105: Quitting Your Job to Pursue Your Passion with Jonathan Bailor

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. Jonathan Baylor is the founder of Wellness Engineering and Sane Solution. He authored New York Times bestseller the Calorie Myth and the Set Point Diet. He's registered over 26 patents, has spoken at Fortune 100 companies and TED conferences for over a decade. His work has been endorsed and implemented by top doctors from Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic and ucla. But how did Jonathan Baylor get there? How did he go from corporate to being the creator and successful entrepreneur he's so well known for today? Join in today as I asked Jonathan the deeper questions and learn exactly how he leveled up and created everything from.

Nothing Today on Leveling Up, I've got Jonathan Baylor and I'm so excited to talk with him today. This is a story I've wanted to highlight for quite some time. I've had lots of entrepreneurs on. I've had lots of success stories from failure to success. But I want to talk with him specifically because he is was working in that total typical corporate 9 to 5 job. He was a program manager for Microsoft for years, doing really well. And he left that to follow his passion in something he never thought he would be doing. And I thought that's a great topic to dive into today like, because I know a lot of you listening are there right now. You're in corporate, it's not your passion, it's not what you want. And you want to know how do I create everything for nothing. So thank you so much for being here today, Jonathan.

It's my pleasure to be here.

So Jonathan, take us back. Who were you when you became that program manager and did you ever know you would be doing what you're doing today at that time?

One real quick thing to start out with is that my story is one, I would say more of an evolution rather than a revolution. Because I was a senior program manager at Microsoft. I was working on the Nike plus Connect fitness training and the Xbox fitness training as well as some stuff in Microsoft Word. And I like, I love my job at Microsoft. It was fantastic and it was a dream come true. So this wasn't this isn't a story of like, oh, I was sweeping up vomit in the.

Yeah.

You know, and try to, you know, come up with something better. So what had happened was I was always very passionate about technology and biology. These are two passions. And the universe presented to me the opportunity to manifest those at Microsoft. And that was wonderful. And the passions kind of continue to grow, and depending on how much time we have, we can talk about how they evolved. But what I experienced, which was really beautiful, and I think maybe the useful angle here is my mindset. And my experience was never one of like, the corporate job is stupid and bad and how can I escape from it? But more, there is so much that can be learned and gained from being in a corporate environment. And then how can that be manifested or help turbocharge other areas of your life? And I. To me, that mindset is really important because if, I mean, most, most people do have to do something like nine to five or more totally reliably. And like Albert Einstein did that, you know, he was a clerk. And, and so to not like, hate that or think it's bad while you're doing it, but rather to be like, man, there's, there's a lot of good here. And how do I parlay that? I think can be really empowering.

Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more about that because I agree with you. And I especially think with the world of technology and Internet, there's just a lot of, like, we see everybody getting rich quick on the Internet or there's this facade around that. Right. So people in corporate almost feel shamed, like, well, should I be doing my own thing? Do I need to be doing my own thing? But like you said, yes, it is a necessary a lot of times for people. So let's. I want to talk about that because I'm sure you had those thoughts. Like, how did you speak into that? Like somebody that's in corporate right now thinking, like, there's something else, I shouldn't be doing this. Like, what would you want them to know?

If I tried to do what I'm doing now without the experience I had at Microsoft, it would have failed.

Wow. Okay.

Because I being able, like, again, to be clear. Right. Microsoft is a very successful company. They're very good at what they do. So it's a great learning environment. And I understand that not all companies are like that. So I was very blessed and fortunate to learn what I learned at a great company to learn at. It's very hard to make six figures a year. Outside of a corporate environment. So just let's reality check for a second, okay? You know, Instagram, whatever, Internet, whatever. There's not a lot of people getting rich quick. There aren't.

I'm with you. There is not. There's not.

