Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Outside Interactive CEO Robin Thurston discusses the integrated social media platform that unites running, cycling, and other athletic events. Author and Executive Coach Caroline Adams Miller talks about her book Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them and Creating Your Best Life.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
It is Bloomberg BusinessWeek. That's Carol Masser on Tim Stenebeck. Little quiz, Carol, what's you? Outside magazine, the legendary Warren Miller film Tour, the mat, my fitness suite of apps. Yes, that includes about my Ride, my run, et cetera.
This is something you know a lot about.
The event registration platform athlete reg and the mountain biking site pink Bike all have in common.
I don't know.
All right, Well, this is why I have you. Yeah, here's the answer. They're just a handful of the more than two dozen brands under the umbrella of the Outdoor Media company. Outside interacts with a lot of stuff. Yeah, there's twenty five brands there, some of them that are like legacy companies, right, some digital only companies. Really runs the gamut. Robin Thurston is the founder and CEO. He's been trying to build the antidote to legacy and social media. He joins us from Boulder, Colorado, which I think makes a lot of sense in the space that he's in. Totally second day in a row, we've had someone from Boulder on the program too. By the way, I am keeping track, Robin, welcome. Before we get to what you're doing over at Outside Interactive, let's get more of your story. Because you created matt my Fitness and sold it to under Armour a bit more than a decade ago for one hundred and fifty million dollars. Then earlier this year you bought it back from under Armour. A lot happened in between. Give us the story there.
Yeah, I've been certainly in this space for a very long time. I actually grew up as a bike racer, so even in the early eighties, I've been in and around the outdoor space. But what happened with Matt May is, you know, we had a really good run and stewardship from under Armor for a decade and a couple of years ago they sold another company we bought while I was there, called my Fitness Pal, and I just kind of kept knocking at the door and saying, like, you know, depending on what you do with it, you know, I'd love to have an opportunity to buy it back, And that opportunity came up at the beginning of this year, and we pursued that, you know, sort of with them and found a good path to getting it back and you know, not only rebranding it to the original matt My brands, but you know, having it underneath the Outside portfolio and starting to really deeply integrateed. So really exciting for me to have it back. And my co founder, Kevin Callahan was already working at Outside, so he's now helping me run matt My again. So he was one of the original co founders of matt My. And so it's kind of like the whole families back together.
Is there like an anchor brand in the umbrella?
Here?
Is it matt My? This was a relatively new addition to the portfolio, But is this like the anchor now?
You know, if I think about our biggest products, most recognized products outside magazine, outside television, clearly or anchors. I mean we actually, you know, when we bought them, we renamed the company Outside Interactive because it's the best brand in the category. Pink Bike is an absolute enormous site globally in the mountain bike community.
It's been around forever. I mean since I since like basically when I started mountain biking.
Yeah, I mean twenty five years. We bought it in twenty twenty one, you know, so pink Bike and outside. But on the mapping side, no question, matt May is our biggest asset. Now we own trail forks and Gaya GPS as well, and now we're the number two player in the mapping space with you know, nearly a hundred million users in mapping and over one hundred million users total for the outside platform.
So I don't like to use the term synergies because I think it's kind of like a throwaway word. But when you're talking about, you know, a portfolio like this, there are certain synergies I couldn't help. But notice I did. I read it starred for a cyclic cross race a few months ago. Carol Bike. Redge is the company that for you know, for ab more than a decade I've been using you guys now own it, Robin. I've realized I I got this week an outside magazine in the mail. Did I get that? Did I get that because I registered for my cross race on bike Redge.
