Airgym - The Home Gym Revolution - Chris Daskam

And so he literally downloaded the app right there on the spot. He was showing me pictures on his phone of his gym. It was beautiful. Yeah. He put a lot of time into it. And he's like, thank you. He goes, I can make you know a couple hundred bucks a month. That's huge for me. Right. And that's I think that's that was invigorating for me. That got me super excited. Like, that's inspiring for me. That's what that's why I'm doing this.

Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number 107. I get to talk to Chris Dascom of AirGym.com. So it sounds just like it is. Uh it's like Airbnb, but for home and commercial gyms. And Chris will explain it much better than I will in this intro. But it's fascinating. It's a great idea. Um his business is uh, at least at the time of this recording, um, in the initial uh stages of gathering investors uh and moving forward. Um he does have proof of concept, um, as he has a lot of uh people engaged with the service and the application already. So it's it's a fascinating thing. And it just starts making you think, right? How is this interconnected world we're living in gonna optimize the resources that we have? You know, uh, I'm starting to see things like this pop up, um, similar for like self-storage. You know, um, somebody has extra garage space and someone down the block wants to rent it for 25 bucks a month to put their old bed and whatever in it, right? Uh their skis or something like that. So, how is the world changing, right? And if there's one thing I hope that you get from this podcast um as a fitness professional is start looking forward, start seeing the changes that are happening, looking at things uh that are working in other industries and see how we can apply to ours. Uh, that's the biggest thing that I hope I can help uh facilitate and make an impact that way, just getting people thinking a little bit differently, thinking the way that the future is going to lay out. And uh, how do you get to that point? How do you be an early adopter? How do you um disrupt? And Chris is doing it. So it's it's really cool. And I'm I'm a big supporter of what he's doing. And uh it was a really eye-opening interview, especially for people who are doing startups as well. Uh gives you some insight into um some of the wins and the struggles uh people developing it. So um before we get into the interview, I want to thank Live Life Healthy 828 for the review uh that they just recently wrote. Uh I was always I always learned something from listening to Eric's interviews. His questions are great, and so are his guests. I feel like I grow as a trainer with each one. Thank you, Live Life Healthy 828, whoever you are. I really appreciate it for the five-star review. And uh if you're listening to this, I ask you to go to iTunes Stitcher, um, wherever you listen to this podcast and give me a five-star uh review. Uh, subscribe, and uh, if you write a review with comments, I will read it on air. So um, yeah, please do that. You can find it at the future of fitness. So without further ado, let's get into Chris Dascom's interview uh with airgym.com, episode number 107. Enjoy the ride. And we are live. Chris Dascom. Welcome to the show, man. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. It's it's a really, really interesting topic and business that that we're gonna go over today. And uh, you know, like I was telling you before recordings, um, before the recording, when all great conversation happens and none of the listeners get, um, is that you know, I've talked about your business over uh in dinner conversations uh with people and and you know who are into fitness and they're like that's genius. And I'm starting to see, you know, kind of this model that you're doing, you know, obviously Airbnb was kind of like the first version or first uh application of this this idea. Um I'm starting to see it everywhere, you know, starting to be applied to different areas. And I feel like and I'll let you explain more about it, that it's like the concept is so sound and so proven, it's like, well, how do we how do we optimize this idea in every aspect of civilization and community and society? And uh you found one application. So without without me talking anymore, give us a little background on you, Chris, and uh, you know, what you're a little, you know, short bio and then what you're up to.

