Melanie Webb – using technology & Mother Nature’s gym to transform bodies, minds, and souls

NOTES

Recorded in the Pink Room at Kiln Park City

WebbWell.com

WebbWell App (Apple App Store)

Adventures in Mother Nature’s Gym: The Ultimate Guide to Planning and Leading Your Own Fitness Retreats by Melanie Webb

Melanie Webb on LinkedIn

Melanie Webb on Instagram

Book Recommendation: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey, MD

SUMMARY

In this Maker Manager Money podcast episode, host Kyle Knowles interviews Melanie Webb, an innovative entrepreneur at the intersection of fitness, nature, and technology. Melanie takes listeners on her journey from studying human physiology at BYU to becoming a wildlife biologist in Southern Utah to eventually founding her outdoor fitness company, WebbWell.

After working outdoors monitoring endangered species for several years, Melanie missed the connection to people and pivoted to personal training, getting certified while still working as a biologist. She sought new adventures and took an environmental consulting job in Washington, D.C., but quickly realized cubicle life wasn’t for her. She began training clients at the elite Equinox gym, building a thriving practice training everyone from government officials to professional athletes.

Craving the outdoors, Melanie envisioned herself in Zion National Park one day and soon decided to move back west. She resettled in California, training wealthy clients and leading them on intense outdoor fitness retreats to prepare for adventures like climbing Kilimanjaro. Melanie has learned from her clients throughout her journey, using their business mentorship to shape her entrepreneurial path. After nearly 25 years as a trainer, Melanie launched the WebbWell app in 2021 as the culmination of her life’s work and unique approach to training, blending high-tech delivery with a connection to nature.

Melanie recommends

• Using outdoor adventures and nature to help high-powered clients relax and transform
• Embracing failures as “just another brick in your building” on the entrepreneurial journey
• Reading the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
• Following her on Instagram @melanie.from.webwell

Kyle Knowles:
Hello there. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money podcast, a podcast about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships from startups to stay ups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going, and future entrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles, and it’s a Wednesday evening at Kiln Park City. What a vibe we’ve got here. We’re in the pink conference room. Kiln is the goat. They are the Michael Jordan of coworking communities. Today’s guest is Melanie Webb with two Bs. That’s W-E-B-B. She’s a powerhouse in health and fitness. Melanie was raised in Orem, Utah, went to BYU, spent a year as an environmental consultant in Washington, D.C., then seamlessly transitioned into the fitness industry, eventually founding WebbWell, and creating the innovative WebbWell app.
She’s not your typical personal trainer. Melanie takes fitness beyond the gym, leading outdoor fitness adventures that blend the physical with nature. Her unique approach, drawing from her rigorous science background at BYU, and her experience as a wildlife biologist has redefined personal training for successful business professionals, especially those sacrificing personal wellness for career success. Melanie’s story is one of bold risks and transformations from quitting a master’s in nutrition to working at the famous Equinox gym in D.C. frequented by high profile politicos. Let’s dive into Project U with Melanie Webb, a true innovator at the intersection of fitness of nature and technology. Welcome to the podcast, Melanie.

Melanie Webb:
Wow. Thank you, Kyle. What an intro. Thanks for having me in the pink room at Kiln Park City. It’s beautiful.

Kyle Knowles:
It’s so nice. It’s so nice in here. It’s a lovely evening in Park City, and I just love kiln. I love the vibe here. You just feel creative as soon as you start walking into Kiln, any Kiln. They have great networking events. We were talking about earlier some of the events, and it just so happens that someone you met at a networking event introduced us, and he said that you would be a great guest to be on the podcast. So, very impressive your background, the things that you’re doing. Can we just go to the app, this WebbWell app? Can we just talk about that first?

Melanie Webb:
Let’s skip right into the juicy app-

Kyle Knowles:
Jump into it.

Melanie Webb:
… that took me a couple of years to get approval in the Apple Store.

Kyle Knowles:
Really?

Melanie Webb:
Well, I should say, from start to finish, from inception to creation to getting through the submission and approval process. What a journey, what a exercise in fortitude and resilience and all of the things.

Kyle Knowles:
When did you launch the app then? How long ago was it?

Melanie Webb:
Technically, the app was launched about almost two years ago as a free app. We were just, between my digital partners and I, working through the paywall and their structure. So, technically, the app hit the pro subscription, basically the monthly subscription two months ago, so it’s a new release. We are gunning for Google Android, the Google store, but we’re not there yet. So currently, it’s available in the Apple Store only, but we think within the next couple of months, we should have beta in Android.

Kyle Knowles:
Oh, that’s awesome. Tell me, what does the app do?

Melanie Webb:
The WebbWell app is it’s my version of what fitness should look like. So rather than build brick and mortar, I built an app is what I like to say. But if you came to brick and mortar to work with me, this is what you would encounter. You would encounter a movement studio that had all of the basics broken down, important body weight movements that become building blocks of every other workout. Then you have workouts everywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes long, and then warmups and cool downs. So, that comprises the movement studio section. Then there’s the recovery room, which is where you go to access the breath work, the meditations, the soundscape, naturescapes, gong sound baths, crystal bowls, things like the latest…
I’m trying to play with evidence-based tools. We now know so much about how these things impact our mental health and our physical wellbeing. So, everything you’ll find on WebbWell is tried and tested and a bit timeless. These are tools I’ve used with clients for decades now. There’s also specialty programming, so there’s 21-day challenges for beginner, advanced, and intermediate exercises. So, you have up to 90 days programs to just pick from and do. One of my favorite pieces of content on the app is it’s actually a 15-piece walkthrough of how to use self myofascial release techniques like foam rollers and balls and things like that to get yourself between massages. You could look at it like that.

Kyle Knowles:
Say the word again, self myolar fasciar. I don’t know what it is.

Melanie Webb:
That’s a big word. It’s called-

Kyle Knowles:
Is it your back? What is it? I don’t know.

Melanie Webb:
The acronym, which a lot of people in fitness have probably seen is SFMR, self myofascial release. You may have seen a foam roller in a gym, or a trigger point ball. Think of fascia as the casing in our sausage. Our muscles are wrapped in this casing that gives us form. Without that fascia, we would be blobs of meat on skeleton with no form. Everyone should know that you’re wrapped in fascia, and that you can do things on your own to release, to give yourself more symmetry, better function, less pain. That’s critical. So, anyone who’s active is consistently building tightness and tension in the body.
Anyone working on the computer every day all day is building a lot of tension through the front body. So, there’s ways that you can release that on your own. You don’t have to always go to get a massage.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s one of the modules in the app.

