Why Artificial Intelligence is a Good Thing

[00:00:06] So this is my first BOLD and I'm thrilled to be here. And, I wanted to start with a personal story to tell you why it's so meaningful for me to be here. So, it was a long time ago, I was in my early 20’s, I was living in Manhattan, and I was living life in the fast lane at a high-stress job. I was working a lot of hours, and I was doing things in my personal life that you do when you're in the early 20s and you think you're invincible. So, I ended up hitting the wall and I hit it really hard both physically and mentally and ended up taking extended time off just to recover and regroup. Coincidentally, one of the books I read at that time which was a tipping point for me was a book called The Mind-Body Connection by John Sarno. Have any of you read that book? Okay, a few of you, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It was a turning point for me and at that time I started meditating every day, I started working out every day. Both things that I do every day to this day. And it's really helped my helped turn my life around. And I share that story with you to tell you that the work that you do, I am deeply, deeply grateful for, so thank you. And it's not just me, as a Mindbody community, we have an impact on a lot of people around the world. In the past year, all of you have touched thirty-eight point three million lives around the world. That's a lot of people. I think you deserve a round of applause for that.

[00:01:40] So that's a big number. But when you step back and think about it, the global population right now is seven point seven billion people. So, this is just a drop in the bucket. There's a lot more we can do. We want to get that number to 100 million and then to a billion. That's the opportunity in front of us.

[00:01:58] In order for us to do that, we need to understand where our industry is going. So, you heard Amaya talk about some of the key technology trends. We also need to know where our users are going, where our clients are going. And we live in the age of what I call “extreme customer expectations” where these consumers have all the information they need at their fingertips. They are able to switch services easily and they have all the power these days and consumer loyalty in this world is very, very difficult. These are the types of experiences that our clients, our consumers are used to. These companies are not in our space, but they are really setting the tone and the pace when it comes to consumer expectations.

You have companies like Door Dash, which are changing the way people eat. You have companies like Stitch Fix which are changing the way people order clothes. You have companies like One Medical, which is changing the whole doctor visit, and you have companies like Lyft which are changing how people commute.

And again, not in our industry, but this is what our consumers are getting used to. And this is what me and the rest of the R and D team at Mindbody are thinking of, and we want to get our experience, the experience you provide your clients, to this level and surpass it. That's what we spend time thinking about. So, when it comes to our platform, there are four primary things that we look at doing for all of you. It starts with helping you attract, identify prospects. Then we help you convert those prospects to a paying client. Then we work on making sure that you are providing them a great experience so enhancing the experience you provide them. And then finally we help you with retaining these customers. So those are the four primary jobs that we help you with. And I'm going to spend the next 30-35 minutes giving you demos of the latest innovations that we've delivered to help you across all of these four areas.

[00:04:02] You guys ready? OK! All right!

[00:04:05] So, I'm going to start with attract, helping you find new consumers. This is where the Mindbody app comes into the picture. So, we created this app mainly to help expand the number of consumers in our ecosystem, remember that thirty-eight point three million. We want to get that to 100 million and then to a billion. This is why we created the Mindbody app. We want to attract more consumers into the ecosystem so you're able to get more paying clients into your business. That's why we created this app.

This app gets a lot of traffic already, so we have two million monthly active users every month and they are very active on the app. Last month, they made over six million bookings. That's a lot of bookings, which translates to almost 9000 bookings every hour. That's a lot of traffic coming through the channel. You want to make sure you're plugged into that.

This app gets a lot of traffic already, so we have two million monthly active users every month and they are very active on the app. Last month, they made over six million bookings. That's a lot of bookings, which translates to almost 9000 bookings every hour. That's a lot of traffic coming through the channel. You want to make sure you're plugged into that. Another reason you want to plug into this channel is because of how attractive this customer segment is. They spend a lot of money. They spend close to 300 dollars on fitness, beauty, and wellness every month. They work out a lot. They work out more than 3-4 times a week. And the last stat is an interesting one and it's a truth we must all face. 80 percent of them, frequent multiple businesses, right? People like me. I pick one salon and I pick one fitness studio and I stick with it for the longer term. That's not how gen Z-ers think. That's not how millennials think. They like the variety, right? And this is the hard truth. We need to face so you have a choice you can either say, “yeah, I'm just going to entirely ignore that segment,” or you could say, “I'm going to go after their business and I'm going to give them such a great experience that when they're ready to settle they're going to pick me,” and I hope you choose the latter option.