Sure, sure. Uh and thanks again for having me on. I appreciate it. Um, you know, just a little bit about me. Um, you know, growing up, I grew up in a small town. I was always involved in sports, um in everything, right? Our our our parents encourage us to be involved in everything, uh, from basketball to baseball to soccer and tennis and everything, right? And I also grew up watching uh my parents work out at home. And I think that had a little uh I didn't know it, I didn't know it then, but I know now that uh that had a lot of influence on um you know having good role models. And so um fast forward, I was a collegiate athlete in soccer. Um I was involved in martial arts at a very young age, and uh had always been into fitness, right? I started my my college career as a physical therapy major. Uh, I quite frankly just didn't have the grades for it. And so I transitioned to a business major, ended up graduating with a marketing degree, and uh I've always sort of looked at life through the lens of how can we do it better, how can we do it more efficient. Um, you know, and the idea of building a team and building a product has always intrinsically kind of been there for me. And so um, you know, kind of fast forward to today as to where we're at with AirGym, um, the idea for Air Gym came from neighbors of mine who have a garage gym. And the garage gym is very straightforward. And there's a squat rack and there's a bench press and there's kettlebells and barbells and basically everything that you need within 800 square feet. Um and they invited me over to come work out, and I got one of the best workouts I ever had because Mitch and Shannon both uh Shannon does uh marathons, half marathons. Uh Mitch is uh he's lost about 100 pounds. He's just he's an athlete and he's got such passion. And so when you kind of get that one-on-one at a garage gym in a very intimate setting, uh I got home from that first workout last year, October, and it hit me. Like it's convenient, it's close, it's not crowded. Um, I would pay him to work out there. And so that's kind of how the idea sort of spawned was um being able to work out with friends and neighbors, meet like-minded people, um, and have the conveniences that you don't have to travel 20 minutes one way to go work out.

Yeah, yeah, it makes a ton of sense. You know, I have some good friends in Santa Barbara who started their own uh garage gym, and you know, neighbors would come by, they would charge them 20 bucks a month just to, you know, give them a key. And uh it just made a lot of sense. The person could just walk two houses over train at the gym. And it's you know what I what I love about this and what a cool time that we live in is that we have these you know new ways of connectivity, right? And uh now the game is like, well, do we really need to create anything more, or can we just take what we have and apply it to everything that we do already? You know, like and that's and that's what you guys are doing, like blockchain, right? Like, okay, you know, whether or not the currency thing works out, think about all the applications for what blockchain can do. Absolutely.

Smart contracts and and and that whole that whole market, right? It affects everybody. Uh just as much as social sharing has affected everybody with renting out your cars with the Turo app and uh jumping in a you know an Uber, renting someone's house, right? Those are all stereotypes that we've traditionally done things one way. And what we're seeing out of newer generations, whether it's millennials or or Gen X's or whoever, whomever it may be, is one, they don't want to own stuff as much as we used to just get all the workout equipment and all the all the power tools and stuff. Well, now there's apps that you can go ahead and rent out that stuff to people who want to use it so they don't have to own it. So it's an interesting uh social sharing economy that is growing and growing exponentially.

Yeah. And it's cool, you know. I was talking to you before about my my particular lifestyle is my wife and I moved around a lot, right? We're we're essentially docked in a nomad lifestyle. I can only bring with me what I can fit in our van. Sure. That's it, right? I have one bag, I have one duffel bag of clothing that goes with me everywhere. And it took me 15 months to minimize down to that, you know. Um as a fitness guy, I had probably had like 80 t-shirts. Um now I have 12. And that was emotionally heartbreaking for me to let go of some of those t-shirts, but it made no sense for me to keep them. Anyway, that's my own issues. But, you know, as you get more people who are living a more minimalist, more centralist lifestyle, um, it just makes so much sense. Like, why do we have to have all this crap? We just accumulate things and then it ends up being stored somewhere, um, not used. Um, so yeah, it's it's god, I just love it. Now it's why I was so excited to do this interview uh and take this interview with you because I think it's a really cool concept that maybe um not only will get people interested in being part of what AirGym is, but start thinking more in along these lines, you know, that's better for everybody. So tell uh so what give us details on AirGym, man. How did how did you how did you get it started? Um how what does it look like now? Who's it for? All those, all those good things.

