Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / Episode 36: Ethan Agarwal, Founder & CEO Aaptiv

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Episode 36: Ethan Agarwal, Founder & CEO Aaptiv · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

0:00
Speaker 1: What's going on?
0:01
Speaker 2: Guys.
0:02
Speaker 3: Welcome to episode thirty six of Hurdle, a podcast that
0:05
Speaker 3: talks to everyone from top CEOs to entrepreneurs about how
0:08
Speaker 3: they got through tough times hurdles of sorts by leaning
0:11
Speaker 3: into wellness. My name's emileah Body, and today I'm chatting
0:14
Speaker 3: with Ethan Agerwall, the founder and CEO of Active, an
0:18
Speaker 3: audio based workout app which might be best described as the.
0:21
Speaker 1: Netflix of fitness.
0:23
Speaker 3: Today's episode is brought to you by Headspace. I had
0:27
Speaker 3: founder Andy Putcolm on the podcast, so you know I'm
0:29
Speaker 3: a huge fan of the brand. They've got hundreds of
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0:38
Speaker 3: proven to reduce stress and increase happiness.
0:41
Speaker 1: You have got to try it. I swear by it.
0:44
Speaker 3: They're offering Hurdle listeners thirty days free of the entire
0:48
Speaker 3: Headspace library. Just head on over to headspace dot com
0:51
Speaker 3: slash Hurdle again. That's headspace dot com slash Hurdle to
0:55
Speaker 3: dive on in. Today's episode is also brought to you
0:58
Speaker 3: by Athletic Green. Guys, I have been so ampt lately.
1:03
Speaker 3: Total understatement, seeing more and more listeners tagging me in
1:06
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1:09
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1:12
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1:17
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Speaker 3: to Athleticgreens dot com slash hurdle to claim it.
1:29
Speaker 1: No code necessary.
1:31
Speaker 3: Again, that's Athleticgreens dot com slash Hurdle. Now, let's talk
1:36
Speaker 3: about Ethan. In twenty thirteen, the now CEO is working
1:40
Speaker 3: as a consultant, tired, traveling constantly, and forty pounds overweight,
1:45
Speaker 3: and like a lot of people, fitness wasn't a priority
1:47
Speaker 3: for him because, in his words, it was hard to
1:50
Speaker 3: make it a priority. The catch he wanted to be healthier.
1:53
Speaker 3: In his hurdle moment, Ethan dropped forty pounds by building
1:57
Speaker 3: the first version of Aptive, originally called Skyfish, which brings
2:00
Speaker 3: top level digital only audio based training sessions with personal
2:04
Speaker 3: trainers right to your headphones.
2:06
Speaker 1: In today's episode.
2:07
Speaker 3: The founder tells me hilarious stories about the early days
2:10
Speaker 3: of APTIV, posing as a surveyor at the gym, asking
2:13
Speaker 3: strangers for feedback. He offers essential advice for anyone trying
2:17
Speaker 3: to adopt a new fitness routine, and gives the lowdown
2:20
Speaker 3: on his six am habit that makes him more productive
2:23
Speaker 3: throughout his entire day. As always Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at
2:28
Speaker 3: Hurdle Podcast, whether it's a take away from the episode,
2:31
Speaker 3: or you opening a package of athletic greens or trying
2:33
Speaker 3: headspace for.
2:33
Speaker 1: The first time, I want to see it. I want
2:36
Speaker 1: to hear about it. Make sure to tag me in.
2:38
Speaker 3: Your Instagram stories and I'll definitely repost them from the
2:40
Speaker 3: Hurdle account Over at Hurdle Podcast, Los Angeles. I'm doing
2:44
Speaker 3: a live podcast tomorrow, January fifteenth, at the Tory Sports
2:47
Speaker 3: Store on Rodeo Drive. I'll be sitting down with hurdler
2:51
Speaker 3: Y Simons Studio founder and CEO Sarah Larson Levy, as
2:54
Speaker 3: well as Nachelle Hines from cycle House at seven pm
2:57
Speaker 3: and I'd love to see you there. You can find
2:59
Speaker 3: more details on that over on the top of the
3:02
Speaker 3: Hurdle website over at Curdle dot us. If you're not
3:05
Speaker 3: on the West Coast, don't worry, because I'm gonna be
3:08
Speaker 3: having some fun back in New York at the end
3:09
Speaker 3: of the month with We Work Too. Super Flatter that
3:12
Speaker 3: We Work Labs is showcasing Hurdle in their great Reads
3:15
Speaker 3: and Listeners Club as podcast of the Month, and to celebrate,
3:18
Speaker 3: I'll be hanging out with Hurdler's Adam Callen, Jesse Dover,
3:21
Speaker 3: and the co founders and CEOs of Shine Text Maalaidi
3:25
Speaker 3: and Naomi Hirobayashi on January twenty third at six thirty pm.
3:30
Speaker 3: You can find all the details on that over at
3:32
Speaker 3: Curdle dot us as well. Okay, last thing, I promise,
3:36
Speaker 3: even in the Aptive crew, we're't gonna let you get
3:39
Speaker 3: away without offering you an opportunity to try their workouts yourself.
3:42
Speaker 1: Head on over to aptive dot com.
3:44
Speaker 3: That's aaptiv dot com and use the promo code Hurdle
3:49
Speaker 3: to get a seven day free trial, then thirty percent
3:52
Speaker 3: off in annual Aptive membership. I just gave both my
3:56
Speaker 3: parents after for the holidays and they're hooked again. Use
3:59
Speaker 3: the code at checkout at Active dot Com. And with that,
4:04
Speaker 3: let's get to hurdling. I'm sitting here today with Ethan Agarwall.
4:18
Speaker 3: He's the CEO and founder at Active.
4:21
Speaker 2: Hey, Hey, how are you?
4:23
Speaker 1: I'm good? How are you?
4:24
Speaker 2: Terrific?
4:25
Speaker 1: This is kind of cool.
4:27
Speaker 2: We're in a sound booth. We are.
4:29
Speaker 1: It's funny.
4:29
Speaker 3: I actually feel like this is the dialogue I've been
4:31
Speaker 3: having a lot lately. I'm just traveling the country in
4:35
Speaker 3: different sound moves, connecting with awesome people. It's a pretty
4:38
Speaker 3: cool way. It sounds like it's a kind of great
4:41
Speaker 3: side hustle man. And since the last time I came
4:45
Speaker 3: to Active, you are we're in one world trade Right
4:47
Speaker 3: now we are.
4:48
Speaker 2: We're on the forty ninth floor and we're looking right now.
4:51
Speaker 2: We're looking east at a pretty beautiful sunset over the
4:55
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Bridge.
4:55
Speaker 1: Has the change been because you guys were in Flat
4:57
Speaker 1: Iron before?
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Speaker 2: Right we were? You know, I've lived in Manhattan for
5:02
Speaker 2: twelve years and this is the first time I've ever
5:04
Speaker 2: worked downtown. But it's awesome. I mean, what they've done
5:08
Speaker 2: with Oculus and Brookfield and this building is really cool
5:12
Speaker 2: and like, I mean, you know, this building, but it's
5:15
Speaker 2: not a bunch of sort of stuffy finance people. It's
5:17
Speaker 2: like a lot of young people, a lot of startups.
5:19
Speaker 2: So I'm really happy we moved down here.
5:22
Speaker 3: Well, as someone who used to work in this building,
5:24
Speaker 3: I would agree, I'd co sign it's pretty nice.
5:27
Speaker 1: I'm so amped to be here with you today.
5:29
Speaker 3: I'm amped to share more about Active with the Hurdle
5:33
Speaker 3: audience and hear about your company. So why don't we
5:36
Speaker 3: jump off with you giving me a brief synopsis on
5:40
Speaker 3: what Active is.
5:41
Speaker 2: Sure So Active combines the voice and inspiration and guidance
5:47
Speaker 2: of a trainer with an amazing motivating playlist. So for
5:52
Speaker 2: those of your listeners who have been to a studio class,
5:57
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, soul Cycle or berries or whatever,
6:00
Speaker 2: we capture that experience and we make it mobile, so
6:05
Speaker 2: an easy way to think about it is like a
6:07
Speaker 2: personal trainer on your phone. So we have twenty six
6:11
Speaker 2: different categories of classes, everything from treadmill, outdoor running, spinning, stare, climber, meditation, yoga,
6:20
Speaker 2: and we have about three thousand different classes available in
6:22
Speaker 2: those categories.
6:24
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a lot of classes.
