Bringing New Products to Market - Daniel Schreiber

I always say if you try something and you fail, it stings for a while. But then it goes away because you know in the back of your mind I tried it and I gave it everything I had, right? Yeah. That's okay. If you don't try something, that lingers with you for the rest of your life. That never goes away. Um, so I'd rather try something and fail than have that thing just linger for the rest of my life in the back of my head.

Hey friends, welcome back to the Future Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number 155. I talked to Daniel Shriver of wearbands.com. So he is the CEO and founder of this company. And it's a really, really interesting product. You can go check it out, and he describes it quite extensively what it does on our websites at wearbands.com. I think a lot of it, you know, from a standpoint of the fitness and health entrepreneur, uh his story is fascinating. It's really good. And, you know, coming from a successful career in real estate, and then, you know, as an entrepreneur does, kind of diving head into something that he believes in in a product, and then in the challenges he's faced getting the product out and the psychology of behavioral change of getting people to adopt to a new product, especially in an industry like ours, which is very um hard set in our ways at times. It's it's really cool insights and very valuable for anybody who's looking to get their product out there. Um, because there's a lot, there's a lot of fitness products, some hit, some don't. Uh but Daniel's out there, um the gladiator in the arena making it happen. And uh I respect it a lot. And it was great talking to him about it, and and I learned quite a bit. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. And this episode is brought to you by certifiedcoursecreation.com. So Kate, Caremy, and I partnered up and we are working on certifications constantly. Um, some big names that we can't say yet, uh, along with some ones that you've probably heard of beyond macros.com, um, human vortex training, uh, all kinds of things. So if you are in the fitness or health or any industry, really, if you have a great idea, uh, maybe you have a depth of knowledge in a particular area that you've been uh successfully working within for a long time, and now you know that you feel that it's time to leverage yourself. And what I mean by that is stop training your time for money and start making a greater impact by sharing your knowledge uh specifically with people that um can take something and and do something with it and run with it, uh, then this is a good opportunity for you. So go to certifiedcoursecreation.com. You can check out a little bit about you know, Kate and I. Uh if you listen to the show, hopefully you know a little bit about me. And just book a call, you know, and I'm happy to get on a call with you and we could talk about your concept and see, you know, if it has legs in the market, um, just due to my network and and the amount of obviously, you know, 600 plus interviews. I know a little bit about the fitness industry. Um and we'll tease it out and we'll see if it's worthwhile. But think about it this way you know, if you are tired of trying, you know, of trading your time for money, then this could be something for you. Online courses are one thing, but an accredited online certification is completely different. Uh it sets you apart and uh it's an authority play. Um, it's a very lucrative play, and uh it could be for you if you have the right stuff. So uh hit me up, let me know at certifiedcoursecreation.com. Without further ado, this is episode number one five five with Daniel Schraber of wearbands at dot com. Boom, we're live. Daniel, welcome to the show, man.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm um really excited. And uh, you know, I I was just telling you before the recording, I always love to get an update on Boulder because I'm somewhat fascinated with the town. I've never been there. Um so it's it's uh do you guys have snow yet? It's late September right now.

Uh we haven't had snow. It's been a hot summer, hot fall. Yeah, you know, we just moved here four years ago. I used to live in the DC area. So we uh kind of picked up our family and moved out here about four years ago and uh happy we did. But no, no snow yet. It's been hot, supposed to be in the 80s again, and boulder weather is is is is in I heard it was, but now that we live here, um I've really experienced it.

You know, what's that? What was the impetus for your you moving your family out there?

You know, it was really like a lot of people in Boulder. It was really just sort of a lifestyle decision. You know, we had we had three young girls at the time, I think they were in first grade, and and then we have twins in preschool. And um, yeah, we lived in DC and I lived there a long time, and my wife did too, and we didn't have anything against that area. We kind of liked it. We just decided, you know, it's kind of a high pressure place for kids, and um, we've all we both lived in cities our whole lives, and we just thought, you know, if we were gonna move and maybe raise the kids somewhere else, where would we go? And we like a lot of people we poked around out west, looked at a lot of places, and and like a lot of people for probably the very same reasons gravitated towards Boulder and just picked up and moved about four years ago.

Well, where else did you look? Uh, because we did the same thing about two years ago. We literally had, my wife and I had a map of the western United States and British Columbia, and we started putting pinpoints in all the places we want to go check out. What was else, what else was on your list?

Yeah, you know, my wife who who had spent some time in the Pacific Northwest, and she lived in Portland for a while, she lived in Seattle for a while, she floated that idea and I just shot that down. I said, Okay, you know, I, you know, I I I want to move, but I gotta move somewhere where there's more sun than rain. Yeah. And I'm not moving to the Pacific Northwest. So I just nixed that idea. And not like a lot of people, we sort of settled on the front range of Colorado. We thought about Utah because there's some neat places in Utah, but that's a little, you know, Utah's a little bit of a strange place to move to, I think, politics-wise, and and for all those reasons. So um, so like a lot of people, we looked at the front range. It took like three trips. We we hit Golden Colorado, we looked at Boulder, we looked at Fort Collins, which I was kind of partial to. Um, we looked at Longmont, so we kind of went up the front range of Colorado and looked at all the towns. Yeah, and we kind of came down to like Fort Collins and Boulder. Um, I was a little partial to Fort Collins, it's a little more removed, it's a little bit quieter, a little bit more of a Midwest vibe. You know, Boulder has a little bit more of an East Coast, West Coast vibe.

Yeah.

Um, but you know, Boulder's closer to the airport, schools are a little better, you know, for all the same reasons, you know, that everybody else, you know, ends up saying, yeah, this fits what we need if you're raising a family. Um ended up in Boulder.