Yeah, I mean, I can kind of start back. Um, you know, AirGym uh originally, like I mentioned before, came from the idea of being able to just go next door, go down the streets, go around the corner from work, and be able to pop into a gym without paying for memberships, without paying for subscriptions, uh sign-on fees, etc. Um, the idea when it when it when it hit me, I was in the shower and I actually yelled for my wife and I said, Hey Sarah, can you just jump online real quick? Tell me if there's any you know apps that I can rent out someone's home gym. And she's like, What? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm like, I want to rent Mitch and Shannon's gym. I said, is there an app for it? It's 2018 at that time, uh 2017 at that time. I said, there's gotta be an app for it. Right. And so and there wasn't. And so um with my business background, I've worked for Fortune 50 companies. Uh, I've managed millions of dollars of sales for other companies. Um, putting together a business plan, marketing plan uh was kind of rudimentary for me. Um but the way I went about it was understanding the the category data first. What is the market doing for home equipment sales? What is the uh market doing for uh commercial gyms? Um, and is it a sustainable idea, right? Is it a big enough part of the industry that I can actually make a business of and people would adopt and people would use? Um and so a lot of the two or three months that I that I started doing research was that, right? Once I understood that commercial gyms globally are gonna grow about 12% over the next four or five years, that was intriguing. Um, home equipment sales are gonna grow about five percent. That was even more intriguing because people were buying home equipment. Um then I started understanding, well, how many home gyms are in my neighborhood? And uh, in a neighborhood of about uh 700 houses, there were 10 really, really good home gyms in people's garages. How do you uh so we have within this community we have a Facebook page? Okay. So it was very convenient for me to be like, hey, who has a home gym? Do you use it? Just a little basic questionnaire. Okay. Um and then I expanded my search outwards, getting into groups like CrossFit groups on Facebook and talking to them about it, going to my personal network and just understanding what do people use, how much equipment, so is it daily, do they have friends coming over, and just kind of doing this market analysis, right? And that was a good couple months. Um, and then once I made the determination I want to go forward with it, it was um, how do I find a developer? Right? There's thousands of developers out there who claim to be full stack dev and they can do this and they can whip it out, and it's we're a lean company, right? Um, that was that was a challenge. Um, and I joke about it all the time because I put a message on LinkedIn and just said, hey, I need help finding a developer who can make me an Airbnb type website that I can book and make transactions through. I didn't say anything about it. Uh, and within one day I had like 278 requests for people who wanted to talk to me.

Right.

And I'm like, oh boy, that's that's overwhelming.

Yeah.

Um and so kind of fast forward to where we're at now, we we picked our developer based off of their experiences with fitness, experiences with booking. I've been very happy with uh with Cubette Techno. Um I think they've done a good job of getting the MVP in place and it's usable. Uh we launched the app July 1st uh of 2018. And um, you know, the the numbers of people who signed up pre-launch, you know, we're about 125. Um and my goal is to have 50 owners, gym owners, uh, 50 members, and like five trainers, five fitness trainers. And you know, we beat that number. And so my goal for launch was can we get like can we get 300 people? Right? Can I can I double that number? Uh well when we launched uh July 1st, we had 6,000 app downloads and we had about 1,200 people sign up. And so I far exceeded where we're at. Um but the app itself, if I take a step back, the app itself is meant for three users. And so you've got the home gym owners or commercial gym owners, you have the members themselves, those who want to be able to work out wherever they want to without signing up. They just want to be able to drop in and work out, and then you have the fitness trainers. And those three users, um, by and large, the members are uh are up to about 800 members. Uh we've got uh just over 600 home gyms right now signed up uh and a couple hundred fitness trainers. Um and so that's kind of who we're going after. Those are the users. Um but it's a it's a pretty um it was a pretty humbling experience to see that many people uh download the app and and uh get excited about it.

Yeah, it was a little scary. You're like, oh god, people are actually using it. Right.

So we yeah, it was um as expected, there were some there were some uh some glitches, uh, there were some items that needed to be corrected, uh, and we knew that coming in, but people could get on, they could log in, they could see the gyms, they could, they could create their profile and add pictures. Uh and that was very, very exciting. Um we were up north in the north woods of Wisconsin when the app launched, and and um so we were kind of away from internet connection, and and um when it launched, I got into it like a Starbucks, checked everything, and and then we had a little bit of work to do on it. Um since then, we've had some more users adopt it, we've had a lot of commercial gyms join. Um, and we really feel like we could be the platform for for home gyms, home gym owners to just stay focused on doing what they do best, which is run your gym if it's commercial, or you know, welcome people who are coming in who want to come over and work out, um, and let us be be the booking platform for them.

Yeah. So I understand, Chris, why you know a home gym would sign up. I understand why a commercial gym would sign up. I understand why uh an end user like me looking for a gym, place to train, would sign up. But the personal trainer or the fitness coach, how does that how does that fit into the piece here? How's that working?