6:26
Speaker 2: It is, you know, we think we really care a
6:29
Speaker 2: lot about driving outcomes and helping people reach their goals,
6:33
Speaker 2: and we discovered pretty early on that what you do
6:37
Speaker 2: between classes and having the variety of classes and content
6:42
Speaker 2: is just as important as the class itself. So one
6:45
Speaker 2: of the challenges I think that people experience when they
6:48
Speaker 2: go to a studio class is there's no relationship between
6:52
Speaker 2: you and the studio from one class to the next class.
6:55
Speaker 2: Right if you get injured, if you skip a class,
7:00
Speaker 2: there's no sort of follow up or progression or anything
7:03
Speaker 2: like that. And we care very deeply about the relationship
7:06
Speaker 2: with our members, both during the class and outside of
7:09
Speaker 2: the class.
7:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the term. I love that you call
7:12
Speaker 3: them members absolutely.
7:14
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a community, and a community has
7:17
Speaker 2: members in it. We're not, you know, some big corporate
7:20
Speaker 2: entity that we don't use, like you know, IDs or something.
7:24
Speaker 2: I know people's names. We have over two hundred thousand members' names,
7:28
Speaker 2: and I can probably name a couple of thousand of
7:30
Speaker 2: them just because I read about them and I personally
7:33
Speaker 2: talk to them all the time, and I really you know,
7:36
Speaker 2: one of them is an author and I bought her
7:38
Speaker 2: book and I was reading it this weekend, So you know,
7:41
Speaker 2: like we're really a community. You could you could borderline
7:43
Speaker 2: call it a family. So yes, they're family members.
7:47
Speaker 1: Family members, family members.
7:48
Speaker 3: Okay, so your your family's pretty big now, you guys
7:51
Speaker 3: started in twenty sixteen, that's right. What I would love
7:54
Speaker 3: to know, rewinding a little bit for you life before Active. Sure,
8:01
Speaker 3: it's not like you wake up one day you're like,
8:02
Speaker 3: you know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, I'm going to
8:04
Speaker 3: start this workout app. It's going to be audio. It's
8:07
Speaker 3: gonna be great. So tell me about life before Active.
8:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, so where'd you grow up? I grew up in California? Okay, well,
8:15
Speaker 2: I was actually born in Montreal. My dad went to
8:18
Speaker 2: the seventy six Olympics, fell in love with the city
8:20
Speaker 2: and wanted to move there. Not as a competitor, definitely,
8:25
Speaker 2: just as of viewer. That would be amazing though if
8:28
Speaker 2: he was in the Olympics. He is a PhD though,
8:31
Speaker 2: so I don't know that he would be able to
8:33
Speaker 2: do both. So he went to watch the seventy six
8:37
Speaker 2: Olympics in Montreal, and so he moved the family there,
8:40
Speaker 2: and I was born in Montreal and then moved the family.
8:44
Speaker 2: He moved family out to California in the mid nineties,
8:47
Speaker 2: and so I grew up there. And then you know,
8:49
Speaker 2: most of my career before Active was in finance and
8:54
Speaker 2: in various sort of business roles. So you know, I
8:56
Speaker 2: did invest in banking. I went to Wharton for my MBA,
8:59
Speaker 2: I worked at a hedge fund for a bit, and
9:02
Speaker 2: I spent a few years at McKenzie and all that
9:05
Speaker 2: was except for grad school obviously was in New York,
9:07
Speaker 2: and then started Active about three years ago.
9:10
Speaker 3: I only learned recently that bankers at some of the
9:13
Speaker 3: companies that you're talking about work hours that are like
9:17
Speaker 3: nine am to midnight.
9:19
Speaker 2: Yes, that's so intense, it's crazy, for sure.
9:23
Speaker 1: Or are you working hours like that?
9:24
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was doing that. And you work on weekends
9:27
Speaker 2: and you work on holidays, and you don't really take
9:29
Speaker 2: much time off.
9:30
Speaker 3: So I can imagine that that probably didn't exactly cultivate
9:35
Speaker 3: the healthiest lifestyle.
9:37
Speaker 2: Definitely not I was. I was very thin or in
9:42
Speaker 2: shape sort of growing up. And then, as you said,
9:44
Speaker 2: because of the hours, and also in grad school, I
9:49
Speaker 2: wouldn't say I was living my healthiest life. I put
9:53
Speaker 2: on like forty pounds. And you know, this is an
9:57
Speaker 2: audio podcast, but I generally you have a pretty small frame,
10:01
Speaker 2: and so forty pounds is a lot of weight for me,
10:06
Speaker 2: and I wanted to lose it, and that's part of
10:08
Speaker 2: the reason that active came to be.
10:10
Speaker 1: Were you frustrated?
10:12
Speaker 3: I remember, for example, when I was in college, I
10:16
Speaker 3: was dramatically overweight as well. I have talked about on
10:19
Speaker 3: the podcast before, but I lost seventy pounds from my
10:22
Speaker 3: freshman year to my senior year.
10:23
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
10:24
Speaker 3: And throughout that process, I remember that the best parts
10:30
Speaker 3: were when I just started to feel like I had
10:33
Speaker 3: more energy.
10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the thing with weight loss or weight
10:37
Speaker 2: gain for that matter, is yes, you look physically different.
10:41
Speaker 2: But the problem with weight gain is what you said
10:44
Speaker 2: right where you lose energy, you lose confidence, and you
10:48
Speaker 2: lose sort of the motivation that you know wakes us
10:52
Speaker 2: up every day and makes us strive to do something
10:55
Speaker 2: incredible that day.
10:56
Speaker 3: Did you feel like you were lacking motivation at your
10:59
Speaker 3: job because of how you are kind of perceiving your body.
11:02
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, you lose a sense of confidence, you
11:06
Speaker 2: lose a sense of sort of self worth. You know
11:08
Speaker 2: what's it all for? Kind of thinking ends up entering
11:11
Speaker 2: your brain. You know, why am I working all these
11:14
Speaker 2: crazy hours? I'm not living healthy. I've put on all
11:17
Speaker 2: this weight, none of my clothes fit anymore. I feel
11:20
Speaker 2: guilty every meal, and so you end up that ends
11:23
Speaker 2: up factoring into your sleep, into your relationships, into your friendships,
11:26
Speaker 2: and so it's not just the weight, like the physical weight,
11:31
Speaker 2: it's all the other stuff that goes along with it
11:33
Speaker 2: that makes it really challenging.
11:34
Speaker 3: I always ask this to people who also were at
11:37
Speaker 3: one time heavier than they are now.
11:39
Speaker 1: Well, what was your food?
11:41
Speaker 3: Like?
11:41
Speaker 1: What was the thing?
11:45
Speaker 2: I grew up in California? So Mexican food is definitely
11:48
Speaker 2: my weakness, and for what it's worth, it's still my weakness.
11:52
Speaker 2: Like you could put her refried bean burrito in front
11:55
Speaker 2: of me and I would eat it anytime. Yeah, now
11:59
Speaker 2: I just eat a lot less of them than I
12:02
Speaker 2: used to.
12:02
Speaker 3: I share that sentiment, but it's equally divided between French
12:07
Speaker 3: fries always and like I used to be able to
12:11
Speaker 3: tell you, like which places around where I grew up
12:14
Speaker 3: had the best fries, and it wasn't. I'm not talking
12:16
Speaker 3: like McDonald's. It was like the maritime aquarium.
12:19
Speaker 2: Like French fries, seasoning is very specific.
12:27
Speaker 3: I used to just be a sucker for French fries
12:29
Speaker 3: and also still to this day, just ice cream in general, Okay, huge.
12:33
Speaker 2: I I never had a big sweet tooth, thankfully. Yeah,
12:36
Speaker 2: but Mexican food is a big weakness.
12:38
Speaker 3: Okay, So you are working crazy hours, you're traveling a lot,
12:44
Speaker 3: and as you're traveling, to my understanding, you start to
12:48
Speaker 3: kind of have these thoughts about what your routine is missing.
12:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. What's my
12:57
Speaker 2: routine missing? And how do I You know, if getting
13:01
Speaker 2: healthy and losing weight is first and foremost a mental decision,
13:05
Speaker 2: it's really a test of mental strength more than physical strength.
13:09
Speaker 2: And so if I've made the mental sort of you know,
13:14
Speaker 2: I'll even call it a mental accomplishment to decide that
13:17
Speaker 2: I want to live healthier, I shouldn't have to then
13:21
Speaker 2: undergo this big, logistical, complicated world of how to lose
13:26
Speaker 2: that weight, because the mental part is the hard part.
13:28
Speaker 2: And so I made a decision. I said, I want
13:31
Speaker 2: to lose weight, I want to live healthier, and I'm
13:32
Speaker 2: ready to make those changes in my life. But the
13:35
Speaker 2: things that I needed to make those changes were too
13:38
Speaker 2: hard or nearly impossible for me to find. And that's
13:41
Speaker 2: where I found an opportunity.
