Aly Orady - Tonal & The Future of Fitness Intelligence

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. But Pocket Suite is different. If you are a business professional or gym owner that needs clients to book time with you and want a seamless billing solution, then look no further. Pocket Suite has you covered. On average, fitness business professionals that sign up for this app see a 30% boost in income. That's because it's simple and has everything you need and nothing you don't. You can easily sell packages and subscriptions. Control your billing in one place. No need for Venmo, PayPal, or any other merchant solutions. Set up automations to cut down on admin time, like client renewal reminders, seamless client onboarding, contracts, intake forms, et cetera, et cetera. Look, I know this because I used it myself. It took me less than 10 minutes to get set up and fire off my first client invoice. If you're looking for a time-saving, simple application that allows you to combine three softwares in one with a clean, professional look for clients and prospects, then you have to check out Pocket Suite. Go to pocketsuite.io. That's S G U I T E. Check out the Apple App Store or Google Play to learn more and give it a free test run. You can also click on the link in the show notes for my special referral offer. That is pocketsuite.io. This episode of the Future of Fitness is presented to you by the Fit Tech Club, a business network run by the creators of the FitTech Summit, Europe's leading conference devoted to fitness and health technology. Look, friends, the fitness industry is changing faster than ever. The intersection of technology with fitness and health is growing bigger and more dynamic by the minute. Gyms are exploding figuratively, and their constituent parts are ending up at home, outdoors, on your wrist, or in entirely new places with brilliantly new concepts. Investors are pumping astronomical amounts of money into the market like we've never seen before. The FitTech Club believes that collaboration is the advantage to these times of change. That's why the club aims to bring thought leaders together to inspire them by making the right contacts at the right time and giving insights to the industry's most relevant and current trends. Here's what Melanie Lauer, CEO of Kettler and TriSports, says about the FitTech Club.

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Well, the I mean for tunnel as a business has grown tremendously, and then yeah, also my personal life has changed, has changed a lot. So on uh on the personal side as well, just lay it out there. Um, since you and I talked last, I've had two kids. Uh I literally had one kid uh in that November, and then I had another just this last December. So I have I have a toddler and a five-month-old child now. Uh so that that's been a big, a big personal change. And uh frankly, has part of the reason I've been able to survive, like you know, running, running this company uh while it's growing so rapidly and and and two two young kids at home is also because I have a tonal at home that I can work out on and it keeps me keeps me healthy and in good shape. And I can tell you that if I didn't have something like tonal at home, I uh I wouldn't have ever made it to the gym for the last two years. It would have felt impossible. The uh in terms of the actual business, like when we talked last, like around 2019, that was really our big, our first big holiday season. Uh it was the prior, I'd say March, uh, that we had uh we started delivering tunnels nationwide. And so it was you know a relatively new product to market. That was our big holiday season. Uh and then the the business has just really, really accelerated. Uh it's you know, as you know, it's it's the equivalent of having an entire weight room and a personal trainer in your home. And uh as we went into COVID lockdowns in early 2020, uh, that proved to be to be an accelerant for the business, and we built the brand awareness really, really rapidly. Uh in many people's minds, it quickly became the the gold standard for for how to how to train at home. Uh and uh and the business grew really, really fast. And we grew 8x one year or 3x the next. So you know, we're like 20 to 30 times bigger than we were last time, last time we talked. Uh and uh and just have a passionate community. Our the product has progressed, the technology uh has come a long, long way since those early days. And uh it's just it's been really, really exciting and and really, really fulfilling, not just for for me and and the tonal team, which has grown a lot, but also the tonal community, uh, which is uh just so incredibly passionate when it comes to to the product and our instructors and how it's changed their lives.

Yeah, man. That that's a lot to take in. And and just for people listening to, if you want to go back and get the full backstory and the evolution and the, you know, I guess the origin story really of of you and Tonal. Go back to the episode back in 2019. I think it was in November. You can listen to it and get the whole thing. I I really want to get people updated on what's going on now. And uh give us some numbers, man. I mean you mentioned uh I know you can't mention, I think, the finances of the company, but you were giving me some some really good numbers about total employees, retail locations, things like that, and how far it has come.

Yeah, so uh we're we're well over 500 employees now. We have 50 retail locations around the country where uh where prospective members can go physically touch the product and and demo it. And and it's it's one of these products that's so revolutionary. It's hard, it's hard to understand until you you physically touch it. It's kind of like driving an electric car for the first time. We all can like we can all intuit what it's like to drive an electric car. Oh, it's like it's like a regular car, but it runs on electricity. But when you actually drive it, uh it's a completely different experience. It's the same thing with tonal. People people can guess what it's like, but when they actually touch it, uh they their eyes widen and they're like, wow, I had no idea. Uh so 50 locations around the country, 40 of them north from shop and shops, about 10 owned and operated locations uh where folks can go physically touch the product. And now hundreds, hundreds of thousands of members, yeah, tens of billions of pounds lifted uh across across the community. So just just we've we've had a level of scale that's that's impressive and and just momentum that uh feels unstoppable at this point.