[00:05:57] Make sense? Okay.  

[00:06:01] All right, so I wanted to give you a demo of the Mindbody app and some of the recent innovations that team has delivered. So, you can see intro offers, you could see other things when you log in. When you go to the profile screen, we've integrated Apple, Google, and Fitbit. So now you're able to see all that information consolidated and the number of classes you've taken, how many calories you've burned, how many steps you've taken. You can also favorite your favorite instructors, so this makes it really easy for you to look at their schedule and then go out and book a class. So, this particular user is then going to the main page they're interested in an intro offer. They find one that they like, they click on that.

[00:06:50] And they look at more details about the offer. They want to get more details on the studio, so they click on that. And they browse through some of the pictures, they scroll down, and then they look at the description. And they go out and purchase the intro offer. So the thing I want to call out is the pictures that you have on the app and the description that you have.

[00:07:15] That is your digital storefront. That's what people are looking at when they decide if they want to come in or not, so you want to make sure that those look great and there are pictures and a description that you're proud of. Our interests are aligned.

Mindbody wins when all of you win. That's why we created this app. We want to get more consumers into the ecosystem so you can get more paying clients.

To enable that, we are investing millions of dollars on advertising. So, in the first part of the year, we've been running ads. So, there are bus wrap-arounds. We've been running streaming audio ads. We've been running streaming video ads on different channels like Spotify and we are seeing a lot of success, and we are gonna be ramping that up to another level and scaling this out to a lot more cities. So, don't be surprised if you see some of the ads in your city.

OK, so Ask #1 like I was telling before. You want to make sure that your digital storefront is something you are proud of. So, we do have a makeover booth outside in the Mindbody Hall. Please make sure you go there. Talk to the people who are there.

They're here to help you and they will make sure that your listing on the app pops. So please take the time to go out and do that. OK. All right. So, you've worked hard, you've gotten new consumers. Now you want to convert them into a paying client.

You may have heard about an acquisition we did a couple of months ago called Bowtie.

[00:08:20] Raise your hands if you have. So, some of you have.

[00:08:24] So, for the others, Bowtie is a company we bought a couple of months ago. It is an AI receptionist and AI stands for artificial intelligence. Sounds cool. In this case, it happens to be really cool and I'm excited to share more details with you. But first, some data. 44 percent of consumers still like to call to make a beauty, especially a beauty appointment. Sixty-two percent of those calls go unanswered. That's not surprising. I get it. You guys are busy, you're running your business, you're tending to your clients, you don't have time to answer every call that comes in. But here's the stat that's a little disturbing.

[00:09:05] 80 percent of callers don't leave a voicemail. That's a lot of missed clients, lot of missed revenue.

[00:09:13] If you’re like one of my kids. You like texting people even when you're sitting right next to them. Apparently, it's not just my kids. Lot of people want to text. They like texting. They want to text you as well. Eighty nine percent of consumers want to text all of you. So, I'm going to introduce you to a salon called Takamichi Hair. They are based out of New York. They have a cult following, and they've been using Bowtie for a while. And let's hear from them about their experience.

[00:09:43] The Takamichi Hair philosophy started in the East Village on First Street in New York City.

Our salon is everything the customer is. We particularly care for the personal style. Not just an aesthetic. Before I start a haircut, I always ask questions like they like, what kind of lifestyle they have, and I figure what's the best for them, so it's really all customer.

As a stylist from a floor point of view, keeping a good relationship and checking in with your client afterwards is always a main priority, especially when it comes to retention.

