Ben Parker - Founder of Runna.com; The Running Revolution

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Ben Parker, the co founder of Runna. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Ben.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Casey, and thanks for making the time change work across the Atlantic.

Oh my God, of course, man. I've been super excited to have you on the show. Not only am I a huge fan of the product you've built, but just knowing your journey as an athlete and how that led to the business, just based on our conversations offline, just getting to know each other and it's just been super cool to learn more about your story. But for those that might not know what Runner is and what it is that you've created, I'd love for you to give a quick, high level overview of what it is.

Yeah. So Runner is the first of its kind, fully automated running coaching service that's fully personalized to every individual. So I used to be running coach and would help 40 people all over the world train for their running goal. And then we essentially automated this process. So that meant that we could deliver that same quality of coaching to anyone, wherever they are. And because it's automated mean that it can be done in a much more accessible package and therefore meaning we're charging much, much less. So we're now 10 months since we launched on the App Store and coaching over 5,000 people in 154 different countries.

Wow, 154 countries. That's insane.

Yeah, it is bonkers in our Christmas quiz. So as a team, we were five actually at Christmas. And one of the questions my co founder put towards everyone was do we have more sales in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkistan? And I hadn't even heard of all the countries, let alone knew the answer, which just baffled me to think that they've reached heard about Runner through the Internet, through people sharing about it on Instagram, on Strava. And for me to be able to tell people over there what running sessions they should do day to day is mind blowing. And I guess that's the power of building a, an online company. But yeah, it's, it's really exciting and as a result means that I've had a very much a roller coaster the past two or three years as well.

Absolutely. And we'll definitely dive into that. And you know, for, for me I came across Runna. I think it was like November of last year in 2022 when I was training for my marathon. And you know, for me, through my personal experience, I was training for a marathon. I had my own plan after talking to friends and understanding their marathon training plans. And then I ended up coming across your platform and just hearing the personalized aspect of what it is that you guys built really spoke to me. And you know, I'm using it for, for upcoming races moving into the new year of 2023. But where did this idea come from? I know that you said you were training different people yourself, like what, what did your endurance journey look like that led you to saying, wow, I need to go create a product like this.

Yeah. So I guess there's kind of, there's my personal journey and there's also what led us to go on to build the company. First of all, I kind of started out with fitness as a chubby 14 year old kid who just would buy sweets on the way to school and sell them to all my friends at school with enough profit in there that I could buy the sweets for tomorrow. And at the age I started liking girls, essentially I thought, how can I sort myself out and not be the chubby short kid? And started going to the gym. And for the next five, six years, my focus in fitness was becoming as big and strong as I could be doing six pack and big strong arms and big packs, which obviously don't translate into a runner. I did that. And in my last year of uni, I went to the gym 365 times, 365 days in a row, just for the silk simple purpose that I loved it. And at the end of that year I thought, what can I do next? What can I challenge myself with? And I said I'm going to run 2,500km, which was a number I plucked out of thin air over the year that followed and finished that year with an ironman, really just to kind of prove to myself that I could do anything. I kind of was known within my friendship group that I'm just this nutter on fitness. I go to the gym all the time and I wanted to prove to them that I was strong and driven in other areas as well. So I did that. And over that year I thought I would finish the year, go back to being a gymnot for the rest of time. And that's what made me happy. But as soon as I started running around outside and doing my cycle, training outside and just enjoying the endorphins of endurance outdoor exercise, I kind of switched my mentality and realized that I find that so much more satisfying and enjoyable than lying on my back, lifting a bench press and putting another two and a half kilos on every every few Months. And so that kind of led me in the direction of doing this Ironman. I did one Ironman and then thought, how can I get better? And then the kind of. The last five, six, seven years since then have just been a quest of me personally becoming a better runner cyclist and very much moving away from that kind of gym history I had. Along that journey I became a personal trainer and I started working at a hotel in Greece. So I was running the fitness department for a five star hotel in Greece which was just the best breeding ground to learn and get better because I was getting an influx of 500 new guests every week. Do you mean I'd learn all their names, I'd learn about their problems, their questions and then every week they'd go and I get a new batch in. So it was the fastest way to learn, become a better coach because I was experiencing so many different challenges rather than doing a normal PT who might have 40, 50 clients in a year and they don't see anyone else other than that. And one of those clients or a few of them would kind of go home and they would join the regular morning run sessions. I would lead and get home and message me and say, oh, hey, I've got this half marathon in a few weeks, what, what should I do? And these were people that I genuinely enjoyed meeting when I was just 23, etc. And I would send the messages of the run sessions they should do, the distances they should run, the paces they should do. One of them went on to get her half marathon PB three weeks after, four weeks after leaving the hotel and said, how much do I owe you? And I was like, you don't owe me anything. I did that because I genuinely cared about you, enjoyed meeting you. And she insisted on naming a price and she'd wire me the money. So I said £20. And so she sent me £80 because I trained her for four weeks, which I thought, okay, this is a bit awkward, I'm very happy to have this extra money. And then she said, what should I do next week? And I've got three more friends who want to kind of join. And that kind of birthed an online running coaching platform, but that was non automated, very much personalized, but in a manual capacity like most online running coaches do. And that grew to the point where I had 40 online clients. I'm back working in London, moved home after my two years gallivanting running a fitness department in Greece. And one of my clients, who was also a friend from, from university, who studied electronic engineering and Genuinely the smartest man I've ever met came back to me and said, had I thought about automating this journey for my customers? And I had had little conversations with one other friend, but he was busy doing a YC back startup. And so the fact that I've now got the second genius that I know reaching out to me suggesting automating this meant I had to take him up on a Monday evening call. So after I finished my PT sessions that Monday, we went and did a two hour kind of brainstorming session on kind of me hearing about the ideas he had to automate a running coaching journey. And Monday evening became Monday and Thursday, which became every night of the week. And nine months later, we launched an mvp, which has now grown into being the app the Runner is today.