Yeah, that's uh that's pretty impressive, man. I mean, and I can't imagine the amount of data that you guys are collecting. We'll we'll we'll get into that as well. And and just looking from the list of names of you know, ambassadors and Serena Williams, LeBron James, just to name two people that you may be familiar with. Then we get on to Michelle Wee, Steph Curry, Maria Sharipova, Bobby Wagner, Sue Byrd, Clay Thompson, Brandon Marshall, Tony Gonzalez. Like you guys are cool, man. Those are like, you know, these are big name pro athletes. Like you've become a really cool brand. You're much more than just technology now. You know, when you start working, when you start partnering with these people, is that something that kind of happened organically? Or is that like, okay, this is the image that we want, these are ambassadors we want, this is what we want the public and the consumer market to think of us.

Yeah, it it definitely it definitely happened organically, uh, but it also it also worked, you know, worked perfectly for what we were trying to accomplish as uh as a business. Uh and so I think one one one way to think of it is when you and I like I firmly believe this is the most advanced piece of fitness equipment ever created in all history. Uh it's it's just an incredible piece of equipment in terms of what you can do. We're used to strength training uh using you know dumbbells. Basically, think of that as literally big hunts of metal, no data, no ability for it to respond to you. You you can't ask a 40-pound dumbbell to instantly become 39 or 38 pounds uh or to measure in you know in extreme detail exactly how you're moving and what your power profile looks like. And when you create a digital weight machine uh with AI built into it, that's exactly what happens. We have dozens of sensors measuring what you're doing, doing in real time, the ability to analyze it, respond to you, spot you in real time. That's what happens when you know when the AI thinks someone's struggling too much, we start dropping the weight one pound at a time until they can finish their set. We start adapting the resistance through the range of motion. So it's just it's just such an advanced piece of equipment. So the idea that, you know, we we always knew that eventually it was going to make its way into the world of pro athletics. Uh, and it did organically. Uh oftentimes, in some cases, directly, directly to the athlete. There was Steph Curry was a was an interesting one where the way we found out he had a tonal is because we saw it on Instagram uh and Steph were working out, and uh we're doing a workout together, and she like posted this video of them working out, and she did this pan across the across her gym. But but the the machine they were standing right in front of working, doing a workout together on was the tonal. And we have a partner mode where you can work out with someone, and we're like, Steph Curry has one of these, right? And and so some of it was that way. A lot of times it also was through their trainers, so through their athletic coaches or the trainers they work with. And we uh, you know, just as an example, we're now working with Mike Mancias, he's one of our advisors on the Strength Institute, which is our institution for working, it's our our vehicle for working with researchers and research institutions on basically writing the next chapter in the science and physiology. And that's a fun conversation to have. And so a lot of it was was organic, and then from there it progressed into them investing in the business, um, becoming becoming sponsors and working with us. Uh and it it just makes perfect sense because you know, one of the challenges of Baltonal is it's this new technology that a lot of people have, you know, had never even conceived of or imagined. And now you show up and you're like, hey, this is way better than that thing that you've been using your whole life and think is you know, think is the best way to strengthen train. Well, actually, there's a better way now. And uh and when you have the world's best athletes using it and endorsing it because they genuinely love it, you know, it it it lends a level of credibility to what you've built, uh, which is which is harder to achieve without getting every single person in the world to come physically touch it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's there's something I've noticed over the last 15 years in this industry, too, is like the 1%'s at either end. So you get the 1% at the high performers, right? The pro athletes, the you know, uh special forces military, like these tie-in 1%. And then it kind of on the other side is the people who are dysfunctional, sick, right? Like if when technology tends to serve those populations, then the other 98% slowly start to absorb it. And that seems to be you know what's definitely happening on the on the performance side for you guys. Give me some insights into you know, last time we talked, you were you're just starting to kind of get into what I call like submarkets, right? There's obviously the the majority consumer market, right? People who are generally interested in fitness and health, you know, probably are already in some kind of routine, but they're looking to improve upon it. Where have where have you guys, what interesting projects has this whole thing led you to? Like what things have emerged as you've been doing this and it's been hitting the consumer market. And like you said, just find out like a pro athlete is using it on Instagram, right? Like must interesting things must be happening. What are you what are you seeing?