[00:10:18] After the customer leaves, Bowtie reaches out to you to continually keep the conversation going, keep the conversation open. If they have any questions, and you can thank them, and it's just a more direct line of communication with your client that we didn't really have before. If you are trying to take care of a client, you're having a great conversation with them and the phone is ringing and it's ringing and it's ringing. You don't really have to worry about stopping what you're doing and cutting off somebody mid-conversation, mid-transaction. You can just let it go and the system picks it up for you and it handles it and it's just a more direct line of communication with your client that we didn't really have before.

[00:10:53] All of our clients love the Bowtie systems because there is a freedom to booking an appointment whenever they want, wherever they are. Even if it's midnight, 2:00 in the morning, they can still book for the next day. So that, for them, for the client, changes totally the way they book.

[00:11:12] I think the best part about it is just like the less things that I have to do when it's involved. So out of the last nine hundred and twenty-eight messages that we got, only six of them needed human intervention. So, I only needed to step in and help six people out of nine hundred and twenty-eight messages, and I just think that if that's not a time saver then, what is?

[00:11:38] Great, I hope you caught that part at the end.

[00:11:40] Nine hundred and twenty-eight interactions and only six required human intervention. So, first off that's nine hundred and twenty-eight interactions that they didn't miss. Secondly, only six of them needed human intervention so that's a lot of time saved.

[00:11:57] Let's take a look at how the product actually works that to the user who starts off on Google, does a search for Takamichi Hair, finds it, goes ahead and calls them.

[00:12:11] No surprise, they get the voicemail. They don't leave a voicemail. And this is where Bowtie kicks in. It immediately sends a text saying, “how can I help?” The client goes ahead and says they're looking for a haircut next Thursday. Bow tie asks a clarifying question, “what type of haircut?”

[00:12:33] Client responds

[00:12:35] Bowtie then gives them options for scheduling

[00:12:42] Person chooses a time.

[00:12:45] And then Bowtie asks for confirmation before actually putting the appointment together. And once the person confirms and it even gives them an estimate goes ahead and makes the appointment, as simple as that. Now you may be curious about what happens if the client asks a question that Bowtie cannot answer.

[00:13:07] So let's take a look at what happens in that case. So, the client says “Hey, last time I was there, Takamichi used a hair product. Can you tell me what that product was?” And Bowtie doesn't know the answer. And let's see how Bowtie reacts to that. So what Bowtie does is it actually kicks off a notification to your front desk staff and that person is then pulled into the conversation. So, they see the question.

[00:13:38] They respond saying that they're on it.

[00:13:42] And they, in turn, then reach out to Takamichi himself with the question, Takamichi responds, and the front desk staff, Alison, goes back to the client and then closes the loop with them, as simple as that.

[00:13:58] Now, keep in mind this is the exception scenario, right? Nine hundred and thirty-eight interactions, only six of them needed human intervention. Sound cool? What do you guys think? Yeah?

[00:14:10] Excellent. Excellent.

[00:14:13] So, the thing I wanted to share with you guys is the Bowtie team is here and they are excited to talk to you. They're excited to share about what's coming and how the product works. And they have a booth in the Mindbody Hall. So please go seek them out. The other thing I want to call out is they're also working on support for fitness. So that's coming as well. So, please go talk to them even if you're in in the fitness industry. OK? OK. So, moving forward. So, you've worked really hard, you've found prospects, you've converted them to be paying clients now you want to enhance the experience they get when they're in your facility, and some of you sitting here maybe going, “hey all this new stuff is cool, but what are you doing with your core product.” Right, and it's a fair question, and I'm happy to share with you that we have hundreds of developers who are working every day to improve our platform. They're making changes every day, we release every couple of weeks. And I'm gonna share with you just a few of those innovations that they worked on in the past couple of months, improving the core product. Starting with the Class Check-In app. So, those of you already using it, you know how valuable this is. This enables your clients to do self-service check in so you don't have that big traffic jam prior to a class with you trying to check everybody in.

