The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
Are You in the Right Community for Success?
Discover the secrets of community-driven success in the health and wellness industry with our guest, Brian Von Aiken. As a seasoned veteran, Brian shares his journey from working with Tough Mudder to founding the Wellness Growth Mastermind—a dynamic community where leaders collaborate and share insights on industry trends. Listen in as Brian reveals how this initiative helps navigate the complexities of digital marketing, particularly with Meta’s upcoming ad changes, and emphasizes the power of connecting with like-minded peers across diverse wellness sectors.
Explore the fascinating world of partnerships and collaborations as we discuss how rival brands like Spartan and Tough Mudder can unite for greater industry innovation. We delve into the pitfalls of relying solely on digital marketing and highlight the rise of alternative wellness spaces post-COVID. We also tackle the challenges brands face in building genuine connections and the importance of community engagement in overcoming these hurdles, offering listeners a fresh perspective on personalized customer interaction.
Find out how taking small, consistent steps can lead to balance and mental clarity in both personal and professional life. We discuss the value of visionary planning and carving out time for high-level thinking, which can lead to significant business growth. Brian also shares his insights into the importance of personal development and community support in the fitness and health industry. To wrap up, we invite listeners to connect with Brian on LinkedIn or through his group’s website, joinwgm.com, and encourage ongoing collaboration in this rapidly evolving field.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://creatitive.com/fit-to-grit-cast/
we used to go head to head with Spartan Race, yeah, and it's like we would never, ever talk to each other and it was, like you know, we were running banners at their events, putting flowers on cars at our events, and it was like real, real, like you know, brand warfare, I guess you could call it.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Gym Break cast, where you know leaderships within the space kind of just sit down and talk through those visionary ideas that come up in our minds as we're going through our normal daily gym break. Today I have a very special guest. We actually met at the Beyond Active event back in New York a couple of months ago. Why don't you introduce yourself, brian, and tell everyone a little bit about yourself? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. Brian Von Aiken and I've been in the Health of Moments space for like 15 years now, started my career at Tough Mudder early days and kind of found my way to be my own founder of the space. I have spent time growing the B2B and partnership side at Barry's and was one of the first employees at Othership, and most of what I'm working on right now is a community I put together called the Wellness Growth Mastermind, which is a group of about 200 leaders in the health and wellness space. We get together and talk about how to help each other grow and how about this industry seems to be really changing. It's not just siloed in fitness and mental health and wearables that there's quite a lot more synergy these days. And how do we keep up with that? And you know, be allies to each other.
Speaker 2:You know I work mostly with studio owners I'm, you know, local brick and mortar large franchises but I did see a common trend, as I've continued to push in this industry as well, probably very similar to you that everything is 100% heading towards technology, and I think that, funny enough, I think something that 2020 did, was it kind of brought us back to this realm of, even though technology is important, that, hey, experiences and community are still going to be the driving factor on what keep anyone in the fitness and health and wellness industry sustainable and able to grow. And so tell everyone a little bit about your brand and how it's really starting to make an impact on the fitness community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's been interesting because I didn't create this business on purpose. I just am somebody who really cares about making health and wellness more accessible to more people in this world, and I know that it's a hard thing to grow a health and wellness business, a fitness studio, whatever it is. It's not easy out there, we're not covered by insurance, it's not like we're selling cigarettes, and so what I found, especially from being a founder myself, is that by surrounding myself with the right people, I was able to get more peace of mind, to be able to try new things faster and to be able to form partnerships in ways that was just really hard to do on my own. When you're a founder, or if you're a head of growth or whatever it might be, you got so many fires to put out. You're so in your own world. You don't really have the time to go to the conferences or network all day, and what I created accidentally over the last couple of years is this group of really high level people who you know. Everybody in the group is three things they're kind, accomplished and generous, and when you put enough people like that together, really great things happen. And so, like I said, we've got people who are in the group and getting help with fundraising or they're getting help finding a partnership or they're like, hey, I'm trying to explore this new channel, tiktok, and it's really really great to go out and find, you know, expertise from somebody who you hire, but it's also really nice to be able to talk to a peer who I just tried this, this and you know I don't think it's worth your time or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:And so you know, we get together virtually monthly. I kind of call them like conferences almost. We average about 80 people per call and I facilitate it and I try to run it as efficiently as I can. We have a 10 minute expert talk about something really tight with a Q&A. Then we go into breakout rooms that I know everyone in the community, so I assign you to people who you might actually want to connect with based on where you're at, and then at the end we do a mastermind session where it's like, okay, hey, what are some challenges that people are facing that are going to be relevant to a lot of people and we talk it through. I mean, like you know, recently Meta is going to be changing some of their rules around paid ads and like having a space where you can actually have a conversation with people about that can be really, really helpful. And so, yeah, like I said, it's a, it's a cool community that I've been doing on the side for a while Now. It's full time, it's paid community and I'm just really proud because we got people from all different walks of the wellness life right.