Melanie Webb:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
Now, I would think that wellness programs would be interested in this. Is that the target audience, or is it… Who is the target audience?

Melanie Webb:
Great question. I absolutely am looking to partner with corporations who have wellness benefits in their offerings to their employees who are interested in moving the needle on their employee wellbeing across both physical and mental metrics. But also, this is for entrepreneurs. These are… A lot of my clients through the decades have been self-made business people. So again, these are the workouts that I do with them in the gym, and it’s not just me on the app either. I actually have had 13 different colleagues contribute content. So, the content and the quality is phenomenal, and it’s not just in my style. There’s different styles here.
So, this is for anybody. This is available anytime from anywhere. There is a strong flavor of nature, so I do think it will really appeal to people who appreciate that, or even want to experience more nature even though they can’t get there, if that makes sense.

Kyle Knowles:
Does that mean you filmed some of these things outdoors, I assume?

Melanie Webb:
Yes. Yes. A lot of the content was filmed outdoors. So, it’s also… So far, all of the content… With the exception of one or two pieces, you really can do them anywhere. You could do them in your home garage. There are body weight movements, and then there are functional exercises that have weights, but nothing with big gym equipment required.

Kyle Knowles:
I love it. This is the culmination really. This is your, I don’t know, I want to say magnum opus or something like that for a writer, right? This is a culmination of, like you said, decades of being a personal trainer, working with people, and understanding what people need from workouts, right?

Melanie Webb:
Yes. Yes. I’ve been a certified personal trainer now for 25 years, and that’s after graduating with my bachelor’s degree, so 30 years on top of growing up as an athlete and spending a lot of time in physical therapy myself after injuries and chronic injuries as an athlete. A lot has gone into this. It’s like my grand vision. It was a lot of fun. It was extremely creative. I really enjoyed every aspect of it. Like I mentioned, it was challenging. It was challenging because a lot of components were not in my control, but what was really fun for me was riding the programs. I’ve had a lot of experience getting behind the camera before, so I was comfortable doing that. I had some friends who were producers and news anchors set me up and say, “Look, all you need is a great iPhone.”

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Melanie Webb:
Get yourself a tripod and a Lavalier mic, and go to work, Mel. They came out and met with me, and we did a few practice sessions. Then I just went to work. But the process of working with graphic designers and for the look and feel, that was a blast. My digital partners are best in class. This is a phenomenal platform. This is not an off-the-rack platform, which a lot of personal training apps are. I think that’s wonderful, because everyone in fitness needs to adapt right now. It’s a really disruptive time, and we need to be working with hybrid models to reach our clients, and serve them, but this is custom. This is beautiful.
There’s very few apps out there like this in terms of the way it can present the content. So even down to organizing the content, I’m a little nerdy like that. I really get into how you organize the content flow to coordinate with the graphic designer and everybody else. So, even that part was fun for me.

Kyle Knowles:
So, you were pretty hands-on with the development then?

Melanie Webb:
I was extremely hands-on.

Kyle Knowles:
Do you want to give any shout outs to designers or agencies here that helped you?

Melanie Webb:
Oh, I do. My digital partners are Catalyst XL. Entrepreneurs here who are tech will know Mark Russell. He founded Catalyst XL, and the platform is Cardware, and they’re based out of Detroit. Big shout out to them because the platform won platform of the year from Tech Buzz a year ago.

Kyle Knowles:
Wow.

Melanie Webb:
Mark was named one of the top tech entrepreneurs in the world five years ago.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s amazing.

Melanie Webb:
So for me to… When Mark reached out to me on LinkedIn, I was like, “Wait. Wait. Who? What? I think I better take this one.”

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Melanie Webb:
It was amazing.

Kyle Knowles:
So, did you already have the idea, or how did it come together once he reached out to you then?

Melanie Webb:
This is fun. We were talking about AI before we started recording. So, in fall of 2019, so this is pre-COVID, I was actually healing from a severe concussion, actually post-concussive syndrome, so I was on the timeout bench. I wasn’t able to work for at least six months while my eyes and my brain were healing. It was a terrible time for me, because I’m just a worker. I’ve been very defined by my work. So, it was one of those moments where I’m like, “Who am I when I can no longer do the thing that I’ve always done?” I had to really do a lot of self-examining. But in addition to that, I was having these vivid dreams through this healing process, and I had a dream. I dream in a lot of symbols, and I am such the former biologist in me and the nature girl in me.
I often dream in animal and nature symbols, so I dreamt of an owl wearing a tech… It had a tech panel on its breasts flying in, and then it started interacting with… It morphed and transformed, and then there was a tiger beetle, and then there was a fish, and it swam away. Of course, a fish is a very powerful spiritual symbol. So to me, this dream was something I was working with, and I would think about it and be inspired about it and think like, “What does this mean for me?” There was actually an owl that would hoot outside my window here in Park City that I would hear often. But anyway, I took it to mean technology, like something’s coming, and I need to use technology as a way to share my wisdom, this wisdom that I’ve been accruing throughout my life as a person who’s been very in my body.
So, when Mark reached out that spring, I felt like that was what I had been looking for, because I wasn’t quick, and I’m still not… To jump on YouTube, maybe that’s a marketing mistake, but I knew that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it. But when the app opportunity came along, that was it.

Kyle Knowles:
So, was he pitching you the idea of making an app? He knew you’re a personal trainer through LinkedIn, and pitched the idea of make a personal training app.

Melanie Webb:
Well, yeah, in some form or another. Mark’s a visionary, and what he saw was an emerging market in fitness and wellness, so we’re talking pre-COVID.

Kyle Knowles:
Wow. That’s really cool.

Melanie Webb:
He asked me to be an early adopter on the platform, and help his team develop an app that they could then sell to others in the fitness and wellness market, and they have. So, we have done that, and it was an amazing opportunity.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s really great. What differentiates your app? Is it the nature side, or what are some of the things that differentiate your app?