There really isn't. Right? So if you have a 9 to 5 and you're making over $70,000 a year doing something you don't absolutely despise and you have benefits and you have a 401k and what I you are doing better than 90. You, you have a sweeter deal than 99.99% of the people on the planet right now. And that's something to celebrate and get energy from. And by doing that, you will be more successful in that role and potentially open yourself up for other opportunities rather than striving for Grass is always greener. Grass is always greener because it is at least in a 9 to 5, you are guaranteed to have people who work with you and who pay attention to you and who pay you Going out on your own, you have to bust your ass to just have the opportunity to earn money. So there's. You have to work to have the privilege of working.

So good. You know, it's so funny, Jonathan, I love that you're sharing this because so many times people say to me like they want to be an entrepreneur because they want the freedom. And it's like, my gosh, do you realize you're going to work 10 times times harder as an entrepreneur and a business owner than you are in corporate? So I love what you're saying there too about the gratitude piece because I think so many times, me included, I was in corporate thinking, like, what else is there? What else is there? And then you're just hating your life, which is not the right energy to create from. So it's. You're right like having that gratitude while you're in there. And the both and of you could still be thinking of what you're creating.

And I think it is a. If one of the biggest lessons I've learned as I've gone through life is, and we can get super esoteric about this if you want, but I'm going to use the word problem, although that's probably not the right word to use. The only choice you have in life is to pick your problems. You're never going to not have problems. So as a entrepreneur, you're going to have as many problems as you did in corporate environment. You're going to have different problems and you might care about those problems more I don't know, but this idea of this sort of four hour workweek mythology, the four hour work week, put it this way, you are as likely to have this four hour workweek billion, you know, million dollar Internet business as you are to work at a corporation. Get early stock options, have that corporation go public and then take your billion dollars of Facebook money and go retire. Like you can get fantastically wealthy working for someone else. Probably easier than you can get fantastically wealthy working for yourself.

Yeah, I don't buy into the whole four hour work week thing. I'm up and I'm like, I know how hard I work and what it can appear like to people, but what it is, I don't know yet of any entrepreneur myself, even the uber successful, that really just works four hours a week.

Yes. And if they do or did, you might see an experience that becomes a bit like a one hit wonder. Yeah, I've seen people get lucky. I've never seen people sustain success without working their booties off.

So first and foremost for those listening, like the gratitude in it, like appreciate that what you have is actually a good thing. It's a great thing. Now that clearly didn't stop you from transitioning and stepping into something you're really passionate about. Can you walk us through that? Like when did that idea occur to you? How long did it take? What was the thought process to do that?

For me it was much more of an emergence than something I directly pursued. And I do. That's something that again I've, as I've gone through the years, the more I've tried to force things to happen, the more I've learned that that does not work. And essentially it's like the harder you push, the harder life pushes back. Oh yeah, the harder the universe pushes back. So what happened with me very specifically is I was, I worked not a 9 to 5 at Microsoft. You don't work 9 to 5, you work much more than that. And in my nights and weekends, because this is just the kind of geeky person that I am, I read tremendous amounts of scientific literature. I found it very interesting. It was just a passion project I had from way back, from when I was a teenager. So I was at Microsoft for 10 years, so many years before that, and then all throughout that, just as a hobby, I did a tremendous amount of scientific research involving human performance. And eventually I would talk with people about it and they said, hey, you should write a book on this. So I self published a book in 2012. I didn't have a Facebook page, nothing like that. It was called the Smarter Science of Slim. It had a 88 page bibliography with an 8 point font. So like 1100 scientific references with no intention of making any money doing anything. It was just something that I did because I loved it and it was fun. Yeah, totally contented at my job at Microsoft. One thing led to another because of all my academic research. I had a lot of relationships in sort of elite academic contexts. The literary agent who represents all the people at the Harvard Medical School ended up saying, hey, I could try to sell this book. It seems to be doing really well just on the Internet organically to a major publisher. Do you want me to do that? And I said, sure. So like I didn't try to get a literary agent. Literary agent found me. I didn't try to sell this independently published book hard. It was created after 10 years of work. That's why it had 1100 scientific references. So the book emerged after 10 years of work. The literary agent that emerged because the book made itself successful online, because of, I guess the, the quality of it, you could argue. And then that book was the calorie myth, then got created by Harper Collins that ended up doing very well in the market for reasons that I do not have complete control over. I don't have. It got translated into a bunch of different languages. And then we got some feedback where people were just saying like, hey, I want more and I want tools and solutions to help with living what's in this book. And at that point the need to build something that is like a business to support people in this journey emerged and we were able to get funding. And at that time, Microsoft said, we fully support you. Do you ever want to come back? There's an open door for you here. And go rock and roll. Because I was going to build my own company, do that while working at Microsoft. That doesn't make any sense. But it wasn't like you, you're cool. It was, it was all good.

