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Gary Arakelian: Welcome back to the show. We're the Play Makers Spotlight segment. I'm your host, Gary Arakelian. We're in the studio today talking about health and wellness with CEO and entrepreneur, Jeff Hyman. He's the CEO and founder of a company, Retrofit, here in Chicago. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Hyman: Hey, Gary. Thank you for having me.

Gary: Jeff, tell us what Retrofit does.

Jeff: Retrofit is a weight loss program but of a totally different kind. It's really the first weight loss program designed for busy professionals. Our clients are across Chicago, across the country, and they work with us over the course of 12 months to improve their health, and we do it all via online.

Gary: When you say online, you're applying technology to the process?

Jeff: Yes, in a very unique way, so each of our clients gets their own private team of experts. They get a dietician, a behavior coach, and an exercise physiologist, and they meet with those experts via Skype video conference each week, so they really get private lessons on how to improve their weight. Then, we give them wireless tracking devices that track their progress throughout the whole process.

Gary: That's outstanding. Obesity is a national epidemic.

Jeff: Correct.

Gary: You've done some amazing work here with your team and your organization and what you're doing. You've been a great entrepreneur. How did you bring this idea, how was it conceived? Share the story with me; share with our audience because it's truly fascinating.

Jeff: I think, like a lot of start-ups, Retrofit came from personal frustration. I had gained about a pound and a half a year from the time I was 30, which is pretty much the average American, and got to a point where I wanted to change that. My wife actually took me to a Destination health resort in Tucson which changed my life. You get to work with dieticians and behavior folks and exercise experts. The challenge is that not everyone can go to a place like that, and even if you do, it's very hard to change your life in 4 days. I started thinking about it, became obsessed with it, started meeting with a lot of obesity experts, and we started doing some focus groups with overweight individuals and designed Retrofit out of that experience.

Gary: That's outstanding. Personal experience turned it into a business, and it's thriving. You just celebrated your one year anniversary in November?

Jeff: We did.

Gary: What a ride, Jeff.

Jeff: It's been a fast year.

Gary: Really fast. From an entrepreneurial success standpoint, that's really tremendous. So, in that process, when you kicked off the business, what were some of the first things that you had to get in place?

Jeff: The very first thing, which I don't think any entrepreneur can do otherwise, is make sure that there's a market for the concept. Retrofit actually went through about five or six different iterations before we arrived at the actual design of the current program. We did focus groups, we met with a lot of overweight individuals, we said, 'Would you buy this? What do you think? Would you pay this? How might it work?' They shoot holes in it, and they like this and don't like other elements and you piece it together until it's at a point where you launch a beta, which we did last year, and start to get some experience with real life customers. Then we officially launched.

Gary: During that process, you recognized a very specific target market. Tell us about the target market you focus on.

Jeff: 68% of us are overweight, so two-thirds of the U.S. One of the interesting things that came up was that many people appreciate group lessons, so they go to these companies that offer group lessons where you go to a retail location. They're wonderful; they're great programs. The challenge is that many people told us, in research, that they would never go to a group lesson. Instead, they wanted private lessons; maybe they felt some embarrassment around their weight. Or they travelled so their business schedule didn't allow them to go to group lessons. We designed Retrofit to provide private lessons, and we go after our target which is busy professionals; they might be bankers, lawyers, attorneys, CEOs, CFOs, we have hedge fund managers, we've got financial analysts, basically people that want one-on-one private lessons around how to improve their health.

Gary: Focused.

Jeff: It had to be focused. You cannot try to boil the ocean as an entrepreneur and try to go after everybody. You will fail.

Gary: One of the things that we do in coaching, in working with companies in strategic planning and stuff, we talk about the ability to achieve a goal. To share one of the statistics that we use in our strategic planning: when you decide it, it's 25% probability of achieving it. If you speak it, it's 50%. But if you commit to someone, you've got a 95% accountability to getting to your goal.

Jeff: That's a key principle behind Retrofit. I believe that entirely, whether it's business coaching, weight loss, or any other activity: if you have someone to whom you are accountable, you are much more likely to succeed. People have to want to be held accountable to use Retrofit, because you're going to meet with your own team of experts via Skype each week and look them in the eye, but, like you said, that will improve your odds of success dramatically.