Melanie Webb:
Great question. Certainly embracing nature as a critical component in our wellbeing is probably what I’m known for, and a territory that I’ve been able to claim as a trainer. Again, that goes back to my background. I think it goes back to being raised in Utah, running wild, or Utah with Timpanogos out my back window, and then landing in Washington D.C. after working as a biologist in southern Utah for five years in these wild and spectacular places, and I just knew what I was missing, even though I loved that urban environments for seven years. There is beautiful nature there, but it wasn’t wild. That wasn’t the wild part of D.C.
Anyway, I wrote a book called Mother Nature’s Gym. Eventually, I published that in 2019, and it’s the ultimate guide to how to plan and lead your own outdoor fitness retreat. So, it’s available for continuing education credits to other fitness professionals to help them… Say you have a spin instructor. Most spin instructors actually love to ride their bikes-

Kyle Knowles:
Outside.

Melanie Webb:
… outside, right? So, this can help them. If any spin instructor wants to take their class, and go to Bordeaux and go wine tasting, this teaches them how to do that. That was a chapter that I had when clients in D.C. started asking me to bring them back to Utah to take them on their bucket list adventures. So, we would train in the gym in D.C. I’d help them buy their gear, and then we would come out to Utah. From my prior experience as an environmental consultant and wildlife biologist, I knew how to work with federal and state agencies to get the proper permits. I became an outfitter and guide. I would train my clients in the gym, and then we would come out, and spend a week exploring, so backpacking in Zion, or hire and stay in nice hotels here in Park City and Deer Valley, and go biking and hiking every day.
I just noticed that these really power playing, very ultra successful and influential clients of mine were totally different people outdoors, and I wondered why, and started picking up on any kind of research that was out there that was studying this interaction between nature and the human mind. This was 2007 that I started guiding trips. So, there really wasn’t any research out there. I just had to go off of experience and what I saw and what I knew from my lifestyle. It was just really fun. The feedback I got from people was like, “Wow, I can finally exhale. I can finally relax for a minute.” So, that’s what I started seeing.
Then it wasn’t until about 2014 that there were people in fact doing scientific research, but that just wasn’t available for almost a decade later.

Kyle Knowles:
So, was it really hard for them to go back in the gym? You’re training them in the gym, and then you take them on a outdoor adventure. Was it like, “Oh-

Melanie Webb:
A little bit.

Kyle Knowles:
… sitting on an exercise bike with no scenery, and just looking at five other dudes biking away or sweating away?

Melanie Webb:
Yeah. Well, luckily, I wasn’t a spin instructor, so they never had to sit on a bike or a treadmill with me.

Kyle Knowles:
Do you know what I mean?

Melanie Webb:
It was a gym equipment. I trained in downtown D.C., right on the border of Georgetown. It was at the Sports club LA at the time. It later got bought by Equinox, which people will know is the premier luxury sports club and gym in America. These are very elite places. I mean, they’re huge 30,000-square-foot facilities. Although in D.C. it was somewhat entertaining, you could be looking out the window, and seeing CIA screaming down the road with machine guns out the door at any given moment. You could see the motorcade, the presidential motorcade going by. It was usually somewhat entertaining. Like you mentioned in the bio, there were powerful politicos there.
It wasn’t unusual to see the secretary of the Department of Defense come in and set up his four blackberries on his treadmill, and go to work. So, it was an entertaining place, but yeah, they were bummed for sure, but these were professional people. I 100% they had been there, done that. They had been to every spa. They were sick and tired of plugging themselves into group classes all day long. That’s the formula at a lot of these places, and not to poo-poo them at all, there’s a lot of spectacular, amazing places. I’ve been there myself, but you don’t want to do that all the time. When people found out that I was from Utah, and that I had been a biologist for five years in southern Utah, they wanted to experience the places that I knew intimately.
So, I was able to really get them out of their comfort zone. That’s what’s cool about being both a personal trainer and an outdoor guide, and hopefully people experience this in the app. I want to be your guide to experience transformation. I don’t want to just create choreography, and create a Hollywood production feel that’s perfect to the tee. That’s not what you’re going to encounter on WebWell. You’re going to encounter really high quality work, but it’s the real thing. That’s where we’re going to impact people, and create real change in people’s lives.

Kyle Knowles:
What is the secret? When you talk about as a personal trainer, what is the secret to changing someone’s life? How do they change?

Melanie Webb:
That’s such a powerful question, and there’s so much on the person’s side that they must take responsibility for. I can partner with a person, and I can share my… I can bring my best self and all of the wisdom and knowledge I have to be their person, if you will. It’s a very emotional process as well. You’re dealing with bodies, and bodies hold trauma. We know that now. Bodies hold every emotional experience we’ve ever had. The body, in my opinion, is the greatest gift that we have to experience this life, and so many people are not comfortable in their bodies that it’s a complete act of trust to turn yourself over to somebody and say, “Please take me through this next hour safely. Please don’t hurt me, and please help me create the changes I need to make, so I can feel good in this body, because I probably don’t.”
I think having the empathy and the sensitivity and humanity to really accept what someone’s offering you when they come to you and ask for that, it takes a really special kind of person. The colleagues that I’ve been able to interact with in my career are some of the most wonderful people. We will often talk about the love we have for our clients, and it’s this beautiful reciprocal relationship that you build. By all means, the fact that I’m an entrepreneur now is because I was mentored by my clients, and it’s a very two-way street. One of the things that I love now working with my clients, and that I always loved in Washington, D.C. was the respect that I have received from my clients, and saying, “Look, Mel, this is what you studied. You’re the expert. You just make this hour worth my time.”
These are busy people. They don’t have time to waste wondering what they should be doing to get fit, so there’s huge accountability factor. Most people trainers I work with may not like to work out, or they may love it, and they really want you to get them to the next level. It’s one or the other. So, you have to take someone who you know. Especially in D.C., they don’t really want to be there. No, they don’t want to be in the gym, but they know that if they don’t take care of themselves, they do not take care of their employees. They do not take care of their family. They do not bring home the money that creates the lifestyle that they really love and enjoy.
These were really hardworking people, and what I saw them do and what I think I’ve learned to do as a trainer is help them take those elements that have helped them succeed in their career, and apply it now to this process of being in the body. Being in the body means not being a disembodied head on a body, right?

Kyle Knowles:
Explain that. Explain the difference then.

Melanie Webb:
I think a lot of people are just running around with noisy brains, refusing to sit still, and listen to what’s going on in there. It’s just, “What can I grab to make myself feel better? What’s the news cycle telling me?” It’s gotten worse. Over time, there’s so much noise coming at us. But again, going back to the body and the way that a lot of us experience the body or don’t, a lot of people have had bad experiences in their body, so being in tune with it and connecting with it is a scary thing. Maybe somebody has phobias, so I’ll bump up against that as a trainer. You’ve got to always be prepared for it to show up in unexpected ways, but disembodied basically means the inability to really be present with oneself.

