

• Authored a paper about purpose-driven business for Chief Executive Mag

• Featured in Thrive Global

• The fabric of reality and how perception is arbitrary

• Karan's personal build up to a massive panic attack while piloting his private plane

• How Karan began dismantling himself and his reality and his idea of being ultra-successful

• Building a new paradigm for business

• Affirmations creating accountability

• Entrepreneurship

• Karan's biggest failures

• Why dedication to higher purpose was the only choice for him

• Karan's morning ritual

• Asgard's unconventional "secret sauce" to success, practices from inside their coveted Tuesday morning meeting

• How Karan measures success

• Valuable advice for conscious entrepreneurs

Karan Rai is founder and Chief Executive Officer of ASGARD Partners & Co. a financial advisory and investment firm based in NYC. He loves working with and investing in entrepreneurs and inspired leaders who are building purpose driven companies.

Mr. Rai also, at times, serves as the interim CEO for ASGARD portfolio companies. Most recently, Mr. Rai dedicated some of his time to serve as the CEO for Theodor Wille Intertrade (TWI), a portfolio company that he has led since 2015. TWI is a multinational company that provides a range of supply chain solutions for U.S. Government agencies and the prime contractors who support them.

Previously, Karan was the President of ADS, Inc., a leading specialty distributor and supply chain solutions provider, serving all branches of the government. At ADS, Mr. Rai led the company’s turnaround efforts and helped grow ADS into a $1.5+ billion dollar global organization.

Prior to joining ADS, he worked in JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Investment Banking Group in New York, where he originated and structured over 50 deals during his tenure as a banker. During that time, Karan helped structure private equity deals for companies like Huish, Colt , Wyle, Armored AutoGroup, as well as recapitalizations and financing deals for large public companies such as Macy’s, Limited Brands, B/E Aerospace, and JBS. Karan was recently appointed to The Wall Street Journal CEO Council and currently serves on the boards of Bcause, LLC and Avadim Technologies, Inc.

He earned an MBA with distinction in Finance and Strategy from Yale University’s School of Management. Karan resides in Manhattan with his wife and two sons. He is also an instrument rated pilot with over 500 hours of flight time.

It’s out of Norwegian mythology. [Karan’s lovely wife is Norweigian and they call their son the baby viking]

Asgard is one of the nine realms, and Asgard is the home of the gods.  So Thor and Odeon lived in Asgard. It’s the home of the Viking warriers and the gods. And I felt like I was putting together this team of Vikings.

May 2017

How would you describe your corporate culture and how do you foster it?

Here’s my thesis, I’ll tell you that, because that’s what I’m basing the business on:

If I can grow a leadership team that has done the work on themselves where they want to show up as the best versions of themselves, and then I can empower them to just live up to that with just some guideposts where that’s an expectation, [then] we don’t worry about what’s this policy and that policy. Our goal here is let’s show up in a highly empowered way.

And I’ll give you an example of how that manifests itself in terms of how we do it:

In order for you to work here, you need to figure out, who do you want to be, what’s the best and highest version of yourself, you have to have it written down. We call these your “I Am” statements. This is the highest version of yourself, and then you declare those to your teammates. And we hold you accountable for living into that person that you’re claiming that you want to be.

Is it aspirational? Absolutely. But we hold people accountable to show up [as who they claim]. It’s not an edict or a mandate. It’s not Karan’s way. If you go do your work, and you figure out that’s the highest version of me, then that’s the guy I want to show up at work, that’s the guy I want interacting as teammates, that’s the guy I want interacting with clients and investors. Because that is what you are being vs. what you are doing. It’s an inside-out revolution. So we literally work on let’s fix what’s going on inside, because the actions that will flow through you, from you, when you’re being a certain kind of person are just gonna be a different feel, texture, flavor, taste, smell to those actions. They show up in this Universe in a different way.

Yeah, people have been talking about affirmations for a long time, and sometimes I think they can get a little trite. You can’t just plaster more stuff on. Finding yourself is about taking off the armour, removing more stuff until you get to your core. A lot of the time in our society and self-help, that’s more about putting more stuff on. Like if you buy this thing, then develop this skill, then create this ability, and there’s a time and a place for skills and abilities to participate here [too]. But our view is that it’s more about shedding all of the stuff you’ve accumulated over a period of time to get to the core essence of who you are. And then show up in your meetings, in your work, in your interactions as that authentic being. That’s a complete game changer.

Where do I begin?

