29. Scott Perkins
CEO of Pliability, mobility maven
Q&A
You weren’t always a ‘fitness guy’. How did you end up as the CEO of an exercise app? I got into computers very young and, when I was 18, I started a web and graphic design business. Later, I set up my own agency with a partner. It was that agency that acquired Romwod [which rebranded as Pliability]. What drew you to Romwod? Was fitness an area of interest? Not at all. I had no understanding of health or fitness. What drew us to Romwod was its business model. It was subscription-based and, at that time, we specialised in building these businesses for clients. Romwod scaled much faster than we imagined, so I approached the owners and we acquired it in 2015. We made it profitable within 41 days.
How did you turn it around so fast? It just needed some business acumen. But it’s also CrossFit as a community. The CrossFit market is very tribal and if an athlete does something, others want to do it, too. The first athletes we brought on board were Kara Saunders and Noah Ohlsen. Kara and Noah showed the CrossFit community what the product was and how it could help. What was the thinking behind the app’s rebranding as Pliability?
We’re very proud of the way CrossFit helped us build our community. That will always be at the core of the business. We see it as a ‘spoke model’, with CrossFit as the hub at the centre, then taking the benefits [of mobility workouts] and extending them outwards to other sports. The name change was a databased decision. A lot of people outside of CrossFit didn’t understand the Romwod name. Within the community, it makes sense, being a combination of two familiar CrossFit acronyms [range of motion and workout of the day].
What other sports are you looking to access now?
Movement is at the core of everything you want to do, whether that’s in sport or in life. What we’re bringing to the table is not just something that can benefit athletic performance, but longevity. It isn’t spoken about enough. What happens outside of the gym? As you get older, how do you recover better so you can do the things you love more? You said you weren’t into fitness. Has your time at the helm of this business changed that?
Yes! Although, I didn’t absorb the importance of it until I had a wake-up call. In 2019, when I was 29, I realised that grinding myself into the ground working had a physical impact. My resting heart rate was hitting 114 and I was on caffeine overload. I was about 22kg heavier than I am today. I was just not in a good place, physically or mentally. Fortunately, because I worked in the health and wellness industry, I was able to access the resources to change that. My close friend Cody Mooney was a competitive CrossFit athlete and was looking for the next transition in his career. I needed help with my health, so we started a mentorship and partnership – he helped me with my health and I taught him how to run a business. Now he sits as the director for performance for Pliability and is guiding a lot of our programming.