Kyle Knowles:
Is it also being aware of your body and what your body’s telling you as well, or how does that… The mind, body, what’s your explanation of how the mind and the body work together?

Melanie Webb:
I want to share a quote from a man named Max Strom. Excuse me, he’s a powerful breath work coach now, and transformational coach. My understanding is he started in LA in the first wave of yoga and all that, but he has a saying. I want to add to this the Melanie Webb flare of nature, but the days of speaking of the body, the mind, and the emotions, and I’ll add nature as four separate entities are over. So, the days of speaking of the body, the mind, the emotions, and nature as four separate entities are over, meaning that we now know that there is no separating mind, body, emotions. The body stores emotions. Yes. The brain, as I learned it during my concussion recovery, this was like… I used to say, “Central command is down.”
I had a lot of cognitive impairment and everything that you learn really fast when you have a concussion, what the brain controls and your nervous system and everything else, but I used exercise to heal my brain, and it was through… It wasn’t just my application. I didn’t know how to do this. I didn’t know what I was dealing with, so I had some really phenomenal experts here in Park City guiding me through this process, but there’s connections. If I just get down to the nitty-gritty of cells, there are cells next to muscles that send a message to your brain that tell it where it is in space. The body doesn’t move without the brain’s involvement, even though much of it is involuntary, and then there’s the thinking brain, right?
So, all that is happening unconsciously. You don’t have to ask your body unless you’ve had an injury, and then anyone who’s had an injury knows that retraining process of getting range of motion back is practice and discipline and work and pain, but the thinking brain is a totally different animal, right? Like in Buddhist, Vipassana, which is a meditation style, they talk about the raging bull. The mind is a raging bull. It’s running to one side and then to the other. You’ve heard of monkey mind, I’m sure. That’s just cognitive. Those are just thoughts. That’s what the brain does is think, but the connection between body and mind is much more powerful and deeper than that, and it can be trained. Anybody can experience this.
Then the emotions, which I talked about, and then the nature which works to calm our frontal cortex is that front part of the brain. I’m touching my brain at the front of my head for those who are listening, but not watching. That’s where cognitive thinking takes place. We now know that when you step foot outside, that quiets down. You might notice this if you go for a walk outside in nature, right?

Kyle Knowles:
For sure.

Melanie Webb:
They call it pink noise now, and there’s all these apps out there that are… Even Sirius Radio now, which I have a subscription to in love, they have all these nature sounds streaming.

Kyle Knowles:
Why do they call it pink noise then?

Melanie Webb:
Pink noise is nature noise.

Kyle Knowles:
Is it like birds and other things, or what is it?

Melanie Webb:
I just realized we’re in the pink room.

Kyle Knowles:
We’re in the pink room. We should be hearing some pink noise. I don’t know if we are.

Melanie Webb:
We can try the [inaudible 00:28:11].

Kyle Knowles:
There we go.

Melanie Webb:
That’s pink noise. Pink noise is bird sound. It’s water running. It’s leaves rustling. It’s a fire crackling. It’s footsteps on dry leaves. That’s pink noise. Because humans evolved with nature, with bare feet on the ground, sleeping on the ground, you may have heard of this process of grounding that’s pretty popular now, just going out and standing barefoot on the ground, those negative ions from the earth. There’s a frequency coming from the earth that our body attunes to and that we align with. After all, we’re what? 80% water potentially with nothing but minerals. We are of the earth literally.
I think we’ve forgotten that, but most people I’ve ever seen set the stage for them to have a safe experience outdoors, and they just relax right into it. It’s really beautiful.

Kyle Knowles:
So, grounding is like a real thing?

Melanie Webb:
It’s a real thing.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s a real thing.

Melanie Webb:
It’s a real thing. I’ll be honest-

Kyle Knowles:
Do you teach it, or do people actually do it?

Melanie Webb:
Oh yeah, people do… Oh, I walk barefoot outside every chance I get. I even do it in the winter, but I do it for the cold exposure on snow.

Kyle Knowles:
On snow.

Melanie Webb:
I can stand it for about one minute. I’m like, “Oh, then it’s piercing my feet.” The cold exposure, that’s a really hot topic now as well. Lots of evidence, some in dispute. That cold is really good for the body in many ways. Now, we know it helps increase brown fat compared to white fat. White fat holds a lot of toxins and is the adipose tissue that we know holds disease, and lends itself to overweight and obesity and metabolic difficulties and things like that, whereas brown fat is a really healthy fat. It surrounds the organs. It’s nutrient dense. It helps… We need fats to create hormones. That’s more what we digest, but lots of benefits, cold.
Then grounding, there’s something called a Schumann resonance, which NASA studied and found that the earth is emitting a frequency constantly. Surprisingly enough, that frequency is very aligned with our creative process, the frequency in the mind, which now you can go on YouTube, and find any kind of frequency to tune into and listen to. That’s the same as the earth. Another reason why they-

Kyle Knowles:
Do you know what the frequency is?

Melanie Webb:
I have it in my book. I want to say it’s between 3.9 and 4.7, but I should have memorized that before I came in.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s okay. I was just wondering, just curious. I mean, does it just come down to energy? I mean, is it vibrations, energy, frequency? That’s what all this is, right?

Melanie Webb:
That’s what all that is.

Kyle Knowles:
Everything around us.

Melanie Webb:
That’s in the quantum, right, which is fascinating.

Kyle Knowles:
I don’t know what that is, but I will agree with you

Melanie Webb:
I almost… I have been tempted to go back to school to study the quantum biology right now, because there was no such thing as a quantum biology class when I was in school 25 years ago, but yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Because it hadn’t been studied or discovered or ?