Speaker 1:So we do have some some brick and mortar traditional fitness recovery wellness type studios. We've got wearables. We've got people from Aura, from Eight Sleep, from LMNT Supplements, gainful and then we've got the mental wellness side. We've got like some brick and mortar like Othership, sonic, cold Plunge, like I said, or we've got, you know, an AI journaling app or some gut health testing. And you know I'm really trying to embrace that broad version of wellness and that the people who are attracted to it end up being people who really get along. And I think one of the best things about the group end up being, you know, just being around like-minded people, like when we met at Beyond Active. I think there's bits of that over there where you're just around people who get it. We're trying to move the needle in the right direction and they're being smart about it, because none of us are going to be in business if we're not gonna be around. If we's there and then also make sure we're going about, it's giving ourselves the best chance for success.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think you brought something up there I'm a very big component on brand, right, I'm a very big component I don't know if you watch my TEDx but I am very big in the aspect of personal development and understanding the importance of connection and community as being part of the brand evolution and evolving of wherever you're at in your journey, no matter what type of business you run. I'd like to get your perspective on this, especially as you're building out a community right now of you know. Was there ever a time and or a situation that has arised where you see certain types of individuals just not there yet, just not understanding the importance of community? Maybe it's a fear of competition, maybe it's a fear of growth, and have you found your community probably solves that, but have you found ways to kind of combat that when it comes to bringing more people into your community?
Speaker 1:Yes, and just to take a quick step back. I mean, like, if you think about fitness and wellness, like we're scratching the surface of potential, right, we are still so small. And if you look at other industries, we're like a minuscule speck on on. I mean, the wellness industry, it's growing, it's you know, it's, it's, it's getting there, but we still are early days and so that underlying ethos that I really believe in, that we're an all boats rise industry, is super important to groups like mine and also, I think, every brand out there you know, to be able to embrace that. There are certain brands that don't, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:I think what I found in my community is that some people initially have trepidation around things like competition oh, am I gonna be sharing trade secrets? But what they end up getting is that they realize that it feels really good to give and then you end up getting so much back in return and that you don't end up there. You end up feeling like they're you're on the same team actually, after all. I mean, so I used to work at Tough Mudder and we used to go head to head with Spartan Race, yeah, and it's like we would never, ever talk to each other and it was, like you know, we were running banners at their events. They were doing, you know, putting flowers on cars at our events and it was, like you know, real, real, like you know, brand warfare, I guess you could call it.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I did when I was there is I created a safety committee for the whole industry and I actually was the first one who kind of got together the Spartan people, the Tough Mudder people and all the other brands that were out there.
Speaker 1:We got together to talk about something shared, like safety, and what ended up happening is we realized that it's so cool to talk to people who actually get what you do on a day-to-day basis, like when we're running obstacle course events. No one in the world knows what that's like, but when you talk to somebody at another brand, they actually can understand where you're at and there's lots of tidbits that you can share with each other. And that's not to say we were just like, hey, here's the blueprint for our biggest and best things. But that doesn't mean just because that doesn't happen doesn't mean there can't be quite a lot that can be shared and you could still get a lot of value out of each other. So I ended up kind of helping bring those brands together, diffusing things and finding ways for us to kind of end up working together.
Speaker 2:No, I, I work in the digital space. You know, we work very heavily on digital marketing, digital stuff, and I, you know, I went through a time, I think, just sitting behind the computer screen all the time, and I think it's very common, for I mean even local you know I'll use the local brick and mortise kind of mentality here the community aspect starts to get lost. You know, you see some of the bigger brands out there which I won't name, but I think we all I mean I can name them. They know what they're doing. You know, like gym launch and things of that nature that you know nothing against them, but they, it seems like it's a very non connection, non community type system and there's nothing wrong with that. But, as you said, it's growing. There's room for innovation.