Yeah. So I have a lot of uh friends who are personal trainers, um, and I understand that the the hustle and the grind that goes into what they're trying to do for themselves, uh, because intrinsically they want to be able to help people. Um, but I also understand that there's a cost involved in it, right? They're either paying a uh they're a contractor, they're renting out space for 500 bucks or a thousand bucks a month. Um, but internally they want to be able to build their own client base and and make good money, right? And so what I sought out to do with AirGym was to have a find my trainer section. Okay. So any any fitness trainer can post their their bio, their profile, and uh people can book a time slot for them. So essentially, we want to be the booking platform for the trainers, and they don't have to use an air gym. They can go ahead and continue going to their gym, they can they can use an air gym if they want to, they can start their own gym as well. And that's what we're trying to show people is that like we'll be that front-end platform for you to just continue running your business. Um, and so there's a find my trainer section that's currently on the app right now. Like I said, we've got about a couple hundred trainers who have signed up. And literally, I can search the map wherever I'm located, find a trainer, click on their profile, and see one, see how much they charge, see what they're licensed and certified in, see what their specialty is, check out pictures. Um, and then if I like it, I can go ahead and book a time slot with them to come over and work out.

And does that handle all the monetary exchange as well? Like it does. It does. Yeah, we we do all of our uh all of our payments through Stripe. Okay, okay. So if I'm a trainer, someone books with me, they pay through the app, I get I get paid through AirGym. Correct. Awesome. Yeah, and that takes care of their you know, the issue of them finding some kind of you know CRM or billing software too, right? Yep. Genius. I love it. Um competition. Do you guys have competition? Is there any competition in the space right now?

Not in the home gym space. Um so our competition for the commercial space is really ClassPass. And ClassPass has got millions of dollars of funding and they're doing some awesome things in terms of building community for the boutique gyms. And and that they stated on their website that they're focused on boutique, the yoga, the bar, the Pilates, um, spin. Uh there's a couple strength uh gyms on there as well. Um, but that's really the only competitor from a uh booking standpoint. Uh, but no one in the home gym space.

Awesome. So if I'm gonna go, if I'm gonna let's say I'm on this island, I'm on Pender Island right now. People don't know what that is, just look it up. Uh it's off the coast of Vancouver. And, you know, like I was telling you, there's I found out there's a couple home gyms on the island. There's the commercial gyms, quote unquote commercial are um minimal and don't really suit my barbell fetish, right? Uh you know, if I'm looking, let's say I found a gym in the island, what what do you expect me to pay? Is it like a drop-in fee? Is it a membership base? Like what's some average cost that you're seeing? And then, you know, if I'm I guess if I'm a home gym owner, how much can I make?

Yeah, so um we want the home gym owners and the commercial gyms who sign up to set their rate. Okay. And so what we're seeing uh is anywhere from three to about ten dollars per hour.

Okay.

So there's no there's no weekly payments right now, there's no monthly payments. We would like to, in the next iteration or update, we'd like to incorporate that. So if you really find a home gym or commercial gym you like, you can go ahead and just book it for the month. You can show up as many times as you want. Um, but for an hourly rate for where we're at right now, it's anywhere from about three to ten dollars per hour. And so, you know, you start running the math that you get if you get three clients and you're charging three bucks an hour, nine dollars per hour uh for those three clients, they're gonna work out you know, three days a week, it's $27 a week. You know, it's you know just above a hundred dollars, right? So $128. $128 a month is groceries, right? That's someone's car payments.

Yeah.

Um, but furthermore, if you wanted to make a business out of it, right, you can amplify those numbers and and double or triple or quadruple it to understand what is the potential, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the thing is it's income that comes from something that's there already anyway.