It's possible or it could have been part of you know, if you are a member or have you know, historically signed into Pink Bike or Trail Forks or one of the other platforms, it's possible it was from one of those, you know, without looking at your user account, which I don't do, you know, unless we're friends on the platform. You know, I wouldn't know unless we had client service look into it. But you know, the ideas, yes, those synergies exist so that we can cross pollinate and and really you know, single sign on now the entire platform, you use one log in. We have one membership layer called Outside Plus that is you know, over three hundred dollars of value that we sell at ninety bucks a year. You know, that really gives you premium access to all of the pieces. And so the goal really was that was creating more of a first party data platform that really you know knows you know, when you switch say let's say you're a skier and you're skiing in the winter, you know, you're using Ski Magazine, you're using Gaya for the trail maps and things like that, and then all of a sudden, you switch to mountain biking in the summer. Now we have a good idea about that in the ecosystem, and that allows us to serve, you know, the best content and services to you kind of in real time and make suggestions so that you ultimately spend more time outdoors.
So go to your website. Twenty five brands, eighty million and counting monthly reach, twenty eight million plus social followers, two hundred plus employees. So, Robin, how do you think about your FO one hundred?
Oh sorry outdated?
Oh okay, forgive me. You got to talk to your website people. But I understand like things are moving fast. So how do you see you guys? Are you a content company? Is it about data like getting a very niche population and a data set around them that's certainly going to be of interest to other people who will pay for that. Is it about marketing? Is it about advertising?
Like?
What is it?
Well?
I think the way we describe Carol is that essentially, first we want to inspire you through content. So the content piece is really important, and that could be that could be video content. We have a twenty four to seven you know, TV channel on both fast and linear. Still that could be through you know, any one of the brands from a content perspective in writing or audio like the Outside podcast. So once you get inspired, then we want to basically shift you into activation. So you know, you gave a good example of bike rage. We want to suggest events that you could go do and then get you registered for those events, or we want to suggest trails that you could go do and have you go do those and then ultimately celebrate that. And celebration could come in the form of you know, recording and seeing what you did at the finish, it could be sharing it with friends and having those people celebrate that. And what we ultimately think about that journey is that if we can successfully navigate you through that, that you kind of keep going back for more. So the metric that I use often our goal to be clear like, is we want you to spend more time outdoors. Never in human history have people spend as much time indoors. And we know screens are bad for people. We know that there is a mental health crisis, and you know, my view is that the outdoor solves that. And so our goal through that journey is to get you to do those things and ultimately activate and spend more time outdoors.
Look, I think everybody agrees that we all need to be spending more time outdoors. I think about what you're saying, Robin and I and Strava just keeps coming to mind. One of you guys and a buy Stravay.
Look, we're partners with them. You know there certainly there's interactivity between you know, our platform and their platform.
You know, what I would say is you know who knows? I mean it.
I think there's still going to be a lot of consolidation in the industry. I mean, we're still inquisitive. I know others are in the space, and you know, my view is that they have a good product. It's pretty it's pretty narrow in my mind to outdoor categories. Like you know, if you think about something like matt my Fitness that records over four hundred and fifty different I haveivity activity types. Strawa I think has forty activity types they record in and and you know, it's frankly, i'd say very concentrated in cycling and running. You know, So I I you know, who knows what will happen in the future. Our view is that your data, so you as an individual user. You own your data and you should be able to do whateverever you want with it. You know, there are certainly some people in the industry that you are trying to create more closed environments.
And I would say we're very pushing for an open.
Environment, all right, So not know was that on straw.
Tricky question? Maybe I'll leave it with them, fair.
Enough, fair enough.
I want to get right back to Robin Thurston, the founder and CEO of Outside Interactive. He's also the guy who created and then sold to under Armour the matt My suite of apps. He joins us once again from Boulder, Colorado. Robin, and we got a good bit of time left with you. There's a lot we want to cover, including the revenue model at the new Ish business. Newish, I say, you've been there for a few years at this point now, but also go back in time a little bit and talk a little bit more about under Armour and about matt My, just because you did end up joining after you sold the company a little over a decade ago to under Armour. You were there for a couple of years, then you left and went off and did your own thing for a few years. What was it like watching them work have the produc as an outsider and then being an insider once again.