13:43
Speaker 1: Right, And so it's interesting that you say that.
13:46
Speaker 3: I think a great example for this is with running,
13:49
Speaker 3: Like people are like, oh my god, I need all
13:51
Speaker 3: these things. I need sneakers, I need a smart watch.
13:54
Speaker 3: Are the leggings I'm wearing? Are they okay? What about
13:56
Speaker 3: do if you're a woman? Do I need a sports bra?
13:58
Speaker 3: And then they get so rare up in the details
14:01
Speaker 3: that they completely forget that you could literally just put
14:04
Speaker 3: on any pair of sneakers and get out and move.
14:07
Speaker 3: You don't need to see how fast you're going, like,
14:09
Speaker 3: you can just do it.
14:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. And running is a great example
14:13
Speaker 2: of something like literally all you need are like sneakers
14:15
Speaker 2: in a road. You can do it anywhere anytime. You
14:18
Speaker 2: don't need to spend a bunch of money, you don't
14:20
Speaker 2: need to know how to do anything. You just run.
14:22
Speaker 2: And I think one of the you know, you bring
14:24
Speaker 2: up a really good point. One of the things that
14:27
Speaker 2: I think hinders a lot of people is this fear
14:29
Speaker 2: that other people are going to look at them. And
14:32
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to look like a fool.
14:34
Speaker 2: I don't want to look like I don't know what
14:35
Speaker 2: I'm doing. And I always tell people two things. One
14:39
Speaker 2: is whether this hurts your ego or not, no one
14:43
Speaker 2: is looking at you. Everyone is focused on their own thing.
14:45
Speaker 2: Everyone's listening to music, everyone's doing something. I promise you,
14:48
Speaker 2: no matter how good or bad you look, no one
14:50
Speaker 2: is looking at you.
14:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
14:51
Speaker 2: But the second and most important thing, and we can
14:53
Speaker 2: get to this later, is you know, one of the
14:55
Speaker 2: things I's active is that we're audio only, and so
14:58
Speaker 2: when people are listening to our class is they're listening
15:00
Speaker 2: in their earphones and they're listening on their phone in
15:04
Speaker 2: their earbuds, and so no one knows. No one else
15:07
Speaker 2: in the gym knows that you're listening to an active
15:09
Speaker 2: trainer and an active class. So when you walk into
15:13
Speaker 2: a gym with active membership, you walk in like you
15:16
Speaker 2: own the place. You have a sense of confidence that
15:18
Speaker 2: I can walk up to any machine and there's dozens,
15:21
Speaker 2: if not hundreds of classes available led by the world's
15:24
Speaker 2: best trainers to teach me exactly how to use that machine.
15:28
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest, that's not something that I planned
15:30
Speaker 2: for in the beginning as one of the reasons why
15:34
Speaker 2: I started the company, but it is one of the
15:36
Speaker 2: most common reasons that we hear from people as to
15:39
Speaker 2: why they love active.
15:40
Speaker 1: And it's funny now that you say that.
15:42
Speaker 3: I had a girlfriend hit me up a couple of
15:44
Speaker 3: days ago asking if I wanted to go to the
15:46
Speaker 3: gym together next week, and she said, I just feel
15:49
Speaker 3: like I walk in there and I have no.
15:50
Speaker 2: Sense of direction totally.
15:52
Speaker 3: And so what you're saying is like a huge problem
15:55
Speaker 3: solver for someone like that that's just like, I don't
15:58
Speaker 3: know what to do this. I can I get there.
15:59
Speaker 3: I feel like I've chicken with my head cut off.
16:01
Speaker 3: I'm just walking around. I'll like lift something briefly, then
16:05
Speaker 3: I'll like get on the treadmill and I'll be like, oh,
16:07
Speaker 3: I don't really want to be on the treadmill, and
16:08
Speaker 3: then I'll like walk over to the elliptical.
16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have to be like that. It does
16:12
Speaker 2: not have to be like that. The other thing I'll
16:14
Speaker 2: just say really quick is we launched a maternity program recently,
16:18
Speaker 2: and as we were doing research before we built the program,
16:23
Speaker 2: we were talking to a lot of moms, or I
16:24
Speaker 2: should say both pregnant women and re moms, and one
16:28
Speaker 2: of the pieces of feedback that we got almost unanimously
16:31
Speaker 2: is because a woman can't tell anyone in the first
16:34
Speaker 2: trimester that she's pregnant. A lot of women were going
16:37
Speaker 2: to the gym in their first trimester or going to
16:39
Speaker 2: a spin class or whatever it is, and they couldn't
16:43
Speaker 2: tell the trainer or the instructor that they were pregnant.
16:46
Speaker 2: So they had this huge sense of concern inside of
16:50
Speaker 2: is this workout safe for me? Is this workout safe
16:53
Speaker 2: for the baby? But because they couldn't tell anyone, they
16:56
Speaker 2: couldn't answer that question. And that's such an unfair situation
17:00
Speaker 2: for a woman who is pregnant and wants to work
17:03
Speaker 2: out at the gym, that she has this sense of
17:05
Speaker 2: insecurity inside. So when we built our maternity program, now
17:09
Speaker 2: we have it's a full three trimester program and then
17:12
Speaker 2: we have a fourth trimester after you deliver. But each
17:15
Speaker 2: week's classes that we have for all forty weeks is
17:19
Speaker 2: first of all, the program is created by our trainers
17:21
Speaker 2: who are also moms. But more importantly, the classes are
17:25
Speaker 2: safe to be done in any given week. So if
17:27
Speaker 2: you're taking the Aptive Maternity program and you're in week
17:30
Speaker 2: six and you're not telling anyone that you're pregnant, the
17:33
Speaker 2: classes that we have in week six we know are
17:35
Speaker 2: safe for women. To do. So now they're going into
17:38
Speaker 2: the gym, they're taking the Aptive maternity program with a
17:41
Speaker 2: full sense of confidence without having to disclose to anyone
17:45
Speaker 2: else that they're pregnant, because no one knows that you're
17:48
Speaker 2: taking the maternity.
17:49
Speaker 1: Program, right right, Okay, so let's dial it back again.
17:52
Speaker 3: We're going to reel it in and we're going to
17:54
Speaker 3: talk to when you started to really kind of concept
17:58
Speaker 3: the idea for this ad app because at the time,
18:02
Speaker 3: there was really not much like it at all.
18:04
Speaker 1: There wasn't anything like it at.
18:06
Speaker 2: All, that's right, So there was nothing like it.
18:09
Speaker 1: Or what year we in when when you first have
18:11
Speaker 1: this kind of aha moment?
18:13
Speaker 2: Twenty fifteen.
18:16
Speaker 1: So and you're still you're still at your old.
18:18
Speaker 2: Gig, and yeah, this is right now, this is just
18:21
Speaker 2: an idea in my head. There's there's no one working
18:23
Speaker 2: on it, there's no money, there's no members. This is
18:25
Speaker 2: just like an idea that I have.
18:28
Speaker 1: And you're still forty pounds overweight.
18:31
Speaker 2: No, so it started because I lost the weight. I
18:35
Speaker 2: lost the weight by creating, you know, the very very
18:39
Speaker 2: very early version of active, which is like music and
18:44
Speaker 2: a workout designed to the pace of the music, and
18:48
Speaker 2: some coaching and you know programs and stuff like that,
18:51
Speaker 2: and I lost all the weight and I went from
18:54
Speaker 2: uh one seventy five to one thirty five, and one
18:58
Speaker 2: thirty five is a little skinny for me, so I
18:59
Speaker 2: put some weight back on, but I lost the weight.
19:02
Speaker 2: And people started asking me, Ethan, how did you lose
19:05
Speaker 2: forty pounds, because it's a lot of weight to lose.
19:07
Speaker 2: And I started telling them about, you know, these programs
19:10
Speaker 2: and these classes that I had sort of built myself
19:12
Speaker 2: and I was taking. But where I got really interested
19:15
Speaker 2: in it is I realized that all the content that
19:18
Speaker 2: was created before Active was video based. And a big
19:23
Speaker 2: problem with video is, like, you know, I'm a runner.
19:25
Speaker 2: I think you run too. You know, you can't run
19:28
Speaker 2: down the street staring at a video on your phone
19:30
Speaker 2: or on an iPad, right, that doesn't make any sense.