Speaker 2:Like I personally fell through the same trap, I was doing everything online, I was like sitting behind a screen, I wasn't talking to my clients, I wasn't talking to my community and I think that even my competitors, you know, and I think that having more of a strategic approach on even not even a mentorship, but possible co-partnerships and promotions, even a mentorship, but possible co-partnerships and promotions, like you said, who says that? And you probably know this better than I because I don't know the seasons, because they're probably very similar to one another. But Spartan and Tough Mudder who says they couldn't be like, hey, let's cross promote and you do one event here and we'll purposely do our event in the same spot a week before and we'll do like a double ticket scenario where they get one and maybe they get another one for one third the cost. Or trying to find those partnerships, even if it's, you know, a local gym down the street and you're a yoga studio, for instance, or non verticals, like like a daycare center or something like that you know.
Speaker 1:I think you're so right. No-transcript the things. That's just true, I think, since COVID is that the trust in the medical system has declined significantly. People are like I'm not sure if I really trust everything. And a lot of times you go to the doctor and if you're healthy they're just like oh, you're not dying, all right, see you later. And people who care about their health are like well, I want to do more.
Speaker 1:And there's all these kind of, you know, concierge type of medicine or longevity clinics that are kind of popping up around different areas that to me, I think, are a really logical companion to some of them. There's one in Flatiron in New York that just opened called Game Day Men's Health, which is a great space where, you know, guys can go in and kind of get an evaluation on how things are going and then kind of get some recommendations based on that. And so to me places like that but then you know, there's lots of, there's countless other examples of people who are in that space it doesn't even have to be another physical location. You know what, if there's a brand that's a wearable of some kind or some sort of mental wellness device, that could be part of your retail strategy or whatever it might be, and I think the hard part that I see brands is that they don't know how to connect with those people.
Speaker 1:They don't know how to start that conversation. What are the terms? And that's why I think a community like mine ends up being valuable, because we make it real easy to find those people. It's kind of like a LinkedIn for people doing this sort of thing and it's like a forcing function to say, okay, well, other people have given them credibility, so I know that there's value there. But I think it's really important for brands to start thinking about that, because you can't just throw money into meta anymore. I mean, you can, but it's just not. You're not getting the same leads that you used to get.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's funny too, because, back to what I was saying earlier, I mean I preach all the time that. I think a portion of the problem you can't unless you're for those wearables, you know, those tech kind of companies. It's a little bit different, they're e-commerce and they are online type of businesses. But for a local brick and mortar, meta ads of course have a very high cost per click now and in reality I don't even think they were really made for brick and mortars. You know, they kind of just suited them in and I've always been a big component. And back to what I was saying with my a little bit of my story was you'll hear most marketers out there say it's not about referrals, it's about going out there and and and do an SEO and and and advertisement and blog posts, and I do all those things. But I'm like hey, why can't there be a community type scenario around it, like you need to kind of look at it as in hey, why don't you use your members as your advocates? And so I see these, at least the small brick and mortar ones, and of course every business is different, but from a location standpoint they don't have anyone to talk to and they get kind of stuck in a validation mode type mindset. They don't understand that. Hey, mentally we need to shift to a new level and start to think about bigger things. Strategies 100%.
Speaker 2:And in the fitness industry as a whole, right now and I'll just be frank with everyone I'm seeing multi-million dollar brands only spend $3,000 a month on their budget and I'm like, dude, you should be spending 10% here. There's something wrong with your operations. We need to figure out how to fix this scenario. Back to your emphasis on community. I think it does come back a little bit on community helping each other, building partnerships, helping bring that, not just lowering advertisement costs but we're in a time right now.
