Ryan Hanna, founder of Sworkit Health, discusses his personal and professional journey, highlighting how his upbringing, combined with his experience in the Army, influenced the core values and mission of Sworkit Health. The conversation explores the company's focus on promoting health and wellness, and how Ryan's leadership has shaped the business.
We examine the runaway success of the Sworkit app, including its approach to addressing common gym-related apprehensions. The episode features a case study of a user whose life was positively impacted by Sworkit, underscoring the app's emphasis on personalized wellness and its expansion into the health sector.
The discussion concludes with an exploration of digital health's role in today's society, particularly in light of the recent pandemic and its effects on corporate wellness programs.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
Ryan Hanna, founder of Sworkit Health, discusses his personal and professional journey, highlighting how his upbringing, combined with his experience in the Army, influenced the core values and mission of Sworkit Health. The conversation explores the company's focus on promoting health and wellness, and how Ryan's leadership has shaped the business.
We examine the runaway success of the Sworkit app, including its approach to addressing common gym-related apprehensions. The episode features a case study of a user whose life was positively impacted by Sworkit, underscoring the app's emphasis on personalized wellness and its expansion into the health sector.
The discussion concludes with an exploration of digital health's role in today's society, particularly in light of the recent pandemic and its effects on corporate wellness programs.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
0:00:10 - David Williams
Ryan Hanna launched Sworkit Health as a side project back in 2012. What began as a D2C fitness app is now a fully managed digital wellness solution serving employers, schools and health plans. The mission To empower a healthier, happier world. Hi everyone, I'm David Williams, president of Strategy Consulting from Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz Podcast, a weekly show where I interview top health care leaders about their lives and careers. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review. Ryan, welcome to the Health Biz Podcast. Thank you very much for having me Great. So let's talk a little bit about your background and your upbringing. What was your childhood like? Any childhood influences that have stuck with you?
0:00:53 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, happy to jump in. So I was born in Kansas and then moved to Germany shortly afterwards. About a few years there before settling into North Carolina for most of my childhood.
0:01:05 - David Williams
So, even though I was, young.
0:01:06 - Ryan Hanna
I looked back at that time, being abroad in Germany. I think it showed some of the importance of stepping out of our comfort zone and experiencing something new. The more we do this, the easier it becomes to do later on in life or at any time where we're feeling a bit challenged. So that was a big part of moving around and doing that. Obviously the reason behind that my dad spent his life serving as an officer in the US.
0:01:32 - David Williams
Army.
0:01:33 - Ryan Hanna
My mom was a nurse for over 40 years and directly and indirectly through that, this taught me the importance of service to others and making a positive impact on your community and the world in general. So still to this day again, they're still helping out and staying active within the community. Doing that. I believe. Again, as we look at Sworkit and where this has come and evolved, there is for us this overarching goal and vision to create a healthier, happier world. So doing that through multi-generational impact on health, seeing how we can help people of all ages and abilities we're even now sort of spreading that out across supporting hospital systems and how we can make positive impacts on the communities there, taking on social determinants of health so a big part of what we do and, again, growing up through them and seeing it through them and being inspired by that. You never realize it at the time, but looking back, you know there was an influence there.
0:02:33 - David Williams
So pay attention when you're a kid, I think, is the message. And what did you do education-wise once it was in your hands?
0:02:40 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah. So after high school I decided to go to the University of Chapel Hill, north Carolina. I'd actually taken on a four-year Army scholarship for that. So I think even at the time there, the decision to join the Army through that mechanism was even a surprise to my parents. We hadn't really talked about it that much. Obviously it was a big part of what we do. I think there was something in there, I think you know, sort of being an entrepreneurship and kind of thinking about it. It was a choice to do something different. I really didn't know anybody else who was doing it and it was an invitation to try to do something more adventurous and put myself in the situations that you know might not otherwise get to experience.
0:03:20 - David Williams
So that's great. And what was your role in the Army? What was your role in the Army?
0:03:25 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah. So I was an officer in the US Army, in the Signal Corps, so worked in a couple different organizations. One was a combat camera organization, another training support battalion. So definitely you know really value that time in the Army and you know, know that.