19:33
Speaker 2: Any instruction, guidance, motivation that comes to us has to
19:37
Speaker 2: come through audio, and running is, by the way, the
19:40
Speaker 2: most popular workout in the world because of all the
19:42
Speaker 2: stuff we just talked about. And then I realized audio
19:45
Speaker 2: actually works even better for almost every kind of exercise,
19:49
Speaker 2: Like we're not meant to work out while staring at
19:52
Speaker 2: a foreign screen for forty five minutes. That's a terrible
19:54
Speaker 2: way to work out your body. You can't move your head,
19:57
Speaker 2: your eyes are anchored to one place. You know, you
20:00
Speaker 2: can't do any body weight kind of workout. You can't
20:02
Speaker 2: do push ups, you can't do squads, you can't do
20:04
Speaker 2: anything that doesn't require you staring straight ahead. And so
20:08
Speaker 2: if you get the best trainers who can articulate the
20:11
Speaker 2: right posture and who can motivate you through words, which
20:15
Speaker 2: is exactly what we have today, audio is actually a
20:17
Speaker 2: much better way to deliver content and instruction than video,
20:21
Speaker 2: and no one had done that. So that's why I
20:24
Speaker 2: started Ouptive.
20:25
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so interesting, I think especially I mean
20:27
Speaker 3: I had Ruth Zagribbin on the podcast they have fly
20:30
Speaker 3: Anywhere at Flywheel. I had Robin Arizono the podcast. She's
20:34
Speaker 3: a part of the huge team at Peloton. And it's
20:36
Speaker 3: like there's more and more options coming out, some of
20:40
Speaker 3: which do have screens like you're talking about. And then
20:42
Speaker 3: obviously now there's more competition in your market, but it
20:44
Speaker 3: seems that the bigger goal here is to provide people
20:49
Speaker 3: with things that they can do on their own.
20:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I think flexibility and personalization are going to
20:56
Speaker 2: win in the end. You know, people are tired of
20:59
Speaker 2: being treated like an um. I mean we were talking
21:00
Speaker 2: about this earlier, like our members are members. They're not
21:05
Speaker 2: just a number, and they're not put into like buckets
21:08
Speaker 2: of demographic like, oh, you're a woman who's twenty five
21:11
Speaker 2: to forty four, so here is five classes that we
21:15
Speaker 2: think you alike. That makes no sense. Forget the fact
21:19
Speaker 2: that there is a nineteen year age range between those people.
21:22
Speaker 2: Even two people who are twenty five are going to
21:25
Speaker 2: have very different goals, very different bodies, very different capabilities.
21:29
Speaker 2: So we really care about specificity and individuality and personalization,
21:34
Speaker 2: and we don't try to box people into buckets. We
21:38
Speaker 2: don't try to tell people, hey, the only way for
21:40
Speaker 2: you to get a great workout is to do this
21:43
Speaker 2: one specific exercise. We have twenty six categories of workouts,
21:47
Speaker 2: we have three thousand classes. We are super open and flexible.
21:51
Speaker 2: We let people do what we think is the best
21:54
Speaker 2: for them, and I think that's what's going to win
21:56
Speaker 2: in the end.
22:03
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22:07
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22:51
Speaker 3: com slash hurdle. You have this idea, you lose the weight,
23:02
Speaker 3: people are asking you about it, and you're like, maybe
23:05
Speaker 3: I should really start thinking a little bit more about
23:08
Speaker 3: all this stuff.
23:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what I did is I created like a
23:12
Speaker 2: very like really really rudimentary, really pretty subpar app It
23:19
Speaker 2: was like super ugly, and I think, there, how.
23:22
Speaker 1: Do you even like do that when you've never created
23:23
Speaker 1: an app before.
23:26
Speaker 2: Badly, so you know, you beg people who are engineering.
23:33
Speaker 2: I'm not an engineer, So I had to find people
23:35
Speaker 2: who are engineers and pay them like obscene amounts of
23:38
Speaker 2: money to design something that I designed, and I'm not
23:41
Speaker 2: a designer. Yeah. I just studied a lot of different
23:44
Speaker 2: products that I liked and found common themes and then
23:47
Speaker 2: created a design based on that and I got someone
23:49
Speaker 2: to build it. And then what I would do is
23:51
Speaker 2: I would either go to people in the gym in
23:53
Speaker 2: my building, or go to people outside in the street,
23:55
Speaker 2: or go to people at gyms and say, hey, like,
23:58
Speaker 2: I see you're about to get on this, mil I
24:01
Speaker 2: have this class. It's like going to make you work
24:03
Speaker 2: out better. Do you mind trying it?
24:05
Speaker 1: It's gonna make you work out better?
24:06
Speaker 2: And nine times out of ten they tell you to
24:09
Speaker 2: screw off, right, Yeah, like, leave me alone, dude, I
24:11
Speaker 2: want to work out. But every once in a while
24:13
Speaker 2: someone would say yes and they would try the class,
24:16
Speaker 2: and unanimously, the feedback I got from people was like,
24:19
Speaker 2: oh my god, how do I get more of that?
24:21
Speaker 2: And it didn't matter to them that the app looked like,
24:23
Speaker 2: you know, it was terrible, and I was just some
24:25
Speaker 2: random dude and a gym bothering them. The class was
24:28
Speaker 2: really really good, and so they kept and I did this,
24:32
Speaker 2: you know, dozens and hundreds of times, and then I
24:35
Speaker 2: got a bunch of feedback from people telling me these
24:38
Speaker 2: classes are amazing. I've never had anything like this before.
24:41
Speaker 2: Like that gave me the drive to keep going with this.
24:45
Speaker 2: I realized there was something.
24:46
Speaker 3: Then you probably also got like a lot of really
24:48
Speaker 3: good critical feedback.
24:50
Speaker 2: Oh definitely, so great point. One of the things I
24:52
Speaker 2: did is when I started, I would tell people that
24:55
Speaker 2: this is my thing and I built this, and so
24:57
Speaker 2: they were like a little too nice. And then I
24:59
Speaker 2: changed my approach and I said, hey, I work for
25:03
Speaker 2: this like surveying company, and I've been hired to gauge
25:06
Speaker 2: interest in this. So they're much more honest because they
25:10
Speaker 2: have no problem, you know, criticizing something if it's not mine.
25:14
Speaker 2: And that's what I want. I want the criticism.
25:16
Speaker 3: And are you still at this point at your other
25:19
Speaker 3: job while doing this on the side and paying people
25:22
Speaker 3: a ton of money to help you execute this.
25:25
Speaker 2: I'm sort of this is right when I was leaving
25:27
Speaker 2: my old job and before I started app to full time.
25:30
Speaker 3: Okay, and I just I as an entrepreneur myself, I
25:35
Speaker 3: find it fascinating to think about people that are either
25:38
Speaker 3: keeping a full time job while building something else, or
25:41
Speaker 3: they start building something else and then like they finally
25:44
Speaker 3: get to a point where they're like, maybe I should
25:45
Speaker 3: reach out to some other people for money. Like it
25:47
Speaker 3: just blows my mind. And it goes back to that
25:49
Speaker 3: question of like, so how did you make the app?
25:51
Speaker 3: Like there's simple questions that people are like that someone
25:55
Speaker 3: will say to you and then I just did this
25:57
Speaker 3: thing and I'm sitting here and I'm like.
25:59
Speaker 1: How how'd you do the thing? Like how did it happen?
26:02
Speaker 1: I want to know all the secrets. I want to
26:03
Speaker 1: know the details.
26:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think part of the
26:08
Speaker 2: reason that we don't that I don't share too many
26:10
Speaker 2: details is because it's not at all a glamorous process.
26:14
Speaker 2: It's actually horrible. Like, yeah, I was. I was doing
26:19
Speaker 2: an interview earlier last week, and you know, we went
26:22
Speaker 2: pretty far in depth about like how I had you know,
26:25
Speaker 2: I was pretty deep into student Dead and I like
26:27
Speaker 2: didn't have a bunch of money, and I racked up
26:30
Speaker 2: a bunch of crazy bills on my credit cards to
26:31
Speaker 2: get into this thing, and I was recently married, and like,
26:34
Speaker 2: you know, it's a big personal commitment and a big
26:37
Speaker 2: personal investment and there's very very slim chance of it
26:42
Speaker 2: turning into something, and it's a lot of frustrating work
26:46
Speaker 2: and a lot of failure before it becomes anything. And
26:49
Speaker 2: then even so, you know, we raised a little bit
26:51
Speaker 2: of money in twenty sixteen, and so I started hiring
26:55
Speaker 2: some people, but like, I didn't take a salary for
26:57
Speaker 2: six months, and then when I did, it was like far,
27:00
Speaker 2: it was like twenty percent of what I was making before.