What makes us entrepreneurs – that’s pretty simple. I think everybody that came in to start this firm – they’re all highly successful people. I don’t say that flippantly, I mean these are people that have big careers from big institutions. These are all highly accomplished folks who all quit what they were doing that was safe, to take a big risk to come start this platform. To me, that’s literally the essence of entrepreneurship. It’s easy to be an entrepreneur when you have no other options. But when you literally have every option that’s out there for you, and you make an active choice, that instead of taking that path, [what i do is] create something that doesn’t exist that I think needs to exist and I want to do it with like minded people.

It’s the willingness to go backwards before you go forwards even though you don’t have to. That I think is very entrepreneurial.

And what makes us different – our number 1 ethos is – and this is still new to some people – I just don’t understand why –  We believe business is just a powerful platform to have a massive change in the world.

I think it all starts with intention. I think intention is incredibly powerful. Without getting all metaphysical on you, I believe (and this is experiential) that they way you show up and how you show up and the why behind why you do what you do… it’s almost like when someone has cooked you something with a lot of love you can almost taste it. You know what I mean? And so, to me it’s the intention behind your actions in my way of thinking it purifies those actions and gives those actions a lot more power. Intentionality makes us meaningfully different.

We’re not a non-profit. We’re a for-profit business for all intensive purposes. But we do not engage with a client unless we think that our values match. And one of the questions we ask about our clients – whether that’s a private equity business we’re looking to buy, or it’s a client on the advisory side that’ll engage and assist in capital raise,  “tell us why your company needs to exist besides making a profit.” And if you can’t articulate that means we talk through it. And if that’s a question that’s like “why are you asking me that?”, then that’s a sign we’re probably not a good match.

There’s a lot of companies out there and our goal is to take a level of sophistication that really has not been made accessible to some of the smaller companies and early-stage companies that don’t have access to the JP Morgans or Merril’s of the world. But they deserve the same caliber of service and intellectual ability helping them think through their business issues.

So for us, it’s not about the size, it’s about the intention of the business, and I think that’s pretty unique to what we do.

Yet to be defined. I think my bigger career achievement will be ten years from now when people are talking about how ASGARD changed what it meant to – Let me take a step back...

The reason this firm exists is we’re doing an experiment. We have a hypothesis that we’re trying to prove. And our hypothesis is that if you truly show up and you take a view that business ought to be a platform to do good in the world and inside of that thesis is that my only goal and my leadership team’s goal is to empower the person that’s in any of the positions that we’re in to show up as the highest version of themselves – that to me is the most sound business strategy that you could ever have. And our goal is to say hey, let’s see if we just show up like that, what can we build in ten years.

And wouldn’t it be cool if you could change the dialogue, because (and I say this kind of flippantly)… tree huggers are tree huggers and wall street guys are wall street guys. So what I want to do is bring legitimacy to a conversation … where it’s like… I did it. I was top of my class at JP [Morgan], I turned around two companies, I launched a private equity firm, and oh by the way here’s what we believe. Because that conversation is not happening. Right? So bringing that level of legitimacy that, you know what? If you start with purpose, profits will follow. And it’s an incredibly powerful way to do good in the world and be profitable.

The first 37 years of my life. [he says jokingly, laughing] But listen, I’m only kinda half joking. But you are the product of your experiences. And I fundamentally believe that the obstacle is the way. Obstacles aren’t there for you to just go around. It’s not “life”, and by the way you have some obstacles. The obstacle is the way. You have experiences in life and they forge you and they mold you, and you do have free will. And I feel like, if I hadn’t had the experiences I had for the first 37 years of my life, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the place where I was in the airplane [referencing a panic attack whilst flying an airplane in 2015] that got me to go down this journey, that got me here.

Given that today, my life is so different. The way I show up in the world, just the level of pride in who I am becoming as a human being; it’s so much deeper than it ever was. And that would have never happened had I not ended up in the hospital thinking about why they hell am I even here.

So yeah, I would say, the first 37 years of my life.

No. That is such an interesting question.

You see, you have all these fears that are projections. There are things that we want, I’m not only talking materially, but spiritually, like when we’re in that place, being really romantic about our life, and it just feels so good to be like “this is how I’m gonna show up”. And then ten minutes later that moment passes and you’re kinda sitting there eating Cheetos watching TV, and you’re like oh that was cool, but that’s not real. And what I’m learning in my older age as I get wiser is those moments when you have those highly inspired visions of yourself – that is the truth!  And everything else, the moments when you dull yourself back to reality – that’s the hypnosis that society wants us to live in. That’s not the truth. So once you make that distinction – and there is a clear distinction – that when I have those highly inspired moments – that is my truth! That’s what I’m supposed to be doing! And that is an inspired way of living.

