The Exchanges

Q So do you think by the time you were a senior, you had kind of abandoned the idea to become like a lawyer or a consultant and get an office job that this was going to be the thing that you were going to pursue?

A So by the time I was a senior, yes. By the time I was a junior, where the business was already firing in all cylinders, I still was very torn. And it tells you just how strong the gravitational pull is towards the more conventional career tracks, uh, Where you've got safe, secure, low risk ways to be very successful. And, and so I actually did an internship at McKinsey, uh, for the summer after my junior year. And I had kind of a perfect split test where I was running the, my business on the side and I got to see, you know, which was I better at, which did I enjoy more? Uh, what did I want to spend the next few years of my life doing?

AI assessment note: “So by the time I was a senior, yes.”

Q All right, so with thirty million dollars, You've got a huge war chest, but the goal is don't worry about profitability, right, because this was the model at the time. Just focus on growth. So what did that mean for you guys?

A Yeah, I think the challenge was we were growing so fast, and then when we raised that money on really advantageous terms, it just vindicated the strategy of grow, grow, grow. And so our approach was let's blow the doors out. We hired a hundred people, Over the course of the next six months, we moved into a 25,000 square foot office. So this is like a over the top, uh, office with mirrors on the ceilings, uh, under the, the floating conference room. Um, you know, everything you'd expect from an overfunded series a startup. Um, we leaned into sort of crazy funnels where we would, you know, if you signed up for a trial membership, we'll give you a free jar of coconut oil.

AI assessment note: “our approach was let's blow the doors out. We hired a hundred people”

Q role of a business is to make money for the business, for its, its employees, uh, For its investors and to provide a great service to consumers, right? And so, um, if you stopped doing these programs, if you stopped carbon neutral shipping, if you stopped by one membership will give one to somebody in need, do you think it would have any impact on your business, your bottom line?

A In the short term, some of these programs cost money, so it might have a positive impact. I think in the medium to long term, it would have a, you know, massively negative impact on the member perception and member loyalty, on our ability to attract, attract great employees who come to thrive first and foremost because they believe in the mission, and on our ability to think long term. Like, that mission is what galvanizes our entire company, and I think it is the reason why members not only Purchase on site, but also evangelize. And I think we've also been really, we tried to be really smart about looking for opportunities to invest in the mission that are not zero sum with the bottom line. Like I said, with the gives memberships, when we donate a membership, that doesn't cost us anything.

AI assessment note: “In the short term, some of these programs cost money, so it might have a positive impact.”

Q Alright, so you get to Harvard as an undergraduate, 2003. When you got there, um, had you already had an idea in your mind that you would continue to pursue test prep?

A I got to Harvard thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. Hmm. Test prep was, I can help pay for some of my tuition. And then basically after my sophomore year, I had written this book, That I called The Ivy Insider's Guide to the SAT. By book, I mean that very loosely. It's a Word document that I printed out of my house for the students. And the idea, I created my own curriculum concept that I called SAT Game Theory, which has nothing to do with actual game theory, but just that the SAT is a game. It can be beaten. It's not about how smart you are. It's about how smart you get at that test. And what I basically realized three years in was Was, I've got a business in a box, and any undergrad who, like me, did well in the SAT, and could go back to their hometown to do the same thing. So that was the actual birth of Ivy Insiders, was like, I call it like a micro-franchise model, because it was just during the summer, we funded the businesses, we provided the curriculum, and, you know, we are going up against the Princeton Reviews and the Kaplins, offering a program that really worked at a fraction of the price.

AI assessment note: “I got to Harvard thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. Test prep was, I can help pay”

Q But this was his idea. What was it about that idea that intrigued you that you thought this is cool? Maybe this could be something worth exploring.

