Experience Strategy Podcast: Wellbeing Everywhere with Sallie Fraenkel

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Historically, customers expected categories like hospitality and healthcare to support their wellbeing. Today, categories as wide-ranging as finance and electronics are expected to design for wellbeing. Don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry? Think again. Cultural shifts and crises have changed the game. In this episode, we are joined by Sallie Fraenkel, the founder of Mind Body Spirit Network, and the former CMO & COO of SpaFinder and EVP for the Global Wellness Summit. Together we look at how changing customer expectations influence the perception of your experience and specific ways that you can meaningfully integrate wellbeing for your customers and company. 

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts, experienced nerds, uh strategists, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.

Aransas: Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast. I'm Aransas Savas, and I'm Dave Norton, and today we are thrilled to welcome Sallie Fraenkel, the founder of Mind Body Spirit Network, formerly the CMO and COO of Spa Finder, the EVP for the Global Wellness Summit. Someone who we look to frequently for expertise in well-being, particularly as it relates to the travel industry.

As a part of our 2023 Trend Report for Experience Strategists, we identified a truly pervasive [00:01:00], and I believe exciting trend that we have seen continue to grow over the last decade, which is the introduction of wellbeing as an expectation for experienced strategists in every category. We've invited Sallie here to look at this trend with us as someone who has really been at the heart of this movement and expansion for over a decade, to help us look at ways that we might all learn from the history of well-being as we build for the future and the potential for innovation as we integrate well being into categories that maybe don't quite seem intuitively linked to well being or that have not historically been linked to well being. So Sallie, thank you so much for joining us here today. Really [00:02:00] excited to chat with you.

Sallie: Thank you, Aransas. You are quite articulate, and I loved what you had to say just introducing that trend.

Aransas: Thank you. Really, really excited to talk to you about this. I know you've been watching well-being and wellness grow over the last decade. In a nutshell, describe that journey for me. What has changed over the last decade?

Sallie: Well, first of all, I'm gonna take us back a little bit and kind of ground us in when the term wellness really started to be used widely.

Okay, because you're using both the terms wellness and well-being. Well-being is the thing that you achieve through doing certain things that you might call wellness. Really prior to 2008, the word wellness was not being widely used. And I think that many people may recall that in [00:03:00] 2008, we had a financial meltdown that greatly changed our world and how we experience certainly a lot of things that we experienced in the United States.

Prior to that time, the word wellness was not broadly used. Prior to wellness, I think we were talking a lot more about things that had to do with spa, which spa is a place you might go to and experience wellness and, ultimately well-being. But spa was linked with this concept of pampering, and our world changed, and people really rejected that kind of concept.

And it started this modern-day movement if you will. And that really was what, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, this adaptation of this word wellness that we now see everywhere. And I think that was your trend. I think your trend is well-being everywhere. Quite frankly, well-being should be everywhere, [00:04:00] but wellness is the word that I think is being most actively used everywhere, and people are trying to create these wellness experiences.

Aransas: Based on the pervasive need for well-being, as you said, I think that that's absolutely right to distinguish between those two and not dissimilar. The historical drivers that you're referencing here, there was a cultural crisis that triggered this greater thirst for well-being. Yeah.

Sallie: Yes. It was also initially linked, so if you think of the term illness, you know some would say that the opposite of illness is wellness. There's been a lot written about that. Wellness also was linked to this concept of preventing illness. [00:05:00] So there's a spectrum when you look at healthcare. You are either sick, right? Maybe, and you're going into being cared for, or you're trying to keep from getting sick. Some would say that the absence of illness is wellness. Others would debate that term. But you know, wellness was somewhat linked to preventative measures you could take and that's linked to what you eat, your nutrition, how you sleep, how you exercise or move your body. The social components, you know, you can't really, truly be well if your entire financial world is falling apart or your entire social structure is falling apart.

So all of these components sort of came linked together under this umbrella of wellness and wellness experiences of all different kinds, which would then ultimately lead you to well-being, a state of well-being.

Aransas: Right.