But what I mean, so it's interesting. I like how humble you're being about it all. You've mentioned luck a few times, but I don't believe that. I don't believe that it was luck. I believe that you were fully in your vision and you were, you knew your intention with doing stuff like. And what I'm hearing a lot of is you had an intention of what you wanted to share. You were connecting, you were listening to what people wanted. You were creating it. You were not attached to the how it was going to get out there. You weren't attached to that. But I don't believe it was just luck. Anyone could just put something out there and just wait and have luck. It doesn't work. But I think when you're in your purpose, you're really sharing your true knowledge. There is an element of the universe and things finding you and things being created.

Yeah, I love, I think it's Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers where, you know, people want to be like, is it luck? Is it hard work? Is it skill? And he's like, yes, it's all of those things. And Right. I mean, one of the things that I, you can ask people in my family, I literally was a hermit for 10 years of my life learning skills at Microsoft. Right when I wasn't sleeping. I didn't have girlfriends, I didn't have any friends. I was alone in Seattle just doing research. You do that for 10 years. Like you put in 10,000, 15,000 hours with no thought of gonna make it big and I'm gonna be famous and everyone's gonna love me. Yeah, that's the only thing. I mean, I think that's the missing piece and the stuff that no one talks about. And even if you look at like the Beatles or Lady Gaga or blah blah, blah, they all did it because they loved it for years and years and then cool shit happened.

Totally. The luck meets your preparation. That's me, that's not my quote. But the luck meets your preparation and you did obsess about it and you became knowledgeable on that and that's what works. So I love that. So I want people to really hear that because I think there's a very misleading, we mentioned it a little bit earlier about people being in corporate and thinking that they're missing out on something like there, there's this dream out there and I should be part of it. And it's supposed to be just easy. And what if I hear you correctly, you were just really putting a lot of effort into things that you were interested in, knowing you were going to share it. And I love that for people.

Yes. And I think that if you're in a corporate environment, please take as much from that. Not like take, but learn as much from that as possible. Because now being out of the corporate environment, even knowing how to write good emails and conduct meetings, and when you get, if you're in a corporate environment, especially kind of like a higher end corporate environment, as soon as you get out of it, you will quickly realize that there was a reason it was hard to get your job.

Oh my gosh yeah, I can totally. You know, my husband made fun of me for years because he said you're so used to like a team of six figure employees that would do whatever you needed. Like, you're forgetting it's now just you and me. Like, it's like, you know, there is not that team. And you're right. And you have to be incorporate really specialized in specific areas, not everything. And when you come into your own world, you really have to know a little bit about everything you do. So when was it that you knew like that this business was going to be really your true passion and calling and take it because you've grown it since that like kind of this happened. There was some luck you bring up. And then when did you know, like, this is it? Because did you ever have those thoughts of like, this is temporary, I might go back to corporate. Like, walk us through that.

My vision statement for my, I came up with a vision statement for my life when I was a sophomore in college. And that vision statement has to do with lovingly enabling people to achieve excellence.

Okay.

And that was one of the things that attracted me to work at Microsoft because I saw it as a huge stage on which I mean, even something as simple as like, if you could make Microsoft Word a little bit easier to use, you could help a billion people. So that overarching, like that passion, I would say that my passion never, never changed. The thing that attracted me to Microsoft was the same passion that then attracted me to start my own company. But the decision to, very specifically, I ended up leaving Microsoft once we had secured funding for my new company. Because like, again, it's not easy to earn money reliably. Like, reliably is key there. It's really not, I promise you. It is not easy to earn money reliably. So when did I transition out? I transitioned out once I knew I had talked with my wife, deeply laid out our finances and said, I have two years to do this or not basically. And then I, then I made the switch.