27:04
Speaker 2: And you know, even today I'm the lowest paid guy
27:06
Speaker 2: on my executive team. And so you know, this is
27:09
Speaker 2: this is just part of It's like you, right, you
27:12
Speaker 2: sort of have an itch and you look back in
27:15
Speaker 2: hindsight and you say, man, I can't believe I did
27:17
Speaker 2: all these crazy things. But it was an itch. And
27:19
Speaker 2: if you didn't scratch that itch, that was much more
27:21
Speaker 2: painful than the risk that you had to take or
27:24
Speaker 2: the financial commitment.
27:25
Speaker 1: That you had to put in totally, and.
27:28
Speaker 2: That's how these things work out. Sometimes.
27:30
Speaker 3: I can only imagine, as someone that was recently married,
27:33
Speaker 3: that this must have been so stressful for the two
27:36
Speaker 3: of you. She's she's like, what did I get into? Like,
27:39
Speaker 3: what are we doing there? When I met you, you
27:41
Speaker 3: were this guy, Now you're this.
27:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm fortunate in the sense that my wife's always
27:46
Speaker 2: been very, very supportive. So we were together for quite
27:49
Speaker 2: like a couple of years before he got engaged. Yeah,
27:51
Speaker 2: and then we got married, and you know, she knew
27:54
Speaker 2: that this is this kind of lifestyle and work level
27:58
Speaker 2: and sort of I guess ambition is something that has
28:02
Speaker 2: always been part of me. So yeah, I'm super lucky
28:05
Speaker 2: that she's been so supportive from there.
28:08
Speaker 3: Oh man, Okay, so you start working with these app developers,
28:12
Speaker 3: you're going in posing as a survey guy at a gym.
28:15
Speaker 3: Did anyone at any of these gyms ever tell you
28:17
Speaker 3: that you needed to like buzz off?
28:19
Speaker 2: Oh?
28:20
Speaker 1: Like what about like the staff at the gym?
28:22
Speaker 2: Yeah? So one time. Yeah, Actually, one time, I was
28:26
Speaker 2: like trying to record something on a treadmill as I
28:30
Speaker 2: was running, But I brought my laptop with me and
28:32
Speaker 2: I put it up and I had an external mic
28:34
Speaker 2: that I plugged into the mic thing because I wanted
28:37
Speaker 2: to see if it works if you're recording while you're running,
28:40
Speaker 2: and so I'm like recording a class or like an
28:43
Speaker 2: audio clip while on a treadmill with a laptop sitting there,
28:48
Speaker 2: and within like you know, two minutes, the guy comes
28:50
Speaker 2: to me and he's like, sir, what are you doing? Like,
28:53
Speaker 2: you can't be doing this here. You gotta cut this out,
28:55
Speaker 2: you gotta go. So I like closed it and I left.
28:57
Speaker 2: But it was the building. It was the gym in
28:59
Speaker 2: my building. Oh my godness. It was like, you're not
29:01
Speaker 2: going to kick me out of the apartment. So I
29:02
Speaker 2: just went back upstairs and that was the end of that.
29:04
Speaker 2: But yes, I got kicked out of gym's all the time.
29:06
Speaker 1: All the time.
29:08
Speaker 2: It happens.
29:09
Speaker 1: Do you have any sort of like personal training background
29:11
Speaker 1: at all.
29:12
Speaker 2: No, So this was all me just understanding sort of
29:16
Speaker 2: the technology of totally. And then as soon as I
29:20
Speaker 2: before I put anything out there for anyone else to consume,
29:24
Speaker 2: all that's been done by you know, professional license trainers,
29:27
Speaker 2: I would never do that myself.
29:29
Speaker 3: Okay, so you are doing all that testing, This seems
29:33
Speaker 3: to be something that people could be into.
29:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the feedback I was getting from people was
29:38
Speaker 2: really strong. And then in January of twenty sixteen, I
29:43
Speaker 2: started act to full time. It was me with two
29:46
Speaker 2: monitors under my arm, and I walked into the We
29:49
Speaker 2: work on twenty ninth in Park in a three person office.
29:52
Speaker 2: I didn't need a three person off It's just me,
29:55
Speaker 2: but it was. I remember it was January seventeenth, and
29:57
Speaker 2: I walked in and started working on the thing full time.
30:01
Speaker 2: And the first guy I hired joined in March, and
30:05
Speaker 2: then Clara, who I think we both know, joined also
30:08
Speaker 2: in March or maybe in April. And you know, we
30:12
Speaker 2: ended that year with ten people. We ended twenty sixteen
30:15
Speaker 2: with ten people. We ended twenty seventeen with seventy people,
30:19
Speaker 2: and today, you know, we're sitting at just over one
30:22
Speaker 2: hundred people. And so, yeah, the last couple of years
30:25
Speaker 2: have been pretty crazy.
30:27
Speaker 1: Pretty crazy. An Active didn't start as Active, that's right.
30:32
Speaker 2: We started with the name originally was Skyfit. That was it.
30:35
Speaker 3: I was trying to remember what the originally was because
30:38
Speaker 3: I tried it when it was Skyfit.
30:39
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that.
30:40
Speaker 1: Oh, I was an early doctor.
30:43
Speaker 2: I love to hear that.
30:44
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say props to Clara forgetting me
30:47
Speaker 3: to try it when it was called Skyfit.
30:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, back in the day, I was.
30:52
Speaker 3: Definitely pitched it as an editor, probably sitting in this
30:55
Speaker 3: very building. I think Skyfit that app was featured in
31:00
Speaker 3: ELF when I was itself. That sounds right, Yeah, yeah, well,
31:04
Speaker 3: thank you, You're welcome, no problem. I'm sure that that
31:07
Speaker 3: press really did you a lot of good.
31:09
Speaker 2: I think it did a lot of good.
31:11
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the name changed, So where's apptiv come from.
31:14
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we wanted to veer
31:18
Speaker 2: away from was being known as like a fitness company
31:21
Speaker 2: or a fitness app because we you know, today, we
31:27
Speaker 2: think of our vision and our mission as physical and
31:31
Speaker 2: mental strength. That's what's much more important to me. So
31:34
Speaker 2: we have categories like meditation, We have yoga, obviously, we
31:39
Speaker 2: have walking. We have a lot of things that wouldn't
31:42
Speaker 2: traditionally be considered fitness. Like our goal is not to
31:46
Speaker 2: always make you sweat. Sometimes our goal is just to
31:49
Speaker 2: have you sit in a chair and you know, meditate
31:52
Speaker 2: for six minutes, just to reset your mind mentally. And
31:55
Speaker 2: so we wanted to take the word fit out of
31:58
Speaker 2: our name, and we kept using the word active physically
32:02
Speaker 2: and mentally active, and so we started playing with the
32:05
Speaker 2: word active and that's how we came up with active.
32:08
Speaker 3: I remember I was working at a company called Cafe
32:11
Speaker 3: Mom when I started in the city, and they were
32:14
Speaker 3: launching like new digital properties at one time or another,
32:18
Speaker 3: and you'd walk through the lobby and it would just
32:20
Speaker 3: be like three thousand different words on a wall, and
32:25
Speaker 3: people would either like put a check next to one
32:27
Speaker 3: that they liked, and it was just.
32:28
Speaker 1: A huge drawing board.
32:29
Speaker 2: Totally start up. Wow, that's awesome.
32:32
Speaker 1: Totally yeah. I don't remember.
32:35
Speaker 3: I forget what we were naming at the time, but
32:37
Speaker 3: I do remember that the naming process was such a nightmare.
32:40
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like for me, I got so
32:41
Speaker 3: lucky with Hurdle that it just clicked one day.
32:44
Speaker 2: It's a great name. Thank you, it's a great name.
32:46
Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
32:47
Speaker 2: It's very understandable. I know immediately what you're saying.
32:49
Speaker 3: More than eighteen million classes have been taken on the app,
32:53
Speaker 3: which is a lot of classes which must take a
32:56
Speaker 3: lot of hours on your part to be here and
32:59
Speaker 3: or straight this team of more than one hundred team
33:03
Speaker 3: members and so members my class. My question for you
33:07
Speaker 3: is how do you make the time yourself to have
33:11
Speaker 3: a work life balance. Because we're talking about how it's
33:15
Speaker 3: so important to have that balance and to be both
33:18
Speaker 3: mentally and physically fit.
33:20
Speaker 1: So what do you do for you to kind of
33:22
Speaker 1: keep that all in check?
33:23
Speaker 2: A couple of things. Number one is because I love
33:28
Speaker 2: this job. I dance to work every day. It's like,
33:31
Speaker 2: I'm so lucky and excited to work with these people.
