One of Brett White’s first assignments as a CFO was also one of his toughest. Back in 2001, with 10 years of career-building at Oracle Corp. behind him, White recalls eagerly stepping into his first CFO role–only to be handed a less than exhilarating task.

During a meeting in his first week on the job, White was welcomed by the CEO, who then asked him to pull together and execute a plan to eliminate one-third of the company’s workforce, or roughly 850 employees.

“It was a palm-to-the-forehead moment,” says White. “I realized that this was just not crunching numbers, and that the decisions that were required to be made would have an enormous impact on people’s lives.”

Fifteen years and four CFO tours of duty later, White received a call from a recruiter regarding a health and wellness business located down the coast.

“The business was a recurring revenue model and SaaS business, so it meant no more of this end-of-quarter fingernail-chewing stuff. It was all highly recurring with a group of A-list investors,” adds White, who arrived in Mindbody’s CFO office in 2016.

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