Explore Brian Farber's journey in the GymHealth & Fitness Clubs Industry

That’s a tough one. I think I could relate to the word ‘rootless’ throughout my life, from early childhood to where I am today. I don’t think that we need to go into the deeper details but i believe that not everybody path is easily defined. Not everybody knows exactly where they’re going to be. Sometimes you have to be able to read the situations and make decisions on where you are on that given day or give yourself time to see if it’s going to lead you to where you’re supposed to be. So, that’s what ‘rootless’ signifies to me. – Brian Farber

I grew up in a small town in North Idaho about 45 miles from the Canadian border. That was home for me. It’s like a miniature Lake Tahoe that really nobody has known about until recently. I think COVID has led to people knowing more about it and now many are all traveling there as tourists. I hear all the complaints from my family. It’s a beautiful place but really, the only things you can do there is hard labor or athletics and sports, which is what ultimately helped me get to where I am today. It would be a great place to go back to someday. However, things have changed a lot. It’s a much different place now compared to when I was a kid. The only reason that I was discovered was because I participated in the Olympic Development Program, ODP. Many people would know about it but it’s not really as big or as impactful as it used to be. Essentially, I made the state team for Idaho. So, I represented the state and then I advanced and represented the Region 4. Afterward, I went to national camp and that’s where coaches were able to see me and see what I could do. – Brian Farber

I think you can recognize talent early on. I think there are late bloomers and there’s definitely exceptions to the rule but you can tell the players that kind of are exceptional from an early age. By the time that someone is in high school, you should know whether that’s the sport they should keep playing or if they should find another option. I tried everything back then. I tried basketball, baseball, motocross, football and eventually dwindled it down to focusing on soccer because it was my passion. Maybe it wasn’t the best decision financially. Maybe I would have made some more money playing baseball, but it was not where my heart lied. So, I was all about soccer from an early age and everyone knew it. It was just what I was destined to be. Luckily, I didn’t have any injuries. Other players would have a similar story: really excelling at the game but have something happen at an age that affected them up to the point they couldn’t play or showcase their skills. They missed out on scholarships, etc. There’s a little bit of luck involved with making it to the professional levels for sure but it does come down to dedication and desire. In my case, it is what I always wanted. – Brian Farber

I wouldn’t say it’s 50/50 because If you can’t outrun or outjump or outthink the players, you’re in a disadvantage from the get-go. So, it definitely is a lot. The today’s game is so fast and so skilled that it requires a lot of ability, with or without the ball. Whether you’re just recovering to get back in a position or if you’re the one on the ball who has to create space in a tight channel. So, there’s a lot to it but I would say it  probably leans a little bit more on the physical side. However, having that mental aspect to keep you going, engaged, to stay focused is totally relevant. I would say it’s probably like 60/40, maybe. I mean, it’s really hard to define. – Brian Farber

Well, I had some ups and downs. After college I was PAC 12. I thought I was going to get drafted buy It didn’t work. I quit, got an insurance job and later realized that that was a mistake. I was hearing about friends of mine signing in different leagues and different teams and I just knew I had to go back to it so I quit my job. I spent all my graduation money on suits and ties. That was dumb. Then I ended up walking onto a team. My friend had an invitation to a tryout. He had already kind of advanced through the tryouts and he came back to this this final 20 player tryout for maybe one or two spots. He called me and at the time, I was with the Seattle Sounders. We had a game playing against Gonzaga and I had just scored two goals and it was going well. I was talking to coach Schmetzer thinking I was going to sign with Seattle and my friend called me and told me about this indoor team. He convinced me to come down for this try out. He told me that I had already played in Seattle, I had already shown them what I could do so I should give it a try. I called the coach and he said he didn’t know who gave me that information because there was no try out. There had been misinformation according to him. He told me he’d take my information down though gladly and let me know if there would be another opportunity. So, he straight up lied to my face. I called my friend back, told him that the coach lied to me and didn’t want to come anymore, I thought it was not worth it. He advised me to forget that guy and just go there. So, I drove from Seattle to Corvallis, grabbed my indoor shoes. I said hello to my girlfriend, my now-wife and I drove to Sacramento, slept in my friend’s driveway. He drove us to Turlock, somewhere in the middle of nowhere and that was the day I was discovered. – Brian Farber

A guy called Troy Dayak was the head coach of the former men’s national team. Indoor soccer was a new franchise, they had all these veterans and they were looking for some young guys and I was the only one to actually make the team from that try-out that day and I  eventually got my friend onto the team. He’s one of my best friends, he was the best man at my wedding. Maybe none of this would ever happen if he hadn’t convinced me to drive down that day. – Brian Farber