33:36
Speaker 2: It's incredible how fortunate I am. I don't go home
33:41
Speaker 2: and say, like, oh man, I need a drink, like
33:44
Speaker 2: I'm exhausted. I go home and I have ideas and
33:46
Speaker 2: I'm reflecting on what happened that day and what I
33:49
Speaker 2: can do the next day and preparing, and so my
33:52
Speaker 2: mind is running and excited with things that can be
33:56
Speaker 2: done or things that we have done. And so I
34:00
Speaker 2: don't really see it as like now I'm home and
34:02
Speaker 2: so I'm like done with frustrating work. I just I
34:05
Speaker 2: love what I do. So it's always part of It's
34:08
Speaker 2: like your your hobbies or your family or something that's
34:11
Speaker 2: sort of always in the back of your mind. So
34:13
Speaker 2: A I don't, I'm because I'm so lucky that I
34:15
Speaker 2: love my job so much. I don't feel like I
34:17
Speaker 2: need that complete separation. But one thing I do definitely
34:21
Speaker 2: is that I run every morning for an hour, and
34:24
Speaker 2: that's new I started in the last about year and
34:27
Speaker 2: a half. Now. Number one is it's the only time
34:31
Speaker 2: of day that I'm completely alone. And so I live
34:33
Speaker 2: in Chelsea. I run down the West sid Highway and
34:36
Speaker 2: I'm it's just me and my class in my ears,
34:39
Speaker 2: and that's it. And usually I wake up pretty early,
34:42
Speaker 2: so like the sun's not even out yet, so I'm
34:44
Speaker 2: just running and like it's dark and it's just me
34:47
Speaker 2: and my notifications are off on my phone and so
34:50
Speaker 2: I'm just running and sort of zoning out, listening to
34:54
Speaker 2: the trainer in my ear. And that's That's an amazing experience.
34:58
Speaker 2: And I hold myself to that to do that every day.
35:01
Speaker 2: And sometimes it's harder because I have a late night
35:04
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, but that's time that is important
35:07
Speaker 2: for me because what it does is it allows me
35:10
Speaker 2: to focus better at work. I feel it sounds kind
35:13
Speaker 2: of silly, but I feel smarter at work, you know.
35:17
Speaker 2: I obviously feel more energized. I feel like I'm more
35:20
Speaker 2: productive if I get that in the morning, and if
35:22
Speaker 2: I don't, then it's the opposite, and that's not fair
35:25
Speaker 2: to everyone that I work with. It's important that I'm
35:27
Speaker 2: operating really well, so that workout gives me that and
35:31
Speaker 2: then you know, once a week, ideally, I try to
35:35
Speaker 2: find like one dinner with my wife so that we
35:40
Speaker 2: can both you know, just sit down and talk about whatever.
35:42
Speaker 2: Because she also has a crazy schedule. I have a
35:44
Speaker 2: crazy schedule. We don't see each other that much on weekdays,
35:47
Speaker 2: but we try to find like one week night, excuse me,
35:51
Speaker 2: one night every week to have dinner together.
35:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.
35:55
Speaker 3: I feel like listening to you talk about running, it
35:59
Speaker 3: reminds me about how I feel about running.
36:01
Speaker 1: Sometimes. It almost feels like a spiritual practice.
36:04
Speaker 2: Oh, totally. It's it's it's completely like it's going back
36:08
Speaker 2: to what I'm saying earlier. Running I really think is
36:10
Speaker 2: more about mental than physical. Yeah, everyone can run, it's
36:14
Speaker 2: the question of do you have the I guess mental
36:17
Speaker 2: sort of desire to get out there or something. You know,
36:20
Speaker 2: we're in New York City. It's cold in the mornings,
36:22
Speaker 2: and it's dark and all that stuff, and you're tired.
36:25
Speaker 2: Like if you can make that mental step, the physical
36:28
Speaker 2: ones are very very easy relative to the mental ones.
36:32
Speaker 2: And that it goes back to the weight loss thing too, right, Like, yeah,
36:34
Speaker 2: I'm happy that I lost the weight, but what it
36:37
Speaker 2: really lets me do is be much more energized and
36:40
Speaker 2: focused and sharp at everything else I do. We had
36:43
Speaker 2: a guy, a member Bill, who lost two hundred pounds
36:50
Speaker 2: with active He was four hundred pounds and he's now
36:53
Speaker 2: down to two hundred, and he shares these pictures and
36:56
Speaker 2: obviously he looks incredible and what he's done is amazing.
36:59
Speaker 2: But what's cool so we did this testimonial. On this testimonial,
37:02
Speaker 2: at the end, what he says is, you know, I
37:04
Speaker 2: lost all this weight and I felt great physically. But
37:06
Speaker 2: what that did is he wants his own business. He said,
37:09
Speaker 2: it allowed me to expand my business into other areas
37:13
Speaker 2: because I now had the confidence to do that. Because
37:16
Speaker 2: I had achieved this physical goal, I now had the
37:19
Speaker 2: ability to take a risk in my business that I
37:22
Speaker 2: wouldn't have done before. That's what's awesome about having these
37:27
Speaker 2: sort of physical successes is the mental benefit that comes
37:30
Speaker 2: from that. That's what gets us really excited.
37:33
Speaker 1: You get the grit.
37:34
Speaker 2: The grit I swear.
37:36
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that if I hadn't undergone a
37:40
Speaker 3: major body transformation, I wouldn't truly believe that I am
37:44
Speaker 3: capable of anything I set my mind to.
37:46
Speaker 2: It's amazing what confidence you get when you were able
37:50
Speaker 2: to achieve something like that.
37:59
Speaker 3: Taking a break from two episode to give a shout
38:01
Speaker 3: out to my sponsor, Headspace, I'll admit, just like with
38:05
Speaker 3: any habit, meditation takes time to get used to, but
38:08
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38:10
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38:14
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38:16
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38:19
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38:22
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38:25
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38:28
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38:30
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38:35
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38:59
Speaker 3: that's head space dot com slash hurdle to dive on in.
39:08
Speaker 3: I'm back here sitting down with Evan Agarwall. He is
39:11
Speaker 3: the CEO and founder at Aptive. What I want to
39:15
Speaker 3: know and I find I asked Hayden Slater, the founder
39:18
Speaker 3: of Press Juicery, this question and I loved his response.
39:20
Speaker 3: So my question to you now is we're so immersed
39:25
Speaker 3: in this wellness culture and everyone's trying wacky things all
39:29
Speaker 3: the time. What would you say has been the craziest
39:32
Speaker 3: thing that you've dabbled in?
39:36
Speaker 2: Well, if you asked me three years ago, or if
39:38
Speaker 2: you asked a lot of people, they would say audio fitness, Like,
39:40
Speaker 2: what the hell are you talking about? This is going
39:42
Speaker 2: to work out to that. So you know, I'm not
39:45
Speaker 2: going to knock anything because clearly something that might be
39:48
Speaker 2: seeming wacky can evolve into something much harder. You know,
39:51
Speaker 2: I'm more of like a traditionalist like Iron and I
39:53
Speaker 2: do strength trading and stuff. I don't know that I've
39:56
Speaker 2: tried anything particularly crazy, but seriously, I'm I'm all for
40:01
Speaker 2: different ideas. Whatever gets whatever it is that gets people moving,
40:05
Speaker 2: I'm all for it.
40:06
Speaker 3: See, if you built this company in California instead of
40:10
Speaker 3: New York. You probably would have answers similar to Hayden's,
40:13
Speaker 3: which were like leech therapy.
40:15
Speaker 2: Lech therapy, I've heard of that one. It's supposed to
40:17
Speaker 2: be good.
40:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, everyone's different, everyone's dife, everyone's different. Okay,
40:22
Speaker 3: you are building active, well it becomes aptive. When does
40:26
Speaker 3: it make the switch from skyfit to Active?
40:29
Speaker 2: It was November of twenty sixteen.
40:31
Speaker 3: Okay, and when you started. Because now you have a
40:34
Speaker 3: pretty robust network of trainers that you guys work with, right,
40:37
Speaker 3: so talk to me about building those relationships and how
40:41
Speaker 3: that has kind of evolved for you and your team.
40:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean the trainers are the most important
40:48
Speaker 2: part of what we do, right, Most people don't. Most
40:51
Speaker 2: of our members do interact with me, They interact with
40:53
Speaker 2: the trainers. And we have a serious responsibility to our
40:58
Speaker 2: members to provide the world's best training, the world's best classes.
41:03
Speaker 2: We are rigorous about the people that we work with,
41:06
Speaker 2: with the trainers that we work with. So we've had
41:10
Speaker 2: I think four thousand applications or something now from trainers
41:14
Speaker 2: and we've hired five full time trainers out of those.
