How one major career risk built a $500M empire: Mindy Grossman

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Brian Sozzi (0:25)

When you were starting out, that resiliency, was that your superpower?

Mindy Grossman (0:30)

You know, it's why is someone going to believe in you if you don't believe in yourself? And it's not that I haven't had moments of what am I doing. This ability, because of what I went through, to have the perspective of risk taking and boldness, taking the risk of walking away from something. I was at that company for a year and I ended up walking away. And I knew that a woman was never going to get chosen for those roles.

Brian Sozzi (1:00)

Was it hard to do it?

Now, a partner and vice chair at Consello, as well as on the boards of Fanatics and VF Corp, one of my favorite companies, I should say, Mindy Grossman's career is the epitome of achieving success at the highest level of corporate America. From leading global apparel as a vice president at Nike, to taking IAC retail public and scaling home shopping network as CEO, to orchestrating the massive digital rebrand of WW as CEO, Mindy has pretty much done it all. Along the way, she's gotten to work alongside iconic leaders such as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Oprah and Barry Diller. Somehow, I was able to get Mindy to come on Power Players with me. Not sure how, but here she is with me at Yahoo Finance HQ in New York City. It is so good to see you.

Mindy Grossman (1:46)

Well, I really appreciate that.

Brian Sozzi (1:47)

Yeah, look, I still, I still... How did I get you to do this? Like, how are you even here?

Mindy Grossman (1:51)

Oh, you know, I love having conversations with you.

Brian Sozzi (1:54)

Oh, I have not seen you, I think, physically since 2020, and you were talking about WW and Oprah and all these...

Mindy Grossman (2:01)

I know, I looked back. It was January 2020

Brian Sozzi (2:05)

Holy cow.

Mindy Grossman (2:06)

We were in person, and we were just getting ready to kick off the Nine City Arena Tour with Oprah.

Brian Sozzi (2:14)

It feels like yesterday. It doesn't. It's crazy. You were on the road for a while, right, doing that?

Mindy Grossman (2:19)

Yeah. The finale was March 7th in Denver. I literally flew back to New York. That Wednesday had to shut the offices down. And then we did 30,000 in-person workshops a week in 13 different countries.

And it was literally one of the moments of my career. And I said, we have to solve this problem. Yes, there's financial issues, but I can't leave our members alone when they're going through a crisis. And I remember, I called Eric Wan at Zoom, and I said, I need your help.

And we shifted all of our assets to focus on this. And in six days, we converted every one of those workshops to virtual. I will never forget that.

Brian Sozzi (3:17)

You know, at the time, at the time you're running a business, you're trying to figure all these things out, as we all were at the time, too. I mean, we moved live programming. I was doing live programming off my now ex-girlfriend's kitchen table. I mean, this is just really weird stuff. Do you realize the time you were changing lives of human beings in real time?

Mindy Grossman (3:34)

We were.

And, you know, it's interesting when you go back and look at not just COVID, but I took HS&I public in August 2008, two weeks before the Lehman bankruptcy.

But everything we tried to do at WW, and the reason I joined Oprah on the transformation, to not just be the number one weight loss program in the world, but how could we be more holistic and really help people lead better lives? And it was very personal for me. My mother had her first heart attack at 50, was obese and take care of herself. And I wanted to be able to do something that would truly have impact. But I didn't realize how much that would be in the almost five years that I was there. But that's what we tried to do. And whether it was doing the tour with Oprah from morning till night, having people reassess their lives and walk out, literally transformed, you saw it. And people determined to live a better life and be healthier. That's just so powerful. And look, it's everything today. Look how focused you are, right? On health and wellness and everything you do.