Jason + Colleen Wachob: Well-Being vs. Wellness, Accessibility, and Building Habits That Bring You Joy

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Jason + Colleen Wachob
Well-Being vs. Wellness, Accessibility, and Building Habits That Bring You Joy

Jason and Colleen Wachob are the co-founders and co-CEOs of mindbodygreen, the leading independent media brand dedicated to well-being with 15 million monthly unique visitors. 

Jason is also the host of the popular mindbodygreen podcast, and the best-selling author of Wellth: How I Learned to Build a Life, Not a Resume. He has been featured in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider, BoF, and Vogue, and has a BA in history from Columbia University, where he played varsity basketball for four years. 

After graduating from Stanford with degrees in international relations and Spanish, Colleen spent ten years working at Fortune 500 companies including Gap, Walmart, and Amazon before devoting her life’s work to mindbodygreen. Colleen has been a speaker at Fortune 500 companies and numerous trade conferences on well-being trends. 

The Starretts and the Wachobs arrived at their life’s work on parallel paths. We get into the similarities and differences in their approaches and thinking around the common goal of empowering people to prioritize well-being.

For more info, check out MindBodyGreen and follow Jason and Colleen on Instagram.

Points of interest in the episode: 

06:12  Jason’s background and his “Why”
11:30  Colleen’s background and her “Why”
12:00  Listening to your body
17:34  Jason and Colleen’s new book is The Joy of Well-Being: A Practical Guide to a Happy, Healthy, and Long Life
18:52  Empathy for multiple perspectives
20:07  The health and fitness space is growing exponentially, while the population is increasing more unhealthy and unhappy
21:26  How do we get people to care before they get injured
22:39  The state of media; Wharton study on media virality
23:29  Shifting the conversation to be about the fundamentals
24:30  Modeling behavior for children
24:55  Accidental entrepreneurship
25:26  Working with your spouse
32:30  Relationships and community can have the biggest impacts on your mortality; Dan Buettner
34:55  Well-being vs. Wellness
37:34  The frosting analogy
41:27  The basecamp analogy
46:05  Motivations change throughout the seasons of life
47:45  “Health and happiness are so deeply connected that in the longterm, you can’t have one without the other” – Quote from The Joy of Well-Being: A Practical Guide to a Happy, Healthy, and Long Life
48:40  What brings you joy?
50:50  The Roseto Study
53:13  Children make you re-evaluate expectations, so you focus on the needle-movers
57:00  The food label rule
59:17  Accessibility
61:35  Walking is a very accessible and effective habit
63:04  Being outside is really important – there’s an app for that
64:00  Choose habits that bring you joy; Fitness Marshall
65:45  Shift ‘the health pile-up’ to ‘the well-being wave’
68:35  What’s next?
69:30  Jason and Colleen’s socials

Full Transcript

Sponsors

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