Dave: [00:06:00] Sallie, can I ask a question around this? You know, we, as experienced strategists, are trained that we have to treat the customer in a very special way. Oftentimes in the early days, we talked about pampering the customer. Now one of the things that you've said is that we have moved as a society away from pampering for spas and so forth to this idea of wellness but I'm not sure that customer experience, experience strategy has really understood that shift.

We're still trying to make people feel pampered, for lack of a better word. And we really haven't tapped into this idea that we need to support the individual holistically, [00:07:00] which I think is really what well-being is all about.

Sallie: Well, that's interesting because I did link it to the term spa because, as you know, Aransas said, when she introduced me, I worked for a company called Spa Finder for quite a long time, and Spa Finder was the world's largest marketing company for spa and wellness. Now, when I first came to Spa Finder, the word wellness didn't exist. The word spa did. Spa was used sort of a broad way that you could go to a resort and have spa treatments. The term spa solace per acum is, healing through water. You could go and do hots springs and that would help you heal, help you feel more well. And then what started to happen was in 2008. Spa was very much linked with pampering, even though the deep root of spa was rooted in health and healing, and well-being.

[00:08:00] Interestingly enough, wellness really did come largely through this spa kind of lens, the spa world. We wanted to shift the conversation that while there's nothing wrong with pampering and everyone likes to be pampered now and then, or maybe always, but it's a much deeper, Dave, as you said, it's a much deeper expression.

Wellness goes beyond pampering. Wellness, as you said, my company's name is Mind, Body, Spirit Network. The reason for that is this idea of wellness is addressing your body, your mind, and your soul spirit. All of those components coming together in different ways, as you said, holistically to help you have a better life, to feel better, to feel more well.

Aransas: And it's interesting as I [00:09:00] think about the cultural progression of this and, while I wrote this trend report based on millions of pieces of data, some of the data that I rely on most heavily is observing my 12 and 14-year-old daughters and understanding what excites them because they are the consumers of the future and listening to them and their friends, they are as much digital natives as they are well-being natives.

Sallie: Really? Tell me how they're well-being natives.

Aransas: They demand support for their mental and physical well-being in a way that, frankly, that conversation wasn't opened up for the generation prior. It was taken for granted, or it was an individual expectation.

We demanded that the companies that we work with and engage with, the brands that we [00:10:00] listen to, the influencers that we connect with, that they be aligned and supportive of our wellbeing. So that expectation of external support of well-being is, as I said, it's as native to them as technology.

I just think it's really important for us to listen to these kids and their expectations because they will absolutely lead the economic pathways and demand that from here forward.

Dave: You know Aransas, this just occurred to me, and I don't know if this makes sense to you or not bu you can almost trace this trajectory by just looking at what kids want for lunch when they go to school. Like when I was a kid, school lunch, you know, mystery meat was a great thing. We were happy to have a hot school lunch. My kids, they grew up in the nineties and the [00:11:00] two thousands, I guess they were more than two thousands, and they wanted a homemade lunch but the grandkids want a balanced, holistic, homemade lunch.

Aransas: And one that is nut free because those nuts may have an impact on other children. There is a broader lens.

Sallie: I would debate saying because I think that the reality is the term wellness is new, Ish. And by the way,I could tell you because we studied this at Spa Finder. I believe the first use of that term was in a book called, I'm forgetting his name, Dunn and High-Level Wellness. And I believe this was back either in the late fifties or the early sixties. So it hasn't been that long. But the reality is, is that we had knowledge of how to eat. It's just our point of view has changed.

We've had knowledge of movement, physical movement. [00:12:00] It's just that our lifestyles have changed so dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years. If you look at this from a sociological point of view, I'm not a sociologist or any kind of a scientist, but I mean, the rise of technology, which has had tremendous benefits and tremendous detrimental sides. And as you said, Aransas, your kids are digital natives. But prior to that, nutrition has always been looked at. So, Dave, when you talked about school lunches, I mean the food pyramid. It's just that our knowledge of what's good for us has morphed, the way we grow food has morphed, and technology has come into play, and we are much more sedentary.

There are many different social influences that have fueled this need for wellness.

Aransas: I couldn’t agree more. I think though, what we've seen is that the baseline expectation has [00:13:00] shifted in terms of the level of support from brands and experiences, and that's what we are really speaking to.