You know, I would say after I left, and I was there about three years after they acquired US and we acquired you know a number of other companies to put into what was called Connected Fitness. When I left, I think, you know, I had this sort of bigger vision for you know, more and more content around the subscription, and obviously at the time the business had some had some challenges, and so you know, I decided it was, you know, better to move on, I would say.
For the first couple of years after.
I left, I you know, I want to say I disconnected a little bit, like I tried not to maybe overthink the fact I'd made a decision. I knew I had sold the business, and you know, it was no longer in my hands, I would say. As they started to you know, sell off assets, I started looking at a lot more obviously, continue engaging with the checking the product, you know, sort of reliability of the product, you know, And that's one of the reasons I was so excited to get it back, because you know, they had stewarded it well. It was you know four point nine stars in the app Store for Matt My Run and Matt My Rod and Matt My Walk, and so you know, I knew it was still in decent shape and growing from a user based perspective. I mean, when I sold it to under Armour in twenty thirteen, it was twenty million users, and when we just bought it back it was eighty five million users. So you know, they definitely had grown it. It's still growing organically very nicely. This is part of the benefit of being you know, Matt My Run and Matt My Ride we're in the first hundred apps and the app Store in July of two thousand and eight, and so you know, it's still benefiting from that.
It's still out the way the algorithms work.
It still has a lot of organic traffic globally and a lot of usage in the app every month. And so you know, I think, I'm I'm real like, we're gonna, We're gonna. We're relaunching right now challenges, branded challenges, so we'll have a lot of brands on the platform, you know, doing branded challenges this year in twenty twenty five, and we have advertise that's being turned back on for free users. You know, and start to monetize it again and really get it back to the point of it being a very robust you know, uh, not only monetization platform, but certainly developing new features. As you all know in the finance world, if you're able to generate revenue, it's easier to build new features for users.
Yeah, of course, yeah, that is true. Hey, why do you think you know it was there was a really interesting moment with apparel companies and digital. You know, Nike had its fuel band you mentioned under Armour and connected Fitness. Why do you think the peril companies weren't able to make it work?
You know, I look, I think Nike is still doing a good job with you know, I mean, obviously it's it's a it's less of a focus than maybe it was. But you know, obviously as they have to go and improve and go back out into distribution. I think Adidas and run Tastic in some of their digital products is you know, could compliment a six owns run Keeper, which was also one of the first early apps in the store when we were there. You know, I think a little bit of it is just like you know, mixing. You know, I call pure digital companies with you know, really shirts and shoes companies and kind of like what that means. I mean, I think the most interesting thing about digital products is like it's not a it's not a one and done, you know, like when you think about an app, like you.
Have to keep investing.
And you know, I think as maybe some of the founders left these companies and there were changes, you know, maybe they didn't have the same vision for what it could do for whether it be their e commerce businesses or you know, how it touches the customer. You know, so I think it lost a little focus, and certainly as those companies had their own challenges. I mean, even look at Lulu, Lemon, Sould, Mirror or sorry shut down right right, five hundred million dollar investment, right, it was a big number, right, So you know, I think a little bit of it's that it's that mixing of you know, what I call pure digital and sort of app ecosystems with you know, basically apparel and footwear.
Silly question for you, Robin, but we're Bloomberg and we are always curious, how do you make money? Are you profitable? Tell us about kind of the metrics of the business to understand, you know, or help us better understand the viability going forward. And is it all a lot largely based on advertising in marketing.
Yeah, I think what's interesting about this business specifically, and I would say this was sort of a goal from the onset, was that when we acquired these businesses, they like even the mapping tools like Gaya and trail Forks, were relatively you know, they had very small subscriber bases and we're not that focused on monetization. They were more focused on user growth, user growth, and like with the media businesses, they were one hundred percent advertising. Like, they didn't have first party log in, they didn't have any personalization, they didn't have a membership.
Tied to the digital piece.