A The part that intrigued me from the first moment was the mission. It was make healthy and sustainable living, easy, affordable, and accessible to everyone. And, you know, that just resonated with me at a very personal level. Again, like I had seen my mom, how hard she worked to make healthy decisions. Um, you know, know what it's, knew what it was like to not have a Whole Foods in the neighborhood. If you're shopping on a budget, even if you do have a Whole Foods in the neighborhood, you aren't going to likely buy those products. And actually by the end of that first meeting, like by the end of, you know, the 45 minute conversation, I was actually pitching him, uh, doing it together.

AI assessment note: “The part that intrigued me from the first moment was the mission.”

Q And so you still had money. I mean, you could have still poured more money into this, although you don't want to deplete all the money that you made from your Previous business, presumably, you wanted to have some cushion for yourself. So how are you going to get the money?

A So at that point, we were pretty desperate, and we had been kind of the one bright spot in terms of progress we've been making on the business was conversations we'd had with health and wellness influencers. So a friend of mine, John Durant, who I knew from college, had recently written a book called The Paleo Manifesto and become a thought leader of sorts in the Burgeoning paleo movement. He became friends with a bunch of other authors, bloggers, early social media kind of folks at the time it was on Facebook. So, you know, he had introduced us to a number of these folks. We had talked about doing marketing with them. They were excited. They were engaged. They understood the mission. Their audience was the target that we are going after people that are trying to get to this lifestyle, but it's really hard because of where they live or because of, you know, how expensive it is or whatever. So out of desperation, we went to these people and said, how about you invest too? And to our surprise, a lot of them said yes.

AI assessment note: “we went to these people and said, how about you invest too?”

Q he eventually comes home from this tapping conference in Italy, and now, and that makes sense to me now that I know he's from Ojai, because I've been there, I love Ojai, a lot of spirituality, and Krishnamurti was there, and, and so I get it, and he comes back, I guess this is the summer of 2013, so what do you start to do, like, how do you start?

A So, you know, he came down to Launchpad, we did a few meetings down there, I went up to Ojai, a house that was full of crystals and other things you might imagine, and we, we just started jamming, and I think from the, you know, the first thing was, what's the right business model? So we, like, we knew we were clear on the mission, but how do we actually make this happen? We threw out the group buying thing, because that wasn't going to work practically, but we kept the club, and we'd, at that point, we were studying Costco, uh, where, all right, Costco model is, if you, uh, Pay a membership fee. Then the retailer can pass on wholesale savings to the club members. The more we studied Costco, the more incredible we realized their business was. And I mean, you sort of know that if you're a consumer, cause you're like, people are like rabidly passionate about Costco in this strange way, given what it, what it looks like from the outside.

AI assessment note: “we just started jamming, and I think from the, you know, the first thing was”

Q Wow. So how many checks would you end up collecting, and how big were these checks, by the way?

A They were all over the place. Um, many of the influencers had never written an angel check in their life, so we had, you know, our, one of our first checks was from Wellness Mama. She was a At the time, twenty-six-year-old mother of four in rural Kentucky. Huge audience. Super authentic content. Ended up being a huge promo partner for us. I remember we, we had a call with her accountant who asked us what our ticker symbol was. I was like, oh, we're not quite there yet. Um, so yeah, it was, it was anywhere from five, 10, 15, sometimes 25,000 dollars. I think Mark wrote a 50,000 dollar check, and that was probably one of, if not the biggest, yeah.

AI assessment note: “it was anywhere from five, 10, 15, sometimes 25,000 dollars.”

Q You moved to California, I think, to work for them, right?

A I moved to Los Angeles. I thought I would be there for a year and, you know, fell in love with Southern California. Um, but it was also a really, um, I call it kind of a, like a lost, a lost year or two in the sense that what I thought I wanted when I sold the company, which was create income automation and kind of do whatever I want. It just wasn't fulfilling. I felt rudderless. I felt, um, I felt lonely. And it was very interesting to see that the things I didn't think I valued as much, like being in the trenches with the team, solving hard problems, you know, facing different challenges every day, like all the things that I actually thought I needed a break from, I missed.

AI assessment note: “I moved to Los Angeles. I thought I would be there for a year”