033: For Dummies Writer is now Gamifying Company Wellness? The Danna Korn-Van Noy Interview.

Background on Danna Korn-Van Noy of Sonic Boom Wellness:

Danna Korn-Van Noy is Co-Founder of Sonic Boom Wellness, a software company specializing in corporate wellness. Danna began her work in the wellness industry in 1991, with a focus on nutrition and medical conditions that benefit from a gluten-free diet. She is a best-selling author of six books on nutrition, including three in the prestigious “For Dummies” series. Renowned as the country’s “Gluten-Free Guru,” Danna is respected as one of the leading authorities on the gluten-free diet and medical conditions that benefit from it.

Listen in to learn some interesting insights from the mind of our company’s co-founder, as well as fascinating tidbits from Sonic Boom’s past, including:

The inspiration that led to the founding of Sonic Boom
How Danna got the gig of writing several bestsellers in the “For Dummies” series
Early obstacles that were thrown at the fledgling corporate wellness company
The time we stepped away from our core competency (and learned to never do it again)
Why you should embrace failure
…and as a bonus, you’ll discover a few of Danna’s favorite things

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:11] Danna is the founder of Sonic Boom Wellness, the first and only wellness-engagement company committed to improving members’ daily health habits.
[2:13] She and her husband Bryan started the company 10 years ago out of frustration.
[2:50] Danna wrote 7 bestselling books about nutrition and she is well known as the Gluten-Free Guru.
[4:54] They started the company in 2007 and got married in 2008.
[6:07] “I think that’s part of an Entrepreneur’s nature to be able to juggle a lot of balls and to be able to manage a lot of things at once.”
[6:27] Danna wrote books for the “For Dummies” series.
[13:08] They got to a point that they were 6 months in the business and they only have 4 months of savings left before they became homeless.
[13:31] A lot of people told them that their business will never work.
[14:29] “Thankfully, we failed.”
[16:16] Their first big client is Kyocera.
[19:53] When they first started the business, the first thing they did was to educate people why they need a wellness program.
[25:44] “What works for our program really has very little thing to do with the size of the company or even the demographics, or the industry. It has more to do with “Are they excited by the unique aspects that Sonic Boom brings to the table?””
[29:28] One of their biggest mistakes was they took their eye off their core competency and tried to do something outside their core competency.
[34:45] Their first software was developed by an outsourcing firm from India.
[42:27] Danna discourages working with your spouse.
[43:03] “Embrace failure…When life is easy and you’re just sailing through and every business deal happens to go well for you, that’s not always in your best interest.”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Since I’ve written several, it’s hard not to choose my own 😀 … but I’m getting super into car racing now and absolutely love Speed Secrets by Ross Bentley!
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Oh boy. I purchase almost daily now (a love-hate relationship with Prime). Maybe the “peg leg” I bought when I had ankle surgery this year – it gave me back my hands, which can’t be used when crutching. I mean seriously – HOW do you carry a martini with crutches? The iWalk 2.0 is how!
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? We use Asana as our project-management tool. It provided a great way to get everyone on the same page for collaborative projects, and it provides transparency into workloads.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Finding awesome sales people. We find it tough to hire them because sales people are natural BS’ers, so they kill it in the interviews and then – well, they don’t always kill it in real life. They can also be super expensive, and because we’re self-funded, we don’t have gobs of money to throw their way. We regret not beefing up our sales team years ago.

Key Point from the Interview:

“Embrace failure…When life is easy and you’re just sailing through and every business deal happens to go well for you, that’s not always in your best interest.”