We were lucky to catch up with Jack Abbott recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jack , appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

A serial entrepreneur, I tend to play in risky places. From importing apparel and art from Bali in 1980 when no one was doing it and I had no experience in it, to opening a sunglass chain in 1986, when no such thing. From restarting the Hang Ten brand when it has been dormant in the US market for years, to starting a “digital agency” in 1993 when everyone was sure the internet would soon go away. Finally, now to virtual reality. I don’t really know what it’s like to be in a comfort zone, and certainly can’t imagine getting a steady paycheck working for somebody else! What was it that made me dare to stick my neck out time and time again? I’ll never forget my Dad’s words after a particularly depressing closure of a company I’d been building for five or six years. I was hinting that I could use some sympathy, but he wasn’t giving me any. Finally, I outright asked for it. “Dad,” I said, “I’m having to close everything I built — it’s over….” With that he smiled, slapped me on the back, and, with a big grin, said, “I’m not worried at all, I know you’ll just get back up and do something else.” And so I have. I am living my TEDx Tijuana talk  — it’s never too late to chase your dreams.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

JOY XR is a XR Wellness company in the human flourishing business. We’re a VR Portal dedicated to experiencing joy, discovery, personal connections and lifelong learning. We’re building a compelling menu of wellness, mindfulness and personal flourishing experiences and programs, including facilitated as well as self-guided programs. We provide guided transformational travel experiences in VR as well as on-boarding and digital up-skilling. We aim to be a launching pad in VR for wellness providers and practitioners and to hold “only-in-VR” social events and learning opportunities.

Simply put, the world and society are pretty f*cked right now. People are living in a constant state of stress and anxiety leading to mass burnout (and even depression?) This has created mental, emotional and physical changes and challenges for people. Nowhere is this truer than in the workplace. Hence, wellness and wellbeing programs have become a significant part of organizational culture and individual’s lives. Often people choose to design an escape, if only for a moment’s respite. A one-day offsite. A happy hour. A mindful minute. What if that escape could also contribute to the cure? What if the focus of wellbeing was not just less stress, but more joy? That’s where MFJ comes in.

We combine evidence-based practices to cultivate joy in one’s life with immersive experiences in virtual reality. Our Seeds of Joy program has been designed by leading experts in social and emotional learning on the simple premise that joy comes from within and is a skill to be developed. And we chose to deliver this program through VR, given the medium’s ability to drive focus, deepen practices, and accelerate impact. We’ll launch our first set of modules in Q4 with a focus on stress and burnout for companies and health care organizations.

The result of using our modules is both momentary escape through immersive experiences and a very real set of tools to bring more joy into one’s life. Simply, the ability to cultivate more joy leads to less stress, anxiety and burnout, not the other way around. Come join us, and experience what’s possible!

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

I essentially sold my digital agency twice. The first time, when the process started, I had a formal valuation performed in which my company was valued at $32 million. That scared me. I expected much less. Thirty-two million was way more than I knew how to handle. So, convinced I couldn’t close such a large sale on my own, I brought in a former client with the experience I lacked, who I thought could hold me by the hand through the process. I wanted to sell because enough was enough. I had always said I’d get out at $5 million. It was 2007 and I was worried about the housing market, but this person was on a deal that escalated the higher the sales number. She was convinced it was a bad time to sell, and she treated me so well  that I took my eye off the ball. She didn’t want to sell — she thought we would get a lot more. Based on her advice, we expanded rather than selling. I was full of trust, until I saw our margins dropping like a stone in water. I got back involved, but by then it was too late. Our business was real-estate based, so when the market crash came, so did we. I ended up selling for less than a million, instead of the $32 million it had been valued at the year before. She was the only one that made money on the sale, because I had to pay her to go away. 

BUT I was smart enough to refuse to have any limits placed on me as part of the sale. No anti- competitive clauses, etc., so I was able to restart, from home, with no overhead and the largest client of my former company. It was originally just a lark seeker — seeing if I couldn’t make a few bucks and get out after 5 or 6 years. It was twelve years later that I ultimately sold that business to my contractors (I had no employees) for the money I had invested AND a 4-year earnout which ended just a year ago. It was enough time to get my VR venture started.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

This is actually a follow-on to the above story. When I sold my original digital agency, because I had no anti-competition clauses in my contract, I was able to compete for my old firm’s largest client. I had this idea of marketing something we called leads on demand, LOD for short. Highly targeted qualified leads at a fraction of the cost of “traditional” pay per click (we managed hundreds of thousands of long tail highly qualified search terms early in the process, before you could do that directly with search engines). I knew the housing market was in a spiral, but that there were still buyers on the market. If I could find them, I could feed buyers to this client and make significant margins thereby allowing me to over-service the parts of their business that weren’t as profitable as finding leads. It was a crazy gamble, but I promised my client that if he gave me one year on this program, I could double his sales at half the marketing cost. I also promised that I would service the client directly. He agreed. We did over a hundred million dollars in business in the next ten years.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.madeforjoy.life
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackabbott, https://www.facebook.com/groups/gatheringofjoy
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/jackabbott
• Twitter: cinch44