So when we bought these businesses a little you know five, you know, four or five years ago, you know, we did twenty twenty three acquisitions during COVID, you know, they were mostly advertising. And today we're now at this point, we are fifty percent you know, arr subscription or sort of SaaS businesses with things like bike Ridge and you know now and only fifty percent of the business is advertising.
So we continue to.
Dive the mean annual recurring revenue, right, so I make sure Okay.
Annual recurring revenue. My apologies to the audience, it's okay.
You know.
So these are subscription based businesses and we're really relying on that for the growth of.
The business, and so we need the support.
Of the community and the users to buy those memberships because that is how we're going to develop more and more features for them. We're relying les and less on advertising, although it's an important, very important part of our business, and we have incredibly important partners, like I just got back from the Defender, the land Rover Defender Awards out in California. Land Rover is an incredible partner for us. Same with Toyota. We have a number of autos CpG companies. But that's the other thing that's happened with us is the advertising changed from largely endemic categories. So people like north Face and Patagonia and others, and those are still partners of our Now fifty percent of the advertising business is non endemic. It's it's big autos and other partners because we have scale.
Okay, so are you profitable, are you growing the top? What can you share with us about the business man?
I'll share top I'll share top level with you.
We're over one hundred million in revenue, and you know, we we continue to believe that, you know, we we can eventually take the company public and that you know, we can do that both organically and from an organic growth as well as inorganic growth.
So what like, so what kind of business is this one hundred million in revenue today? Is this multi billions of dollars?
Like?
How do you think about the trajectory here?
Well, I think you know, the one thing that you said, Carol is like the some people do perceive this as niche I perceive outside very much as general wellness and that everybody needs something in our ecosystem from a wellness perspective. And so you know, the addressable market for that, in my mind is billions of people. You know, today we touch about three hundred million unique people annually through all the distribution channels.
And all the services. You know.
My view is that, you know, in the future, we should be able to convert something on the magnitude of you know, one to five percent of those people annually into membership. And so you know, you talk about a ten plus million member business. I mean that's a that's a big, multi billion dollar company.
Is it sticky for you?
Tim steneviek Oh bike Ridge, Oh, bike Ridge is like yeah, if you're gonna race in a bike race, like a cycle cross race in the Northeast, and I assume it's like this all all over for USA cycling events, bike Ridge is.
The only place to do it, okay. And it is a great product. It's easy to use, and it saves my information, and it's fair and it shows me the races that are close.
Yeah.
I just need it to include childcare, which it doesn't do yet, so I would appreciate that.
Right, there's a new revenue stream, right.
Yeah, if you can make the little kids cross race, you know needs you know, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So I'm wondering about other areas of business that you want to get into if like these twenty five brands, you said you're still inquisitive, But is there an area that you're not playing in right now that you want to plan?
You know, I think the areas.
I mean, you know, one one area on our AD business that's our second largest AD business is travel, so we work with a lot of travel companies.
I mean, one of the things people come to.
Outside for is like what to go do right, like whether that's an event or that's a place to go. I mean we write two thousand plus pieces a year of content that are related to like you know, roundups of like top ten hikes in North America, top ten surf towns, top ten you know, kayaking, places to go, you know, things like that, And so travel is a really big part of our business. And I think travel is an area where I think we can you know, if you think about bike ridge, I think travel is an area where we can do a lot more for the customer.
I think we can help in that journey.
So akin to like Expedia or an Airbnb or like like where kids.
Yeah, it's different.
It's different because a lot of those companies do not focus on you know what I call the sort of the details around Like think about a ski vacation, Carol, Like you're not just interested in the hotel you're going to stay in or the flight, You're interested in the ski instructor, the ski rentals, the ski passes, like you know, the runs, like what you know when you're going to ski. So like I think in adventure travel, what's different is the details, Like if if you know I'm using example, if if you were going to go let's say you were going to go do a bike race, but you didn't want to take your bike. Where do you rent the bike?
Where?
Yeah?
What's the best?
Hell?
Stay?