Wow, it's such an incredible journey, man. And just hearing, like going over that last part that you just talked about, you know, these Monday calls turn to Thursday calls, you know, that's. I don't want to just skip over that because that is the beauty of how things tend to start. Right? Like you have this idea, you start chipping away at it. Obviously you want to launch the mvp. And just understanding that from your perspective, it was super cool to, to touch on for you. What was the step like, going from someone that, like, you know, hey, let's go build out this tech platform, let's launch this app. Was this something that you instantly were like, hey, I want to go dedicate all my time, energy and resources to? Or what was the initial idea when it comes to automating, you know, these training sessions that you were doing, were you like, hey, I'm going to stop this and just go all in on that? Or what was that transition process like for you?

I would say I probably have the, the opposite experience to probably most people you would talk to that a lot of people probably go out there and think, I want to be a startup founder, I want to be an entrepreneur, and I'm the opposite. I mean, I'm the son of two very smart parents. They both went to Oxford University. My dad founded a finance company and exited at 50 for a lot of money. And I grew up observing him, observing my parents, rich, snobby friends and thought, I don't want to be anything like any of them. I looked up to my tennis coaches more than I looked up to the careers of my kind of parents cohort. And I thought, I want to do a job that I care about, I love. I get to do something that I massively enjoy day to day. And I also looked at these tennis coaches and they'd all built their own little businesses whereby they could have time to go on holiday every doing once or twice a year. They had kids, they had a car, like I kind of thought, what more do they want? And that's very much what gave me the confidence to break away from going down the conventional career paths of a grad scheme and then a normal corporate job in the summer holiday, in the Christmas holidays. In my first term at uni, I came home and I said, I've worked out guys what I'm going to do to my parents. And my mum's reaction was to me telling her I'm going to go into fitness and I'm going to be a personal trainer. Was, that's fine, we'll cut your allowance. You get used to being poor. Which was a certain reaction. She wanted me to go down that kind of conventional career path because that was the path that her and my dad had gone down and it led to financial freedom. So as a result I was building this personal training business. I had 40 online clients and plenty in person clients. I was as busy as I could be. I had maximum capacity, which is what led to the idea of the automation. But I had no desire to change this. I was 23 and I was earning more money than I needed. I was able to buy my dream bike which made me very happy. And the month before we launched the business publicly, I bought my house, which is a very looking back, awful decision. Don't ever buy a house, especially the month before you launch a crazy startup. Which slowly meant that I canned my coaching business and did go all in. But I would say that probably a lot of people when they get this success from an mvp, they've got this idea, they think I can't wait to cam what they're doing and, and go all in on it. I was the opposite. I slowly wound down my pt, my, my online clients and my in person PT because I love them. Like I genuinely cared about all these people and it was so hard for me to go, do you mean I would have people that I'd spend an hour with every week and I couldn't keep doing that at the point where my co founders left his full time job in, in kind of consulting at McKinsey and product management there. Like I couldn't. I had to match what he was doing.

