Our NeuFit® company is very much a product of our community – our amazing Austin, Texas home. It’s where we live and work, where the Neubie® device was born, and where we get to pursue our passion for a better way to help patients recovering from injury or surgery and supporting those who seek to optimize their fitness and wellness journey. And we get to do our work together with our team of incredible people from right here in Austin.
Today Austin is a place with a global reputation for ideas and innovation. We first earned our street cred within national and later international music circles. Who hasn’t watched the music tv show Austin City Limits on PBS – now the longest running music series in television history since it began in 1976? Our community is now known beyond music as fertile ground for all forms of tech and start-ups. So, because we live and work in this community and it has helped us to pursue our purpose, it only made sense to us to participate this year in one of the most important conferences for creativity, innovation and ideas that also happens to be hosted right here in Austin – the South by Southwest® Conference (SXSW®)!
SXSW began in 1987 and it quickly captured the attention of innovators worldwide as it brings together people across sectors and disciplines to share, learn, and grow. At the 2022 conference which just ended, NeuFit participated in the Wellness Expo – a celebration of what’s new and noteworthy across the health and wellness spectrum for attendees interested in healthy living and connecting with companies in the continually-growing wellness industry. We also exhibited at the Creative Industries Expo. Both of these platforms were important to us because of the focus on the future of wellness and what can be learned when there is a convergence of ideas and expertise across sectors.
Part of growing a company and championing one’s purpose is evangelizing your passion to your audience or ‘target market’ in marketing vernacular. Defining the boundaries of your audience is part science and part art. For us, participating in SXSW was important because we could talk about our work in the context of new ideas – where we could be inspired by the work of others and hopefully excite some of the attendees about our vision.
The response to our work at SXSW was incredible. We were busy in our exhibits throughout the conference connecting with people from around the U.S. and the world sharing our NeuFit mission and demonstrating our pride and joy of course – the Neubie neuro-muscular electrical stimulation device (NMES).
It seemed like everybody approached us with an open mind too. People were curious rather than skeptical. They saw the merits of our approach and were excited that the NeuFit Method works so well. Frankly, it didn’t hurt that we were collocated together with other amazing innovations all in the same space.
Based on the reaction we received, we gained an important appreciation for part of our audience who is very well represented right here in Austin – the tech community. When we began to talk about what the Neubie device can do for pain management, we suddenly had a queue of volunteers telling us about their sore backs, prolonged pain after surgery, and neurological conditions. Given that many of the participants of the conference work in tech, an industry that typically requires sitting for long periods of time and high stress, some of the more common things we saw were general stress complaints and back pain. We are going to take this insight back to our own clinic and consider how we can continue to connect with our local tech community.
The point of sharing our exhibit experience at SXSW is that, especially for our readers who are practitioners working at or perhaps operating their own physical therapy or chiropractic clinic, we encourage you to find ways outside of your traditional communications to share your work with a wider audience.
Perhaps there is a conference you’ve considered but have yet to participate in either as an attendee, speaker, or exhibitor. Perhaps there is a segment of your audience that you have spent less time nurturing that could be an untapped opportunity to grow your practice. Or perhaps it is time to simply communicate more about why and what you do online and/or in-person.
The reward may be a new patient, a new staff member, a potential partner or collaborator or simply increased awareness and appreciation for your work.
Whatever audience boundary you want to push through we encourage you to do so. And if the Neubie device and the NeuFit Method is already part of your practice, don’t underestimate the inherent news value of sharing what we are doing together in support of our patients. While here at NeuFit “HQ” we live and breathe the NeuFit Method every day, we know that there is a vast audience out there who has still yet to hear about the benefits of harnessing our body’s nervous system for a better way to heal.
And as we learned ourselves first-hand, new points of contact can be amazing learning opportunities. We left SXSW with a stronger sense of the value that the NeuFit Method can bring to tech companies and their employees just by listening to who was getting a “charge” from our work and what was exciting them.
So, we encourage you to find your own SXSW equivalent. It need not be a big investment either. Just continue to stretch the boundaries of who hears about your work. Your passion deserves to be heard!
And to those who we met at SXSW; it was so great to meet you and thank you for inspiring us! We look forward to connecting in the future.
Let’s charge forward to better outcomes together!