Yeah?
Yeah?
And so I think that's what's really different about what you know, the opportunity is for outside and travel is that we can really get into the details.
All I know is we're ready, right for what?
Ready to get back to Boulder at full cycle and do a ride up Gold Hill. That's what I'm ready to do. This is a man who's done any time.
You want, anytime you want. You know what you love me know when you're coming out, I'll take you the Gold Hill.
Sounds good. I really appreciate it. Robin. Nice to check in with you. Robin Thurston, founder and CEO of Outside Interactive. They've got the map, my uh suite of apps, they got Warren Miller film Tour, They've got Outside Magazine. That's just a couple love it.
This is Bloomberg.
Okay, so it's Thanksgiving, but it's also about this time that people start to think about their goals for the forthcoming year. In twenty twenty four, about thirty percent of Americans said they made at least one New Year's resolution. This is according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Well, we all know that just because you set a goal, it doesn't mean you stick to it. A month into the new year, more than a quarter of people who made at least one New Year's resolution say that they've only kept some of them. Well, thirteen percent say they didn't keep any of their resolution. This is also a quarding to Pew. They did this at the end of January. So depressing, right, that's how it went for twenty twenty four. Yeah, it's hard to do this stuff.
We have an next guest, though, who is into looking at kind of how you achieve goals and says that there's actually a science to settling and achieving those goals. She's Caroline Adams Miller. She's a psychologist and executive coach, author of many books, including her most recent Big Goals, The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life. She joins us from Delaware. All right, Caroline, help us. How can we set big goals? How can we get there? How can we create a really good life and have balance and enjoy kind of enjoy the journey.
Well, it's so interesting. First of all, hello, I'm not a psychologist. I have to say I'm an applied positive psychologist, so it's a protected term. I want to be really careful about that. But thank you for having me, because goal setting is a huge topic. And of all places I learned about the science of goal setting when I went back to school at midlife, went to the University of Pennsylvania in their first ever Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program, the Science of Happiness, and that's where I'd learned for the first time. After thinking I understood goal setting, I learned for the first time there is a science. It's the number one ranked theory and management. It's called goal setting theory. It's by Lock and Latham. And my capstone that year was about the connection between the science of goal setting and the science of happiness, because we now know that not only is there a science to goal setting that is kind of stuck in our academia that the mass market needs, but all success in all goals across all sectors of life is preceded by being happy first. And so you can't talk about goal setting without also talking about the science of emotional flourishing, so I connected those in my book Creating Your Best Life, came out fifteen years ago, but this year right now, I'm completely committed to bringing the science Lock and Lath them science of goal setting to the world in the book Big Goals, because we really need it. We're still running on fume zombie theories like smart goals or the law of attraction, just a bunch of urban legends, and we need the science. And it's just like after the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages, we have to go evidence based in everything if we're going to survive and thrive.
Listen, I can go to a Barnes and Noble and there's lots of self help books. So tell me about this one. You talk about the science of goal setting. Tell me what we need to do so that we can kind of actually get to that place we want to be super happy.
Sure, well, there are a lot of books on goal setting. It's a very evergreen topic, but to my great surprise, most people do not know there's a science to it. So that's where my book is really different, and it's goal setting theory Lock and Latham. I've added on six steps on top of that, the bridge methodology. It's in the business section. I just went into Barnes and Noble the other day, so it's not in self help. But we all set goals. The thing is we assume we know how to do it because we're all so busy doing different things in our lives. So the science is very simple. And what Lock and Latham found in this number one ranked management theory of seventy three theories never had a replication crisis that goals are divided into two buckets. Start there. A learning goal is when you're adding skills or knowledge in order to be able to accomplish that goal, and then performance goals are like checklists and recipes. You've done it before, you know what it takes to be excellent. The problem is too many people skip the learning part go immediately to thinking they have to come up with a great out come soon. Maybe it's expected of them. But when you mix them up, you get the greatest business disasters in history. And I'll just name a few. Ocean gates, titaned submersible. They had a learning goal to create this thing, but they turned it into a performance goal to make money Boeing seven thirty seven max same thing, the Ford pinto, same thing. Never skip the learning process because that's when people are curious and engaged in getting it right before they're trying to have a specific outcome. So that's step number one. When you're pursuing goals, know the science.