Did you guys did you ever look at the livability score? Have you seen that website?

Uh I haven't. I haven't. We've I've read articles about the best places to live kind of things, but not the livability scores, no.

Yeah, it's a pretty interesting thing. So people who may be listening to this are starting to get inspired about um moving somewhere that's more lifestyle driven, like a Boulder or Whitefish where I'm at, or Provo, or you know, like all these places that um flagstaff, you know, very life lifestyle driven. Um there's a cool website. I don't know what it is. If you just type in livability, it'll give you like scores depending on you know, uh uh crime, schools, um, price of housing, um, weather, all these cool things. And I I live on that website for a year while we were kind of figuring it out. I said that was your that was your code too.

Yeah, we're glad we did. And like a lot of people, you know, I wish I'd done it 10 years earlier.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So, Dana, for for people who don't know you, um give us a little bit of a background.

Dan, not David.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Yeah. My dad's name.

Did I say David? Uh yeah, Dan, yeah, please give us give us some background, ma'am.

Yeah, you know, I uh I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Um spent my life as a Steeler fan and a pirate fan and a penguin fan until I got out, until I went to uh college, and I went down to Duke University a couple of years, um, up to New York to Wall Street for a couple of years, back to business school, um, to uh to the Wharton School. And I got out of there and spent about the next 20 years in the real estate business. I got my family was sort of in that business. I didn't go into the family business, I went out on my own, but um a lot of things about real estate I found attractive as a um somebody who wanted to work for themselves and kind of do their own thing, right? So I spent about 20 years, a couple of years working for a company, then I went out on my own and I raised uh some money from some of the people I used to work with in New York. And in the early 90s, we went I went out and started buying up apartment complexes, which were a good deal at the time. Um, and then I spent the next 20 years building that business. We had a management company, we ended up with about, I don't know, probably about six or eight hundred apartment units. We had an industrial property we ran, we had about 25 employees um running it, and I did that. And then we kind of got to the place in mid-2005, 2006, and and real estate had recovered, and there was nothing interesting to do from an acquisition standpoint with my investors, and I wanted to try some different things, so I just kind of felt it was a good time to to uh to get out because I didn't really understand the industry anymore. The prices were getting kind of crazy. Um, and my very good investors, they said, do whatever you want to do. So we unwound the partnerships and sold all the properties kind of in 2006, 2007. Timing ended up being very good. And I can't say that I had a crystal ball. I just knew that what was happening didn't really make sense to me anymore. And I always think that's a good time to try something new. Um, so I got out. Um, I did a few things. I was a professional photographer for a few years, um, worked for a lot of magazines and papers in the DC area. It was always sort of a sideline passion of mine. Um, and then I ran into a person who invented this concept, you know, basically said, everybody uses resistance bands. Why can't we put them on your body? And I thought that was a kind of a cool thing that nobody was doing. I remember going home that night and Googling, you know, wearable resistance bands. I got zero hits. And I said, I think you know, we're on to something. Um and we partnered for a short time. He was an inventor, I was a business guy. Inventors and business guys don't always see things the same way. Um, turning his invention into a business was was going to require some changes that he, as the inventor, didn't want to make. They tend to love their inventions the way they are. Um and so uh so I ended up acquiring all the intellectual property that we'd sort of amassed to date from him and made the changes I felt needed to be made to kind of make this a potentially a viable business. And and uh and I took the leap a few years ago and said, let's go do it and see if you know we can make this happen. And it's been three about three interesting years in the market now, and we're you know, and I'm still I'm still consciously optimistic that that this concept is is going to catch on and that we'll be at the forefront of it.

Yeah. Interesting, man. A couple questions for you, just hearing that. Um first of all, and I don't want to spend time on real estate, but what what are you thinking now? I mean, 2020. I I've been reading a lot about it because we're watching the market here where we're at because, you know, to hopefully potentially get some property. But I mean, it's it's gotta be coming, there's gotta be a downturn, right? I mean, I just for example, and you know this, but I I grew up in the Silicon Valley um before it was all that. And my dad bought a property when I was born for like $130,000, right? Um we sold it, or he sold it, you know, about 15, 20 years ago. But I looked today or last week, it was valued at 3.1 million. Like when does this end? Like, are we are we looking at another recession?

But I mean so in certain areas. Look, I you know, uh, you know, I've lived real estate, nothing goes on forever. And I've learned I learned it in my business, and it doesn't go now. And I was in commercial real estate, so we are apartment complexes built, it's a very different world from residential real estate. It really, you know, different things sort of matter, but there's certain areas, you know, bowlers one of them. Um, because of the local politics, the construct, you know, the how hard it is to build anything new, yeah. Um, and it doesn't matter how hard you fight that with ordinances and zoning and all this stuff. If the supply is constrained and there's people that have some money that live in a per particular area, um, it's very well insulated against downturns. I mean, there'll be downturns. Everything gets affected, it kind of trickles down if you have, especially if you have a big kind of meltdown like 2008 or 9. Everybody gets affected. There's certain areas that are insulated from it. Silicon Valley, I'm sure, is one Marin County, you know, Boulder County. I mean, there's certain areas that, but, but for the most part, nothing goes on forever. And it's tricky to it's tricky to play the game, the guessing game of when you know it's gonna go up and when it's gonna go down, because there's lots of prognosticators out there and they're all guessing.

Yeah, interesting. Okay. Thanks for the real estate knowledge.

I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, real when interest rates are really low, not a good time to buy real estate.

Okay.

Because when as soon as they go up, your value goes down. It doesn't matter what market you're in, it's very much tied to interest rates. So when interest rates are this low, I personally I would stay away from buying real estate. Okay.

