Ashley Heron, co-founder of the marketing technology agencies Comma 8 and Sprint Forward, joins Sunny Ray to trace an unlikely path from surfing in Sarasota, Florida to quietly powering much of the boutique fitness industry. Heron studied music business at Belmont University, spent over a decade at Disney owned country label Lyric Street and then Big Machine, working alongside artists like Taylor Swift, before moving into digital marketing at the agency Hyphen, where he rose to Chief Digital Officer over nine years and helped pioneer early paid social advertising. After Hyphen was acquired, Heron launched Comma 8 and Sprint Forward in January 2020, days before the pandemic forced gyms and wellness businesses to digitize overnight. The conversation covers lessons from the music industry, the shifting role of agencies in an AI driven marketing landscape, why health and wellness became his focus, and how data science and thesis driven decision making now shape how he builds and scales companies.
A former music industry exec explains how AI and data quietly power the boutique fitness industry's growth.
Can you give the elevator pitch on Comma 8?
Comma 8 is a marketing technology agency primarily focused on health and wellness businesses. We quietly power a vast majority of the boutique fitness space, doing everything from marketing implementation to application development. We've scaled our services significantly along the way, working across the full spectrum of what these multilocation health and wellness businesses need.
What was young Ashley obsessed with growing up in Sarasota?
Young Ashley was obsessed with the ocean and the water, not technology. I always wanted to work in music or transformative categories and was ambitious to get out of Florida and explore the rest of the country. I was a surfer and a waterbound individual before any of this.
Why the music business program at Belmont, and not something more obvious?
I gravitated toward what I was passionate about, and I was very interested in being in music. A partner at the time was moving to Nashville for her music career, and Belmont offered a great relationship between business fundamentals and a foundation in music. I quickly realized I was a talented musician in Sarasota but wildly untalented in Nashville, so I went the business route.
What did your time at the Disney owned label Lyric Street teach you?
We worked with Rascal Flatts on Life Is a Highway for the Cars movie, and that was my first real taste of the scale and impact of the Disney machine. Beyond that, I learned from the people around me about robust communication, how you talk about your product, and the value of repetition. Doing something over and over, not once, is what makes you good at it.
What was the wildest deal you ever closed in country music?
Working at Big Machine with Taylor Swift, we needed a jetliner to fly two contest winners from every reporting radio station, about 300 people, across the country for an album release week. We partnered with JetBlue for the plane in exchange for Taylor doing a surprise pop up concert at JFK's Terminal 5. It became this incredibly intimate, viral concert moment.
What pulled you from music into digital marketing at Hyphen?
Hyphen was actually my vendor first, and they never said no to any wild idea, which really empowered me. I also felt music, despite its reach, was a small business in terms of headcount and mobility. I wanted more entrepreneurial growth, so I left a stable career and joined four or five people working in an attic in Hermosa Beach.
Why fitness, and why start Comma 8 and Sprint Forward in 2020?
After Hyphen was acquired twice, I felt misaligned with the second acquirer's SMB focus versus my strength with larger operators. In 2020 I had a chance to start with built in client revenue rather than bootstrapping. We launched January 6, 2020, and by March the pandemic hit, so every gym needed digital solutions overnight, which scaled us almost instantly to where we are today.
What's the one insight that changed how you build companies?
Probably the value of thesis and staying true to it. There have been many chances to deviate that would have distracted us from becoming who we are. Confidence that your initial insight and path shouldn't waver is motivating, both for me and for my team, because singular focus lets you actually refine and master what you do.
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