Latest / CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered. / Sworkit Health’s Transition From DTC to B2B w/ CEO, Ryan Hanna | HealthBiz Brief

Transcript

Sworkit Health’s Transition From DTC to B2B w/ CEO, Ryan Hanna | HealthBiz Brief · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:06
  Welcome to Health Biz Briefs. I'm David Williams, president of health Business Group, and I'm here with Ryan Hannah. He is CEO and co founder of Swirk at Health. Welcome, Ryan.
• 0:16
  Thank you. Great to be here. I want to ask you first about your personal experience and how that led to the founding of swirk at health.
• 0:24
  It. Yeah, so my journey with Sworkit began really as a personal need for accessible fitness that evolved into a widespread focus on wellness at the time. Back in 2012, I was in the army reserves and needed to stay fit. I was still working a full time job as well. So there was a need to find a way to be motivated to get my fitness in. And the amount of time that I had, I was not really somebody who was interested in going to the gym. I again, had sort of a limited amount of experience in gyms and just didn't have the confidence to be in there. So happened to, at the time, also be teaching myself to code. And so one of the actual first ideas that I started to play with and to kind of build on that is circuit. So it started off with being able to create circuit workouts that you could complete just by choosing the type of workout you want, how long you have, and then following all along with really great guidance from the top, sort of guidance and standardization from ACSM for physical fitness.
• 1:34
  So putting that all together, really, that started to evolve. Swirk it into what we still focus on a lot today, which is personalization, being able to make sure that the journey that somebody's taking is personalized, breaking down the barriers. So again, when I didn't have as much time, I could just choose a 510 minutes workout to be able to still prioritize what I was doing and has been able to help myself personally. And then obviously now millions of people throughout the world have been able to benefit from that as well.
• 2:06
  When talking to authors, people say, write what you know. And I think something similar follows along on the business side. And it sounds like that was the case here. Even after you've been on active duty in the army as an officer, and then you found, hey, gee, I still need some. After you're doing that, you need the structure, the motivation, and realize a lot of people are intimidated by the gym and just don't actually know where to begin. And that's led to a lot and real success. On the direct to consumer side, I want to hear a little bit about the transition that then you made from direct to consumer to business to business. What was that transition and what motivated it yeah.
• 2:42
  So part of the motivation it was sort of stemmed out of, again, what we were already doing with schools. So we've worked with over 16,000 schools worldwide. But during the pandemic, we started to get inbound requests from large global companies who wanted to provide a benefit to their employees that they could use at home in this sort of big change that they were going through in their lives of not being able to get out and not being able to do things as much. So this transition from d to c to b to b was a great pivot for us as an organization.
• 3:13
  We were able to expand our reach. We adapted our offerings to work with organizations. So adding challenges and admin portal where they can control things, adding all the security for eligibility, it's helped us grow as a company. So being in control of that revenue model where we can work with large groups, and now, even as we transition that into working with health plans and community organizations, so just keep kind of getting bigger and bigger. And we've had a really great past twelve months and a really exciting 2024 ahead.
• 3:51
  You had worked with schools before really going to b to b. That was like kind of sort of a d to c. And you can imagine, as we've discussed, that, okay, it may be difficult for you to go to the gym. There's a lot of people who have a lot of awkwardness in fifth grade or eigth grade around PE class. And in some ways, having an app and even being at home could actually be better and in a way more inclusive, even if you can't do all the things you do in gym. Absolutely. We've heard countless stories of students who, again, when they were in person in PE classes, again, were a bit more shy about kind of getting involved with the sports and the games that were being played, but then having access to it at home and even be able to do it alongside with their parents. We've heard quotes from parents who now your child is now taking this on for themselves. They're motivated to do it. They're feeling more confident, and hopefully that's sort of transitioning back and will be something they can take with them for the rest of their life. A new way to think about physical activity in schools is how we can actually empower students to build their own plans and follow them and measure their results in a very healthy way, in a very holistic way. So you've worked your magic with millions of people on physical health, but during the pandemic, we also saw mental health as being a big problem and really an intractable one. Can you help us there? Yeah, absolutely. So, again, we always focus on a big part of we what do with physical fitness is a powerful lever for mental health. Improved mood, reduced stress, higher energy levels, the dopamine, the endorphins that kick in right away.
• 5:28
  We've also seen how tying this in with mental health as well. So we've added mindfulness. That kind of complements what we do, just helps people stay a bit more grounded, I think, as well with fitness, by getting that really quick rewarding feedback from the sort of physical benefits to the mental benefits, you start to also kind of pass that on to maybe taking on others, improving your nutrition as well. So, yeah, we're definitely all about the benefits beyond just the physical and into mental health. And again, working with partners who maybe focus more on behavioral health or mental health, when we combine that with what sometimes could be a softer benefit like fitness, we are able to amplify outcomes together and look at how increasing movements is just going to help with the longevity of life and help people feel more confident.
• 6:19
  And that's a big part of our mental health. Well, Ryan Hanna, CEO and co founder of Swork at Health, thanks for joining me on health is briefs. Thank you.