That's a huge yeah, that's a huge tidbit. Um so when you when you saw this opportunity, I mean, you're obviously a savvy business person. You've been doing you know multiple things over many years. When you saw this opportunity for the current company that you own, what how did you identify the opportunity? Like what made you think like, okay, like you must add some criteria that you look at besides just a gut feel? I mean, many entrepreneurs may only go by gut feel, but what was your identification of how you look at it?

Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a great question. I mean, I, you know, I I had some, you know, I was an athlete my whole life. I played um football in college. So I've been around a lot of strength and conditioning coaches, a lot of trainers. Uh, even after I got out, fitness has always been important. And I'm, you know, like a lot of people, I got family. I'm always trying to find time to squeeze fitness in. You know, I like fitness, but I'm not the fanatic that never misses it. So I, you know, I'm always looking for ways to, you know, make my own fitness quicker, faster, and more effective, right? So when I when I saw this concept, both I had some idea about what people were doing in the sports training world and what kind of tools were out there. And I also knew that it fit like a need in my life. So, you know, it's sort of that feeling that you sort of have knowledge of what's going on in the training world and you see a product that does something that that that sort of takes six or seven products that people cobble together to try to do the same thing and sort of puts it in a simple package. And you know, like anybody else, any athlete that's either trying to get a college scholarship or they're in college at the professional level, they're looking for an edge. And if you can, if there's a product out there that can give them an edge, you know, it becomes a very big market. And then the fitness side, like that's more of a personal thing. There's so many people out there that say, How do I, you know, stay fit with my crazy schedule? So I saw a product that that that kind of met two of these needs and two of these problems out there. And then I looked, then I did some research, you know, how big are these markets, how many people belong to health clubs, how many people work out, how many athletes are there in the world, 12 and up, and how many, you know, and I and I did all the and I I just realized that you know what I liked about this product is it's not a niche product. It has its pros and cons when you're launching it, when you don't have a particularly, particularly focused market, right? But um, but I also felt like the odds are good, and I don't have to hit a home run in any one market. You know, if I can, you know, hit a double in three or four markets that this product serves, you know, then we'll have a really nice business on our hand. So I like that idea that that I felt like you know, there are a lot of different ways this product can succeed. Now it's my job to go out and figure out, you know, which markets are going to be the most receptive first and then build out all the other verticals from from that.

Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I always think about products like yours and and give everyone the name of your product as well. So it's called wear bands.

It's called wear bands, simple bands that you wear.

Yeah, yeah. I've um very I the uh the videos you have are awesome for by the way. I was looking at those today on the website. Yeah, really good. Love the music, got me fired up. Um I always think of products when I look at products like what you're what you have, I always think of shark tank, right? Like what would happen if they was up in front of the sharks? You know, what would they say? What questions would they ask? Have you ever thought about that scenario?

Like I've applied once. Okay. Um I got through a couple rounds of cuts. Yeah. Um and then I didn't get that final invitation, you know, to come out and we're gonna film you. You know, even if they film you, you might not end up on television, but I I didn't get to that final cut. Um, that was a couple years ago. I kind of got away from it. People tell me I should, you know, keep reapplying every year. Probably absolutely true. Um, I've learned a lot about the application process since then. So I think I'd probably make a more savvy application now. Um, you know, I was trying to sort of sell them on our business and the fact that there were a lot of sharks that would like what we're doing and could help us do it when, you know, I'm sort of told the reality is they want good TV, right? So you need a good story, good emotional story. You got to work, you know, whatever you're, you know, they they want good TV, which isn't necessarily a good investment, but it's good TV. Yeah. Um, so I may, I may revisit that because I do think about it. You know, one problem with us is we're we're we're selling steady, but we're not showing a huge, you know, huge growth in month over month or year over year sales. I think we'll get to some tipping point where that'll happen. So I know they would sort of eviscerate us a little bit on, you know, hey, you're in the market, how come your sales aren't better? Um, so you know, yeah, we'll we'll take your company, but we want 70% of it. So um I don't know if the timing's great for us. You know, if I get desperate enough, you know, and I and I feel like, hey, I've exhausted all my other things, let's see what these guys have to say, um, then I may get back on that on that wagon.

Yeah, I just imagine Mark Cuban being like, yes, I want that. I want it for my basketball team, I want it for all the athletes I work with, right?

And then you're then I think I I think so. And and then the QVC woman, um we have a very QVC friendly product because you know, and we have lots of customers from all over lots of people say, Hey, I wear it around the house, I wear it when I'm mowing the lawn, I wear it when I'm walking the dog. So I call that like our QVC audience. I think that's big. Um, so I do think that they would look at it and probably get it and understand, like I do, how big this market could be. Um, I think the trick would be getting on the show. How to how do you get on the show? And then and then if you get on it, how much am I gonna have to give up to work with them?

Right. Right. Yeah. So what you know, if you had to, as you bring, you know, as you have brought this product to market, um, and I would love to hear what insights you have for people who are out there thinking, hey, I have a great product, right? Um, I want to bring it to market. But if if you had to go after a niche, what which one do you think would be niche, niche, whatever you want to say?

Yeah, I think um our two biggest people have gravitated to us most so far are women.

Um, because you know, amongst many other things, this is a great, you know, booty and leg developer product.

Um, and it does it not just when you're doing all your booty exercises, but it does it if you're just you know walking your dog. Um so you know, that's that I think is gonna be a big market force. Um and uh and it is probably 50% of our users right now. Um and then out of the other 50%, um you know, CrossFitters, um, I think like it because it's intense. You can really CrossFitters life, you know, harder and harder and harder. And and if they put our system on it, it gets exponentially harder. Um, and then on the sports side, track athletes have been our biggest sort of uh market right so far. But when we send it out to different places, we have it at a big sports performance school, um, and they have lots of different teams, and the track team's the one that that seems to want it the most. So um so we're sort of focusing our energies on you know, on track, um, and we're starting to push CrossFit a little bit and and then women's what I would call women's fitness.