Yeah.

So I was almost pulled because this idea was so strong and this really was a calling that I had to deliver on as an idea and as a product Rather than, I've always wanted to be a tech founder and entrepreneur and as soon as I had something, quit it and give it a go. It was the opposite. There was a period of time for probably six months whereby I was working with my PT client. 6am, 7am, 8am I would then work on the business from 8:30 till midday, take a running session at lunch with a client, back on the business until 6, 7 o', clock, and then classes and online clients and writing programs on the weekend. And that was my day to day for probably six months. And at that time it was at the end of the lockdown, my little sister was not at uni because they were closed. So she was living in my, my new house, cooking me two meals a day and putting them on my desk and I would eat them. Uh, do you mean going out to see clients in between? So it was very much a case that I didn't want to close down this business that I'd built up and given me the, the life that I enjoyed. But I couldn't not give this idea its kind of time. Um, and now we're in a position where I've been very much confirmed that those are the right decisions along the way. Um, everything's pointing in the right direction, which is great. There's so many crazy challenges. You know, this is like a startup founder. Like there's so many challenges that we've gone through and that we're still yet to go through. Do you mean this is the very start of a very long journey, but we're now in a position, We've got a team of 10 full time people, we've got our own office and my life is very, very different and probably day to day worse in terms of I don't run around with people in the park and in the sunshine and have a nice day to day. And that way I'm writing as many emails as I can get out to all the partnerships and all the managing the marketing, the events, building the runner kit, working with the tech team, doing all of these different things. And I always. Do you mean I can say clearly, like I'd rather go on a run with someone and tell them what to do in real life. But I get an enormous sense of satisfaction knowing that there are so many people out there benefiting from what we've built, which is what keeps me doing an objectively worse day to day because there's so much kind of built in satisfaction to this journey.

What an incredible transition. Like just hearing that it's so, it makes so much sense in terms of why you guys are where you are. Like, not only are you hardworking, but you've been at this for years. Like you genuinely care about people, your, you know, past clients and more importantly now the, the users of your product. I want to talk about when you launched, right? Like there's a lot of founders that listen to the show that might be id ID ideating on an MVP about to launch it. You guys launched, I believe you said, 10 months ago. You have five, over 5,000 users currently. What has that launch strategy looked like? And also I'd love for, for you to give context to the people listening of, you know, what they, what they experience when downloading Runner. Obviously we talked about it at a high level at the beginning, but just I'd love to have you walk through the user journey and then talk about the launch strategy that took place and really what that looked like for the first 30, 60, 90 days.

Yeah. So to give context on what the user journey looks like now, then we can kind of slowly work back and kind of get to the launch. So today, if you download the Runner app on App Store, on Apple, on Android, or come to our website, it will take you to download the app on your local platform. You will all get a week free trial and I'll build a special code after this. If you use the Casey Adams show, it will give everyone a two week free trial instead of a one week free trial.

Let's go.

You then set up your profile. So you tell us about you, what you're training for, whether that's a faster marathon, a first 5K, whatever it is on the running spectrum, an ultramarathon, for example. You tell us about the history of running you've got, so how kind of what your endurance is like, how fast you are. You'll tell us about the number of days you want to train, what your schedule's like, your experience in the gym, the equipment that you've got in the gym. And we will then build you the perfect running and strength and conditioning journey for you as a runner and, and send that to your phone into the app for you. And then also send those workouts straight over to either your smart device, so your Garmin watch, your Apple watch or Chorus watch, or guide you through those sessions as you run directly from our app. And then as you finish those sessions, it gets sent over to Strava or stays on any of those platforms that you'd like to record with and also kind of documents your training inside the Runner app. That's where we are now there's a whole host of tech features ahead. And so kind of winding back from there. We launched the App Store. Launched on the App Store 10 months ago. So in March of 2022, however, that was the launch of the Runner app. We had our MVP before that. And so I would say that the true launch is what I'll go to talk about, which came before that. Because our launch onto the App Store was very much a case that you simply paired what you had before. So beforehand we had a website. You came onto our website, which was also called the Run Buddy. It. It wasn't called Runner when we launched. I can talk about an interesting.

Yeah, for sure.