Correct, correct. And that you're using an hour, hour and a half a day. Yeah. And then it just sits there. And what I hear from you know, a lot of people is that, well, it turned into the uh turned into the coat rack. My barbell turned into the coat rack, right? Yeah, yeah. I don't use it anymore. Uh what am I gonna use it for? I was at a networking event uh last week, and um, it was just on west side of Nashville, and uh, you know, I gave the 60-second spiel as to what I'm doing, and the guy stopped me. And he was a he was a he was a bigger guy, probably mid-40s. Uh, and he goes, I've got a garage gym. It's awesome. And he started lighting up about it, just how cool it was, how much money he spent into it. He goes, I never use it. I want I want to do this. And so he literally downloaded the app right there on the spot. He was showing me pictures on his phone of his gym, and it was beautiful. Yeah, uh, he put a lot of time into it. He's like, Well, thank you. He goes, I can make you know a couple hundred bucks a month. That's huge for me, right? And that's I think that's that was invigorating for me. That got me super excited. Like, if I didn't do anything all week and I met that one guy who downloaded it and it's gonna change his life because he's he's passionate about fitness, he's a big dude. He's clearly um his hands like just crushed mine. It was like you know, it was it was like, damn, he you know, he's he's worked out for a long time. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. That's inspiring for me. That's what that's why I'm doing this.

Yeah, I I love it. I mean, I've you know, I built out three gyms um, you know, in the last decade. And uh, you know, I always tell my wife, if we ever settle in a place, I want to build some sort of garage gym, right? Yeah, but down you know, when you you can build, and I've seen beautiful garage gyms, like beautiful homes. home gyms and you know so much pride goes into to building that thing out for a lot of people you know especially if you you're kind of like it's it's a weird thing building out gyms is is uh is really addicting I and I maybe it's just maybe I'm weird. I don't think I am I think that's I think it's pretty normal no that's the normal into it because you want all the toy it's toys that's what it is it's just toys right and you know many people are you know have this this proud um you know gym that they built but they don't have anybody to share it with and what a great way to do it. I mean ultimately when we train it's always nice to have people to train with right energy and the everything that comes with it. So um yeah got him just it's it's so massively applicable. So I guess I would imagine your big challenge right now is just getting the word out right because you know home gym owners aren't looking they don't know this solution exists to a problem they don't really know that they have.

So that that's a that's that's a a part of it right they're also not adept at uh marketing and advertising themselves. Sure. Right. Um and so yeah they can tell their social circle on Facebook or or you know Twitter or whatever it may be for them. But at the end of the day AirGym is a company where we would like to go and we're still very much in our infancy stage of of making sure that users are using it and there's adoptability and and you know sort of the blocking and tackling that's going into into AirGym's business is we also want to be able to get to a point where we are promoting based off location right so you're in yeah you're in what Vermont you said? No Vancouver. Vancouver so you have Vancouver and you open up the air gym app and all of a sudden based off your geolocation you see that there's four air gyms and you can see the pictures without having to tap into it just happens automatically right and there's a there's a level of just um support that we want to be able to give to the to the home gym owners and to the trainers as well that makes it so easy for them to to find clients much like Airbnb does Uber does and you can see where people are located we've got a map feed feature but we definitely want to step it up as we look to bring on a seed round or you know attract an investor.

Yeah. So yeah that's that's that's my next question is what what is the next step for you guys you want to bring on investors or or do you want to yeah give us some insights where do you where do you see this happening in the next six months or so?

Yeah great great question I mean I think ultimately um you know I'm doing this for all the right reasons is that I want that community to be first right and so the community feel and aspect and and uh and communication is very very important that brand of air gym of of of not being a traditional brick and mortar gym um is important. So what we're looking to do is we're looking to bring on um uh build out the team first first and foremost bring on a uh a technical advisor um someone who can help out with the uh the tech side because I'm a non-technical founder right I'm more big picture CEO um we want to bring on a CFO as well uh even on a fractional basis to uh to round out the team and and that's sort of the feedback that we're hearing from uh some investor conversations we've had is that they want to see a full team and so you know over the next really month and a half um up until the new year we're looking to do that and so I've had some really good conversations with um some potential CTOs CFOs but we're also doing a lot of A B testing in terms of you know how do we attract home more home gym owners right organically we've grown through social media and that's been awesome but how do we continue to to you know increase users and how do we keep attracting users to you know keep coming back and so those are all things that I'm working on in addition to building out the team and then we would like to you know raise a seed round to help us scale and then put some support behind um the commercial gyms who sign up the home gyms who've already signed up and continue to build and grow and build and grow.

Yeah yeah man so cool. So you know what I love about these types of businesses and and anything that you know modern entrepreneurs are are going after is that we have the ability now to build a business that completely matches what our dream lifestyle is you know and uh you know I'm always curious when I hear stories like this like how do you you know you're obviously doing it for all the right reasons um how do you see this change in your life you know in 10 years like five years let's say because this is something that grows pretty fast I would imagine you know how how does that how does that change your life man? What's that vision for you personally?