Melanie Webb:
Or at least certainly not published in a way that could be taught at the college level. But now, yeah, it’s that whole concept of everything is connected. If you’re talking, I’m certainly no expert at energy and frequency, aside from human resonance and what happens to the human brain being outside, but we all know what it feels like to be in a room with somebody who’s just negative and emitting that kind of frequency versus being drawn to the positive. I heard something really cool that really caught my attention this fall. It was about trauma. Again, I’ve gotten very interested in trauma due to, again, my own physical traumas and head injuries and everything else.
So now at the cellular level, they know that a cell is either in growth mode, or it’s in death mode and protect mode. So, growth mode is this open frequency. It’s allowing nutrients through its cell walls, and it’s growing. It’s thriving, and it’s supporting a healthy organism. So at the cellular level, that’s happening at the traumatic traumatized recoil. You can see this in posture too. We all know what postures convey, and a traumatized cell withdraws. It closes down its wall. It no longer allows nutrients in. It becomes very defensive and guarded, and it’s in protect this cell mode. Nothing gets in. That eventually leads to death of that cell.
So if you think about it, the organism, that’s how it impacts from the cellular level out. There’s a lot of research now that our environment is responsible for a lot of these physiological, mental, and physical responses that we are seeing in humans. I just went way off on a tangent. I didn’t know we were going to talk about the quantum here.

Kyle Knowles:
No, I love it. I want to dig into that. Let’s talk about how you got all the way to making an app. Let’s go back a little bit. You were an athlete in high school?

Melanie Webb:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
What did you do?

Melanie Webb:
I was raised playing baseball and volleyball. At Orem High School, I played volleyball all four years. I played softball for a couple of that as a varsity player, and then just played on my own after that, but I was very, very competitive.

Kyle Knowles:
Did you get athletic scholarship to BYU or academic scholarship?

Melanie Webb:
No, I did not. No, I actually went to Dixie College first. The school formerly known as Dixie College for anyone familiar, it’s now Utah Polytechnic University, I believe.

Kyle Knowles:
Utah Technical College, something like-

Melanie Webb:
Excuse me, Utah-

Kyle Knowles:
Utah Technical University. I don’t know. I’m going to have to look it up.

Melanie Webb:
I’m a terrible alumni.

Kyle Knowles:
I have to look it up. I can’t remember. I always get it confused.

Melanie Webb:
I went there on an academic scholarship.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Melanie Webb:
It’s funny how coaches can make all the difference in the world for an athlete. I had a different volleyball coach all four years that I was in high school. So, I never really had a coach that championed me. I’m also five seven, and if you play at the college level, you’re probably six feet at least. I was on the shorter side. I probably wasn’t going to play college volleyball. I was a really good softball player. My father played college baseball. I come from just a baseball family, but with the academic scholarship, I was afraid I needed that scholarship. So, I think college. While I wish I could go back and play sports again, I did not. That’s when I started getting more into the outdoor sports.

Kyle Knowles:
So, you go to BYU, and what do you major in? After Dixie, you go to BYU, and what do you major in?

Melanie Webb:
I transferred to BYU as an athletic training major, so I was one of eight students accepted to athletic training in a very highly-regarded national program. Spent about a year and a half doing that before I realized the career trajectory for an athletic trainer was not very promising. At the time, I believe there were five female athletic trainers in the NCAA. If you wanted to be an athletic trainer in high school, you had to also be a teacher. My father is a highly-acclaimed biology teacher, but I saw what he went through being a teacher in the state of Utah, and I wasn’t enthused to follow that same path.

Kyle Knowles:
What was it that he went through?

Melanie Webb:
Just not being valued. He won Science Teacher of America Award. He taught all these AP classes. He gave his life to his students, and he was so underpaid. So, I have a huge amount of respect for teachers and what they go through, but I really didn’t want to follow that same path. So, I changed my major from athletic training, and I at that point became a pre-med major, and ended up graduating with a bachelor’s in human physiology and developmental physiology.

Kyle Knowles:
Then take us through after BYU. What happened?

Melanie Webb:
I took a year off, and I went MIA. My very ambitious father put his head in his hands and said, “I don’t… What are you doing? You’re throwing it all away. You just worked so hard, and what are you doing?”

Kyle Knowles:
What did you do during that gap year then? What did you do?

Melanie Webb:
Well, the part of me that thought I was going to be going to med school or going to physical therapy school, and I just needed a break. It was five and a half years for me to get my undergrad do to that major change, and so much science, and, again, the body and the nature side of things. I didn’t know what direction to go. So, I did what any good Utah girl does, and I was a ski bum for the winter. I got a job at Snowbird waiting tables, and I snowboarded my brain’s out until I realized I felt totally brain-dead, and I just couldn’t do this anymore. Then I hooked up with a friend from California, and we moved out to the central coast, and we waited tables for three months, and we saved every penny. Then we went to Europe, and we rode the trains for eight weeks.
I forget how many countries we went to. But as we were talking before the podcast as well, I somehow ended up crossing the ocean between Spain, and landed in Morocco. It was 1998 in Morocco, and just totally changed my life, not only Morocco, but the experience of carrying everything I owned on my back. This was pre-credit card. I had a debit card with so much money in the bank, and then when the money was out, I had to go home. That really… It was such a formative experience for me. It took this Utah girl who really hadn’t traveled a whole lot. My dad made sure that we were exposed to all the amazing national parks. We took a lot of road trips, but I had not been outside of the country, aside from going to Tijuana, Mexico. So, this was really eyeopening for me, and gave me experience to cultures and people, and made me a traveler through and through.
I just got a real taste for it, and experienced homelessness essentially. Not that I was not privileged to be able to be riding trains, but I remember… Oh, where were we? I think we were in the south of Spain, and somebody around us had made a mess. We were spat on and kicked and called dirty Americans and-

Kyle Knowles:
On the train or where were you?

Melanie Webb:
No, this was in the train station. We were guilty by association of being around these other backpackers who really… I think they left some food scattered on the floor or something like that. All of us were sitting on the floor, and we looked pretty grungy. This was like… Maybe you find a hostel at night, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you sleep in the train station, because you arrived too late, and you don’t have a cell phone, and you don’t know where you’re going. It was wild, and it was a blast, and Morocco was just completely shocking in every way. Because of that experience, I think that’s what inspired me a lot to become a guide. I’ve tried to have amazing adventures around the world ever since with a couple of pauses here and there.
But after that was over, I was very skinny. I lost a lot of weight, because the very act of finding food was laborious, and carrying my back was a lot of work. I came home like skin and bones, and I was ready to get a job. I was ready to go to work, but I needed that year break. I needed that gap year that a lot of Americans don’t take, that a lot of other nations value and prize, and I still to this day. I will tell you that’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, because I learned, again, the cultural things that you learn when you get to travel. Not only that, but I was ready to get back to work when I got home, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
I kind of knew my direction too. So, that’s when I went to work as a wildlife biologist, and took a job in southern Utah studying endangered native aquatic species, and walked every inch of water body in a giant amount. I don’t know if your listeners know the state of Utah. It’s pretty big, but everything from the Colorado River on the east to the Nevada border on the west, all the way up to the Great Basin. I’m forgetting my words, the west desert and the north down to the Arizona border. So, I pretty much walked every body of water working with any kind of fish that was native to Utah, and endangered.