Yeah, CrossFit would be interesting. Um I mean, you're right. Uh and then the thing about CrossFit is you know, you get um one or two star athletes to uh to show a couple Instagram ads, and people are, what is that? Right. Because your your product is is visually you're like, okay, I've never seen that before. What is going on here? Right. That's my first thought. So I look at it, I'm like, what exactly is going on here? And then you start figuring in your brain, like, okay, as when you know the resistance increases as you right extend, right? Right. Um and I can imagine uh doing something like a a thruster pull-up workout with that thing would just be devastating as an idea.

Yeah, and the key, we have one of you know we one of the big cross-suit athletes here in Boulder. I won't mention her name, and we're trying to get her to just try it. I'm like, just put it on, you know, five minutes, five minutes. And you you know, you'd be honest, you probably wouldn't be amazed. I mean, you know, getting people to put something on, you know, we have our we have a little saying here, it's wearing is believing. You know, you can see it, you can see it, maybe not believe it, but if you wear it, you're gonna believe it. Uh so take about five minutes to say, you know, why am I sweating? Why is my heart rate up? What's going on here? And then you'll Feel it. So yeah, so that's a constant part of our strategy. I'm always reaching out to people. And you know, sometimes getting to the most elite people is as often as you imagine, sometimes the hardest. Not that Gene can't get in touch with them. You know, my theory is the people at the top, they got a good thing going. They see something new, they don't quite understand, they don't know what it is. I think they're they're very risk averse. They're like, well, you know, if I endorse this thing and something and it doesn't take off or something goes wrong, you know, there's just a downside for me, right? And I sort of get that idea. I try to convince them that nothing can really go wrong. There's no downside here. You're not going to get hurt using this thing. Um, but I think that they're more risk averse. You know, so we kind of focus on sometimes the people that are trying to make it, they're they're on their way up, but they're not the stars yet, and they want something new and they want an edge and they want something to make a name for themselves with.

And sometimes we we go after those people because I think sometimes they're a little more receptive to try new things than the people that are kind of up at the top.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's the the bubble athletes, right? I mean, as we would call them and cross people who are, you know, trying to get um trying to get the regionals or wherever it's organized now. It's been shifted so many times, but they're looking for that little thing. I mean, it's funny because you know, I've been in rooms with um, you know, not anymore, it's been a long time, with with really high-level CrossFit athletes. And um, you know, we all went out to dinner once, and I remember this. It was after a certification, and there was like CrossFit Games athletes, and then there's the regional athletes and the people that wanted, you know, were just trying to get there, right? And I was just noticing like the CrossFit game athlete, the one that was very high-end, was sitting there with eating dinner with a full pizza and two huge things of beer, right? And then like the bubble athletes were like, you know, watching in their macros and all everything, right? You know, they're looking for because they're looking for every little thing. Meanwhile, it was quite obvious that the best athlete on the table was just focused on training. That was his thing. He was worried about all the peripheral stuff. And uh, you know, I think that's a huge component was like, well, how do you make the training more effective? And ultimately that's what it comes down to. It's like, are you training? Are you recovering? And that's it. Um so when you brought this this product to market, if if I'm listening to this, I'm like, hey, I got an idea for a product, right?

What lessons did you learn so far along the way that you can help people maybe avoid some challenges that but um well look, I mean, the the first one gets back to the psychology of business, which you know, if I if I raised some money and had some money sitting around where I could hire somebody, I I think I'd bring in a you know a behavioral psychologist onto my team, you know, seriously, because you know, when you're when you're launching a new product that people if I'm launching a better water bottle, right, or I'm launching a better resistance ban, or I'm launching a better anything, something that's derivative, but you have if it's really good, that's the clearest sailing because people can, oh, I can get rid of this water bottle and I buy this water bottle and I know how to drink from a water bottle, and there's nothing I have to learn. You know, I recognize a water bottle, right? And and that, you know, getting that early adoption is is simpler. If you come to a market with something that's really innovative, um, even if it really works, and you know it works, and you have a science that says it works, but it really looks different. Um, maybe there's not a lot of published papers out on it that people can go read. They've never seen it before. Um, and you're asking them to change the way they train or the way they do business, and that all that work they've done coming up with this way of doing it, now I've got to tweak it to make room for something new. Um you just have to be prepared for the fact that you're gonna shake your head and say, You don't you get this? You know, you know this is better. Why won't you use it? And you've got to figure out a way to get over that hurdle, you know, and and I still work on that, but it's something that I think about all the time. Now, how do I make this easier? How do I make it um make more sense? I'm gonna have to be patient here, you know, with this person. Instead of discarding them because they don't like my product right away, I'm gonna massage this and I'm gonna, over time, I'm gonna sort of win them over. So that's you know uh you know, that's that's I think been our biggest challenge as far as speed of adoption. Um, I think is just understanding the psychology of introducing something that's really new to the market and how averse people will be to to to getting on board. Yeah, even if it's better. I think that's my you know, that's my biggest piece of advice. Um, and then, you know, look, I'm not marketing, you know, and this has been my own personal battle, I'm not a natural-born sales guy.

Um, and again, if I had some money, I'd hire one.