Do you see any of those? Those are the results? Like we can say in hindsight, yes, the seven thirty seven Max disaster, the Titan submersible, the Ford Pinto. Do you see any of these? This happening in real time right now when you look across the business landscape where this is just oh everywhere.
Well, I coach CEOs all over the world. I coach them in space and technology and artificial intelligence, and many of them have let's say, investors and boards of rectors who are insisting that they three x or five x or ten x their results in a year or two years or three years to get their money back. And I'm constantly explaining to boards of directors and CEOs, what got you here may not get you there. You have to understand goal setting theory, because if you know it, you set goals correctly, they are well formed from the outset, and then it can cascade down. So you cannot skip the learning step when you do, you get people cutting corners. You get something I call fo grit. You know where you're faking the fact that you've done something hard. So it's it's everywhere, truly, it's everywhere. This is not the.
Group projects in college. They spent so much time working on this.
Yeah, well, does it have to be hard to be productive and good?
No? It does not. But what Lock and Latham said is that if you're looking for the best possible outcome, you want to be challenging and specific. So I always illustrated by putting my hand out and pass your fingertips. The problem is I raised my three great adult children during the self esteem parenting movement, where we watered down the grades and everyone was a winner and you couldn't.
Can I just tell you not everybody?
Have we moved beyond that? So have we moved beyond that?
I don't know. I mean inching that way. I'm not going to say yes, because the average grade where I went to college Harvard is an a minus. And I can tell you I didn't do nothing but a minus work there, and neither do my friends. So the great inflation has taken away the specialness of doing great work. So Consequently, the Millennials and sometimes Gen X, they get into the workplace and no one's ever given them real honest feedback. And that's hard to hear the first time. I want to quickly say, the adults in their lives did it to them. We're the ones who dumbed down the playgrounds. We're the ones who ban sledding because you could get hurt. I mean, that's on the adults. What I do think is important is everyone has a dream come and he have goals. And I go all over the world talking about this and working with leaders, and I have to say, fewer than five percent of the people I work with have ever heard that there's a science to goal setting goal setting theory.
So I got to ask you just got about a minute and a half left, Tim and I do a pretty good job. I'm going to say that. I'm just going to lay it out.
I think we do a really cal Thank you, Carol.
We do we do?
How can we be better?
Like?
How do?
What's what would you say is our first step? We have to in terms of setting out goals and being better.
In what we're doing?
What do we do we.
Have to?
Yeah? Yeah, okay, sorry, He keeps.
Trying, but you know, but no, but so what? So give us one one. Our big first step just got about a minute.
Big first step is have a goal. But I have to say I combined all the research, all the researchers in this one book, big goal. So I'm just going to say, go, go get the book. Everything you need is in there. But start.
Oh come on, Caroline, give me thirty seconds of a tip. We know you want us to get the book. First step, first setting, yeah, pardon no, first step, yeah yeah yeah, first step.
Break it into a learning goal or performance goal, and then check is it your goal or not? Then look around? Are you brainstorming the right way? What's new? Who's doing it better than you? What's artificial intelligence doing? Who wants you to succeed? Who needs to stay out of your life? What kind of investments do you have to make? Do you have noise and bias in your decision making process? Do you have good grit? Do you have humility? Do you have patience? Passion? And do you have a record board standard for your outcome? So? How's that?
That's great? Thank you so much. I wish we had more time, but this is really fun. Caroline, Adams Miller. Her new book is Big Goals, The Science of setting them, achieving them, and creating your best life. You gotta work on that faux grit.
I know.
Yeah, that's so good. That's so good.