Speaker 2:We're in a time where everyone thought 2020 was going to be this and it was for about one or two years. Everyone was working out from home, everyone was doing that thing. But I think, from the bringing in and we'll talk about it in a second the mental health side, I think that that's people's homes now. That's where they want to. They want an experience and they want to do like a shields or a situation where it's like, hey, can we get our, our holistic place, where this is an experience we can go for not 30 minute quick workout, but a nice one to two hour, you know a day type scenario where we can get everything that we need done for ourselves to feel better.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that there's so much there. I mean the modern human. If you just think about it at this point, if you think about the number of things that a modern human should do to take care of themselves, it's insane. Like all right, so I got to wake up and I got to journal and then I got to cold plunge and then I got to get to the sauna and I got to stretch and then I got to work out and then I got to make sure I see people and stretch, and then I got to work out and then I got to make sure I see people and it's just like reality is that for the large amount of the population, it's just not possible. And so the question is is how do you give people the opportunity to check some of those boxes, not just the physical boxes at the gym, but maybe there's ways to check the mental box, the emotional box, and I'm not just talking about, you know, norma Tech recovery boots or like giving them a free subscription to a mental fitness app or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:I think it's what is the way that people feel like there's true partnership and that you're actually caring about them and trying new things. I mean, that's one of the things that I, if I were to like encourage people to do anything, is just get experimental, like like get out there, have some big ideas. Like you know, if you wanted to do the referral program, don't just look at how somebody else does it, try to say, okay, well, maybe I just give the free membership to my top 10 people and I say, if you can refer two people per class, I'll keep it for free. I don't know, like figure out some stuff that feels interesting and then try it and feel like okay to fail a little bit, because then you'll be able to learn and give yourself a better chance the next time around.
Speaker 2:It builds confidence and it's leading by example. You know, when we take on clients, it's funny you say the review thing because we're I'm a very big advocate on, like I said, the digital stuff we do. There has to be a community aspect behind it. So I don't just say, hey, go get reviews. I say, hey, remember, your audience is your ad, they're your advocates. No-transcript this community has helped your members.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, first and foremost, this community is about helping members grow their businesses. But there is a bit of an ulterior motive as well, which is that I see so many people in this space. We're trying to espouse healthy living. We don't take care of ourselves, and it's really hard if we're going to be the ones trying to advocate for this if we're not taking care of ourselves. And I get it, it's hard. I've been a founder. I burned myself out. I didn't take care of myself. It's hard, but I think what our community tries to do is, you know, in a couple different ways.
Speaker 1:First of all, there is immense value of being heard and listened to by people who get what you're talking about right. So you can talk to your spouse, you can try to say, oh, I'm dealing with all this stuff. You try to talk to your friends. If they don't get it. It doesn't have the same kind of neurological response as somebody who, like, really has been there and can ask the right questions and understand, and so there's something unburdening, there's something valuable being like it's just nice to see that other people are struggling to or dealing with the same issues that I have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that that's one component. And then the other component is, you know, when you join the group, a lot of people end up giving some sort of wellness availability to people in the group, right? So, yeah, you can go try another ship session for free or you can, you know, try to get this sleep reset program for a couple of weeks on your own, or you can try to do some training at this place, and so it's kind of facilitating and encouraging like, and also, every event that I have, I'll have a physical, I'll have a wellness component too, right. So it's not just, hey, let's get together and network and, you know, talk to each other, let's also go do something healthy together, and so it's just kind of building those muscles. I mean, every single networking or kind of like get to know you type of interaction I have in person. These days I'm doing it at a gym, doing it in a sauna, I'm doing it a stretch lab. I'm trying to like, do a healthy thing at the same time that I'm like talking to somebody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's. It's interesting, right? I think a lot of us got into health and wellness and fitness because we loved it ourselves, right, it was something that helped us, and I think that I went through a very similar situation where I got to a point where I was burnt out and I realized that I lost the things that I was enjoying watching my food intake, going to the gym, being healthy. All this stuff that I had 100% control over I was not doing. And it's funny because in this industry, you hear so many people say like, oh, I'm like a personal trainer, for instance, and I want to move up and own a gym. And then they get burnt out and they're like why am I not doing what I do? It's so good? Well, because you don't have you have to bring back, funny enough, what you thought you had to get on the KPIs of the business than anything else is able to take time for myself, right? Totally.