Gary: The statistics that you're telling me right now on the success of your clients is what I'm most impressed with. Share with us some of that.

Jeff: We've had great success. Over 90% of our clients lose weight, and the majority of them lose at least 10% of their weight. Most people don't realize, but ten percent of your weight is clinically significant. People start to go off medications; they feel totally transformed.

Gary: It's the healthy way to do it.

Jeff: It's the right way to do it. Every study has proven that the faster you lose the weight, the faster it comes back. So losing one pound a week, very slow and steady, which is what our clients do on average, is the right way to do it. Over 90% of our clients stick with the program for the full year. The industry average in weight loss is very poor; maybe 20% of people stick with it. Ours is over 90%. It's terrific.

Gary: That sustainability, Jeff, is really impressive. Really impressive. Great job.

Jeff: Thank you.

Gary: Let's talk about the growth of the company. As an entrepreneur, you've said that this is not rocket science, necessarily, in what you've created in the company, but, in a sense, it is. What you've done and the philosophy of how you've led the organization. What's been most important to you as an entrepreneur in building the company and getting it to where it is right now in such a quick time?

Jeff: I think, aside from starting with a valid market and a true need in finding customers that are willing to pay, the key is finding these milestones, or nodes, and putting the right tools in place at the right time, whether it be raising funding at the appropriate time or adding the right people to the organization at the appropriate time or ramping up the marketing activity at the appropriate time. You can do those things too early and waste a whole lot of time and spend a whole lot of money; you can do them too late and therefore miss the opportunity. I think one of the keys, as an entrepreneur, is to think through those milestones and sequence them out: what are we trying to do this quarter? What needs to happen? And so on and so forth.

Gary: You're constantly revisiting that and measuring it.

Jeff: I think that a big part of the role of an entrepreneur is aggregating or assembling resources, whether it's people, capital, partnerships, customers, and I spend a lot of my time talking to customers to figure out how do we need to take the organization.

Gary: How to drive that. Absolutely. That's excellent. Let's talk about how you obtained your first dollar of funding.

Jeff: We met with a number of angel investors and must have been turned down by well over 100, but we found 10 or 15 that liked the business opportunity, recognized that helping people improve their health and lose weight was a great challenge but also a great opportunity.

Gary: You go through that process and you cannot be impacted by rejection.

Jeff: You have to be very thick-skinned. You don't take it personally, because you have to realize that it's just not the right investment for them. But then we found ten or 15 that loved it, so that's all it takes, and we raised a seed round of about $7,000 and that was enough to hire our first few folks, start to build out our software platform, and validate the business. Then we did a beta with a bunch of customers, and they loved it. That helped us raise more money.

Gary: You have a team of experts on your team that is really impressive. You've drawn them in through your own personal conviction and your leadership philosophy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jeff: That was another thing that we did very early on, so I'm glad you raised it, which was to build a board of advisors. I did not have a background in weight loss or health, but I was able to attract world class experts who were actually looking to get involved in a venture that would help them with their aspirations of improving the country's health. As an example, Dr. Robert Kushner, who runs the obesity and weight loss program at Northwestern University, world famous individual, published author, etc. Loved it. He got involved and joined our board, and he's very actively involved in the program. There are five others on our board. That helped surround myself with true experts in the category.

Gary: These are the people that, when we go online to Skype, they're drawing on all that experience, all that expertise, and they're applying that to my personal goal.

Jeff: 30 years ago, weight loss was a black art. People just didn't know the right way to lose weight. Now, there's enough data. There's a body of science that there is a right way to do it.

Gary: That's excellent. You're doing this for individuals, you're doing it for organizations, and the target market that you have is just exceptional.

Jeff: Thanks. I appreciate it.

Gary: That's great. So, if people want to lose their holiday happiness, and they want to get a hold of you, they can call Retrofit at 1-800-774-5962, or they can go online and find Retrofit at www.retrofitme.com.

Jeff: At the website there's actually a free quiz that you can take, and it will tell you your personal challenges with your own weight, which is kind of a fascinating analysis.

Gary: This is a private analysis. I don't have to share with anybody.

Jeff: That's right. It's totally free, it sends you the report, and then you can decide if it's something you want to pursue.

Gary: That's excellent. Jeff Hyman, thank you so much for being with us in the studio today.

Jeff: Thank you, Gary. I appreciate you having us.

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