Um, and you know, you really gotta have your your your your marketing acumen in order, you know, present-day current marketing. Um, because there's there's a thousand options out there. And if you don't have some you know good idea getting in as to you know where you're gonna spend your money and your time and your effort, you know, and you try to take a shotgun approach, you know, you're probably gonna run out of time and run out of money before um you you hit the magic bullet. Um, so that's just a personal, you know, challenge that I have to overcome. Um and I what have sort of learned that I've been lucky enough to get the business to where it's you know sort of break it even and I can keep making new product until it catches on. Um so you know, it's been a long journey. I was certainly hoping by now, like everybody to be farther ahead than we are. Um, but I think part of what's held me back is I've had to learn a lot on the go about, you know, where should I be focusing my time and my effort, especially if you're sort of a one-man shop like me and you have to be really careful. Um, you know, those are the two things. I found marketing to be my biggest challenge, understanding where to go and how to do it, um, and the psychology of just how do you get people to adopt a new idea?

Yeah. Yeah, that is an interesting thing. I um I've been uh just due to some projects I've been working on and really getting into like uh personality assessments, Colby, disc, predictive index, all these things, right? And seeing how um how how incredibly important it is to understand how people think, right? And how different people will react different ways. And um risk aversion, of course, is you know, that's uh a very um very synonymous with with uh entrepreneurs. Right. We just it's just we like it. We like a little bit of risk, right? Like uh failure is like just another day at the office, like oh, I'm gonna stumble today just like I did yesterday, and that's just part of it, right? Um so I'm wondering, like, you know, with a product like yours, if you know, going after the people, find the people who are quote unquote. I mean, there's no risk in trying your product, right? I mean, there's none. None. It's the only thing like what would possibly be a risk, like, okay, well, it looks different. So people may say, you know, may make fun of me for it originally. I don't know. Like, what is it? There is no risk. I I don't know. It's just trying, I guess it's time. That's the thing, right? That's what they're risking is like, well, if I'm using this and I'm not doing a traditional training or I'm not doing something else, I'm risking my time. That would be about it.

I I make that pitch all the time to writers, you know, who do gear reviews and stuff. I said, let me just send you one.

Yeah.

You don't like it, throw it out. Right? You know, you know, I personally like you to send it back. But you know, I said, if you don't like it, that's okay. But why not try it? You know, I do think, you know, be I do think part of it's not like a risk. I don't think part of it is thinking about the risk of using the product. I think when people see something they haven't seen before, they figure if it hasn't been invented yet, you know, it probably is a gimmick. It probably you know doesn't work. It probably you know, if I if it if it's not here, then if I haven't seen it before, then why should I waste my time? And which is a strange kind of thing that I think people, you know, if I haven't seen, I'm an expert, everybody thinks they're the expert. I've I've studied, I got all my degrees, I got all my certifications. If this has never come up and all my stuff, and I'm the expert and I don't know about it, then you know, this isn't even worth my time. I mean, I've I've come across that sort of attitude before. Not I've come across people that look at it and say, I've been waiting for something like this for 20 years, you know, and I know exactly what this is gonna do just by looking at it. So please send me one. I I meet those guys, but I meet, you know, 20 of the other guys that say, I don't know what this is, this isn't gonna help me. This is I'm like, just try it. I don't even have to try it. I already know, and you have to, you have to, those people I think will come on board after they see enough other people using it. But there's no sense trying to convince somebody who's not even willing to like open up their minds a little bit and just out of curiosity say, I'll give it a shot, send it to me.

Yeah, yeah. It's a constant daily battle.

The people that um you come across were like, oh, I get it, I've been waiting for something like this. Where do they live? Like what's their world?

Yeah, boy, I tell you, it's you know, uh, I think for the most part, and it's not uh unusual, you know. I I I've learned that there's in our in our business, there's people that write the papers, right? And there's people that read the papers, right? And the people that write the papers, you know, will look at this two ways. They either understand it right away and say, send me one, I'd like to use it. Um, or they're not sure, you know, they're a little skeptical, but because they like to write papers and they like to think of new ideas, they're open. Hey, send it to me. That looks kind of interesting. I haven't seen that before, but that looks kind of cool. And then they'll try it, and and usually if they were skeptical, they weren't skeptical after they try it. Um, and so those are the guys that sort of write the papers. The ones that read the papers and they're you know out there and they're training people and they're strength and conditioning coaches, and they gotta, you know, they have their own pressures, they gotta get you know a bunch of kids in and a bunch of kids out, and they have these very specific training protocols, you know, they're a tough sell for something like this. Once they've read a paper about it or they've seen it at a seminar and they've seen it explained by a third-party professional, they might do it. But if the owner of the company pitches it to them, they're kind of, I think their attitude is, you know, no thanks, I'm busy, and they'll they'll wait, they'll wait to see you know what other people are doing. So it is nice that we have some people, uh very high-end people, both in labs and just trainers out there that have bought into what we're doing, and we're certainly trying to leverage that. Um, but even they're busy people, so they're out there using it and they're using it with their clients. But if I say, hey, you want to do a little study for the next three months and we'll put it on your clients, and we'll, you know, that's a tough sell for them too, because they're super busy all the time.

Yeah.

Um and I don't have the money, and I don't really want to pay them because I don't have paid for a result. Um, so we're still sort of in search of those high-level people or teams that, you know, just out of the, you know, because they're because they're interested, will say, Yeah, we'll work with you on this. And and that's a challenge just because everybody's busy. Yeah. I just had a my job is to figure out a way or to keep hunting until I find those one or two programs that that say, yeah, let's do it. And then I think, you know, I think that'll give us a huge sort of bump in credibility.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I've I've interviewed um between my two podcasts, something like between almost probably 600 people in the fitness and health industry in the last, you know, couple of years. And when I ask people, um, you know, what what do you think makes people successful in this industry? Um and I agree with the answers that I hear the most the most often is it's persistence. Right. Just this unshakable belief in what you're doing, because sometimes it just takes a while for people to catch on. Um that, you know, whatever that word comes in, various forms persistence, grit, resilience, right? You know all the words, right? Right. You live it every day. Right. Um, you know, so do I. And uh I think that's you know something that you know is is because you'll find it. Like that's the only guaranteed way. Like if you just don't give up, you'll get there, right?