Absolutely that rise in knowledge and awareness, the access as well as the cultural forces that are making it more difficult for us to take care of ourselves. All of that has increased the demand and expectations. For us, it's been really fascinating to track this across categories and to see that okay sure, spa was the first in there, right? To say, yeah, don't just make me feel good in the moment, but leave me transformed. Make something lasting happen for me.

Sallie: But are you aware, I think that it's interesting when you look at this that the root of spa, I don't know if you're aware that in Europe, taking the waters, you know, that medical insurance covers that. It used to be that in Europe, you'd be sent for a K U R and that would be a two-week course of treatment or longer where you would [00:14:00] take the waters, and you would do all these different healthy things, and it would help you feel better for whatever ailed you, whether you had allergies or whatever. It would cure any number of ailments.

So once upon a time, people would literally go to what they call the spa in order to take a KUR. So, you know, wellness is very deeply rooted in spa. You know? That's why it kind of first came through the spa industry, as it were.

Aransas: Absolutely.

Dave: But to your point Aransas, and kind of building on what you're saying Sallie, it's not just about the spa anymore. We're talking about finance, financial well-being. We're talking about societal well-being. We're talking about shopping well-being, my goodness. Home [00:15:00] building. There's so much that's going on out there. And companies that didn't think that they had a place to play in wellness and well-being are starting to realize that they're part of this larger ecosystem, and people want them to support them. Now at Stone Mantel, one of the things that we talk a lot about is this idea of systems thinking, and systems is a job to be done and part of that systems Job to be done comes from the fact that people want well-being, and wellbeing is holistic and it's systemic. I think people are realizing that their lives get better when they're looking holistically at things, and strategists need to pay attention to that.

Aransas: Yeah, absolutely.

Sallie: That's very well stated.

Aransas: [00:16:00] Dave and I have the great fortune to be exposed to many different categories through our research and when we talk to people about, I mentioned home building, but even electronics. There is an expectation that these electronics understand my personal well-being as well as my mental well-being and that they see me systemically as a whole person, mind, body, and spirit, as you say, and respect that in their design.

Our customers, now at a much greater level than ever before in history, expect us to know them and to show them respect. I had a debate with my 12-year-old this morning on the walk to school about the word respect, and somebody had a sign up that said, respect your elders. She was like, I don't buy that. She said respect only exists. I think it was really interesting. [00:17:00] She was like, respect only exists as a two-way street.

Sallie: Exactly. Respect yourselves.

Sallie: I would like to add something to what you said about the electronics company. So I'd like to offer just one little tidbit. I think if electronics companies were looking at our well-being in a really holistic way, they might be looking at how to make sure we're addressing successfully electromagnetic field, things that are being written about somewhat in the wellness industry, wellness world about our well-being as it relates to electronics and the EMFs that they admit. I don't know if you're familiar with a stone called selenite, something called selenite, which people go out there and get this selenite to offset the EMFs and all this. But wouldn't it be interesting if some of these electronics companies, or I even think about the example

Aransas: [00:18:00] And that will likely come. Right? And I think that's what we're talking about. I think these things that we identify, and I cannot overemphasize the influence of TikTok right now in terms of customers’ expectations.

I have not done a focus group in the last year where I did not get an answer that was about TikTok. Who do you listen to? Who do you listen to that you trust about your finances, about your health, about your relationships? The answer is invariably not from everyone, but invariably someone says TikTok, and someone else says YouTube.

So these voices that you're talking about, Sallie, they are gonna come through. I think there's mainstream media, right? It's a little delayed, as always but yesterday there was a lot of [00:19:00] news about the risk of gas stoves. . I have a gas stove.

Sallie: Oh, I missed that. Oh, no. Something new to worry about.

Aransas: Yeah, something new to worry about. talking about the dangers to respiratory health to children.

Dave: I'm pretty sure, Aransas, that it's because of electromagnetic fields that I'm bald. I would've had a full head of hair had not been for, I'm just kidding.

Aransas: You heard it here first, folks.

Sallie: Dave, there's some wellness that can help.