Kyle Knowles:
What did you do when you were walking those bodies of water? What were you writing down? Did you have a lab coat on? What were you doing?

Melanie Webb:
No, we were actually-

Kyle Knowles:
Clipboard, something.

Melanie Webb:
Lots of clipboards, backpacks. Our uniforms were Teva sandals and river shorts. We were kind of the mockery. We were mocked by a lot of the big game biologists in the state of Utah. You think of a wildlife biologist, and you think of deer and elk and hunting, and no, no. We’re the ones wearing river shoes, and saying, “We’re out there saving endangered species versus working with hunters and stuff like that.” So, sometimes we were quite unpopular, but the way you monitor a toad or a fish is you need to know what their native territory is, their native habitat, and you need to know if they’re reproducing every year.
So, we had our sections on the river, where we would go out, and use a net to a scene to catch the fish. You measure them. You record everything, and then you track that over time, so you’re looking for trends and reproduction.

Kyle Knowles:
You tag them somehow.

Melanie Webb:
No, we never tagged, not the species I was working with. They’re much too small. They may do that now, but we didn’t. But when you work with the species over time, and you see their numbers declining, and amphibians and toads are really what you call an indicator species. If the environment is toxic and going downhill, you’ll see frogs with multiple legs or not reproducing properly. I never saw anything with five legs or anything like that, but they’re so important. They’re so critical. The fact that so many people are completely unaware that this really unique species, one of a kind lives in our waters, but we’re going to develop it anyway, and drain it anyway, because a developer building homes is more important than keeping water in that system that has fed this ecosystem for years. It’s unfathomable, so we had a large educational component as well.

Kyle Knowles:
So, how long did you do that?

Melanie Webb:
I did that for three years. Aside from just walking around with a clipboard, and catching toads and fish, sometimes I would camp for a full week, and backpack, and just go find things that we didn’t know were there. So, I ended up managing crews, and hiring crews, so that’s where I would say I got my chops as a guide and as a leader is picking a map, seeing what was on there, what hadn’t been studied, and then going. I love that process. Again, and maybe that’s the adventure in me as a discovered. Again, it’s a very physical job. It was very demanding, which for a 23, 24, 25-year-old is great.

Kyle Knowles:
So, you didn’t need to go to the gym.

Melanie Webb:
I did not need to go to the gym, but this is… This is when I reentered fitness actually is I missed it. I missed what I studied. I missed my athletic life. It turns out a lot of biologists aren’t really people people, no offense, but I was this hybrid personality type, and I missed it. I actually got certified when I was 25 while I was working as a biologist, and I started training clients in the studio two nights a week when I wasn’t on a big assignment or something.

Kyle Knowles:
Then what took you to D.C. then?

Melanie Webb:
Well, I got bored, honestly, as a biologist. In the role that I was in, you repeat these surveys every year, year after year. That’s how you track what’s happening. There’s a real ceiling to the amount of money a biologist can make at that level. So, I just felt… Again, the entrepreneur in me, I learn what I learned, and then it’s time to move on. I am just not the personality type that’s going to stay and just keep doing something over and over and over again. I want to keep learning and growing as a person. So, I moved to Salt Lake, and I took a job with an environmental consulting firm, and I started… It was a very technical writing role, writing environmental assessments basically, and, again, training, taking clients in Salt Lake City on the side, which wasn’t super lucrative at the time.
The environmental work was lucrative, and I eventually… After a couple months in that role, I got offered a one-year sabbatical, if you will, a consultant position in Washington, D.C. at the General Services Administration, which a lot of people call the armpit of the federal government. No offense, I’ve met some wonderful people there, but they’re basically the real estate agent of the federal government. I took it. I had never wanted to move to the East Coast. I had no desire whatsoever, but I was like, “Well, this is awesome, and I would love that one year. I can go do that.” So, I took it, and the next thing you know, I’m living 10 blocks up the street from the Capitol building, and putting on a suit, and going to work in this old, ugly federal building.
All of a sudden, the wildlife that I’m responsible for monitoring… This was in 2002. I moved there in September 2002. All of a sudden, this is a war zone, not literally on our ground, but my environment became protecting Washington D.C. approving anti-terrorism infrastructure, going up occasionally dealing with a deer herd on a military base in that area that needed to be taken care of or something else, but I was completely a fish out of water. I was a very strong rider, so that was good, but I had a lot… I encountered a very steep learning curve, and again, learned a lot, but was utterly bored and unchallenged and really not cut out to work in a cubicle at that time in my life, so pivoted.
I thought, “Well, I miss fitness. I’m going back to fitness, and in order to do that, I have to get another degree.” I got accepted to George Washington University, exercise science nutrition and eating behavior program. Started a graduate program. As I do, got a little bored now. Now, I’d been out of school for six years, and I’m in a master’s program, and I’m like, “I need to work. I have to do something.” I also was not on a scholarship at that age, so I became a trainer. Within three months, I was just booked solid, and I was loving it. I was doing exactly what I was meant to do. It was at that point that I dropped out of grad school.
Fortunately, that semester of classwork was really valuable, the eating behavior skills that I learned there, but I just realized that I didn’t need another degree to do what I needed to do, and that I needed to accept that I didn’t need to be everything to everybody. I needed to know who the people were that I needed in my network to send my clients to. It was really liberating to realize that, and make that exit.

Kyle Knowles:
What was some of the tactics you did to get clients? Did you have to do any marketing, or was it all word of mouth?

Melanie Webb:
It was all word of mouth. I was very, very fortunate.