We've made huge usability improvements so the product looks better, works better. And if you're already using it please continue using it.

And if you're not… Is that a crying baby in the back?

There’s a first for everything. So, if you're not already using it, please go ahead and use the product. It's free, you've already paid for it, it's included in your package.

We want to make sure that you don't lose any revenue opportunity. So to enable that, we've added alerts which will let you know when there are scenarios that could actually impact you or your revenue stream, starting with the failed autopays. 

So we've added an alert which will tell you when autopay has failed and, prior to this alert, we have data that showed that you ran the auto pay details report 18 times every month. You don't have to do that anymore. When auto pay fails, we will automatically alert you and give you all the information that you need right there.

[00:16:06] Fantastic!

[00:16:08] We've also added alerts which will let you know when an intro offer is about to expire or when a credit card is about to expire that’s been set up for auto pay. So, all this information is right there in front of you.

[00:16:24] Now, the capability we've added is a capability that enables your staff to easily publish their class or schedule on their social network and broadcast it to their entire network. Your staff loves it because it gives them a way to fill up the classes. Your clients love it because it's an easy way to find out about these classes and appointments and an easy way for them to go ahead and book it. And we have data that says one out of every five clients has booked a class this way, and you know that that number is going to keep going up. You know how much time everyone spending on social networks so that number is going to keep going up.

[00:17:07] Video on demand. So, you heard Amaya talk about this earlier. She talked about how this isn't a threat, which is true. People love coming into your facility, getting that work out. That social interaction. It's not a threat but you should be aware that this is a huge opportunity. You have clients who want this ability when they're traveling or when they're not able to come into your facility. They would love to have a streaming ability and would pay you for it. So, we have multiple partners at work here who can help you with this. They can help you create the video, they can help you upload it, and then they will stream it to all your clients. We've worked on integration with these partners so we've integrated our client management systems and our billing systems so you can easily create an add-on subscription on top of your regular subscription packages to add on subscription for video on demand and charge for it. So please look into it. I'm assuming that all of you are already thinking about it. The chance is now. So, please go out and take action.

[00:18:16] FitMetrix. This gives your client's heart rate monitoring and equipment tracking. It also comes with a visual workout builder which allows your trainers to display the workout on a screen so they can spend more time one-on-one working with your clients. It also comes with group X management which gives you an easy way to manage your trainers schedule and takes care of automatically switching trainers if there's a need to do that, and it also comes with a portal that your trainers can use for engaging with their clients so they can keep that engagement going even after the class, which is really important. OK, so everything I've shared with you until this point are capabilities that are already out there you can go out and use it. There is one item that I want to give a preview of and it's something I've heard from a lot of you and the teams heard from a lot of you and this capability is family accounts. Yes. So, it is coming, the teams working on it and it's going to be coming out very soon. Think of it like your Netflix family account. So gives your clients a way to log in once and then manage their all-day purchases and memberships in one place. OK? You’re welcome. So, my Ask #3 of all of you. Like I said we have hundreds of developers working really hard to continue to improve the platform and it would be a shame if we release a bunch of things and you're not aware. So, there are three ways we use to find out what improvements are coming out on the product. Way number one is the product newsletter that comes out every quarter. Please keep your eyes open for that. Go through it. The second way you can find out is when you log in the bottom right of your screen. There was a pop up that comes up and you can click on that and that'll give you more details about product improvements, and then the third way is for you to just go to our support Web site and right up front there is a “what's new” link you can click on that and that'll tell you what new product capabilities have come out as well. So, can you guys do that for me?

[00:20:29] OK great. Thank you.

[00:20:32] All right. So, you've worked really hard. You've added a lot of new clients you've given them a great experience. You want to make sure that you keep these clients. And the reason that's really important is this. It's five to twenty-five times more expensive to acquire a new client than to keep an existing one. You guys probably knew this already but that's how much it costs to get a new client. I'm going to introduce you to a customer of ours, Michael and Payton Hughes. They run Gymnazo fitness studio in San Luis Obispo. A lot of you know them. Yes sir. They have a fast-growing business. They also have a growing family, that may have been them in the back with the crying baby and they use the Mindbody Marketing Suite to great benefit. So, let's hear from them.