Yeah I I um I grew up in a small town and um I think that there's so many benefits and perks to being able to to know your community because you've learned a lot about yourself real quick that way right grew up in a metropolitan city um LA or Chicago there's a lot going on there's a lot of distractions right and so um I want us to continue to to have that sort of small town feel that people are welcome and this is a community. And I think the way that's going to affect me is it's just going to uh it's gonna bring further affirmation that like my upbringing was very solid um and uh communities first uh and I can continue to feel good about the product and not be so corporate corporate America right uh obviously those there's gonna be corporate structure behind the company that's with any company uh however I think really the the social culture um is going to be the probably the funnest most fun thing for me to to see going forward is home gym owners who are getting behind it and they're very passionate. But it also affects my family as well right I've got two little kids and my wife was a college uh volleyball player she went to Yukon uh we want to show our kids that like you can be healthy no matter where you're located right um and so I think it's big picture 10 years down the road um hopefully we're uh we're a fraction uh of the success that Airbnb has become um and we're changing we're changing people's lives for the better um and hopefully making them some money as well yeah yeah you know it's and now I'm gonna ask you like the Shark Tank questions right like what uh let's say Airbnb this gets on the radar and someone's interested in doing it what stops them from just adding this additional piece to what they already have in their network? Talked about this very early on as I was building out uh the idea and the concept and um quite frankly nothing right they're a $34 billion company and they can pretty much do whatever they want to do right and and uh while I think they've done a good job of focusing on their core business I know that they're they're going to want to add on different revenue models uh to be able to continue to provide value. So quite frankly they could uh and and if they did and I went under no one would really care uh because they would have the next biggest and best thing and and I think for me it would be like okay well I'll I'll take my lumps and and move on to the next thing that uh that I'm interested in which I've got you know other ideas to to build and grow and and make it my own. So yeah.

Yeah I would imagine it's it's um there's probably a lot of urgency behind this too, right? Like you really want to get in and get a foothold as as fast as possible, hence doing podcasts like this to get the word out there and and uh and move quickly. So how is that how are you structuring your energy and time? That's that's big because I know you also right now you're you're doing two two things right you have like a full time gig as well which is how um you know everybody most people get started. What's your you know how are you leveraging your time right now um which is you know a struggle for any entrepreneur right it's you know I have so many things I can be doing but what's the things that are most important to move this forward?

Yeah so there's there's been different phases in which um you know AirGym has sort of uh developed into and so really kind of the the first phase was all just market research development research uh and then we got into the build the app um and then as we're building the app I'm focusing and I still focus a lot of my time on social media um I hear a lot of people say well just be really good at Instagram or just be really good at Twitter or whatever you want that brand to be right and my take is um it's very similar to like you know Gary Vee is that be on everything and understand who your customers are on everything uh and do it yourself and don't have another company do it. So a lot of my time currently in this phase of of AirGym's growth uh I'd say about 80% of my time is really spent on social media right doing podcasts and I've got my own podcast AirGym Digest I've got an email uh that I send out on Mondays to all the users so far I've got a private Facebook group um but on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Cora and and you know Anchor for podcasts. So that's a bulk of my time and I truly enjoy that because it's the creative piece right allows me to put the voice behind who AirGym is. And then you know a lot of what else that I'm doing during my day is um trying to build on strategic partnerships right um Defiance fuel water um I sat down with the president uh it's a local Nashville company Defiance Fuel Waters they're a science backed uh water company uh they've got a pre-workout supplement they just rolled out and they're doing big things uh so that partnership's got a lot of synergy uh Nutrafit Nutrifit uh is a company locally here in Nashville as well that's uh just starting to get into the retail space with Whole Foods and and um and other and other retailers um and so there's some good synergy there as well and so I'm just trying to show them that you know a lot of my marketing materials a lot of those Instagram posts include them right I want people to see what they're doing because I believe in them. And then you know some of the corporate backbone and the structure of what AirGym needs to be is is also what I focus on. So we're finding the pitch tech to talk to investors um finding other mentors who want to you know help me leapfrog myself because you don't know what you don't know right and so that's sort of the structure 70-80% on social media you know 10 to 20% on strategic relationships and then uh the other 10% on on sort of the corporate backbone and and where we need to go.