So when you decided that I have two years to do this, did you have that idea of it may not work? Were you committed to, like, this is my vision, it's working at all costs. Like, what was the conversation in your head? I know what you told your wife, but what was the conversation in your head?

The conversation in my head was I feel like this is what I'm being called to do right now and I'm going to do everything in my power to make it work. If for some reason it doesn't, I Feel so blessed to not have burned bridges at Microsoft and honestly knowing I had that safety net, some people may say, you know, burn the ships. I'm not a big fan of that. Knowing that you have, you're not going to starve and lose your house and your kids aren't going to starve is a good feeling.

And what I do want people to hear on this too is the safety net doesn't have to be a full fledged plan B because I believe in having that plan A and not having a thorough plan B because that could stop your plan A. But I do like the safety net idea and I want everyone to hear, if you have a job now in corporate, like, you have a job job, you are employable. So like worst case, you go back to looking for a job. Yeah, that's the worst case is what I like. It doesn't make it any worse. But I do feel that people, if they really are feeling called to something and sharing a gift and a passion, go for it. Whether it's.

I think, all I'm saying is don't burn bridges. I think people kind of glorify the, like throwing off the shackles and da da, da, da. I've never found it to be beneficial to burn bridges. Like, why do we burn bridges? You intentionally, why would anyone intentionally limit their options? Totally is my thought.

Now, did you have any bumpy roads over the years in your business?

Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, I can't get into it for legal reasons, but in that first two years, there were bridge, personal bridge loans. There were. We literally have a week of cash flow. I mean it was, it was without question the most stressful. I mean, it doesn't end. I mean once your, your butts on the line and you're. I like to somehow, you know, how many people's mortgages am I responsible for? Some people are like, man, I got a mortgage, I got so much responsibility.

Yes.

Wait till you have like dozens of.

Oh my gosh, I'm so with you. Yeah, it is, it's so different it being that that's like when someone says they're an entrepreneur but they're a network marketing entrepreneur. That's great. Yes. And it's a little bit different because when you're responsible for people are not going to eat if you can't make the bills. That's a big difference. So yeah, that's, that's a big difference. So to me, an entrepreneur is that like really you're truly an entrepreneur when you're living in that, that space. Not that you're not an entrepreneur in other things. But that, that to me is like, when you can do that, like you're really learning some stuff. So how did you keep yourself in the game in those moments? Because it could be so tempting in those hardships, like, oh my gosh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this, maybe I'm not meant not to run a business. Like, how did you keep yourself in that game?

What I found is that for me, my experience in the corporate world, if I graft it in terms of emotions, it is like this. And that's why people sometimes like it's monotonous and I just don't feel alive and blah, blah, blah, because it's like it oscillates between a 4 and a 7 and then in the entrepreneurial environment, it oscillates between a zero and a ten and a zero and a ten and a 0 and a 10. And so how do you keep yourself not manic at the tens or depressed at the zeros? For me, I literally uncovered a whole. I studied meditation, I used float chambers. I got much more deeper into spirituality because I literally would have lost my mind if I.

So you force yourself out of that conscious, really? Like you force yourself to get into the unconscious?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. And did that help you with that not reacting? Because like, I know I live in the reacting space. I own that. It's not a good place. I'm working on the other stuff. So was that a trained thing to not react?

Deeply trained, I would say. It's the number one area that I have, the number one personal development area that I have focused on for the past five years is there's a famous quote. Between stimulus and response, there's a gap. And in that gap, the quality of your life is determined.

Wow.

Is increasing the size of that gap. So that stimulus, stimulus response, you know, a dog or an animal, a stimulus happens and it responds. Stimulus happens and it responds. A human. You know, if you think of the Dalai Lama, stimulus happens, there's like a giant gap. And then Dalai Lama chooses Dalai Lama's response. If you think of a three year old human being, there's a stimulus response, stimulus response. There's really kind of no choice or free will there. And through study and meditation and different sort of techniques, sleeping well, eating well, stimulus response, you can increase that gap. And in that gap, as the quote says, the quality of your life and arguably the success of your business is determined.