Remind me to tell you about that transition. But so you came onto the Run Buddy website, you bought your personalized PDF when we started. So you told us all of those kind of initial metrics about you, what you're training for. We had much fewer goals and much less customization. And we built you an ugly PDF still with the perfect sessions, and we emailed it out to the customer, which meant that as we transitioned to launching our app, we. We kind of had this companion app to start with, where you could enter the details of your PDF and it would then link up to the PDF and show you in a much pretty form. And we slowly iterated on that ever since, growing our development team, improving the designs, improving the functionality. But so the initial launch came to be a year before that. So that was in March of 2021 when we went to launch the Run Buddy on its website. And this was first of all what we did. And we hadn't studied launching brands in a way, for me, it truly felt a bit like, let's just launch this thing that we're spending nine months on so I can get back to the thing I love doing, which is focusing all my time with my clients, building my normal business. And I thought I could launch this and then my amazing co founder would leave me alone. Because it's an automated business. We thought we'd build it, we launch it and then it just automates its way to infinity. It makes infinite amounts of money. It helps everyone around the world. And do you mean add Apple buy it and we put our feet up? Obviously that's not what happens because a few people downloaded it and emailed us back and we had to email them back and then do you mean they tell their friends and we had to then build a discount code for that? And do we build this partnership and improve this thing that someone noticed could be improved? And during two Years later, here we are. Launching was the case that we built an Instagram and and really kind of just built up a bit of hype over over a month beforehand in terms of posting, telling my running coaching audience on Instagram that I had, which was probably two or three thousand people at the time and getting lots of people in our network ready to share it, which luckily we've got a good network of loyal friends and other people that doing created a little bit of a buzz. But it wasn't the case that we sold on day one. Loads and loads of plans. It was happy ever after. We probably sold five plans on the first day, I can't remember and it wasn't a significant day but people bought plans and it was really cool. And I can remember the name of the first purchase he bought because he actually went on to invest a large sum of money into the company which is really exciting that there was one additional kind of really key part of our launch which was that one of my private clients over the those 40 clients that I was helping, one of them was an X reality TV star and someone who I'd helped do a few world record ultramarathon challenges. So he had a huge public following and so he was also able to rave about what we were doing and what we were launching. And he was our first investor and still plays a huge part in the business today. I had to stop a meeting with him so I could make sure I wasn't late for my podcast for this podcast with you. So he's in the office two or three times a week. Absolutely phenomenal person. But again he helped raise the profile of our launch and something that we then made sure to do quite often as we were doing an online company with no physical product, it's very hard to market it. We made sure we hosted a free event where runners could come along. Dom and I, my co founder and I put a bit of money into the business and when I say a bit of money, a total of five thousand pounds between us over nine month period which meant we had enough money to buy cups of water for everyone who wanted to come along to this run. And yeah, we put it on social media and meant that we probably had 50 people come to this, this first run. Do you mean two or three weeks after launching? And that was kind of the way that we did things at the start and over that first year we helped 1,300 runners with these PDFs and we sold 1,500 plans. So that was 200 repeat purchases in that year. Which that led us on to raise our kind of first proper raise. We raised half a million pounds as a crowdfund. So lots of our early users investing into the business and that was kind of a really key turning point that helped us launch onto the app and take things into a more credible and serious way to communicate with our customers.

So incredible. So you, you go through this crowdfunding journey, you raised the half million pounds when was. And then after that. Is that when you transition from the Run Buddy to Run a dot com? And as you said, I wanted to remind you on that because you guys have not only an incredible domain. Right. Run a dot com, Very simple, easy to remember. I'd love to hear the story there about the transition and you know what that process looked like.