Yeah yeah it's it's interesting and that's you know social media I I would I would double down on that play too because you know you have to uh show people that they have a problem yeah and then solve that problem. And that's you know it's it's two you know there's certain this the easiest type of business to create is one where the problem is obvious and you just give the solution right and then there's ones like you know what if what you're working on, what I work on on a daily basis is like you don't know you have this problem, but you do. And your world would be so much better if you solved it. Right. And that's um you know interesting play. So you know for people who are listening like what strategic partnerships are you particularly looking for um yeah so we're looking at um you know we've kind of formed the the supplements uh and the water uh and that came uh that came pretty quick um but we're also looking at um like a platform for us to be able to uh to provide uh workouts directly to the air gym users right so those companies who are creating a lot of contents um that's directed at certain you know body parts for workouts that would be something that we would like to go ahead and and uh and speak with um right you know we also want to speak with um you know other commercial gyms as well right those those companies who want to get two or three or four locations signed up is how do we help promote them and do more with them um and then anyone else who's interested in air gym anyone who believes in you know this sort of booking platform in this community um would love to chat with them for sure yeah yeah man um this is really interesting so if I'm if I'm a personal trainer I'm some I'm a fitness entrepreneur right now right why do I need to be checking out air air gym like what's the benefit to me let's say let's start with a couple of why if I'm a gym owner right let's say I'm Eric 2015 right owned a CrossFit facility pretty decent size um why do I need to be on top of this yeah I mean I I think it's important that you as a fitness professional stay focused on the most important part of your business is clients right and you want you want it to be easy for clients to be able to find you find a time and then go ahead and book that without going through a lot of you know mundane tasks right and then once they get there you as the fitness gym owner that's all you should be focused on is that client that client experience right that customer service that workouts uh the post care follow up if you're gonna shoot them an email to to invite them back that's the most important part as to what you should be doing the booking platform should be the easiest thing that people come across and get paid for it.

Yeah yeah I love it man so um where do you see this like if let's let's just let's sum it up with with one final this is my favorite question right in 12 months from now right what's going on in Chris's world and what does air gym look like yeah I mean uh 12 months from now um you know we fully expect to have at least 10,000 home gyms signed up nice okay I say home gyms because it's it's very ingrained that we started home yeah homely commercial right we want 1000 that have signed up uh we'd like to have at least 5000 members at that at that point uh and well over a thousand trainers so those are the metrics right um but I think more importantly what you see now from our website airgym.com or even from the apps that you're that you're using now uh is going to look and feel totally different and it'll be a lot more intuitive there'll be a better flow uh there'll be some you know promotions and advertising of gyms not of Defiance fuel or neutrophit because my goal was not to make money off of this app my goal was not to push ads in people's faces my goal is to build community from within the community so you won't ever see ads mark my word you won't ever see ads that are pop-ups or non-relevant to what you truly need when it comes to booking a home or commercial gym.

Yeah I love it man well Chris this is uh this is really fun let's let's maybe think about coming back on in 12 months and giving us an update on what's going on with Er I'd be honored to man I appreciate the time and and uh um thanks for having me yeah yeah of course this was really uh intriguing and thought provoking and exciting really I mean it's cool to see you know our goal here on the show is to keep people uh educated so that you know fitness professionals are skating to where the puck is going and not where it is right now because things are changing so darn fast and uh you know this is one of those things you definitely want to have on your radar. So yeah man uh thanks for coming on Chris appreciate it thank you so much yeah hey fitness fans don't leave yet it's your host Eric Malzone and I have a quick favor to ask actually three favors so number one if you're a fan of our show I asked you to do something it takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes please and subscribe to our show. Please please please it means so much to us it's so important and then give us a favorable review. We would really really appreciate it and uh I can tell you how much it means and helps us out. So it only takes two minutes of your day and uh it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel or fitness marketing alliance and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge. That's a big deal for us. And we put a lot of work into these episodes uh trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry so that would mean a lot and that's it so we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes but thank you so much for listening it means so much and uh if you have any questions please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric E R I C at fitnessmarketingalliance calm