[00:21:29] At Gymnazo, our key focus is blending restoration training and performance training. Every client that comes through is unique and has different levels of movement and performance. I call it authentic functional training. But we have to run a business. We have to reach out, keeping people dialed in, accountable. How do we keep that with all our customers?

[00:21:51] There's a million different hats that we wear in small business, and automation has really changed and elevated our game at Gymnazo and the list that we were able to take and turn into campaigns that just run around the clock seamlessly has been really, really powerful and bought us a lot of time that we can now spend in strategy, connecting with clients. Anything that we can, we try to celebrate: birthdays, anniversaries, work anniversaries. There's automation for all of those.

[00:22:23] So, it allows us to show to each and every customer that walks through our doors the things in your life that matter to you are significant to us. One of the things that's hard to prove in fitness is are you actually retaining your clients. When we notice the details and we take time, sending them a text message to say “hey, we missed you. It's been a few days since your last workout” or when we send an email encouraging them to maximize their membership. All those little touches really helped people to feel like they’re missed, they’re valued. They're important and that keeps people walking back through the door. My team loves this tool. It's easy to use, it’s integrated. They aren't logging in logging out. It has more tools and capabilities than we had with the other software programs that we were using. And quite honestly, we feel like even now we've underutilized the tool which excites us.

[00:23:13] We feel really good about what Marketing Suite’s been able to do for our business.

[00:23:25] That was great. The keyword is automation.

[00:23:29] So, with the Mindbody marketing suite, you can setup campaigns and automation which will automatically take care of running it. And let me show you how that's actually working. So, this is a automation page and this customer has setup automation for celebrating somebody’s birthday. So, they've set it up so emails go out on birthdays. They've set it up so if somebody hasn't come in and in ten days or 30 days, they get an email. They've also got celebration emails when somebody takes their hundredth class and the system, based on these automations, will automatically start sending out these texts and emails. So, in this particular case, it's an automation for somebody who hasn't come in in ten days. And based on that condition being met, A text gets sent out with a 10 percent off code.

[00:24:27] Similarly they've set up an automation for somebody who hasn't come in in 30 days. So they get an email with a 25 percent off code. So these things work. Each of these moments of engagement are really really important and a way for you to know if it's going to work or if it is working. Is this dashboard that the creative team is created which is really really good. And it gives you. Insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns. So tells you how many new visits you've had as a result of the marketing that you've done. And it tells you probably the most important metric which is how much additional revenue you've generated based on the marketing that you've done.

[00:25:07] It also tells you how many clients you've rescued. And it also tells you what your Net Promoter Score is so it's all right there front and center. You can look at this. Make the tweaks that you need to get the results that you're looking for. So now they're ask you guys can probably predicted by now the team is here the Marketing Suite team is here. They have a booth already using it. Please go talk to them. They can give you suggestions on how you can tweak and get the most out of it. They're also hungry for your feedback if there's something that you want to see us do differently please let the team know as well.

All right. So that's everything that's come out not everything it's a subset of everything that's come out in the past few months. I'm going to switch topics on you guys. I'm going to take a deep breath. We're going to move to an entirely different topic and I'm going to talk about the future and what's coming. There is a technology that's impacting pretty much every industry across the world

[00:25:43] And it's directly impacting our lives. Any guesses on what that is?

[00:25:49] Somebody already said it. It is AI. If I had a prize I would give it to you. I don't. But you've got the right answer. It is artificial intelligence and let me define what artificial intelligence is because it's a lot of misinformation out there A.I. stands for when a machine can learn and then act like a human. So autonomous driving self-driving cars. That's an example of a recommendation systems. So on Amazon and Netflix these systems look at your past behavior. It looks at what others like you are doing and then based on that it gives you a movie and show recommendations and product recommendations. That's an example of a bow tie. I mentioned this before.