Yeah. So we started the business and the last thing we needed to do before we launched our MVP was agree on a name. We had built it already. We had the website ready, we had everything ready, except we didn't have a logo and we didn't have a name. And I remember we were working my dad's flat, my co founder had got the train down and he was spending the whole weekend there. And we were just picking random names that we couldn't work out something we liked. And we aligned on the Run Buddy, which became a bit of a mouthful. We. We paid, I think, £40 on fiverr to get someone to design a logo. And it was this really like, masculine running man with the Run Buddy and like bubble writing. And we tried to get this guy on Fiverr to keep iterating on the. The logo and he just made it more and more bubbly, like the Michelin Man. So we ended up just having to stick with his first iteration because he just kept making it worse as we kept giving him feedback. So we stuck with that. We launched quite quickly. Feedback was that the Run Buddy was too much of a mouthful. So we dropped the the, which led to a problem, which is that Run Buddy was already trademarked in the US and separately, Run Buddy already had the dot com owned in the US by separate companies. So Run Buddy was an app where you could run around and track your friends from a safety perspective. And then the other Run Buddy, which I think was the runbuddy.com was a dog treadmill company where you could rent out a treadmill, it would come to your house and you'll put your dog on a treadmill and they'd drive off again afterwards, which, who knows whether I would do that or not. But we, we tried to buy the.com and they wouldn't sell it to us. And we knew that this was, this was messy because we, even if we could get the dot com, we probably wouldn't get the trademark.

Yeah.

So that led to us starting to think about new names and as a result we then realized this enormous minefield of how many names are taken out there in the world. And I suspect in 20 years time companies are going to be called number plates of cars because, I mean, someone wants to build a new company next month. Runners take it like there's even less names out there. We tried one run, we run, they run, doing one coach. All of these run coach, all of these different names, they were all taken. And we stumbled across Runner and not a single business out there existed trading with it or anything. We consulted with lawyers and they were confident that we'd be able to, to get it. And the funny thing was the domain also was open, but it was owned by someone, I don't know where, but they owned lots of generic websites and they had a very, very high fee for it. So they had put on run a dot com. It is worth 50k. Here's the email address to go and buy it. And we're still a tiny business. We've sold 65k to date. @ this point we can't go and buy an expensive domain and we would just have to pick a different name.

Yeah.

And so we reserved Join dot runner and get dot Runner. So we reserved a few other names so we could still get the name trademark and operate with the dot com. But we obviously wanted to buy the dot com. So we asked him how much will he pay? We said, we'll pay you £1,000 rather than the 50k he wanted. And he came back to us with, I'll do it for 49k. So we said 2k. He said 48. And this was an email thread of very kind of polite. How about our counteroffer? Yeah, we got three and a half K. He said 46 and a half. And then we said final offer 5K. He said final offer 45K. So we then left him alone, went and chatted to our trademark lawyers and applied for our trademark, both in the uk, the US and the eu. And for us, the first hurdle in this trademark, or the only hurdle that would stump us in getting our trademark was this first one that we found out six weeks in. We had got through the first hurdle, which is the only one of uncertainty. So we went back to him after the six weeks and we said, hi, here's our evidence we're going to get the trademark, which means that no one for the rest of time will ever trade under the name Rudder. So your domain is now absolutely worthless. We'll offer you our £5,000 for 24 hours. Otherwise we don't need it. And he replied 12 minutes later and gave us the name.

Wow.

So it was a very. Yeah, a really funny story.

That is crazy.

And yeah, he's very smart, man. Probably bought up or woman probably bought loads of dot coms as soon as they came out. I mean, 20 years ago.

Yeah.

And he made 5k for doing next to no work. But. But yeah, if anyone out there thinking about buying a domain, do not go and pay the original number that they.

That is crazy. You guys got what a. I mean, coming to him though, with the trademarks and you got it all. It makes sense why he would let that go knowing the circumstances of the market. So. What an epic story.

Yeah.

I want to say that I wanted to touch on, you know, like again, like the product you've built and for anyone that's out there. I have been getting into just my endurance journey as well. You know, when we first chatted, I was in the process of running my first marathon. I did that last December. I would love to hear about what really led you down the path of wanting to do an Ironman and really like what your future looks like as an endurance athlete. Because I find it so just great where the business you're building is so interconnected with your life and your passion and your goals. So, you know, what is your Future look like 20, 23 and beyond in terms of your races and, you know, what does that mean to you as someone that's like so heavily in the space while also building a business in that. Because you don't really come across that too often. And I think your situation of life and business is just so cool.