Yeah, I think the unique thing about me is that I played indoor and outdoor for a lot of seasons. This is before the MLS was really what it is today. I played with Houston and I had some good years there. I also played in Portland. So, I bounced from league to league and I never really had an off season. I got to meet a lot of people along my journey and I am a very friendly personality with everybody so I’ve never burned bridges, I’ve never really had disputes. So, I don’t have any enemies and it all kind of comes full circle. Your soccer life can only last so long. I’m still playing right now because it’s indoor and I can. However, a lot of people wonder what they’re going to do when they retire and usually go into coaching. I thought that’s where I was going too. I had my B license; I’m an accredited coach and I was ready to go into that direction and then I randomly got a job at Puma through this kid that I was coaching. His dad owned a joint venture with Puma. I took over the soccer accessories and I did very well. It was natural, it was easy for me. I knew the trends, the products, I knew the price points. From there, they actually fired my boss and gave me her role. I didn’t really want that because her role included a lot of other things that I didn’t really want to do. I wasn’t passionate about stuff like “back to school” backpack programs, etc. She was looking for a job and found an opportunity at a company called Skillz. Skillz was mostly known as a baseball, golf and performance brand. They wanted to get into soccer, gave me the role and I launched that in 2015. I started in 2014, but it took a year to develop.  I was there for the last seven years. I created the entire global soccer line and it’s one of the leading soccer training brands today. Then BlazePod was an opportunity that I just couldn’t say ‘no’ to. It was the opportunity to make equipment smart, the opportunity for analytics and the cognitive to come together. It was just something that I always wanted to do. The sky’s the limit for us. I mean, we just partnered with West Ham United this last week. – Brian Farber

I think we all know the whole ”pay to play”? I guess it’s a lot more affordable to pick up a basketball and go play it at a hoop anywhere. The soccer game has gotten like that through a lot of different ways and paths and reasons but it’s also shifting back into ultimately where it’s always needed to go. Nowadays there are academies that offer free play for the talented players. So, you maybe have to invest early on to prove yourself but there are also opportunities offered at really young ages, where you can get pulled into an Academy and not have to pay for anything.I cannot say it is not expensive, right? Shoes can be up to $300. You don’t have to buy the top pair of shoes. Shoe doesn’t make the player, right? However, there are definitely some expensive pieces of the game. Some of the players I know that play in the ECNL and the top-level youth leagues travel every weekend to a different state and their family has to go too. My daughter just quit playing soccer last year and I guess I’m saving myself in the long run. – Brian Farber

BlazePod is an unbelievable product. Like I said, it’s something that I always really wanted to get into. They come in a set and you can get a standard or a trainer set. They come with different adapters and accessories to connect them to things to suction cup them to the wall. There’s different technologies or ‘light logics’ as we call them within the pods, within the app that help you up any exercise and it can purely be based off a reaction time, you can make it cognitive. You could add distracting colors by using our focus light logic, where you’ll have one color of choice but also have distracting colors throwing you off. In that way, you have to really focus to not touch the wrong color. You can set consequences to any exercise you want. If you touch the wrong color too many times it basically processes the information. While you’re making your decision, it reacts and analyzes how fast you can get at it. You can actually rearrange your executive order within your brain to process information faster and perform the right task for everyday life or as a high-level athlete. So, we have the best Formula One drivers in the world using BlazePod, the best boxers in the world using it, it’s being used in MMA, NFL, NBA, MLS. It’s happening right now and we’re kind of taking over this space. It’s really exciting because it’s pretty early on. – Brian Farber

So, our founder’s name is Yaniv. He’s amazing. He lives in Israel and he was challenged to create an interactive park for kids in the beginning and he did. There are videos of it where kids are running all over the park, each chasing a particular color and having an unbelievable time without even knowing that they’re really moving, working out, thinking, processing, making decisions and working as a team. There are so many aspects to it that he felt inspired and he realized he needed to create and to create it wirelessly and not just focus it on kids. It was a great test but we know that there was so more to it. It has evolved up to the point where we’re working with top level athletes, physical therapists, rehab. We’re working with brain injuries, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients. There are so many areas where we can actually make an improvement in processing and helping clients, athletes, customers from my 3-year-old son to a 93 year old grandfather who’s experiencing a cognitive decline because they’re just not challenged throughout the day. We can challenge them and keep them sharp, and I think there’s still a lot to be discovered in terms of what we’re capable of doing. – Brian Farber

I think it all kind of depends on the athlete. All of our exercises run off the app and so it all lives in the app. We can train a customer; we can train you right now on how to use the product and make you an expert within two days. You could take our education course and really understand the deeper details of the light logics or we can just show you how to set up your own exercise. If you want to create something, that’s fairly simple too. From fitness to sport and all the way down through military, there’s so many things we can do that there’s almost no limitations. I think that the biggest thing for us is that we can help and affect everybody in a positive way. It’s just a matter of how we actually focus our time. – Brian Farber

