Factor CEO Mike Apostal Shares his Journey to Becoming a Start-up Athlete

Mike Apostal, CEO and Co-Founder, Factor

In spite of a growing body of research that clearly demonstrates the connections between wellness and performance, entrepreneurs are often faced with the reality that the demands of launching their start-ups sometimes mean that their health takes a back seat to their businesses.

According to Mike Apostal, CEO and co-founder of Factor, that approach represents a missed opportunity. In looking back at his own experiences, Mike believes that an investment in personal health helps drive successful businesses.

Mike joined Factor, a prepared meal delivery service that focuses on fresh, high-quality ingredients that fit a variety of different dietary plans, as co-founder and partner in 2015.  In 2020 Factor was acquired by Hello Fresh, but Mike says that in the early days of running Factor, it was easy to lose sight of self-care and put wellness on the backburner.

According to Mike, that initial period was both scary and uncertain, and there were many challenges the company needed to overcome. But the instability in the business also created personal instability; Mike says he left a “cushy” job in a venture capital firm to co-found the company.

In Purpose First Entrepreneur, Pete Wilkins emphasizes the importance of investing in a solid foundation built on four principles, what he calls your Purpose Pillars: Honor, Love Wellness, and Goodness. He also advocates for entrepreneurs to view themselves as Start-up Athletes, who need to train to perform at their best and own their health and wellness.

Mike recognizes that the huge amount of drive necessary to build a successful business in a “grind it out” market easily could have set him on a path to neglecting his Purpose Pillars, particularly Wellness.

But as the business matured out of the start-up phase, he realized that he needed to work out how to become a successful leader, and he recognized that would require investing in himself and his own health. He says, “Nobody wants to follow somebody who is working 20 hours a day and is unfriendly and looks unhealthy. I wouldn’t want to follow that person, and I would say the vast majority of people wouldn’t want to follow that person.”

In order to evolve into an effective leader and make the business a success, Mike started working on his own wellness in tandem with working on Factor. He explains, “The purpose was to be successful with Factor, and I started embracing that working on myself, on all facets, means that I am working on Factor.”

One of the key moments in that change was participating in the Chicago Wellness Challenge, which helped push him to renew his focus on his own health and wellness. What he noticed was that the changes in his physical health translated to improved performance in his business. He had more energy and better focus in meetings, and according to Mike, he was “just more enjoyable to be around for my team.” He says,

“When your health is out of whack, it’s tough for other things to be in line and going well. If you’re not feeling well, it’s tough to give 100% to other things in your life. When you are healthy and when you do have the opportunity to improve your strength training or your mindfulness or the acquisition of wisdom, you’re just better.”

In 2017, Mike’s wife, Mairin, joined the team at Factor, and that further reinforced the importance of prioritizing wellness. Mairin started as a customer service agent. Within a week she was running customer experience and later took over as head of brand, all while, according to Mike, also running things at home with their four kids.

When Mairin found herself getting run-down, they both realized that they needed to invest in their health, their family, and their relationship to bring their best to the business. Mike can see the clear connection between prioritizing wellness and their performance: “The time we spent trying to make ourselves better translated to better leadership.”

Mike is cognizant, though, of how challenging it can be to make time for health when you’re trying to build your business. He explains, “There are all these different elements that have to be in alignment. … The challenge is always ‘how do you make time for those things while you’re building a business?’”

Rather than striving for “balance,” Mike learned to recognize the importance of allowing for flow. Mike acknowledges,

“There’s a tradeoff. There are certain times when you have to pull heavily on the business, especially in the early days when you sort of have to be heads-down. But once we got the business to certain plateaus, you had to be able to make that transition. If you don’t, I believe you’ll stall. So the evolution of the business is consistent with the evolution that each of us had personally.”

But according to Mike, when you’re healthy, other aspects of your business will start to fall into place. Taking that step back opens the opportunity to see how your team performs without you, and you’ll learn to take intentional pauses rather than chasing the next thing.

Those are lessons that Mike is taking into his post-acquisition role at Factor. Today, he says, his purpose is growth, both individually and professionally, which is what he believes is necessary to prepare him for whatever comes next. He explains, “That growth as a leader is integral, because given the rapid and continued pace of Factor’s growth, if I’m not evolving as a leader, the business will outgrow me in my role.”