Yeah, no, it's what got me to do my first Ironman was very much I wanted to prove to probably prove to my friends and prove to, you know, people within my network that I could do anything. I was kind of known within that, within that kind of group as the Nutter anyway, and I wanted to like confirm that was true. And I viewed that an Ironman was the hardest thing in fitness that anyone could do. So that's. I signed up to it and took a stab in the dark with it and finished and it was extremely hard. But my thought immediately was that I could do it better. As soon as you've done the same, you finish your first marathon and you're exhausted. But you also think, if I do a few things differently, I'm going to do better next time. And that's why people do these things for a whole lifetime. And so that's what got me doing the first one. And ever since then, my goal has been simply in fitness, to become a better ironman. And that means I need to become a better runner. That means I need to become more, more knowledgeable runner. I mean, all of these things coincide with becoming a better coach, understanding strength and conditioning better, all of these different elements. Do you mean then you put a crazy startup into the mix? And I go from having this beautiful job of 40 hours or 35 hours a week as a, as a private coach, whereby I've got all the time and all the daylight to train and get super fit. And I brought my marathon time down to 234, which is strong for a 97 kilo man with doing far bigger upper body strength than.

Oh my gosh.

So I became a good runner. I'm less good than I was then because I spent two years in this crazy world of running a startup. We're now in a position that the business is stronger than it has been the past two years, which means that I'm very set on making sure that the business keeps getting stronger as fast as it can, but without compromising my fitness, which it has done the past two years. Do you mean the past two years? If I've got to take a call with an investor in the US or if I've got to talk to a partnership meeting, I will talk to them at whatever time it suits them. Because if it doesn't work, the business might not get to where it is today. Whereas we're in a position now where lots of people are reaching out to us. We've got customers coming in and raving about the products and raving about the service and giving us such good reviews. And now we've also got enough of a team that my combination, my work on the business is 10% of its output, where it used to be 50%. So, um, if I do double, I now do 20%. But in the past, about a double. You know, I didn't do 100%, but I doubled my output. So it means that I can now prioritize my fitness better, which means that this year my focus is to do the London Marathon, which I've never done, and I'm doing that in four or three months time now.

Wow.

And I don't want to do a PB and I Won't do a pb. I'd love to do a pb, but I won't do a pb. I've gone far enough backwards that that's not possible. I will also do a marathon, likely in Valencia in December at the end of 2023. And my true goal for this year, which I haven't really told anyone and put on Instagram or anything like that, is to make sure that I'm the best runner I've ever been in my life by the end of 2023. Wow. So that's kind of my, my big, big goal as well as obviously making sure the business is hopefully continuing its very exciting trajectory. And alongside that I want to do my Ironman pb, which I'll be doing. And I'll be doing an Ironman in September. I'll also be doing three half Ironmans, one of which will be the Half Ironman World Championships in Finland, which I qualified for last year.

You're an animal.

A bucket load of. A bucket load of half marathons and smaller events. The business has partnered with lots of events in the UK and hopefully some exciting ones in the US as well.

Yeah.

And all around the world. But so the kind of. The main goal is getting back to be the best runner I've. I've ever been. And alongside that, that, that full Iron man that I'll be doing this year, which will be my seventh Ironman, I'm also going to be doing a 220 kilometer ultra marathon in Jordan in October.

Oh my God.

My second, second multi day ultramarathon. So I've got that to look forward to as well.

Oh my God. It's just. That is just absolutely wild. So a total amount of races or events in a year like 20, 23. I'm just curious, like, what does that look like for you? Like total races based on ones you have now scheduled already and then kind of where you see it ending up.

I would say kind of like big events is like five or probably like six. It's three half Ironmans and Ironman, two marathons and an ultramarathon which is seven. So seven events that I would say are like the focus.

Yeah.

And then I'll probably do another. I've already done two half. Half marathon events this year and it's only the end of. End of Jan. So I'll probably do another 20 like B B races, some of which I might not race. I might turn up, enjoy the atmosphere and not push myself.

Yeah.

Use them as a training event. I love the atmosphere of Doing these things in events, seeing people around me pushing themselves and, and also, like, you're in a, you're in that race environment. If I see someone walking, I'm gonna give them a big, like, cheer as I go past and get them running again.

Yeah.

And like, that makes me feel fantastic. And the number of times that, like, I've had it now where do you mean? I'll. I'll do these races with runner on the back of my shoulders and someone will find me on Strava or message me or, or even email me a year later and be like, you cheered me on that day, got me to the finish line. And do you mean I found you on Strava? I've trained with you for the last six months without realizing. And do you mean you've got me from a x28 minute 5k to now running a half marathon in an hour and 40 minutes or something like that? And that is just so exciting. So I get double benefit now going to these events. It's doing a great opportunity for me to showcase my business, but also I love it and that's why I'm in this industry. That's why I became a coach in a conventional sense. And why do you mean we keep working as hard as we can to build up a very exciting and much more influential business in the space as well?