That's AI as well. It uses something called natural language processing which is a subset of AI. to have that interaction with humans I understand their intent and have that conversation. So those are all examples of the AI. I'm obviously a huge proponent of AI. I think it's gonna do a lot of good for humanity. Not everyone feels that way. So. Fifty-seven percent of people think that A.I. is a threat to the human race. Think they may have seen Terminator maybe one too many times.

But there is some truth to this. You've got to apply A.I. in the right way in the right area to get the most benefit from it. There is a debate that's happening across multiple industries around impact that A.I. is going to have on jobs. I think that's a fair question and I want to spend a couple of minutes on that. One of my favorite books in the past year is a book called AI Superpowers. Highly recommended if you haven't read it please go get it. It's written by a person called Kai-Fu Lee and he used to head up Google China and he used to head up Microsoft China, and now he just invests in AI companies.

So, he's an expert in this field and he spent some time analyzing AI's impact on jobs and he came up with this two-by-two. So, let me just walk you through this to about to so along the x-axis on the left you have jobs that are highly structured, and then to the right, you have jobs that are highly creative. Along the y-axis on the top, you have jobs that require a lot of social interaction and then in the bottom jobs that are that don't require social interaction.

So, if you're in a job that requires a lot of creativity and requires a lot of social interaction, you're in the safe zone.

[00:28:28] If you're in a job that is highly structured and doesn't require a lot of social interaction, you're in the danger zone and if you're on the other two quadrants it's a wait and see, it's a gray area. We've got to see how things evolve.

[00:28:44] Now let's see where some of the jobs fall. So, if you're a social worker, or a psychiatrist, or a CEO or a business owner, which a lot of you are, you are in the safe zone so that's good. If you're a telemarketer or a radiologist, I mentioned this before, or a dishwasher, you are in the danger zone so you need to think about where you want to take your career. Now, one question that's probably top of mind for you is how does this impact our industry.

[00:29:15] So, I'm happy to tell you that our jobs are in the safe zone because they require a lot of creativity and they also require a lot of social interaction.

[00:29:28] Now that doesn't mean “hey we're done with AI. It doesn't have anything to do with us. We just move on.” AI can help us. It will help us. We need to use it to provide that really personalized experience to our clients and we can also use AI to make sure that we are giving you the insights and the help that you need to run an efficient business. So, this is going to be a huge area of focus for us. A huge area of innovation for us and I'm excited to share with all of you a video we've put together that gives you a vignette of some of the concepts that we are thinking through.

[00:30:03] And with that, let me turn it over to the video.

[00:30:14] With personalized wellness and artificial intelligence, the power to manage your business is at your fingertips. AI-powered recommendations for every individual.

[00:30:53] Health tracking senses what your consumers need, when they need it. Seamless integration with schedules that include in-person services and on-demand video allows you to connect in the moment. Augmented reality enables your consumers to visualize their future. Frictionless checkout, tipping, and reviews keeps the conversation going. As a business owner you have access to critical business data in one place, including industry insights that haven't been visible until now.

[00:32:10] Easily find your next best hire. Identify the right classes, services, and prices based on real-time market demand data. And while your consumers meet their goals, you grow your business. With artificial intelligence, the power to manage your business is at your fingertips. AI enables you to engage with your clients at scale.

[00:32:55] Because it's not enough to live in this world. We all deserve to thrive in it.

[00:33:03] What did you think? Pretty cool, right?

[00:33:08] The thing I want to call out is this is in Star Wars-type tech which is decades out. This is imminent. Over the next year couple of years, you're going to see a lot of the functionality that was demoed come alive. This is what the R and D team at Mindbody is working on. This is how we create an experience that mirrors what we talked about in the beginning, from Door Dash and Stitch Fix. And when we deliver this, it's not just going to meet it, it's going to surpass it. That's why I am so excited to be here at this time.

[00:33:41] I'm really thankful to be the CTO of Mindbody at this time and your CTO. I just want to close by saying thank you all for your support. Thank you for being a customer.