41:18
Speaker 2: And so you know, it's what is that, it's like
41:21
Speaker 2: a less than a point one percent acceptance rate. It's
41:23
Speaker 2: like getting into Yale Law school or something.
41:25
Speaker 1: Right, And I'm friendly with Rachel.
41:27
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So Rachel is a great example. I mean,
41:29
Speaker 2: she's phenomenal at what she does. And what's really I
41:35
Speaker 2: guess you could call it fortunate about us is you know,
41:38
Speaker 2: when you open a studio location, as the studios tend
41:41
Speaker 2: to expand, they have to hire more trainers, and so
41:45
Speaker 2: eventually they end up having to sort of expand to
41:48
Speaker 2: a point where maybe some of the trainers aren't as
41:50
Speaker 2: amazing as the very first ones were. But because our
41:53
Speaker 2: classes are digital and available on demand, like Megan Tacis
41:57
Speaker 2: are our master trainer for RIN. Her classes have been
42:01
Speaker 2: listened to literally millions of times, and I don't need
42:04
Speaker 2: to keep finding more Megans as we expand. There's only
42:07
Speaker 2: one Megan in the world, and she works for Active
42:10
Speaker 2: and her classes are only available and Active, and so
42:12
Speaker 2: we're very excited to be able to bring Megan too
42:15
Speaker 2: the world as we expand. And so similarly, you know
42:19
Speaker 2: someone like Kenta, who's a phenomenal strength trainer. He does
42:23
Speaker 2: a variety of different workouts, his training style is so
42:27
Speaker 2: powerful and so unique. Bringing that to the world is
42:30
Speaker 2: really exciting to us. So we're really careful about the
42:36
Speaker 2: trainers that we work with, and then when we partner
42:39
Speaker 2: with them, you know, it's full throttle. I mean, these
42:42
Speaker 2: people are like my family, so we love working with them, right.
42:45
Speaker 3: And so from the user experience side, someone downloads the
42:48
Speaker 3: app and when they get on there, they, I'm assuming
42:52
Speaker 3: complete a profile. It's been a while since I created
42:54
Speaker 3: my own profile, so I'm just recapping this for everyone
42:57
Speaker 3: at home. So you create a profile, and you probably
42:59
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about your goals, what you're looking
43:02
Speaker 3: for exactly.
43:03
Speaker 2: You tell us your goals, You tell us your current
43:05
Speaker 2: fitness level, You tell us where you work out, you
43:08
Speaker 2: know what times of day, what days of week, how
43:10
Speaker 2: many times, et cetera. And we will recommend programs for
43:15
Speaker 2: you that will help you achieve that goal, will send
43:18
Speaker 2: you reminders the night before and thirty minutes before you
43:22
Speaker 2: work out. We have like an incredible community of tens
43:28
Speaker 2: of thousands of people in it, of active members who
43:31
Speaker 2: are sharing stories and sweaty selfies and videos of how
43:35
Speaker 2: aptive Is helped them on a daily basis and it's
43:38
Speaker 2: super encouraging and super motivating, and so you know you're
43:42
Speaker 2: getting you're really joining a community, as I said earlier,
43:48
Speaker 2: when you join Active, and that's really important to help
43:51
Speaker 2: you achieve your goals.
43:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
43:53
Speaker 3: I think I read the stat that you guys have
43:55
Speaker 3: over two hundred thousand paying members right now.
43:58
Speaker 2: That's right.
43:59
Speaker 3: Wow, it's a lot of people working out, it is,
44:03
Speaker 3: and it's a lot of.
44:03
Speaker 1: People with an opinion.
44:04
Speaker 3: See, like, this is what I keep well, this is
44:06
Speaker 3: what I keep coming back to because I love how
44:09
Speaker 3: passionately you talk about the people that use your app,
44:12
Speaker 3: and I'm just so curious as to how often you're
44:16
Speaker 3: incorporating that user feedback into the product that you're offering.
44:19
Speaker 2: All every day, every day. And it's there's sort of
44:22
Speaker 2: official channels for it, which is that we do a
44:25
Speaker 2: lot of user feedback. We have a team here that
44:27
Speaker 2: does just user feedback and they do interviews both of
44:30
Speaker 2: existing members but people who have churned, people who have
44:33
Speaker 2: never paid us. You know, we do a lot of
44:36
Speaker 2: research to understand what we're doing well, what we can
44:38
Speaker 2: do well. And then there's unofficial things where people ping
44:41
Speaker 2: me on Instagram messages all day long saying Ethan, I
44:45
Speaker 2: would love it if Aptive had X, Y and Z,
44:48
Speaker 2: or they send me messages on Facebook saying, hey, Ethan,
44:50
Speaker 2: I love it, but I wish you had X, Y
44:51
Speaker 2: and Z, and so I look at all that and
44:54
Speaker 2: then we put it into our product development process and
44:58
Speaker 2: incorporating member feedback is so oh critical, it's so critical.
45:01
Speaker 2: I mean, they're the ones that we're building the product for. Ultimately,
45:05
Speaker 2: if you don't know what your members are asking for,
45:08
Speaker 2: if you don't know what they want, how can you
45:10
Speaker 2: build a product?
45:11
Speaker 1: Do you ever unplug?
45:16
Speaker 2: That hour a morning is good unplugged. But but you know,
45:21
Speaker 2: I was talking about this with actually Lauren recently. I've
45:26
Speaker 2: gone on vacation. You know, I think whatever at some
45:28
Speaker 2: point and when I go unplused, Like to me, not
45:34
Speaker 2: being up to speed is more stressful than you know,
45:39
Speaker 2: knowing what's going on. So I would much rather just
45:43
Speaker 2: like check my emails, see what's going on, look at
45:45
Speaker 2: some of the numbers, the product stuff, and then if
45:47
Speaker 2: everything's good, yeah, like I can go to the beach
45:49
Speaker 2: or whatever and said for a couple hours. But I'm
45:51
Speaker 2: not one of those people that's like I want to
45:53
Speaker 2: turn off my phone for two weeks and go to
45:56
Speaker 2: go on a cruise. You know that that doesn't work
45:59
Speaker 2: for me at all.
46:01
Speaker 1: It's not your jam.
46:02
Speaker 2: But you know that doesn't mean it doesn't work for
46:05
Speaker 2: other people. It's just not for me.
46:06
Speaker 1: What about those aptive meditation classes though.
46:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I use those. I use those in traffic all
46:12
Speaker 2: the time.
46:13
Speaker 3: That's actually when I love to lean into meditation, or
46:16
Speaker 3: like I feel like my watch knows when I'm in
46:18
Speaker 3: a cab because I'll get the ping from the Apple
46:21
Speaker 3: Health app that says for me to breathe. It's always
46:25
Speaker 3: when I'm in the back of a cat and I'm
46:27
Speaker 3: in my head, I'm like, you knew that I can
46:31
Speaker 3: tell by the speed I'm going and the stopping and
46:33
Speaker 3: starting that I'm in a car and I should chill
46:35
Speaker 3: out exactly.
46:37
Speaker 1: And I should chill out. Okay.
46:39
Speaker 3: So, now thinking back onto what you're building here with Aptive,
46:44
Speaker 3: what would you say has been something from the past
46:47
Speaker 3: year here? Uh, that's changed in the brand and made
46:50
Speaker 3: it for the better. So what are some things that
46:52
Speaker 3: are changing that are that are tweaking for you guys,
46:54
Speaker 3: that are really working in your favor? Uh?
46:57
Speaker 2: You know, I think the biggest thing is the diversity
47:00
Speaker 2: of the members. So when we started it was you know,
47:04
Speaker 2: we were less less members honestly, so it was a
47:06
Speaker 2: pretty narrow call it audience that was using it. But today,
47:12
Speaker 2: you know, we have people who are eighteen and people
47:15
Speaker 2: who are eighty. We have people who are working out
47:19
Speaker 2: for the first time in their life, and we have
47:21
Speaker 2: people who are doing iron Man. It's really the full
47:27
Speaker 2: gamut of folks. You know. We have people in Chelsea
47:30
Speaker 2: and we have people in India because we're now in
47:32
Speaker 2: twenty different countries. We have people that do our six
47:36
Speaker 2: minute classes and people that do our two hour classes,
47:38
Speaker 2: and so I think it provides a richness to the
47:42
Speaker 2: community to have a more diverse set of folks in
47:48
Speaker 2: the using the product. And that's something that's only happened
47:52
Speaker 2: in the last I don't know year or so. Two
47:55
Speaker 2: hour class it's one of the marathon training classes.
48:00
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, And like, what are we
48:02
Speaker 1: doing for two hours?