You know that carries on with me working together in an organization with a common mission and values. That's incredibly rewarding, and there's so much diversity in the military and being able to, you know work with so many different people from different walks of life. You learn about, you know getting your own privilege and biases and making sure that you're aware of them and that you quickly respect. You know the benefits of working in a diverse group once you've been in that situation.
0:04:07 - David Williams
One of the things also I hear from people who've been in the military is that the opportunity to have a leadership role at an early age and real. You know serious leadership also makes a difference and you know as hard as it is to start a business. It's not life and death.
0:04:23 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, it's the perfect place to sort of get into that gradually. I mean everyone. You kind of start off and no one really knows exactly what they're doing and you're kind of taken through training, you're taken through experiences, you're put into situations where you really get to challenge that and see how you can thrive. And another big part of the military too that I think sort of a lesser talked about benefit is also even having somebody take accountability for your physical and mental fitness. I mean, again, you can't really hide being unhealthy if you're being woken up three, four days a week to go out for PT at 6am and I don't know it helped me make that more of a part of my life.
I think growing up, you know, and we all have different experiences with sort of exercise and fitness as we go through adolescence and high school and sometimes those aren't great experiences, you know.
You might not really feel like you fit in with gym class or the weight room is some sort of distant place for the football players that no one else goes. So I don't know, especially after you know, kind of having been in the military, then when it was time to kind of leave university and go on to do this on my own and it's all of a sudden, okay, well, now I actually have to do this. You know all I own, without the accountability, nobody should be exactly what to do and you know that sort of started to lead into you know how sort of it sort of to come to bowed and you know how that personal need really even to think about, you know re-envision what fitness and movement was for myself. Again, you sort of instantly think and many people do it's, you know it's going to a gym. It's, you know, walking in there and feeling really intimidated by all the equipment and not having the confidence to do the right thing and, you know, looks like a torture chamber.
I mean if you never get in one the first time you go, it's got that big sort of daunting experience. And you know, I think once you sort of step back and you start to realize, you know, actually maybe it's a bit simpler than that, maybe we can just think about a little bit more movement or we can standardize some bodyweight exercises that you can do at home. That was, you know, a big, you know life-changing moment.
0:06:39 - David Williams
Got it. Yeah, I guess I had never thought about it this way, but probably the you know the equipment supplies for the gyms and the torture chambers may help you to different two different divisions of the same company. So, before you did work it. I saw a couple of the things on your background Sparta and CapTech. What were those?
0:06:58 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah. So you know some of my first jobs right out of college, again kind of putting to use you know that Signal Core training, you know I became an IT network administrator in the defense sector just outside of DC. So again it helped having a clearance to kind of jump into a role like that. And again, as you sort of transfer there into you know nowadays, you know thinking about, you know how this fits into healthcare and you know the privacy security it certainly has come to, you know, help out quite a lot.
While I was, you know, at Sparta, which is we went through two different acquisitions, which is obviously an interesting thing. We there was a time that I just happened to take on a New Year's resolution to teach myself to code and happened to get very lucky that at the time, you know, swarkett was actually one of the first ideas that I came up with to sort of solidify that knowledge and put it into practice. So started doing that on the side and building it out and that eventually moved on to the next, my next job role with a company called CapTech and this is my first sort of actual web developer job. That gave me that confidence that this thing that I had built that by this time is being used by millions of people throughout the world, has sort of become my brand new resume and is kind of my existence and helped me kind of go in and do that with others and working on lots of larger projects.
0:08:24 - David Williams
So it sounds like this work started around that time and I'm wondering you sort of answered my question I had about what need did you see when you're talking about being overwhelmed by the gym, but the importance of physical and mental fitness as well to anything you're doing? So how did it work out as kind of a side project and then transitioning it into a full time kind of all consuming business venture?
