Decoding Vertical Ecosystems: Josh McCarter on Disrupting the Wellness Industry

Tech hasn’t just disrupted the wellness industry ­– it’s revolutionized it. Long before the global pandemic forced health and fitness businesses to pivot to virtual experiences, Mindbody was a key player in enabling wellness organizations to thrive through tech. Mindbody CEO and founder of Booker Software, Josh McCarter, has more than a decade’s experience at the forefront of digitally transforming the wellness industry. He joins this episode to share how the vertical ecosystem connects the world to wellness.

Press play to hear Josh’s thoughts on…

The Necessity of APIs

“You kind of hope that if you build it, they will come. And that's really where you start out in the early days, but without having the APIs and having that ability, nobody's ever going to come, right? Nobody wants to partner with somebody that has a closed ecosystem and is really difficult to interface with.”

Going Beyond APIs

"So it really requires an end-to-end thinking, it's not just, 'hey, we're going to go develop and publish APIs that everybody's going to write to, and that's going to be the end of it.' There's always some component of partner management and technical integration work that's going to be there." 

Satisfying User Expectations

"What we see, especially in the SMB segment is that most of these customers look almost like consumer users, right? Like they want it to be as simple as using an iPhone or using their iPad. And so we have to adapt our technology to where the current users are."