Well, I I think that's right, you know, and the challenge to an entrepreneur, you know, is how much time do I have, right? I mean, yeah, you know, I don't have an endless horizon to keep doing this, you know. But and I ask myself that at least every week, you know, you know, what where are we? You know, am I seeing enough you know positive feedback and you know that I feel like, you know, this is still gonna succeed, right? If I if I went three months spinning my wheels and I got nothing but negativity and and this isn't gonna work, and let me tell you why, and bubble. If that's all I heard, you know, for three or four months, sometimes as an entrepreneur, you have to say, well, well, you know, what's the market telling me? I might have a great product, but a great product doesn't make a great business. And you know, you have to be honest with yourself. But you know, I have found what gives me my constant belief is every month, every two months, something else good happens that from some you know reputable people that say, I think you're really on to something, let me use it, let me post some videos. You know, we're starting to collect some data, some labs asked for it, and now we're getting sort of independent research done on it. And so there's always been a good enough good news every few months, you know, that you you know, when you talk to all the naysayers, you're you're not too worried. You're like, okay, you know, when you're when you're disrupting something and doing something different, you're gonna have more non-believers than believers when you start. And you just gotta keep going.

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome, man. That's very, I mean, it's true. It's just true. And you know, there's gonna be uh, you know, so many times when you're when you're bringing something new to the market or you're you're out on your own. And I mean, I can't tell you how many times uh, you know, maybe all uh, you know, a client will go on hold or you know, something like that. We're like, yeah, God, that that offer I got for that uh salary job, you know, a couple months ago, it's starting to sound pretty, pretty good. Right? Like I wonder what that's like. Just a paycheck every month, right? That's like I forget it's been so long. Right.

It's true. It's true. And you wonder, I mean, look, you can't. I don't really buy entrepreneurs that that that tell you that they're 100% sure all the time. I know it's gonna make it necessarily. I mean, you gotta tell yourself that you don't tell other people that, but I promise you, you know, if you're honest with yourself, you have doubts. You know, they're there, you're not sure. You don't know. And that's where where not being risk averse comes in. You know, you don't have to be 100% confident, you have to be really good with not being 100% confident, right? And and I don't know if this is gonna make it. I may spend five or six years of my life and it's not gonna happen, but I think it's going to, and that's okay. And you just, you know, you have to deal with doubt and say, I don't know. I don't know, but I think so. I think it's gonna work. And as long as I think it's gonna work, you know, I'm not 100% sure, but I'll I'll keep doing it until I can't do it anymore. Um, yeah, if you're if you're not good with discouragement, if you don't handle discouragement well and rejection well, um then you're just gonna get ulcers trying to do this, right? You have to be able to take it in stride and and not get worked up. And when people, when you know, you know, when people say no thanks, this is the biggest piece of junk I've ever seen in my life, you have to shake your head and say, okay, thank you very much for your time, and then move on to the next person.

Yeah. Well, there's a couple simple questions. I mean, people are like thinking, should I go for it? Right? I got this idea, I got this product, I got this whatever, right? I want to, should I go for it? Should I go for it? Sorry, you can ask yourself a couple simple questions. A, in 10 years from now, looking back, will you regret not having tried it? Right. And you put yourself in this like objective point of view of your future self, which is pretty powerful. And then number two, you know, depending on that answer, of course, is well, what's the worst possible case scenario if this doesn't go well? Right. Right. Um, but I'm doing I'm doing fine now. But I always think about that, right? And uh I'm like, well, if I take a big risk, like what's the worst thing happened? Like, oh my wife and I live in our van.

Right.

Worst. That's the right, right. Worst that could possibly happen. Right. And then you're like, oh. And but I think we conjure up these things of like, well, God, what's the worst thing that can happen?

And just it, but it's oftentimes it's it's not only worse things can happen, but but people don't like failing.

Yes.

Failing makes you make some people feel like a failure.

Right.

Right. If I fail, I'm a failure. If I fail, I wasn't smart enough. If I fail, you know, whatever. And they it's a personal, they take it like personal. Um, and and I'm sure you're the same. I don't look at failure as as personally. If I try, if I have something I really want to do and I try it and it doesn't work out, I don't think I'm a failure. You know, it doesn't have that impact on me. It's just, you know, I'm a pretty smart guy. I had a good idea. Maybe it would have worked in a few more years. I decided at this point to get out and and because I couldn't make it work as fast as I wanted to, and I'll go on to the you know, to the next thing. I mean, heck, I I'm a five foot eight kind of white guy. I I I walked on the football team at Duke, right? And people thought I was out of my mind. And but I played a little, I played some football in high school, and and I Duke wasn't exactly Michigan or you know, Notre Dame, so the talent wasn't that high. And I sized it up and I said, I think I can, you know, I'm not gonna be a starter, but I think I can actually do this. Yeah. Because I want to. And you know what? If I go out there and get my brains beat in and everybody says I told you so, I'll say, but but I tried it. You know, I you know, to me that's so much better than graduating and saying, God, I wouldn't should have tried to play football. I mean that's that's the point I'm trying to make. I always say if you try something and you fail, it stings for a while, but then it goes away because you know in the back of your mind I tried it and I gave it everything I had, right? Yeah. Um that's okay. If you don't try something, that lingers with you for the rest of your life. That never goes away. Um, so I'd rather try something and fail than have that thing just linger for the rest of my life in the back of my head. I shouldn't try that. And to me, it's such a simple choice when you look at it that way.

Yep.