0:08:49 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, so again, early days, yeah, it was again. One of the biggest things that I again I talked to other entrepreneurs about is if you can focus on solving even a need for yourself and something that is probably going to resonate with others, that really helps. You feel very passionate about it and you're willing to put in those extra hours on the weekend and evenings if that's what it's gonna take to get things started. You can take all those risks at an early stage without a lot of kind of external risk and other employees involved. So it started off. You got it out there into the world after about five or six months of sort of teaching and learning and implementing and I was able to get pretty lucky at the time this back in 2012,. There wasn't a lot of other fitness apps at the time and it met a lot of the needs that we need around breaking down these barriers for fitness. So I don't have enough time, I don't have any equipment, I don't know what to do. I don't like gyms, anything like that. So that story resonated well with folks, so I got it out. I started spreading the word across different blogs. It seemed to resonate and people were willing to write about it and that's how it's really started to begin and started to get kind of went from 10 downloads to 10,000 downloads to a million downloads.
After that and through that time just meeting members, there was a really memorable story. There was a flight attendant, lisa, who reached out to share her story about Sorkid, and it was about she again had that similar story of being intimidated by the gym and her friends had been inviting her to go to yoga and felt like she was going to embarrass herself. So she started using Sorkid to really build that confidence up, use Sorkid at home, build up some experience, some endurance, and then was thrilled when she was finally able to say yes and go along to that class. And through this time and through getting so many of these stories, I met what eventually became a business partners Ben Young and Greg Coleman. They had founded a company called Nexercise. They met at Wharton Business School in 2010 and they we had met and we started talking and just kind of sharing stories about each other businesses.
They had another gamified fitness app out in the world and they eventually at one point I think Ben was just kind of on a whim they just had a board meeting and he said they airport and he texted me and asked would you ever consider selling Sorkid? And immediately I was just thinking, absolutely not. You kidding me. This has just started getting started. I'm not sure where it's going. So I think for me it was sort of all of a sudden a validation that somebody's saying that there's more to this, somebody's saying that there is a real business case that this can grow. And, you know, bringing some of their experience in, we were able to eventually, you know, agree to join forces and came and stayed on and you know that's where Sorkid really, I believe, through their vision of what it could be, really started to grow into the business that it is now and how we developed that over time and have been able to kind of maintain that progress.
0:11:48 - David Williams
You know I can see a natural fit between Sorkid and Exercise. They both seem like companies that you took a sort of a word or a name that people are familiar with and do another letter in front of it.
0:11:58 - Ryan Hanna
So you know work it in the lesson front and exercise with it and in front.
0:12:02 - David Williams
But where? How did you come up with the name Sorkid? What does that really mean?
0:12:07 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, so early days of it yeah, of course I mean early days it was a sort of take on Sorkid workouts. So for me I think it's Sorkid workouts were a way to you know scientifically proven workouts, exercises, putting them together in the right way, but you could choose the amount of time you want it to do and I mean the amount of times you kind of go through that circuit. It's about flexibility, it's about fitting into your life. Eventually, as it progressed, we shifted that focus over to simply work it Again quarter or our mission as a company and the way we develop our product. We want to simplify things as much as possible. We want to break down those barriers, get more people involved.
You know people who don't think that they are somebody who exercises. All of a sudden we simplify things hey, maybe five minute stretch. All of a sudden, now they are somebody who exercises. That's even progressed now. We've even changed it up to, you know, like many people do, out of the word health at the end. But this is really a signal. So now we are Sorkid health and it's that signal that you know. We are also very focused on the outcomes and you know looking how this plays out within the healthcare industry and how we can you know help people kind of go for wherever they are to a healthier state.
0:13:17 - David Williams
I'm always interested in the differentiation from other sorts of players that are out there and I think partly what I'm hearing from you is about you had something that's clearly proven on the consumer side. You're serving in need. You say maybe first for yourself and then others. You give the least example and other people like that, and now you've got something that comes from the consumer side and then is going to healthcare and employers, which is different than, I think, the typical product that's out there. How do you think about what your differentiation is?
0:13:46 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, I think that is quite a few. One of them is our focus on innovative approach to personalized wellness. So we're pioneering the ability to tailor fitness and mindfulness nutrition to each individual. So going beyond the one size fits all type models and integrating science and inclusivity to empower people of every age, every experience level, to take control of their health. I think that importance that there's, the solutions that are out there oftentimes, you know, sort of just video based workouts that you can sort of you know, hope you get the right one for you.
