The Next Big Thing?

I get asked often by associates and customers “What’s the next frontier for Beachbody? What’s the next big thing the CEO is working on?”

It’s interesting to prospect for opportunity – it comes with the “CEO” title, especially as a creative guy who relishes the start-up process. It’s my job to keep an eye on the horizon for the next opportunity. But in an industry that is enamored of “what’s hot” and “what’s new”, one of the distinguishing things which has made our company successful is our persistence and focus, facilitating growth at the same time we are living within our means.

The more I have kept my eye on maximizing investments we’ve made and doubled-down by investing in fixing the problems which are causing customer grief, the stronger we have grown.

Right now I find myself in that very same situation: Maximize the business at hand more than prospect for “the next big thing”.

We have a great catalog of products which have a compelling marketing message and which are effective solutions for the customer. But what used to be a simple business of one or two offer set-ups has matured into a complex matrix of options. From “Try it free” to “Buy the entire thing today for this special price”, the complexity of offer structure is daunting when you multiply it over all the variations, and the ripple effect of issues all the way through marketing, operations, finance, and customer service gets very complicated. Last year we felt like we were at the top of our game. In an effort to better serve the marketplace, we added this layer of complexity, and the challenge is being felt in every corner of the business – and that means it's also being felt by the customer.

Lately I’ve seen emails from some frustrated customers, some who didn’t really understand an offer, others who didn’t appreciate the way they were treated by a customer service rep. It makes me wince every time I get a customer email that says something like “you obviously don’t care about the customer at your company”, because I wake up caring about the customer, and I spend the day caring about the customer, as does the entire management team of this company. But when you’re growing customer service by 10% a week, the process of training and retaining quality people is a race against time and volume. We’re doing our best. We answer every email. We’re adding technology. We're clarifying offer structure. We’re hiring more people, and investing more in training. And as we inch toward 24/7 customer service hours, it’s a daily struggle to maintain quality. So far, the team is doing a great job, and the entire company is working to improve everything.

My job as CEO is to make sure management is focused on maximizing the commitments we've already made, including attending closely to the customer experience, not just looking for the next new thing. We have to maximize the customer relationship, live up to our promises, and above all else, support the customer in achieving the REAL point of our relationship: the achievement of fitness and weight loss.

Right now I am working on making sure as many people as possible are hearing about the products and programs we have created. At the same time, I am making sure that the people who are responding to our offers are getting the attention -- the same kind of service they would get if this company were just me sitting at a card table with one product and enough cash to break a hundred dollar bill. Bigger will not mean a dillution in overall customer satisfaction -- not here anyway.

That’s not the glamorous priority of the title, CEO, but it’s the part of the job that helps the whole enterprise feel good about the work. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a few new things on the drawing board. Clearly, TurboJam™ has the potential to be a blockbuster. And when that product gets added to the catalog this summer, it will get the benefit of a fortified infrastructure and solid business approach that treats the customer with respect, maximizes investment in development, and stays focused on what’s really “the next big thing”… our growing list of real customer success stories.