You know, that failure is temporary, not trying something, that'll bug you forever.

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree, man. That's exactly the point I was trying to make is you know, how how you make your decisions, and there's there's only a couple things in my life that I regret, right? But none of them are things that I regret because I took action.

Yeah.

You know, it's it's always things because I didn't. And I think that's that's the biggest thing. I mean, as as you know very well, like you don't wake up in the morning, uh, grab your coffee, get in the car, and go to a place where everyone has, you know, things for you to do. Like, okay, here's what you're gonna do today. You're like, if you're like most, you probably get up and you're like, okay, what are my goals for the day? How do I make this happen? How do I, by sheer will, right? How do I, how do I get this thing going? And you know, that even when I remember when I started working from home, like, you know, I still had a corporate job, I started working from home. People are like, wow, that must take a lot of discipline. I'm like, no, not really. It's just what you do because you gotta do something, right? I'm not gonna watch baseball all day, right? So yeah, I think it's it's a certain type. I I'm curious too, you know, when you look at your your product, what problem do you think you're solving? Like when you bring it to market, right? Because I look at I look at products in two different categories. There's ones where it's like, it's obvious, right? It's like an obvious problem that's being solved. And you just look at it, you're like, ah, yeah, I got it. Well, yours, I think, takes a little bit more explaining. I mean, it's obvious that that obviously it I keep using that word. You uh you're making people perform better with through different ways of training, right? I mean, you can look at the video, that's that's pretty uh straightforward. But what kind of problem do you think you're solving?

Yeah, I mean, there's two. There's the the problem we're solving in the sports world is that you know, functional resistance, you know, is real the tools that apply functional resistance are all pretty inefficient. They just are. People have you make do with what you have. So everybody out there has tried to make the best of the tools that have been available to them to provide functional resistance. Everybody agrees that functional resistance is super important, and if you want to move fast and move, you you gotta add some resistance and teach your brain and teach your muscles to do it. Every tool out there that does that is inefficient in in some way because you know you can't move because you're your limit is to what you can do when you put it on. So if you try to teach somebody to do something functional, you give them a tool and you say, We're gonna use this tool to do this one thing, and then we're gonna use that tool to do this, and then we're gonna hook you up to that fence, and then I'm gonna hold up, you know, everything that they're teaching them to do, you know, is limited by the tool. Um, but they've cobbled together eight different, ten different tools, and let's do this for this and that for that, and that even among some of the tools, since you aren't really free to move exactly the way you want to move, you're being limited. Um, but that's what's been available, and a whole industry and a whole philosophy of training has come around based on here's the six tools we have. How do we use them to you know train people functionally? Um, so what the problem we do is if you believe in functional resistance, then the best functional resistance is the functional resistance that's on your body, and you can go just do anything you want to do. So if you believe in this idea that you know sleds are good, running para suits are good, you know, running with a band around your waist is good, and all those different things, if you believe that, then you also have to understand that your, you know, your your subjects and your athletes are sort of mimicking movements, but it's not real. You're faking it a little to get as close as you can. So that's what we've done. We've said, if you like functional resistance, how about put it on your body and go do whatever the heck you want to do? There's nothing more functional than that. And you're getting all the benefits of all those other tools you're doing, but you're zeroing in. So if you're looking for that extra tenth of a second in the 40 or that extra inch of vertical leap or that little bit of extra quick, if you're looking for that edge, you know, then a tool that allows you to, you know, let's say you're training for a combine and you're doing a 510-5 and uh and you're doing a high jump and you're doing a 40-yard dash. If you can put a piece of resistance on it, it doesn't weigh anything, by the way. So it's not altering the way you're moving, it's not adding any extra impact. If you can put a piece of resistance on you and train those three combine things at full speed as hard as you can, under that resistance, you know, it you can't get more functional than that. Um, so that's that's that's the problem we we solve. You know, right now there's several other products out there that all are halfway solutions that everybody's using. You know, our goal is to you know win over people and say, you know, if you believe in functional resistance, why wouldn't you want to apply it more purely than you're applying it? And then on the fitness side, the problem we're solving is is simply one of workout efficiency. You know, if you do, if you love body weight workouts, that's fantastic, but you're gonna have to do hundreds and hundreds of reps and it's gonna take you an hour to work out, and you're gonna have to do this big circuit. If you can just figure out a way to add resistance that doesn't weigh anything again to that same workout, now my hour workout is 40 minutes and my half hour workout is 20 minutes. And I mean it has to be because you're just you're you're activating more muscles. It's not rocket science, it's it's it's sound science. So on the fitness side, it's like if you're all if you're busy and you you're spending that one hour of workout time or that half hour of workout time three times a week, you know, one simple tool is going to give you 25% more benefit. Why wouldn't you use it if you're serious about fitness? So those are the two problems on the sports and fitness side that we think you know we solve. It just looks different and looks funny to people. And, you know, my personal belief is once enough people are out there, we have 3,500 customers right now, I think. Once enough people are out there, and I just saw that in my group fitness class, and I just saw that guy training at the track, and it's not so weird anymore because they tell me it really works. And then that self-consciousness of trying something new, I believe, will melt away, and then I think we'll have a nice business on our hands.

Yeah, yeah, it's that critical mask, right? Where people um don't feel like they're uh ostracizing themselves from a tribe because they're trying something new.

You know, yeah, we're in a different tribe, you know, everybody's looking at me funny. Well, you know, okay, but now there's one of you, and then there's two of you, and now there's five of you, and now they're not looking at us so funny. Now they want to know, you know, why are you using that? Well, because instead of burning 400 calories in my workout, I just burned 500 calories, you know. Um, I just added all this resistance so to my workouts, and now my legs are stronger and my butt looks better. And you know, or if I'm an athlete, you know, I couldn't dunk six weeks ago. We've heard these stories, I couldn't dunk six weeks ago. I trained with your product, I just dumped for the first time. Um, all of a sudden, you know, it becomes something people want instead of something people are, you know, reticent to try.