48:03
Speaker 2: You want to go do it? Maybe we'll do it together.
48:05
Speaker 1: We'll do it one morning on the West Side Highway.
48:07
Speaker 2: And we'll both be late to work.
48:09
Speaker 1: What time are you out there running?
48:10
Speaker 2: Usually like six?
48:12
Speaker 1: Oh that's my jam.
48:14
Speaker 2: Okay, great, I'll see what.
48:16
Speaker 3: How well we like kind of jumped the hurdle as
48:20
Speaker 3: to like how much mileage you're typically doing during that hour.
48:23
Speaker 3: I guess because a marathon training class over two hours
48:26
Speaker 3: is like a solid thirteen miles. Uh.
48:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I usually do like seven and a half.
48:33
Speaker 1: In the hour. Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
48:35
Speaker 2: It's okay. We have some pretty fast people on my team.
48:39
Speaker 2: Our CTO Chris Fisher, just ran Chicago and New York
48:43
Speaker 2: in under three hours. Wow, within like two weeks of
48:46
Speaker 2: each other. He's filthy fast.
48:47
Speaker 3: What's one of the best lessons that someone in this
48:49
Speaker 3: office has taught you about, maybe like your lifestyle habits
48:53
Speaker 3: or something that you should be incorporating into your regular routine,
48:56
Speaker 3: because again, you're surrounded by people that live and breathe
49:00
Speaker 3: health and wellness all the time.
49:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, actually, him, Chris, he joined us in January
49:07
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, so we're coming up on two years
49:11
Speaker 2: and he's the CTO and VP product And what he
49:16
Speaker 2: taught me is this term that the running community uses,
49:21
Speaker 2: which is EDD, which is every damn day, and it
49:26
Speaker 2: basically says that no matter what's going on, find some
49:32
Speaker 2: time during the day to do something physical. You know,
49:37
Speaker 2: you could be working late one night, you could be
49:40
Speaker 2: at a wedding, you could be out of town traveling,
49:43
Speaker 2: you could be hungover. Whatever the thing is, every damn day.
49:46
Speaker 2: Find a little bit of time every day to do something,
49:50
Speaker 2: and that habit formation is what drives the outcome. And
49:53
Speaker 2: I've you know, I've always been pretty sort of motivated,
49:56
Speaker 2: and I've never really had trouble getting myself to do something.
50:00
Speaker 2: But I've definitely skipped days before. But this notion of
50:04
Speaker 2: just find some time in the day is unique and
50:08
Speaker 2: something that I'm really glad he taught me.
50:10
Speaker 3: I think it's also really important in this no days
50:12
Speaker 3: off culture to like respect the days when one happens
50:16
Speaker 3: and maybe it's not planned, or maybe it is planned,
50:18
Speaker 3: and on that day, maybe find another way to give
50:21
Speaker 3: back to yourself.
50:22
Speaker 2: That's a great point.
50:23
Speaker 3: I think that I'm I'm someone who really am also
50:27
Speaker 3: of the ed D. Coul right, And on the days
50:31
Speaker 3: where I'm not really moving a lot, I'm finding some
50:34
Speaker 3: other way to.
50:34
Speaker 1: Like move around.
50:36
Speaker 3: Yeah that Like I'm walking around Soho and doing some shopping,
50:39
Speaker 3: or I'm going to see a friend and maybe she
50:42
Speaker 3: lives across town, and maybe on that night in particular,
50:44
Speaker 3: and like hopping a city bike to go do it
50:47
Speaker 3: something great. But I think I think, uh, there's you know,
50:51
Speaker 3: there's we're just I think in general we're really hard
50:53
Speaker 3: on ourselves about making sure it always gets done. I
50:56
Speaker 3: am really hard on myself in that regard. But on
50:59
Speaker 3: the days off, I just try to like move in
51:01
Speaker 3: some way that feels good.
51:02
Speaker 2: I think that's what's important. If it's in your mind,
51:05
Speaker 2: that's good. Like if you just have a desire even
51:07
Speaker 2: going for a walk, Great, you did something that's awesome.
51:10
Speaker 3: Totally, totally okay. So we're winding down here. What's on
51:13
Speaker 3: the horizon for Aptin. You've got a hell of a
51:16
Speaker 3: lot of members, You've got this amazing office, you have
51:21
Speaker 3: no vacation time.
51:24
Speaker 2: Actually we have unlimited PTOs, so you know what's next.
51:32
Speaker 2: We're focusing a lot of our work in twenty nineteen
51:38
Speaker 2: on personalization. We're really focused on helping our members achieve outcomes.
51:46
Speaker 2: They give us a goal. They tell us they want
51:48
Speaker 2: to lose weight, run faster, be stronger, sleep better, have
51:53
Speaker 2: more energy to play with their kids, go on a
51:55
Speaker 2: hike with their parents. Whatever the thing is. We want
51:58
Speaker 2: to help you achieve that goal, and we're gonna be
52:02
Speaker 2: much more successful together as a partnership. If the experience
52:07
Speaker 2: that you have is personal to you, it goes back
52:09
Speaker 2: to what I was saying earlier. I don't like this
52:10
Speaker 2: idea of bucketing people. That's not exciting, that's not fair, honestly,
52:15
Speaker 2: and so what you're going to find in twenty nineteen
52:18
Speaker 2: is a much more personal, sort of honest experience with
52:24
Speaker 2: active which feels like it's built for you, because it is,
52:28
Speaker 2: and it'll help you achieve your goal, whatever that is,
52:32
Speaker 2: in a much more successful way. I like it.
52:35
Speaker 3: Okay, twenty nineteen the year for achieving all the things
52:37
Speaker 3: we ever dreamed of exactly the closer. Right now, you
52:42
Speaker 3: have the opportunity to offer the Ethan who is overweight
52:47
Speaker 3: and maybe not so happy and coaching himself through this
52:52
Speaker 3: hurtle moment of sorts, what kind of advice would you
52:55
Speaker 3: give that guy?
52:56
Speaker 1: Looking back on it now.
52:57
Speaker 2: The thing that I think used to the question that
53:00
Speaker 2: used to be in my mind the most back then
53:02
Speaker 2: was how to have an impact on someone that wasn't me?
53:07
Speaker 2: How do I have an impact on the world? And
53:10
Speaker 2: I didn't know the answer at the time because I
53:12
Speaker 2: was still trying to fix my own challenges and so
53:16
Speaker 2: sort of two problems at the same time. And I
53:18
Speaker 2: look back now and I realized that by solving my
53:21
Speaker 2: own challenge, I discovered something that would help other people.
53:27
Speaker 2: And that's a great you know, I'm so happy and
53:29
Speaker 2: so fortunate to be in this place now where this
53:32
Speaker 2: thing is affecting and helping hundreds of thousands of people
53:36
Speaker 2: around the world, and soon hopefully it's helping millions of
53:40
Speaker 2: people around the world. And so, you know, I think
53:43
Speaker 2: the advice is something simply like, solve the thing that
53:47
Speaker 2: is troubling you and then see how you can use
53:49
Speaker 2: that to help other people. And that's what ended up happening.
53:53
Speaker 1: And so far, so good, I mean, and that's what
53:56
Speaker 1: I hope that I'm doing too well on the same path.
54:00
Speaker 1: Even Thanks so much for sitting down with me.
54:01
Speaker 2: Thank you.
54:02
Speaker 1: This is awesome.
54:03
Speaker 3: Please take a moment to leave a quick review by
54:06
Speaker 3: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We
54:09
Speaker 3: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear
54:12
Speaker 3: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at hurdle
54:15
Speaker 3: dot us. Connect with the podcast on Instagram and Twitter
54:19
Speaker 3: at Hurdle Podcasts.
54:20
Speaker 1: Ethan, Where do they find you? Where do they find active?
54:24
Speaker 1: Give me the load down?
54:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so easiest to find me is just on Twitter.
54:28
Speaker 2: I'm just at Ethan agarwol. That's a G A R
54:32
Speaker 2: W A L and Aptive. Easiest place to find us
54:35
Speaker 2: is just aptive dot com. That's double a P T
54:39
Speaker 2: I V dot com.
54:40
Speaker 3: I have to be honest with the world as we
54:42
Speaker 3: close this out. I'm here because I tweeted at him.
54:45
Speaker 2: Oh well, so clearly I am all over it.
54:48
Speaker 3: Amazing thing, so responsive. Yeah, I don't think a lot
54:53
Speaker 3: of people say that sentence.
54:54
Speaker 2: You can tweet at me anytime that.
54:58
Speaker 1: You're the best.
54:59
Speaker 3: You guys can find me at Emily a body. Another
55:02
Speaker 3: hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time.