Yeah, well, that's pretty powerful. Okay. Did you ever have naysayers when you were in Those times, like, you should quit, you should not do this. Like, did you. And if you did, how did you deal with that?

People in my life were pretty supportive because I took a very measured and calculated approach. I wasn't, I mean, I knew my mortgage, my wife's wellbeing, da da da da da, we're on the line. And I feel, I mean we were, I was probably a year, it was a year of planning and are we going to do this? And blah, blah, blah, blah. So because of that and getting buy off and support from my family members, talking with them, I really value their opinion and I know I needed their support. So because I had that. I never really had anyone say, why don't you just stop and go back and work at Microsoft? I was probably the biggest doubter. Everyone else was like, we know you can do it. And it was really helpful that I didn't have to pull other people along with me. They kind of pushed me.

So, Jonathan, I'm noticing a little theme here with you don't take a lot of credit. It's funny, you give a lot of, like, it was luck or other people. But what I'm hearing is because you show up with conviction, because you show up with the passion and the belief that's what's creating the ripple. Because I do believe we are responsible for everybody else's reaction. And it's funny because when you talk to somebody in a victim mindset of like, oh, I have no supporters, what I always want them to be challenged was to look at themselves and how they're showing up. Because if you're showing up as wishy washy, then of course people are going to say, well, I don't know if you should do this, but when you show up with conviction, like, this is happening, I'm doing this. This is my vision, this is my dream. I think people don't naysay it.

I can see that. And I would take it even one step further and say, put it this way, I've met, and especially my wife, she always tells me stories about, you know, she goes somewhere and this person's like, do this. I'm gonna have this, this idea. And I'm so excited. I've got this passion and it's like, okay, so cool. Passion is really important. It's cool.

Yeah.

What is your actual concrete plan with like dates and dollars assigned to it to make this happen? And what accountability is there for you? Like, month one, we're going to do this or else month two, we're going to do this or Else because it's really fun to like go to the seminar, like woo, take over the world. But like are you going to get up at 6am and then what are you going to do when your kid's throwing up? And before you could take sick days and get paid. There are no sick days when you're an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

If your stuff doesn't work, you don't get paid and your people don't get paid and your business goes under. So like what is the actual on paper, how are you actually going to make this happen? And we were very methodical about that. That's because we got funded so we had to do that. To me, that's also very helpful is it's you want to make sure you actually have some substance because if you just jump off the diving board and hope there's a pool. Yeah. Before you jump off the diving board, make sure there's pool there.

This is awesome. Okay. There's a question I ask everybody on the show, so I'm going to ask you this too and I'm very curious. Your answers talking to you. I think they're going to be different than what I've heard before. If somebody is listening to this and they're in their own personal rock bottom. So maybe they lost their corporate job or they lost their funds or they're not as fortunate as you with their business and it they couldn't make the payroll and it just didn't get better. They're in their own personal rock bottom. If you were to give them three pieces of advice on how they can start shifting, leveling up and creating everything from nothing, what would you tell them?

The first piece of advice would be to identify what part you think you played in being at this rock bottom state.

Okay. So be accountable.

The second piece of advice would be once you've identified that, to ask yourself why, okay, why did I do that? If I, if I cussed my boss out and got fired, if that was the part I played in this, what precipitated me to react that way to my boss?

Okay.

And then the third piece of advice would be what steps can I take every single day for the rest of my life to avoid that type of behavior in the future?

All right, that's awesome. Jonathan, tell us about where people can find you, your podcast, your company, all the things. And we're on social media.

The best the company is sanesolution.com s a n e solution.com. if you want to learn more about me personally, it's just Jonathan Baylor b a I l o r.com and all those sites have all the links to all the various social media sites as well.

Yeah. Awesome. And he's got a podcast. Podcast. Check that out. San Solution all right. Thanks Jonathan.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable. And come interact with me over on Instagram at Natalie Jill Fit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.