I mean, nothing really easy, right? It takes time and effort. We have an unbelievable marketing guy on our team, we have a fantastic sales guy, we have skilled consultants and that’s just within the US side. We’ve launched a master trainer program, so we’re going to have different master trainers located across the country to educate their region or location city, whatever that might be. Our headquarters are in Tel Aviv and we have an awesome team there too. To be fair, the software and the actual product itself is so advanced that I feel like the sky’s the limit for us. However, everything is still new. So, it has been challenging in some ways to focus our attention on where we want to go but it has also been really easy because so many people want to use our product. About a week and a half ago, Steph Curry’s trainer was holding them in his hand while running a session with Steph. That’s just an example. We also had somebody reach out to us because they were on the set of Space Jam 2 and they wanted to make a purchase because they saw them there. I thought that was interesting because it’s obvious who was using them. – Brian Farber

Not necessarily just the athletes. It’s the fitness side of things too, the trainers, the physical therapists. So, we don’t have one target customer. That is a big challenge for us because we have so many people we can help. Nonetheless, the athletic side has been really positive for us. We are currently working with 11 Major League Baseball teams which are using BlazePod. I have a list of NBA teams that we have seen using it even though we didn’t knowingly sell it to them. They made the purchase on their own. So that’s happening. The same thing happened in the NFL. So, the athlete trickle down effect is fantastic because that’s pretty standard. Look at Nike, Under Armour and every other brand out there, if you focus on the athletes, you can get everybody else. However, in our case; we can really help everybody. I think the whole point is  to explain how we can help, whether we’re talking about the top level athlete for their own individual work or their coaches and training staff or their physical therapists, etc. We try to highlight the ways we can help you from using BlazePod every day and making you sharper, making you process information faster, which will ultimately make you either better on the court. It’ll make you a better driver, It’ll make you more aware of your surroundings when you’re walking down the street. Basically, everybody can use it. – Brian Farber

Yeah, blazepod.com is our most commonly used area. That’s where we tell our story, explain the product, highlight the accessories, explain how you can attach these to different things and what is best for you. You may be a basketball player and may want the cone adapters. You may be a cross fitter and you may want the functional adapters. You may be a soccer player or hockey player and want the pod bases because it works on the floor or ice better. So, that’s where we try to send everybody so they can understand our product in a better way. – Brian Farber

I’ve never made a single decision throughout my path that was purely fueled by the money aspect. Maybe that’s not the wisest thing to do but I had teammates who made it pros as I got out of college but they weren’t making a lot of money and eventually quit to take a high paying job. They quit to get into the financial space, or chose whatever field they felt comfortable with. They knew that they were going to be just fine over there and they could say goodbye to the game but not everybody can do that so easily. When I did, an instinct kicked in to show me that I had messed up. I didn’t need to be in an office seat selling insurance. I felt like I was too young and had too much talent to not give it a try, I hadn’t given it a full go yet. When I didn’t get drafted I just accepted it but I guess that wasn’t the case. There’s a different path for everybody. There are so many opportunities in this game whether you’re playing soccer or another sport. There are opportunities for anybody and I think if you’re as passionate about your sport as I was, you’re going to find something in there. I mean, I could have gone into broadcasting, I could have gone into being an agent, I could have gone into merchandising and stayed in that. You just have to put yourselves in, put yourself in that position to stay around the things that you love and it will work out I guess. Maybe not the case for everybody, but it certainly was for me. – Brian Farber

I guess maybe some of it was a little bit of ignorance. I was just trying not to think about it. When I got injured in Portland, I knew it was bad. My doctor actually told me I may never be able to run like before. It was bad when I got hurt in Portland or when I got hurt in Houston. I was out for eight months and I didn’t have a contract because I was on a trial. When I got hurt, I was on a temporary contract. All these things happen and they challenge you but you just have to stay focused on you, right? You can’t control the things you can’t control. So, you have to be able to control your own mindset and not get discouraged. I also had an amazing supporting cast, right? My family, my  girlfriend who is my now wife, were a great support system. She was always there since college and always there to help me with these decisions. Without her, without my mom and her support would have been a challenge. I know that not everybody has that. Everybody always advised me to keep going, figure out what’s next and try to keep me positive. I’ve always been a positive person so it’s part of me. There were moments when I wanted to reconsider but ultimately there was always another opportunity ahead that made more sense or something to look forward to training for or to prepare for. I also had a lot of coaches throughout my career that guided me or had connections to open up a new door and that’s good for you when you’re trying to make something happen. – Brian Farber