Dave: Part of the reason we want to talk about this is because we think it's really important that experience strategists up their game, and that means starting to think about the customer, not just in terms of what your product is to them, but what your [00:20:00] product is to this larger ecosystem that they're in, that they're trying to solve for.

You play a role, as an experienced strategist, you play a role in their lives, or your company plays a role in their lives, and it only really works well when the role that you're playing is coordinated, synced, supportive of their goals, their overall all objectives, and the other companies and roles that they play as well.

So you might immediately not think that if you're in finance, that you have anything to do with sleep, but somebody who's struggling with sleep may very well be also struggling with their finances. So that's the thing that's new and different. We, as experienced strategists, have always thought that we just need [00:21:00] to make sure that our experience was the best.

And I think what we're realizing now is that we are just playing a role, and we need to make sure that we understand that role and we're able to coordinate with our partners and with our customers. .

Aransas: I agree, and that alongside understanding the history of wellness and well-being and who the vocal leaders are within that category, I think can start to help experience strategists better understand where those intersections systemically may be happening in the minds of their customers.

I would challenge every experience strategist listening to this to ask themselves what systems are influencing their customer and how their product, service, experience intersects with that systemic experience [00:22:00] of the customer's life. And when we talk to customers, the answer's usually pretty simple. They say, I want you to fit for me. I want you to know me. I want you to be supportive of my mind, body, spirit, Sallie.

Sallie: You know, it's very interesting, as we talked about earlier, I spent a lot of time in the wellness travel space. But one of the things that I talk about a lot, because I work often with travel advisors, travel agents who are working with clients to help send them on whatever kind of trips that they're looking for, and often those trips that will help their well-being. But one of the things we talk about a lot is it's not one size fits all. And the challenge out there is how do you understand what it is that your client is looking for, especially when you can't know each client individually.

Part of [00:23:00] well-being is it's very deeply personal. What's gonna make you feel, well Aransas, versus Dave, what's part of your well-being, what's part of the wellness that you employ in your life to help you feel well and be well might be very different. So it can be, I would imagine, very challenging for a lot of experience strategists.

On the other hand, we do all understand what it does feel like to address someone's well-being. So, I just throw that out there, because it isn't a one size fits all.

Aransas: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because two of the other principles that we really encourage experience strategists to look at in our trend report, if they're seeking to amplify the well-being benefits of their experience are to look at intentionality and reflection. These two moments are so often overlooked and experience strategies and yet so [00:24:00] extraordinarily powerful in terms of the perceived benefit and reward of the experience. When you've say, hey, what does well-being mean to me? That is the essence of intentionality. Get your customer to tell you what they care about.

Ask them what matters to them, and then use that to inform and guide the experience and then ask them afterward. What worked well? What could have been better? What was the effect? In doing so, experience strategists had the opportunity to know their customers better, to allow their customers to know themselves better, and ultimately to develop a deep and lasting relationship between the company and the customer.

Sallie: I thought as you were just saying that, I thought about what Dave said about well-being and shopping or shopping and wellness. And it occurred to me, don't need what that is, and it just occurred to me, for me shopping wellness [00:25:00] is that the certainty that when I order something, I can easily return it.

That peace of mind of knowing that I'm gonna to go buy something online. That makes my life better because it's easy and presumably it's a stress-free sort of shopping and checkout process. But when I know I can return something at no charge to me with the greatest possible, broadest,sort of ease to doing that, that does actually make me feel well, if you will. Especially because of retail therapy.

Dave: Absolutely. Aransas one of the things that you said is, when you were describing kind of the process, is you follow up with them and you ask them, what worked for them. It's interesting to me that you said what worked for you.

Instead of saying, how likely are they to recommend. [00:26:00] We talk about this a lot, but it's a totally different mindset that we as experience strategists have to get into and we can't, we can't be constantly trying to turn every interaction into a loyalty moment. We've got to start turning those interactions into opportunities to learn.

Aransas: I distinguish it in my mind between a loyalty moment and a relationship moment.

Sallie: That's great. Can I ask you two a question? I know that's turning this on its head a little bit, but do you have any concern around wellness washing? You know, we reach this. Okay. So how would you talk with experience strategists about how to avoid falling into the trap of wellness washing?