We take it further, where you can actually personalize and customize your workouts. We can recommend specific workouts based on injuries you have. So we will actually take that into account and make sure we're only recommending workouts that are going to be safe and effective. We also have a big focus on global availability. So it's a work that's available in 14 languages, with many more coming in 2024. And so having an equitable benefit for large companies who you know again have work courses across the world or maybe in communities where the individuals aren't native English speakers, being able to make sure that everyone has a great benefit that's accessible to them. And then do that too, making sure we can help beginners. So beyond just sort of lifestyle and driving healthy outcomes for beginners, who may feel lost and sort of intimidated by all the different options out there, what is the value proposition for an employer?
0:15:18 - David Williams
And I'm wondering in particular is this something that you bring in to reinforce the culture and wellness and cohesion, or is it something that's trying to presently say a hard return on investment, for example, on like orthopedic costs or something like that?
0:15:34 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, well, focused a bit more on the former there. So again, we are a consumer grade benefit that employs with value. You tie that into bringing in the enterprise features, the social interactions challenges that we've offered. I think once you you know, you let people know that, hey, this is available for you. We as a company are prioritizing your fitness. One of our values, wellness, is a priority. We want to help as many other organizations see that as possible. If we can help people build up their own confidence, you know, outside of work, that will obviously bleed into what they're doing there. If we can get people working out together and thinking about, you know, motivating each other, there's all of a sudden, you know, a new level of cohesion.
0:16:16 - David Williams
So yeah, you know, people sometimes work out with a physical trainer or they have a health coach, but on the other hand and this not in the same way, but you know, jim, can be intimidating for people, but it can also be intimidating, not to mention expensive, to work with a trainer or a health coach. What is the role for you know, can you actually digitize those functions, and does that help, both on the cost side and the accessibility, approachability side? How do you think about that?
0:16:47 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, we often look at that model of digitizing. You know you think about a normal gym experience, right? So you know, maybe you know what you're sort of thinking about when you walk into a gym, you hope that maybe somebody is going to be there to welcome you, right? They'll help you understand. You want to understand what your goals are, what you're sort of planning to do. They'll give you a simple plan that you can follow day to day, provide clear instruction, encourage them, introduce them to others in the community and help them find accountability, help schedule the next visit. These are the you know. So we always do look at that model. We think it's important to kind of mirror a bit of what the best case scenario would be in real life and then putting into that the way that we can digitize that and do that at scale. We do love, you know, making those sort of real world connections into how we can make that more digital.
0:17:36 - David Williams
I talked to quite a few entrepreneurs whose companies serve employers and health plans sometimes providers. It's fairly rare to have schools up in that list and I'm wondering where did the idea of serving schools come from?
0:17:50 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, so since 2015,. We added kids content to the app, so actual children doing the demonstrations, which is much more easy for a child to follow along when that's not some.
You know, 6 foot tall trainer and yet again, they're seeing the sort of you know, sometimes awkwardness of movements and they can relate to that. So that was a big part of what we do and I think you know, in 2018, we formally launched ours working youth initiative with the vision to create a multi generational impact on health. We again, truthfully, as a team, we were having more parents on the team. We were thinking about, you know, how do we pass some of this on to our children and help them grow up with more confidence, as you, this is kind of led even to you know now. So we've worked with now over 16,000 schools worldwide to have access to this work. This means we've even added in our own. We've worked with some of the top teachers in the US and have been able to create specific curriculum where we can encourage, you know, maybe a different approach, maybe you're stepping away from the sort of model of you know sports and you know those sort of more traditional games to play and also look at how we can encourage, you know, youth and teenagers to build their own sort of goals and plans and follow that plan and make it measurable and fit it into their life in a very specific way. So we turn the pandemic again.
There are a lot of usage among schools to kind of you know, kind of take their normal PE and find a way to do that virtually. And we had a teacher reach out and one of his students, his mother, said, you know, shared that you know. Her daughter, obviously you know part of the story was that she hadn't always had a great experience with you know PE in person and, you know again, kind of had confidence, you know, for not really taking part in that but you know, as they were kind of going through and using Swerkin at home, started to build up that confidence, was doing it four days a week, the mother and daughter were even doing it together and you know something about being able to focus and find herself, you know, outside of a normal PE environment. Helped her get that confidence and be motivated to do this.