I’m a big advocate for just getting as much stuff done as you can. I’ve got to the point now where I have so many things on my plate but you can’t solve everything and you have to learn to prioritize better. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at prioritizing in the last three years, probably a lot more, even in the last year, just with BlazePod in general.  I get an email from an agent with representing a big-time athlete and I may have a college athletic training staff that’s really interested in understanding how to use a product at the same exact time and yes, I want to do both. At certain points I have to figure out where my timing is best spent and that for me has been a big lesson learned. – Brian Farber

Every day is different. Normally, I start pretty early. I get a cup of coffee, I come into my home office and take care of the kids out and catch up on the emails. I have a 10 hour difference so I’m behind from the get-go. I play a little bit of catch up. We normally have 7:00 AM, 8 AM, 9:00 AM meetings and then I go into the office in San Diego. Then, we meet up with the team to either finish emails if I have a gap or start to set up future calls. We have so many things happening that I have to delegate a lot. I have to figure out if the task has to go to our marketing guy, to our sales guy or does it just land on my plate. On any given day, there’s something different. We’re planning on going to multiple events in January and February, we have digital campaigns running. Sometimes, I FaceTime with different athletes in different sports just to show them how to use the product. Then we’re speaking to our agents, our ambassadors and our master trainers on a given basis. So there are a lot of things happening. Our partnerships and our PR team keep us very busy as well. So, honestly, every single day is different, fun and challenging in its own way. – Brian Farber

I don’t know if I would do anything differently, but I will say this is the hard part and this is going to happen, everybody. You’re going to come to a crossroads and you’re going to have to make tough decisions and you’re going to have to learn to forget about the ones that you passed on because you made that decision. I guess this is the exact question is not dwelling on those decisions and moving forward with the decision you make. I had a really good opportunity to play cross over in Germany, an opportunity in Switzerland and they both came up at the same time. Then, I got a contract offer from Portland Timbers. My wife is from Portland and I can remember specifically having coffee sitting at a coffee shop on the Rhine River talking to my agent and I looked at my wife and I chose Portland. She looked at me and her eyes lit up. At that moment, I knew that was the right decision even though we had been sitting there 10 minutes earlier talking about Switzerland or Germany. At that point, I cut those out and I focused on my time in Portland, which was amazing. I started my first game off with a game winning goal and from there it was fantastic. Then I ultimately got injured the next year, which was super unfortunate and you can’t dwell on those. Would it have been different if I would have stayed in Germany or gone to Switzerland? I don’t know but those are some of the thoughts that can creep in. However, you should just accept what has already happened. – Brian Farber

We’re in the middle of some partnerships with groups like IMG and all their youth players that they have. We’ve been speaking to a FIFA group about trying to do multiple things, whether that’s in the medical side from like a concussion protocol, which we can do all the way to processing information. We’re actually about to partner with a London-based soccer company to embed our products into their rebound boards. That will be able to put a player on the pitch in front of a goal running through the app with a ball or multiple balls in order to find and make the right decisions as quickly as they can and the coaches can evaluate and train. A small example would be to imagine if I have one rebound board sitting in front of me, a BlazePod mounted to it and three pods behind me. Most times when I teach a player to turn, you’re telling a player to play that ball and check their shoulder as the ball is traveling to them. It’s a very challenging exercise for a kid to understand when to look, especially at the early ages. So, as the ball is traveling to them they have to know when they’re supposed to look and then focus back on the ball and take a good clean touch. A lot of players will play the ball, look and then as the ball is traveling back to them, the defender will be closing quickly and they run away. So now I can play the ball off a rebound board, which will trigger that pod as soon as that board is touched and the ball will start to come back to me. One of these pods will light up behind me. They can be way over there, or they can be kind of narrow and you can set them anywhere. Only one of them will light up for as long as you set it. So, you can have it light up for three seconds so that player has the time to receive turning look. That’s a bad habit. You can bring it all the way down to two seconds, then a second down and half a second. Now you have a player that can play the ball off the rebound board as soon as it triggers that ball and come back, he’s looking and then he’s working on receiving. So now you’re teaching him something. That is just one habit that we can improve within the game and now you’re going to make that player more aware of his surroundings. So, when the coach says to know what’s going on around you, you actually will. He can go out there and train by himself until he gets it right and understand it. If he doesn’t see it light up, then he’s not looking up fast enough and he can make the time a little bit longer until he can work his way down in time and become a more technical player. So that’s one small example. This company i talked about is building them right now. We plan on launching them in late November, early December, just in time for Christmas. – Brian Farber

If there’s something that you are that passionate about, don’t stop. Just stay focused on it and it will work itself out. If you love it that much, you’re going to find your place within that area of that category. That’s exactly what I did. I didn’t really choose it; I just never chose another option because I never wanted to do anything else and it led me to where I am now. I couldn’t be happier and we have a lot of big things coming in the future, which I can’t even mention all of them right now. – Brian Farber