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from time to time, shmula interviews companies that are disruptive-but-value-adding, either in their approach to business, their revenue model, or in their technology. to read about the companies featured on shmula, please go to the company interview page.
*****/ today on shmula, we’re speaking with chad blodgett, ceo and founder of ehealthcompete & weightlosswars. his approach is a uniquely different approach to wellness, where he blends the social and community aspect of the web, and the web’s efficiency to enforce the concept of fun competition to arrive at the end result of wellness. welcome, chad. shmula: please provide a short bio on yourself
My name is Chad Blodgett I am the founder and CEO of eHealthCompete. I am a partner in an entrepreneur group that manages over 8 start-ups. My day-to-day consists of running eHealthCompete and WeightLossWars. I love innovation, ideas and people that do more then just think about making a difference. I have a degree in information systems from BYU and play a lot of basketball and golf. My favorite start-ups are my two boys (2.5 years, and .66 years).
shmula: so, tell us what the business problem or opportunity that ehealthcompete is addressing?
The bottom line problem is that your employees have lifestyles that result in injury and disease. That spells significant costs to your company. The cost of obesity alone to businesses is over $12 billion each year. These lifestyle costs will probably be what puts GM and other large companies out of business (there are more health care dollars put into every GM car then there are steel dollars. Its hard to be profitable in that situation). Health Care is the Number two expense in almost every business (just under wages) and this expense is increasing drastically each year. There has been much political discussion on this problem and legislation was passed two years ago to allow for pre-tax Health Savings Accounts. So, bottom line is the problem is huge and lots of people are trying to fix it.
shmula: $12 Billion – that’s a big number. where are you getting that number from?
That number comes from the Washington Business Group on Health, based in Washington, D.C. Here is the reference: november 9, 2003, The Denver Post, distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
shmula: does this mean that the eHealthCompete market opportunity is $12 Billion?
No, it is much bigger. 64% of Americans are overweight or obese, and will spend $48.8 billion themselves on weight related products or services (estimated 5.6% growth from last year). eHealthCompete allows employees to create their own family competitions in addition to the services paid for by their employer. These competitions are created through our family brand, WeightLossWars.com. So our opportunity is with the employers and with the end consumers. Both markets are very large which presents a good opportunity.
shmula: how does ehealthcompete address the business problem?
To fight this battle you need to change employee behavior – which isn’t easy. Most businesses have adopted some sort of employee health and wellness program to try and change behavior – however these programs usually have poor participation (because they are totally boring) and therefore poor outcomes. eHealthCompete’s approach has been designed by employees and therefore drastically improves participation rates. Our approach is simple: competition. We design all kinds of programs that pit employees or departments against other employees or departments in some area of health. We even have companies competing against other companies. We also focus on making Wellness more of a community event (less of a boring individual program). All of these features and campaigns are run on our web-based system and really make getting healthy fun. Our most popular competition is a Weight Loss Challenge similar to NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” (we were around doing our thing way before they were).
shmula: it sounds like eHealthCompete has systematized competition-based wellness. Can you give us an example of how you do this on the web?
You bet. With each of our clients (meaning businesses), we identify different areas of health where their employees need improvement. We do this through survey’s, assessments, and sometimes by gathering bio-metric (i.e. blood draws, etc). We then determine which health promotion activities will result in health improvements if adopted by the employees. We then develop a “competition plan” that turns the health activity into something with more of a twist! Once we have developed the plan, we communicate the competition to the employees – each employee then signs up on eHealthCompete, receives their own personal account, records their progress, and views the leader board. There are a bunch of other sweet tools that make the competition fun – discussion boards, competitor graphs, and even a sabotage store. The sabotage store allows competitors to purchase and send fatty, high calorie treats to their opponents.
shmula: how does a ehc campaign help your clients?
Measurable differences that we could share? We like to measure our success by the lives that are changed – that might sound cheesy, but we get quite a feeling when we read the stories that come in. However, clients like to see some hard numbers – so here are a few numbers from a recent campaign:“At the end of the challenge the top 10 winners had an average weight loss of 8.4% of their body weight with the top 3 employees losing 13.46%, 13.41% and 12.34% respectively. In addition there were 31,000 minutes exercised during the 82 days of competition and over 500 miles covered by the group.”
This type of activity starts to make an impact on claims, absenteeism, productivity (sales, etc), morale, retention, etc. One organization saw a 15:1 ROI in absenteeism alone, which means that for every dollar invested in their wellness efforts, the company realized a $15 dollar return. This particular client was a school district and since the teachers began to live healthier lifestyles, they missed less work, which means the school district began paying less out in substitute costs, etc. In the end their return on investing into company wellness was very large!
shmula: so, how does ehc make money?
We charge a small set up fee and then a Per Employee Per Month charge to the business.
shmula: that sounds really cool. i especially like the sabotage store. who else is in this space?
Our competitors are other health and wellness vendors that have a major portion of their services online. They include companies like MyEPHIT, IWellSolutions, Miavita, etc.
shmula: In regards to being an entrepreneur, what keeps you up at night?
Meeting payroll. There are families (other than my own) that are dependent on the income that we generate – thinking about that will keep anyone up at night. I also find myself staring at the ceiling thinking of new ways to innovate or satisfy a need in the industry. Sometimes the best ideas come in the quiet of the night.
shmula: Anything else you’d like to share?
If you think your department could whoop up on another department in your organization – than call’em out! We’d be happy to prove you right! You can contact me at (cblodgett AT ehealthcompete.com ) Or, if you would rather create a family competition then you can visit weightlosswars.com which follows the same model, but not at the corporate/employee-level, instead it’s at the family/friend/group level.
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