Speaker 1:And one other point I'll make that's related to is so I was down at Eudaimonia it was a kind of consumer facing health and wellness event and Huber managed. Huber was down there and he gave a talk about mindset and how he talked about when there's professional athletes who are shooting like free throws at the end of a game and how the you know if you shoot a free throw just normally they'll make you know nine out of 10 or 11 out of whatever, 99 out of 100. But then in that pressure situation it completely changes and the percentages go way down. And then he said that that relates to everyday people, because actually what's going on in your brain when the game is on the line is you're thinking way more past this initial thing. It's like your brain is not equipped to handle the crazy amounts of information, which is like if I miss this, then I lose and then my people will hate me and da-da-da-da-da. And it's kind of like I think and he was advocating he's like you've got to take these really measurable small steps that are consistent, that your brain, you can wrap your head around on a week to week, month to month basis.
Speaker 1:And I think building a business is the same thing. We end up, you know there's so many things that we can do and there's so many implications of it we get in this kind of freeze mode and our brain doesn't know how to just like focus. And so I mean, it seems, you know, obvious. But I do think that the really consistent action on a weekly basis is another way to kind of mitigate some of that mind stuff, so that then you have your mental space, cause I think people know what to do but they don't have the mental space to then take care of themselves.
Speaker 1:But if you can feel like it's manageable, you can be in a, you can you're not activated like in a fight or flight every single minute of every day, then you have that space to be like okay, I'm allowed to take 30 minutes to work out, or I'm allowed to take 30 minutes to go for a walk with a friend or whatever it is that you know takes care of you mentally, to get you back ready, take a vacation even so, yeah, anyway, I feel like all that sort of stuff is really interesting to me, and it's there's no one size fits all, nobody has the right answers, but it's experimenting on yourself and finding what I call it your total health formula. What's your total health formula? What's the thing that if you put those inputs in every week, you're like I'm good. And that's not say it's the max, it's what's the minimum that you can put in so that you feel good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that it's very easy to get caught in the game of delegation. You know, you know, you hear so many business developers say, oh, just delegate. And it's like, well, in reality you're pretty much going to be doing a lot in working in the business until you're in the millions. There's no, you're just not going to get enough people you know the right people in space to do it correctly until you've learned to do it yourself and learn to delegate it correctly. And I think that it's very hard to turn off the visionary side of your brain to the implementer side of your brain. It depends on what you're good at. You could be very good at the visionary and the idea side, but you may love the operation side or vice versa. And I think that you have to find that time in the day to reset your patterns, to give yourself the ability to do the other things.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. I have another quick tip and take care of what it's worth. But every three weeks or so I take myself out for a CEO day. So I literally like put on a slightly nicer shirt, I take myself out to a nicer lunch and I take that time to have that CEO mindset of like, vision, vision, vision. Because if you try to have that vision at least for myself, if I try to nudge that into another part of a day when there's a lot going on or like, it's just very important to like, like, set that time out and and really embody it as much as you can. It sounds stupid, but like there there's so much that can be done. If you cause, it'll allow that other stuff. Like, as a CEO, I'm not going to worry about the fact that the the toilet's leaking again. That's not CEO work right now. I'm going to have this mindset of the bigger thing. So have this mindset of the bigger thing.
Speaker 2:So anyway, yeah, well, and it's so. It is funny enough. You know I'm a big preacher on. I'm a big preacher on. You know I talk like I told you. I talk a lot about branding. You know I talk a lot about personal development and how a business is going to grow based around the owner's mentality. You know who they are, what they like, what they do, what they don't like, and no matter what department you're focusing on operations, marketing, sales, finance it's very much portrayed around the one person.
Speaker 2:So you would think that having time to go out and have that visionary time because I agree with you 100% Like I have my office here, I'm getting ready to go out and buy another office, even though I have three kids at home and take two days out of the week that I can have visionary time to be a little bit more separated. And so I feel you a hundred percent. I think my thing that really helped me was being okay with taking a nap in the middle of the week. You know I have three young children right now, so my sleep schedule is like I don't get any REM sleep right now. Let's, let's be real, I don't get any. I'm always waking up tired. So trying to give myself a half an hour now without feeling guilty is probably my biggest accomplishment for the year. Um allowing myself to do that.
Speaker 1:I, I, I get that. I'm a new dad and uh yeah, the game changes once you have kids.