Kyle Knowles:
So, you just did a good job with these clients, and then they told friends or other people, and then-

Melanie Webb:
Very much with the exception that at the sports club LA. I mean, this is a very professional environment. You don’t become a trainer at a place like that without a four-year degree, primarily in the related field is preferable, and a national certification. There’s a fitness manager. There’s a general manager. Again, this was a very well-respected, curated group of people that I was working with. As a result, you get the cream of the crop clientele that’s coming there. So, they would submit leads to the gym, and say, “Hey, I’d like to work with a trainer.” The fitness manager would then match you up, and say, “Okay, I think you’re going to be a great personality for Melanie.” This is funny. I did get a lot of word of mouth clients.
Washington D.C. is a place where if you are trusted, if you’re good at what you do, you’re going to succeed no matter what you’re doing, because people value that. I think also the level of client that I was working with, and all of us we’re working with there is, again, if you’re trustworthy, you’re going to do great, because so many people are not that… They’re just not going to support you. It is a very small town. It is a very word of mouth town, and if you’re not good, you’re just not going to make it. So, I was very fortunate. I just took to it very well, and I think I brought a little bit of that Western… I’m not a very cynical person still. You could say I’m still a little naive sometimes, but I just love people. I love human beings, and again, I love the body.
So, I ended up getting… It’s funny because a lot of those people that were referred to me by my manager might’ve been fired by another trainer.

Kyle Knowles:
Really?

Melanie Webb:
Like, “I’m not working with you anymore, dude. You’re fired.” We had the right to do that. We just say, “Hey, this isn’t working. You’re mean to me. You don’t show up for your sessions. You’re wasting my time. I don’t want to work with you.” A lot of people don’t think that that’s the case, but it very much is. So, I would get some really hard cases.

Kyle Knowles:
But you had the patience for that.

Melanie Webb:
I had the patience for it.

Kyle Knowles:
So, that’s how you filled up your clientele is word of mouth and then some of these ones that were fired by other personal trainers.

Melanie Webb:
Yeah, and by no means was it all of them.

Kyle Knowles:
For sure.

Melanie Webb:
A lot of my clients were like, “Wait, I was never fired by anyone listening to this,” and they were the majority for sure, but I learned a lot from these people, a lot, no matter who they were.

Kyle Knowles:
A lot of them were entrepreneurs or owned their own businesses, or were they politicians or what? There’s just a mix of all that.

Melanie Webb:
There was a real mix, but these were the people. I did have a couple of government, high-level secretary level appointees in the government, some ambassadors, a couple of professional athletes, but primarily small business owners.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s how you started learning about running your own business, and getting the entrepreneur bug. You were an entrepreneur to being a personal trainer, but actually establishing a business. You learned a lot of these things from your clients

Melanie Webb:
Very much.

Kyle Knowles:
What was the number one success story from that time in D.C.? You probably have several, but-

Melanie Webb:
In terms of a client transformation?

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah.

Melanie Webb:
Oh wow. Oh wow. Some of these really happened over years. Stopping drinking, like literal alcoholism, supporting people through checking themselves into rehab, being part of the team, watching them come back to life and reenter, and it didn’t always go… It did not always stick. It was not always happy. It was really meaningful though to be part of that inner circle, and to realize that some of these people really don’t have true friends. So, I always just felt so deeply complimented. Anytime somebody opened the door into their private life like that, I ended up… It was not uncommon, for any of us in that group, to be asked to house sit or dog sit or put on a private plane with a child to take them rock climbing in my case. Like, me and the child, that’s it.
You guys are going rock climbing in California. Is there any greater honor than someone asking you to do that for their child, and give them that experience? So, things like that, it was a really incredible meaningful time.

Kyle Knowles:
So, you started in D.C. in heels, leaving your Tevas behind, and then when you went back into personal training, and started taking people on trips to Utah, putting your Tevas back on basically, and taking them hiking and different kind of nature, more nature excursions. Then what brought you back to Utah then?

Melanie Webb:
Again, I’m quite an intuitive person in one day. I didn’t realize it that was the time, but I was burning out. Sometimes, I had 11 clients a day. In my final year in D.C., I was training six days a week, and I got a little caught up in the pace of life there. I got caught up in having a lot of clients in a really successful practice. I didn’t know my own limits, and I was burning out, but I didn’t know how to assess that, but I was burning it at both ends, because D.C.’s also a very fun place, and I had an amazing social life. I was going out a lot and having a lot of fun, exploring up and down the East coast and everything, but I was a real workaholic, I would say, just like a lot of people there are.
So, I was burning out. I was sick. I was actually very sick. I think I had bronchitis or something, so I think I took the weekend off. I’m sitting in my bed, and I just had this vision of Zion National Park. It was in broad daylight. I just knew that if I could go there, I would be better. If I could just feel… I was just doing this visualization, and I was imagining the sun on my skin, and the Red Rock, and these places that I just loved my whole life. I really was so homesick and land sick, even though I was thriving professionally, but that part of me that needs that nature just was really dying inside. I just felt like… It was like, “It’s time to go now.” That was my symbol. Within two months, I had sold everything, and packed up the Volkswagen Golf with whatever was left, and I just hit the road.
In hindsight, I’ve been thinking about this more and more. I did not realize. This was halfway through 2009, so the market had crashed. Several of my clients were like, “What are you doing? This is the safest economy in the entire world right now. You are doing great. Why would you leave here?” I felt like you don’t have those experiences, those strong impressions that say it is time to go now and deny them, or whatever the energy of life wants to bring to you next, you’re risking not getting that is how I felt. I felt very strongly about that. Was it naive? Yeah, 100%. I didn’t know where I was going. I knew I would land somewhere, and train again. I like to say, I got to Utah, and I just kept going. I couldn’t get far enough away.
I ended up in California in 2009 and ’10 and ’11, which was a very difficult time to be in California, but I also didn’t realize the depth of how much I would have to grieve leaving all my clients and colleagues like that. So, I did what I thought was best for me and my future, but it was devastating. This was pre… Now, everyone, you can, at any time, FaceTime a client, and do a personal training session with them from anywhere. You can have an app. You can have your online everything, but it was a long time before that. I had to walk away from all of that. Som then I reached the West Coast, but all of a sudden, Mother Nature’s gym was now available to me. I was in Santa Barbara, and clients were now uber successful.
They’re not worker bees going to government jobs. They’re investment banker billionaires who are going to climb Kilimanjaro, and you’ve got six weeks to get them ready for that. So, that was like, “All right, next level, let’s get you all your gear. I’ll come to the house. I’ll train you, or you come to the studio, and then we’re going to go to the Eastern Sierras, and hike a 14,000-foot peak so that you can sleep on the ground in your tent afterwards, and know how that feels, because you’ve never done this before.” That was next level, and it was the next chapter for WebbWell. At the time, my business was called Soul Fitness Adventures, and I built a name for myself doing those outdoor fitness retreats. So again, I started doing outdoor fitness retreats in 2007, and haven’t looked back with that being a part of my business model.