Yeah. The workout efficiency is interesting, right? Because it used to be um, you know, not too long ago, like a crossfit class has always traditionally been an hour. Like, oh wow, that's a really efficient use of time, right? Great workout an hour. Then you know, F-45 came out as functional 45. And then you get things like nine round, it's 30 minutes. I just saw another one come out that says they're do 27 minutes workouts, right? And then you have the classic eight-minute abs, and you got all these things, and everyone's looking for that silver bullet, right? Um, to get them the most efficient workout. Yeah. Most of the time we're not even that freaking busy. I mean, we're busy with things that don't even like well, that's true.

That's true. But you you're you're right. But that's a hard psychology to change. Everybody feels busy, everybody, the workouts sort of the last thing they feel like doing. Um, but what you can change is when you do get around to doing it, you know, wouldn't you like to, you know, do it as efficiently as possible? I got 20 minutes and I want to crank out the most, you know, resistance work. I want to burn the most calories and fat. And and you know, how do I do that? And and another problem we solve is that if you, you know, people like pro certain kinds of programming, you know, step aerobics people like step aerobics, Zumba people like Zumba, TRX people like TRX, right? And and people tend to gravitate towards the thing. So they're sort of stuck. I like TRX, so that's gonna be my health. I love it, that's gonna be my workout. I like Zumba, that's gonna be my workout. I like CrossFit, that's gonna be my workout. Well, what we've kind of done is come up with a product, and and we're gonna have our own, I think, workouts and show people how to use the product, and we're working on that. It's we've been slow to do that. Um, but what we offer people is like we're not asking you to change your workout. You probably know what you like to do. You like to walk, you like to hike, you like to do whatever. You know, you like it already. Just put this simple tool on. Go do what you already like doing, right? And you know, you're gonna get fitter. I guarantee you, you know, by the fourth time you've taken this to your TRX class, you know, or that you've taken it or you've trained with it in your CrossFit class, you know, you're gonna do more burpees, you're gonna do more box jumps, your score is gonna go up. So we're not limiting people by our product and then saying this you have to like suspension training to use ours, you have to like aerobics to use ours, you have to like something. You already know what you like. You know, we have a tool that simply you know makes a better use of your workout time if you just put it on doing what you already love doing. Yeah, we think that's kind of makes different from a lot of fitness products, even BOSU. You know, you have to like BOSU workouts to buy a BOSU. You know, you don't have to like any kind of workout to buy wearbands, whatever you like, just add it. It's an additive product that enhances what you're doing.

Yeah.

I mean, we think that's a compelling argument. It's just a function of, you know, like you said, perseverance and sticking it out until you know we become a seven-year overnight success, right? I mean, you know, some somebody's gonna we have a we have celebrity trainers out there using it right now, and we're trying to work out some things with them and trying to get them on board, and we've got some high-end athletes using it, and we're talking to them. It's always a function of can we afford the people that could actually put us on the map? What can we do for them to to make it enticing to them? Um, but if one or two of these things kind of goes our way, all of a sudden, you know, we're not gonna become some strange thing I came across on the internet. We're gonna become I saw, you know, that trainer says this really works, so I should try it.

And I think we're I think we'll be in good shape, but it's it's it's work to get there.

Yeah, yeah, it always is. Man, um great story, great insights, man. Dan, where where do people go to uh to find you if you want to get a hold of you and and yeah, it's very simple.

You know, it's it's it's wear bands, so they're resistance bands you wear, right? So it's it's wearbands and it's wearbands.com. It's our website. Our our name is Wearbands on Instagram, on YouTube. If you go to YouTube, you'll see a huge huge library of every sport, you know, every type of workout. This idea you can just put these on and do anything you like doing. So we're you can find us everywhere at Wearbands.

You can reach me, I'm Dan Triver at Wearbands, so people can send emails directly to me.

Um, you know, you can chat with us on our website if you get there and have any questions. We can um, you know, help you through it. And you know, we have uh well, an interesting statistic. We've sold about 3,500 systems. We have one return, so 3,499 out of 3,500 people um have kept their system. And that was just a kid who played tennis and his tennis coach didn't want him to have it, so his tennis coach made him send it back to us. Although we got lots of tennis coaches using the product, but he didn't understand it, didn't like it. So um people accuse us of you know, your reviews can't be real on site because you know, 99% of our reviews have been five stars. And I'm like, you know, I'll show you, you know, I'll show I'll show you the program that brings in the reviews. I don't touch them, they just go right on the website. And so when people put them on and try it, they like it. You know, our challenge is to just get people, you know, comfortable with it and and try it. If they don't like it, they can send it back, right? We have a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don't like it, we'll take it back.

Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for your insights. Thanks again for the real estate tips. That's right.

I could probably even I could be more informative in a real estate discussion because this has been a new market for me and I've learned and I think I've learned a lot. Um ever do the real estate podcast, uh I would consider myself even more of an expert.

Yeah, awesome, ma'am. Well, I'm I'm uh I'm confident in you, right? I think you're you're the factor. If you were gonna go on Shark Tank, I think people you know will like the product, but I think they'll bet on Daniel. And I think that's uh key thing, man. So thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time. It's been awesome. Yeah, thank you, Eric. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Daniel Schreiber. Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I asked you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us, it's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh, I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh, it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel, or Fitness Marketing Alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge, that's a big deal for us, and we're we put a lot of work into these episodes, uh trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh, if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness Marketing Alliance dot com.