How Hyperice CEO Jim Huether Sets Giant Goals for the Fast Growing Company

Four and a half years ago, Jim Huether saw the potential behind a niche industry before it became one of the most sought-after spaces for brands to play in or companies to launch out of. "In 2014, I remember everybody said the recovery and movement space, it's too small ... you can never create a sustainable global business in the recovery space," Huether recalled. But, as he likes to point out, "You have to know that you're going to have naysayers, and if you have naysayers, it usually means you're doing something right." Huether took his passion for working with small, emerging companies and figuring out how to scale them, and he applied it to Hyperice. Hyperice, launched in 2010 specifically for high-performance athletes, produced tools and technology to speed up recovery, prevent injury, and enhance movement through the use of vibration technology, heat, ice, and compression. Today, you can find Hyperice products in gyms, studios, and everyday athletes' homes all over the world. When Huether linked up with Hyperice, he - like Hyperice's founder Anthony Katz - believed the Hyperice product wasn't just an interesting, unique new tool. He believed it had the power to benefit athletes all around the world, professional and everyday alike. Huether was drawn to the challenge of taking a company with a lot of promise and a solid product to the next level: he wanted Hyperice to become the fastest growing company in sports. And when Huether came on board as CEO in 2015 that became his big, hairy, audacious goal. "When I came on, there was one product," he said. "It was a good, innovative product and there were some bright spots around the brand, but we really needed a new strategy, new goals and objectives, we needed a lot of new members to the team that were motivated and creative, and we needed to continue to evolve and build the best products in the world. We had to be relentless in creating innovative products and [we had to] challenge ourselves to continue to come up with those products." Huether attributes a solid strategy that his entire team was on board with, an intense work ethic to strive for the best product innovations in the world, and a healthy sense of competition to achieving that goal. His marker of success? In August 2016, Hyperice was named #96 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing private companies in America (at 3300% growth). For Huether, the growth of the company's culture (and not just the ping-pong table in the office, he notes, but rather a culture built on work ethic and sense of collaboration) has to remain in lock-step in order to keep growing at this trajectory and to go after those bigger, even hairier, more audacious goals for the future. "I've learned that you have to make sure the entire team is always on the same page. You have to foster an environment within your company where people are working together collectively and not against each other. If you do that, you set up the whole organization for success." He's doing something right and bringing in some good ju-ju for sure, because the company experienced its single greatest success yet with the launch of the Hypervolt. "Probably our biggest success as a company was the launch of of the Hypervolt. We sold out in seven hours," Huether said. "We were sold out all over the world." Huether alluded to the idea that the success of the Hypervolt was in large part because the world was ready for the innovation, and Hyperice is well on its way to positioning itself as a true leader in the recovery and movement space. From serving only high-end, niche recovery tools to professional athletes to offering everyday athletes knowledge, tools and technology about how to move better, warm-up more efficiently and recover more efficiently, Huether has a new goal on the horizon. "My biggest goal," Huether began with excitement behind his voice, "I want Hyperice to be on the list of the world's most innovative companies. "Our vision and mission has evolved into helping everybody move more efficiently ... [and] to change the way people think about movement, mobility, warm-up, health, and wellness, and it's become really exciting." As Huether sees it, helping individuals improve one of the most important aspects of human nature - movement - can change their entire lives for the better. "As science evolves, if we can be that leader, providing people with tools and technology to help people achieve their goals, we can change the world and we can be one of the most innovative companies on the planet." Hear this interview for yourself on this week’s episode. And if you like what you hear, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- Episode transcript: JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by a aSweatLife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. CK: Good morning, Jeana. MU: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning and Maggie, you spoke with Jim from HyperIce this week. MU: I did. I, I got to talk to Jim Huether. He's the CEO of Hyperice. Hyperice, is a movement enhancement technology company and for anyone who's never experienced a Hyperice device before, it is kind of like a foam roller, but nothing like a foam roller because it vibrates and it is not made of foam at all, but it has grown incredibly quickly in the last couple years and now that Jim is CEO, it's his job to see this company through to become one of the most innovative companies in the world is what he hopes for. JAC: And Jim is CEO but not the founder, which is an interesting position to be in because his job is to take that company, take its innovation and its ideas and make it profitable, but he's super focused on team. Can you talk a little bit about that, Maggie? MU: Yeah. It was a really refreshing thing for me to hear him say because he does come from a background of helping companies grow and become profitable. However, as CEO he sees it as one of his big roles to help his team see the goal and the vision together and to help everyone get on that same page to help this company become what he envisions it to be and it's already one of the fastest growing in America, but to become the most innovative in the world and is what Jim told me he envisions, but part of being growth minded for him, it's not just him seeing numbers on a page and what a title of a company looks like, but really what the entire team is helping create and build together. So it's not as much competitive as it is supportive from the inside is what I took from him. CK: And it's interesting too just the whole industry because it has been sort of niche but recovery. I know I'm a runner and you all know from your experience in the fitness world like it's really moving from high level athletics to the rest of the world. How has, does he see Hyperice’s role in taking recovery to the masses? MU: I think the company in general is really fascinating because I did a little research as to where it came from and we didn't end up talking about this on the podcast, but really Hyperice at first was technology meant for professional athletes and college athletes and it wasn't even the products that we use today as in the Vyper and the Sphere, which we'll talk a little bit about in the episode, but Hyperice has been a part of that journey of helping people become and think of themselves as athletes and I think that we all consider ourselves athletes now and I love that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that just because we don't play on a professional, team but if you are athletic everyday, if you do something that you sweat with every single day, your body needs to recover and the tools that Hyperice created helps athletes everyday athletes and professional alike recover and get stronger over time. So I, I think seeing that a few years ago was almost revolutionary because people didn't see it as a market or see it as a possibility and now we're all kind of getting on board with recovering like athletes make sense if we are pushing our bodies like athletes. CK: Awesome. Yeah. It was really interesting to hear his take on this. It's a great interview. So I'm excited to share it. Here is Maggie with Jim. MU: So I'm Maggie Umberger; I’m joined today on the #WeGotGoals podcast by Jim Huether, he’s the CEO of Hyperice, which is one of the fastest growing companies in America. So thank you so much Jim, for joining us. JH: Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm really excited about this. So thank you. MU: Yeah. So I just, I want to get right into it with you and I'd love to start just by hearing a little bit about your journey to becoming CEO of Hyperice, one of these incredibly fast growing and amazingly niche but exciting companies, tech companies now. Um, so what led you to this spot that you're sitting in now? JH: Yeah. Great question. And I was always very motivated. I went back to business school once I graduated. I was working in sales and marketing for Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is a sports and entertainment company. I mean I went back actually to graduate school, this is probably about 15 years ago, mayb...