Totally. No, I mean, and I know you've heard me say this, but I'm genuinely so excited for you guys because as someone that has been getting into this space, like really the last year, you know, running my first marathon and having these new Goals, moving into 2023, your platform and the, the community in which you're building is so powerful. Right. Like, I, you know, I have these apps I train, but just knowing that how you're doing things is so unique. It's, it's very cool to see. So kudos to you and your entire team.

Thank you.

Couple more questions before we wrap up here. Ben, when it comes to your business and entrepreneurial journey thus far, what would you tell yourself if you were to be starting Runna again today? Like, what are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned when it comes to building tech, building a team, and also balancing, you know, this ultra training lifestyle with a tech company you're in startup, you're building?

I don't know. I haven't thought about it hard enough and had maybe had enough time to reflect properly. I think that the fundamental piece of advice I do give myself, I think stems to anyone whether they're Focusing on their fitness, focusing on their career is the fact that we are as good as our lived experience. The reason why you've run a marathon is because you've done some training and you've done that marathon. The reason why I can do. Do you mean I've done six Iron Man's to date is because I've done a heck of a lot of running, heck of a lot of cycling, learned a lot and put all that to the test and that's why I'm where I am now. That the reason why I can do the things I can do from understanding the legal side, the share structure, the account, the accounting side within runner, like all of the different, the, the legal side, the marketing side, the all these different complicated things that I have to be able to do is because I've gradually got more and more experience in all of these different areas. And so the more time we spend working at something, the more time we spend learning, the better we get. That if. Do you mean three years ago when my co founder came to me and said, this is our idea, like this is my idea, will you work on it with me? And I could see into the future and see what I have to do in a day now I would have been so paralyzed because I'd have had no idea how to get from being a PT running coach who didn't work that hard, like had a really nice life set up, to being so ruthlessly efficient. To be working in so many different things and to be like any founder's gotta be like dynamic across so many different areas of a business. I would have felt paralyzed and not known how to get there. And I think it's a case that keep working at something and you will gradually improve, gradually get better at it and also know that you don't need to be perfect. And I say this to my team all the time. Like I was just having a, like a one on one with, with with one of the team and saying to her, like, how you, how are you finding it? What are you, what are you thinking? Like all of these things but also like, have you got feedback for me? I know I'm flawed. Like I'm a flawed person. Like I want to make sure that the way that I'm working with you is the best way for you. And I think kind of knowing that I can still get better means that now if I could see into the future two years from now and think, oh my God, I could never do that. I could never stalk on a stage and excite all these people Talk to hundreds of thousands of customers. Who knows what it's going to be like. I don't know what my role will look like in two years. And rather than looking ahead to that and feeling paralyzed and trapped, that I've got to get to that one day, I've just got to get through this week and keep learning from the things I'm doing now, learning how to articulate myself to you. And that's going to make me a better founder next week. And as a result, in three months time, I'll be better and smarter than I am now. And I think it's that just keep working at something and you will keep learning. And as a result, just like your body adapts to run a marathon, your mind adapts to do the challenges that it's put in front of it and, and just, just believe that you can do it and just keep going. I think that that's, that principle applies to doing your first 5K, doing your first marathon, Iron man or doing a business.

I absolutely love that. No. Very well said, Ben. Last thing before we wrap up. Just moving into this year, where is the best place for everyone watching or listening to follow Runna to learn more about the platform and to stay updated on your personal journey as well, because you have a lot of exciting things coming up.

Yeah. So we kind of share everything about the business on the business's Instagram account. So that's Runner Underscore Coach. The business is www.runner.com, which we bought for £5,000. Got our 45k saving there. I personally kind of like we talked about, do all of my crazy endurance work and training. So I share that. I share that on my own personal Instagram. Ben Parker Fitness. Yeah. If anyone's got any questions, reach out to us either in the support section of the Runner app on Runners Instagram or on my personal Instagram. And like I said, if you use the Casey Adams show or one word when you download the Runner app, you'll get a second week free trial as well.

I very much so appreciate that. So everyone listening, make sure you take advantage of that and I'll make sure to link everything down below. Ben. And last but not least, I just want to say thank you so much again for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you having, appreciate you coming on.

Well, thank you very much and amazing inspiration yourself and everything you've, you've done to date as well.

Thank you.