And so, all of us have this thing in us. But it’s just never been ok, at least not in the finance world, to really have those conversations.

I just got to the point where I was willing to take the risk to be mocked, to people thinking that I’ve lost my shit. But I knew that this is what I want to create because it resonates. And that resonance is the first four people, my four closest friends that I spoke to left their jobs. I had those conversations in January, but March everybody had committed to doing this.

And since then everybody else that’s come in has come in because of this mission. We’re on a mission.

You talked about my morning ritual, that’s for me to get centered. But we have a morning ritual for the business, to get the business centered, because the business is also an organism. And for us it’s pretty simple. I don’t know if it’s unique or not, I don’t know anybody else who does it but anytime we talk about this with other people or other companies they’re like “That’s incredible. That works?”

It’s our Tuesday morning meeting. And it has nothing to do with our business pipeline. This is to get the team centered.

Here’s what we do:

The very first thing is we go through a gratitude practice. So everybody goes around and  literally they’re being mindful of what they’re thankful for. That sets the tone.

The second thing we do, we have an acknowledgment practice. Acknowledgement is different than flattery or compliments. This is truly in a very authentic way, if somebody in the company in some way shape or form did something that you highly valued or they really showed who they are and showed up, you acknowledge that person in front of everybody. And that also fosters this environment.

The third piece is what I talked about. Everybody that works at this firm has to do the work and figure out their highest version [of themselves] , which is written in their in the equivalent of their “I Am” statements.

And so every Tuesday, each person will stand up and they will declare who they are.

For me, [for example], “I am a creator. I speak my world into existence. I am excellence personified. I am profound wisdom. I am divine intuition. I am completely authentic. I am unconditional love. I am massive contribution, I find a way to serve others in any situation. I am husband of the year everyday. I love and support my wife unconditionally. I am father of the year everyday. I love and support my boys unconditionally. I am unshakeable faith. I am my word."

So whatever it is for you, you literally go up and you speak it, you declare it. Everybody up there knows that this is you at your best. Words have power. And now you feel compelled to live up to the best and highest version of yourself because that’s the promise you’re making to your teammates of how you’re gonna show up. And it’s also you recommitting every week. Its about equanimity.

Every Tuesday there’s gonna be a practice of gratitudes, there’s gonna be a practice of acknowledgement, there’s gonna be a practice of you declaring the best version of you. And then we pick one of our ten founding truths – these are the basis of what we believe – the operating system of this business – and we go through it every week.

We’re not a company that has values on the walls. That’s not how we roll. We call it breathing life back into your values. So every week we pick one and the team discusses what it means to them personally and how we show up with it for our clients, for our investors, with our companies.

And then the last piece, when we usually have time, we go through a 10-minute visualization for what we want this company to be about, how we want it to look. Somebody will lead it as “three years from now, here’s where we are… here’s who we’re serving…”

And the reason we do that is because you can have a lot of words, and you can say the same words and different people will get different imagery. I want everybody on this team to have the same exact mental imagery of where we’re going so there’s no ambiguity about what this company’s trying to become.

You can read a vision statement and it doesn’t say anything. But we literally walk through it – 2020, here’s where we are. Here’s the kind of company’s we’ve served… I call it “pulling the future in”.

An hour. We commit to an hour to bringing it back to center.

That’s what’s given us the velocity to where we’ve been in business 8-9 months, and the progress that we’ve had I feel like we’ve done 3 years worth of work. Because everybody knows where we’re going. Everybody knows what the best version of everybody else is. We hold each other accountable for that. And we come back to the equanimity of who we are and how we’re gonna show up everyday.

Oh and we do real work too. We’re not just sitting here singing all day long.

This goes back to the question you asked about us being entrepreneurs. We 100% self-funded this. So not only did people forego their big paychecks at the big firms, we’ve put money into this firm.

I do. But it’s not because of those things. I consider myself to be a very successful person because I’ve figured out for me, success is the process and how I show up, and that’s something that I control. I know that it’s not that I’ll have something someday that will define my success. If I wake up in the morning and I speak out my “I Am” statements, and I actually live them throughout the day, and I do my inventory before I go to bed and say “Did you live up to your virtues today?”. Guaranteed success.

Just love ambiguity. Live in the unknown. Know that something that has never happened in your life can happen.

That’s what entrepreneurship is about -

You’ve got to get to a place that you are so comfortable in ambiguity and the unknown that you get to a place that you give yourself certainty. The only person that needs to give you certainty is you. So work on yourself til you get there.

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Introduction :)