Kyle Knowles:
So, when you came back to Utah, you started establishing your personal training clients again here in Utah, and doing the work that you’d always done in D.C. and in California.

Melanie Webb:
Yes. Yes. Again, I landed in Southern Utah first, and eventually ended up back here in Park City with a few other chapters in there, as any entrepreneur would tell you, right? There were times when the bootstrapping wasn’t working, and I had to go get a job. Then again, those skill sets came to play, right time, right place. Then it was no longer the right time or the right place.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, what’s the best piece of business advice you’ve been given about entrepreneurship?

Melanie Webb:
Oh, the best piece I’ve been given was a client who came out from New York City, hired me to go to Mexico with him for 21 days to transform his life. He lost 20 pounds. He quit smoking, converted his diet.

Kyle Knowles:
In 21 days?

Melanie Webb:
In 21 days. That was intensive, and it was intense too. He really embraced it, and it was challenging. It’s probably one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had as a trainer and opportunities, but I learned, again, so much from him. He was so successful in his business, but yet his health was a total train wreck. He said to me, “Failure is just another brick in your building.” That really hit me strong, because I was… I’ve always been a little bit of a perfectionist, I think. You can’t be that way as an entrepreneur. You cannot be a perfectionist. It’s messy. It doesn’t always work, but the idea that failure is just another brick in your building is so powerful, because you learn so much.
I have failed many times, and things take me so much longer than I think they will. But every time I can embrace that idea, and allow it, I can let go of that perfectionist side of myself, and just really enjoy the journey again.

Kyle Knowles:
I love it. I love that piece of advice. I love it a lot. Is there a book that you recommend the most to people? Is there a certain book that’s your go-to recommend to people to read?

Melanie Webb:
Oh, wow. I’m an avid reader, so at any given time, I might be reading two or three books. Spark, I might say Spark the Science. What’s the subtitle? The Science of Exercise and the Brain, something like that. It’s really powerful. For anyone who doesn’t get that mind-body connection, this book will help. It talks about… It’s very applicable. It’s the kind of thing like, “Okay, next time I get an urge to smoke a cigarette, I’m going to drop and do 10 pushups.” It’s the way you can use your body to change the trajectory that your brain is on. I love recommending that one to my clients. It’s really, really a great book.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, I have a lightning round set of questions for you. We’ll just go rapid fire through these.

Melanie Webb:
Oh, I love these.

Kyle Knowles:
So, what’s your favorite candy bar? It’s funny to ask a personal trainer what their favorite candy bar is.

Melanie Webb:
Oh, no. Plug your ears, everybody.

Kyle Knowles:
You better say one of those protein bars or something. No, what is it?

Melanie Webb:
I lived on protein bars while I was backpacking in Europe, and I haven’t eaten them since.

Kyle Knowles:
I bet.

Melanie Webb:
Twix. I love Twix.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite musician or musical artist?

Melanie Webb:
I love music. Oh, that’s a hard one. It has to be a one person musician?

Kyle Knowles:
It can be a band.

Melanie Webb:
It could be a band? Guns N’ Roses.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite cereal.

Melanie Webb:
I love granola.

Kyle Knowles:
Is there a particular granola you’re going to [inaudible 01:03:16]?

Melanie Webb:
I’ve been eating a lot of not the high-end stuff. It’s like Bob’s Mill. Is that what it’s… Bob’s Red Mill or something like that.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. Where do you get it at?

Melanie Webb:
The Muesli vs. Granola, it’s super good. Harmons.

Kyle Knowles:
Mac or PC?

Melanie Webb:
Excuse me, Mac.

Kyle Knowles:
Google or Microsoft?

Melanie Webb:
Google.

Kyle Knowles:
Dogs or cats?

Melanie Webb:
Dogs. I do like both. I don’t have one though.

Kyle Knowles:
Phantom or Les Mis.

Melanie Webb:
Ooh, Phantom.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?

Melanie Webb:
I think a lot of people don’t know how truly nerdy I am, that the science nerd runs really deep, and that I actually… One of the scholarships I won for college was for my insect collection in 4H, and then I got to work behind the scenes at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History as a docent into the insect collections, and it was a dream come true.

Kyle Knowles:
How old were you when you did that?

Melanie Webb:
Oh, it was while I was in D.C., so I was, I don’t know, 29. It really was a dream come true. It was amazing.

Kyle Knowles:
They must have an amazing collection there.

Melanie Webb:
It’s phenomenal. It goes on and on and on and on and on around the world.

Kyle Knowles:
Is this pins in an insect in foam board, or how do they do it?

Melanie Webb:
To pin an insect, first, you have to kill it in a way that doesn’t break any body parts, and then you must pin it within the right amount of time so that it doesn’t dry out. Then you set it. Really, this was my first form of meditation, learning to respect what I had, just this life that I had just taken, and make it perfect, because you break a leg, and now all of a sudden, it’s not showcase worthy anymore, and you just killed it for nothing. This was also my first ethical crisis, so I was about 14 when I encountered this for the first time, but like I said, nerd, but they’re pinned in foam board in a wooden box with a glass over the top, and then locked in cabinets with… You put formaldehyde.
It’s a preservative to prevent other insects from getting in there, and eating these organisms. So again, just an important piece of science to inventory what’s out there and know what’s there and what their uses could potentially be.

Kyle Knowles:
People don’t think you’re a nerd, because you’re a personal trainer. Is that what it is?

Melanie Webb:
Oh yeah. I think that’s fair to say, and I think people look at me, and they’re like, “Okay. Here comes this personal trainer, outdoor girl, standup paddler, skier, traveler.” I think people don’t really understand the depth that goes into becoming someone who knows how to work with a body.

Kyle Knowles:
Right. That makes sense. So, how can people connect with you?

Melanie Webb:
Almost anywhere, certainly, download the WebbWell app in the Apple Store, and then you can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, the gram. Message me through my website webbwell.com.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s your Instagram handle then?

Melanie Webb:
My Instagram handle is melanie.from.webbwell.

Kyle Knowles:
We’ll include all these links in the show notes and the show page, but thank you, Melanie. Thank you for being generous with your time meeting me here at Kiln Park City. I look forward to following your wellness and tech journey, and wish you all the success in your many endeavors.

Melanie Webb:
Kyle, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been really fun.