0:19:55 - David Williams
It sounds like that's a pandemic related story. I wanted to ask what was the experience like during the pandemic, for you certainly change a lot of digital health companies and brought them to the forefront.
0:20:06 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah, so at the time we again we were predominantly focused direct to consumer and so, yeah, as soon as the pandemic hit, you know, we were on the again the fortunate side of a very terrible situation where, yeah, there was a large spike in usage. I think you know, again, you saw sort of, you know, exponential growth of downloads and people using the app and, you know, getting their exercise in there was. Then you could just watch the data. I mean, truthfully, it started to come down, I mean, I think, as we started to realize, hey, maybe this isn't a 12 week, you know, get fit at home sort of mentality and this is going to go on for a longer time, the sort of, you know, the usage started to still above sort of normal levels but did start to level out.
But for us as a business, it created a brand new opportunity that we hadn't really been putting a lot of effort into and in which large organizations, kind of global pharmaceutical distribution companies, came to us and we're looking for a way to distribute, you know, an app like Swarovskit to their employees to help them stay healthy, help them adapt to this situation they have and having to be at home all the time.
So we had already. Actually, luckily, because of the school systems we did, we actually had a system in place to create organizations and on board this amount of employees and do that in a very secure way. So it helped us to pivot our business into more of a B2B focus, where you know now that our main focus is on helping organizations come on board with Swarovskit and working with them with their class success team and helping them, you know, grow this and get as high engaged as possible. So growth since then has been great. We've also, you know, I think through the pandemic you saw, a normalization of digital solutions. You know, as employers are looking for where they're going to prioritize their budgets.
0:22:04 - David Williams
So the gov 19 pandemic is largely in the rear view mirror at this point and I'm wondering where you think things will go from here and maybe how any use cases might evolve for what you're doing.
0:22:16 - Ryan Hanna
Yeah. So what we're seeing is again beyond just again, having employee wellness again is obviously going to continue and that's going to be where a lot of our priorities are. But we're also striving to work with larger kind of health care systems, health plans, to see where we can actually make an impact on the community and public health. So now it's starting to trickle down into the actual, the payers and the hospital systems who are willing to work with companies like Sworkit. So, working with digital health companies to improve health in their communities with digital health, which are more accessible, they're preventative in nature. We can work with the schools, health plans, hospitals to, you know, embolden their commitment to public health and driving forward, you know, a benefit for their community. That's going to kind of level the playing field for more people. So I think, I think it's the larger organizations are also going to be taking this on as a commitment that they're willing to make.
0:23:20 - David Williams
Great. So, ryan, my last question for you is about whether there's any any books that you've read recently or at any point that you would recommend to the audience, and, of course, if there's anything you would recommend that we avoid.
0:23:32 - Ryan Hanna
See, I haven't thought about the latter. That professionally again, you know, anyone is sort of ever interested in kind of the building of a product which again can be a big part of building a business I've always loved, inspired by Marty Kagan, is sort of the you know, a great introduction to a product mindset of you know. Is the thing that we're building going to be something that people are going to want? Are they going to be willing to pay for it? Are they going to want to continue to reuse it over and over again?
And on the sort of personal side of thing, I actually recently reread a Siddhartha which I can remember reading in childhood and you know reiterates you know I think it's very important as an entrepreneur, this power of patience and resilience. And you know how we can. We find our own journeys throughout life. You know teachers of the river that will always find its way to the sea. So I always see these. You know we come up against obstacles and challenges and continuing forward resiliently is very important and I think we should take the log that on Great Well, ryan Hannah, ceo and co-founder of Swark at Health.
0:24:38 - David Williams
Thank you for joining me today on the Health Biz podcast. Thank you, david. You've been listening to the Health Biz podcast with me, david Williams, president of Health Business Group. I conduct in-depth interviews with leaders in health care, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services and health care, check out our website, healthbusinessgroupcom.