Aransas: That brings me straight to our second experience strategy trend, [00:27:00] which is powered by customer purpose, so that trend speaks very directly to insert descriptive washing, that we've seen so much of and really challenges experience strategists to not be brand voices that are just telling stories and not delivering on promises. The role of authenticity in a relationship. Whether it's a human-to-human relationship or a human-to-brand relationship, we have to show up with authentic concern and interest, and we have to deliver on the promises we make.

I think when we talk about greenwashing, whitewashing, you name it, wellness washing. Every washing. Wellness, washing. All the washing. What we're saying is inauthenticity.

Dave: [00:28:00] Those of you that have been listening to our sessions, or our podcasts, we talk a lot about getting jobs done for customers. That is very much tied to customer purpose. You need to know what it is that they're trying to accomplish. What is the role that you are playing? Because you're not doing everything for them, and you need to solve for that particular role well in their lives. And there's no other way to describe it than you need to know what the functional, emotional, social, aspirational and even systemic jobs are that people are trying to get done. And then learn about those and get better about it over time. That's how you're going to stay focused on the customer's purpose. And that's part of, that's not all of what you're talking about, Aransas, because you're talking about [00:29:00] showing up in an authentic way, but it's part of how we ensure that what we're doing is not making promises, but what we're doing is actually delivering on customer purpose.

Aransas: I want to make sure that we bring this home by really summarizing the key takeaways for the experience strategists who are listening to us today.

I think we heard loud and clear, Dave, that we have to understand the role the company plays within the customer systems. We talk a lot about that in the trend report. So certainly, if that's something you're interested in, go read the report. We give you the exact tools and techniques that our clients use to effectively drive those solutions within their companies.

So please reach out to us if you have other questions, but know that there are lots of great resources for you in the report [00:30:00] itself. We also talk about the power of intention and reflection more on that in the report too. But again It comes down to listening, to caring enough to listen.

And then the third one I'll pull out is the role of authenticity that we talked about in customer purpose. I also want to just highlight one more time, what Sallie said about the difference between pampering and well-being. That you pointed us towards sort of as a historical trend and experience strategy and customer expectations, be nice to us, sure. Like that. At one point, that was kind of an aspirational job to be done, now it's a functional job to be done.

Dave: I love that.

Aransas: It is at the lowest level of expectation. [00:31:00] What we want for you to do now is to fit within our lives and to serve us holistically in a way that is meaningful and ideally transformative. Anything else either of you would add to key takeaways here before we wrap up.

Sallie: I would just say that I couldn't agree with you more that wellness is everywhere. Well-being is everywhere, and it's just going to become, even though the word everywhere is pretty all-encompassing, I think there are still more places that it's going to go. I think you all have done a great job of identifying how this can relate to a lot of different industries because let's face it, industries are people. Customers are people.

We all are craving wellness and well-being. This is something that at the core, it's a very core sort of thing. So I applaud you for all of the trends, but I was particularly excited to see this one.

Aransas: I was excited to tell you about it.

Dave, anything you want to add before you wrap up?

Dave: No, I [00:32:00] I totally agree with you Aransas and love where we're headed, and it's very positive. That's a positive thing. We need positive things in our lives. Life is complicated. I think the more we as professionals look at this particular trend, the more likely we are to really have a positive impact on our customers.

Aransas: I love that you bring that up because that really does bring this back to a place of meaningful motivation. So as experience strategists, most of us crave a positive impact with our work. We spend more time working than pretty much anything else in our lives and we are customers too. We are customers of our companies as employees, and certainly, we've seen that trend deepen into all categories as well, and expectation that our work [00:33:00] life be meaningful.

And so this opportunity to have a meaningful and valuable role in our customers' lives will only deepen our satisfaction as experience strategist alongside deepening that experience for our customers and the economic value to our companies. So it really is a win, win, win, and an exciting time, as you said.

Sallie, thank you so much for joining us, and for bringing your wealth of experience and depth of knowledge to this conversation. Dave, thank you for being my partner in crime. Most of all, thank you to everyone listening. Keep reaching out to us. Tell us what you want more and less of what's working for you.

We want to build a relationship with you and be a good fit in your system.

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