Speaker 2:That's for sure, well, and the mindset changes too. Right, the mindset changes how you grow. Your vision of your business may actually shift. Now, based off of the family that you're developing compared to your work family that you're developing, right, you may see things a little bit differently. You may realize that your vision of what you wanted. You're not going to have 50 plus hours a week to do what you need to do anymore. So how do you do that and still create a vision of what you want? Or maybe the vision of what you want is shifted now that you have kids. You know, who knows, but that at the end of the day, I think the most important thing that you said there was vision in general, taking time out for that vision so you can learn to adapt and change and build the life, the schedule that you want.
Speaker 2:I made the mistake of doing the opposite and doing what everyone else thought I was supposed to do, based off of what everyone else said, because I really wasn't giving myself the time to assess, risk, manage, be able to know oh, this is what I want. I didn't actually want that. I want this, you know Totally. I didn't actually want that. I want this, you know Totally. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about the types of people in your community, and your community can really help anybody in the fitness and health industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we're pretty stringent about who we let in, so we're not necessarily letting in anybody who's looking for work or any service provider who's trying to sell something. These are operators, but they range in two distinct categories. One is is like a founder, so these are somebody who who's starting, and it doesn't necessarily have to be you could be a franchise owner, right? You know that that's kind of your own. You know you're kind of building your own thing and you know we've helped people where they're just launching in a new location and they want to, you know, kind of make a splash when they first come out. So what are those partnerships that we can, you know, help set up for them locally? Or what are the ways in which that they can get plugged into the local space in their own right and go to their own, go to different events and have the coffee chats with the people and try to, you know, find the right types of people who are dealing with the problems that they're facing, and so that can. That can mean, like I said, it can mean fundraising, it can mean events.
Speaker 1:You know we talk a lot about like conferences and stuff like that. Which conferences are worth going to, which ones are not worth going to. And then we do a lot like with podcasts to help people get on podcasts. We help people, you know, deal with influencers. Like, we get a lot of influencer stuff. We have a whole list of influencers that we're connected to, podcasts we're connected to, and it's kind of just like figuring out, okay, what is the strategy that's most important to you, because it's impossible, in my opinion, to be a founder, even to be a person who works in marketing or growth, to be an expert in SEO, to be an expert in brand, to be an expert in influencers, be an expert in podcasts, be an expert in events. There's just too many things that you're expected to be experts in.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, we're trying to just be a space where, okay, you could Google this and you'll probably get weird AI results, or you could put it on LinkedIn, and that's kind of a weird thing right now, like LinkedIn isn't really a space now to ask questions about. How do I, you know, start my TikTok strategy? So we're trying to be that like in between space and, like I said, I mean the biggest thing for me is that we want people who are accomplished, kind generous, right, you get it, you're willing to give, you're not just here to be like oh yeah, let me take. It's like that's not how this is going to be valuable for people in the long term and yeah, it's just like a long-term play to believe that the industry is moving in this direction, consumers are moving in this direction and it's better to be well-versed If you're just a fitness person that's probably not going to serve you in the next five years, as opposed to if you're a little more diversified.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, more so business owner, probably directors of certain types they can kind of collaborate together and find you know either partnerships or tricks or or trade stuff within the trade and learn from their mistakes. I was a big one, you said early on. I think that there's a lot of mistakes that we can learn from each other so we don't make the same painful mistakes.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, and that's what we have every people sharing mistakes all the time in our group and our calls, and that's where people learn. And yeah, I mean, in addition to the founders that we've got like heads of marketing, heads of growth at other companies, you know.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't have to be just the founder level, in fact, I, I like having both uh mean there provides, you know, diverse opinion sets. That is good. You always want the diverse opinions. I think that it. I think that with innovation, but again I want to thank you for coming on, brian. Um, we're going to cut this one a little bit short today, like I said, I have to. I have to go to another meeting across town, and so why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about where they can find you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So on LinkedIn you can just look me up my name, Brian Von Anken. I try to post on there fairly regularly, but the website for the group is joinwgmcom, like J-O-I-N-W-G-M dot com.
Speaker 2:And check it out and you can apply.
Speaker 1:It takes like a minute. Or you could always shoot me an email at brian at join W-G-M dot com.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thank you for coming on, and this is another episode of the Jim Bray cast with your host, zach Coleman, and I hope you all have a good one.