Well, I think beyond consumer fitness, uh, I'll tell you we've we've made inroads in the into the world of pro athletics where we've gotten pulled into there. Uh, we've also done done stuff in the world of physical therapy and rehab. And so, for example, we a little bit over a year ago, we had started, we had launched our our first clinical trials, and we were doing clinical trials over the Mayo Clinic uh for low back pain rehab, those trials just um actually just wrapped up uh and the the results are are going to be published pretty soon. I can't talk about them specifically, but I'm excited for them to be published, I'll tell you that. But uh, but I think even when you come back and look within the world, the world of consumer, one one really important difference between us uh and I'll call it the rest of the connective fitness sector is everyone in connective fitness was trying to bring some sort of a group fitness experience into the home. They were generally entertainment first, entertainment-centric, cardiocentric experiences. And it was never our goal to, and group fitness, by the way, it's it's one size fits all instruction. It's an instructor speaking to a room full of people in one voice with one set of instructions. And what we've always tried to do from the very beginning was replicate the equivalent of a personal trainer in the home. And so that requires personalization, individualized instruction, a lot of data, a lot of personalization. And it turns out that's a really, really hard problem to solve. Uh, because once you're you take on that role of being a personal trainer, you're having to guide people in a lot of different dimensions. And you're also trying to guide people on journeys to a lot of different goals. Uh, and so a lot of what we've seen happen is just kind of this evolution of just going deeper and deeper onto the level of personalization of our system, the way we use data to uh to personalize, the way we use data to um to like literally uncover physiology, but also the goals that we have in the system. So, you know, while we started with generalized fitness and building strength and and and getting lean, we just released our first content with Michelle on on basically how to improve your golf swing using you know, using a training program on Tunnel. And that's sports-specific training content now that that is beginning to emerge emerge onto the system. So a lot of it is how how do you build a system that's intelligent enough and personalized enough that it can guide a lot of different people to a lot of different goals? And that's kind of like building a self-driving car, and it takes decades, and we're we're on the journey, but we got a long way to go.

Yeah. When you when you make that comparison to uh Tesla, right? I would imagine it's similar. Like either the hardware is similar, but you guys can constantly push updates to it. Is that right? I mean, is that comparison true?

Yeah, it's it's it's very true. And and and we do. We we push we push new software updates about every two weeks. And so uh it's just the the system's just constantly getting getting smarter. We're constantly pushing new content out. We actually run studios uh where we film content in both LA and New York. Uh and so we, you know, we're we're constantly filming new new workouts and new workout programs. And our programs tend to be they're four-week programs, they're not just a workout at a time because we're trying to guide someone to a goal. So four-week programs. And then uh we're also constantly updating the algorithms, which are the things that make decisions for you. So when we have you do a workout, every time we ask you to do any movement, we're actually choosing how much weight you should lift. We're deciding when that weight should go up or down, we're deciding when we should spot you, how aggressively we should spot you. And all of those algorithms are constantly evolving based on the data we're seeing from our community. And so our ability to choose a weight for someone is way better now than it than it was two years ago, for instance. Uh, our spotter has improved. Uh, we've created uh new new modes of of generating resistance. So uh we recently released a mode called SmartFlex. Uh and the way to think of this is if you're doing a bicep curl, you're strongest, you're actually strongest at 90 degrees. But when you're above that point or below that point, you're a little bit weaker. So, what if you create a mode where the resistance actually like peaks when your arm is at about 90 degrees, and beyond that it's a little bit, you know, a little bit lighter? Well, that's proven to build muscle about 30% more effectively. And we invented a mode that does that, and it's just it's one of the features on tonal, and that wasn't there a year ago, but it is now, right? Uh our form feedback has gotten better. So, you know, you have this foundation of something that's very data-rich and very versatile, and you just keep releasing new functionality, new algorithms, new data, and it just gets better and better and better and and becomes the world's best uh digital personalized trainer.

How is how has the fitness industry uh you know, overall, especially like the strength and conditioning community, how how have they either adopted or fought against tonal as a technology? I mean, I I'm I'm still I have a garage with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, box jumps, you know, crossfit guy, right? So I still love all that. But I see the value and I see that this is kind of the future of where things are going, especially the consumer market. And the fitness industry just traditionally has been a little slow to adopt things we tend to resist uh for a very long time. So how how is the community in you know it's been entrenched in this for the last 40, 50 years? How are they accepting what you're doing?

So I I think within within consumers, it solves so many problems in their lives that that many of them are are taking a leap of faith and saying, like, this fits in it fits in my physical space, it's small enough, it's versatile enough. It, you know, at you know, we have financing programs which makes a total of about $63 a month to finance on a 48-month plan. So for a lot of them, they're just like, I'm just gonna get this thing. And then they instantly fall in love with it, right? And and our community is so incredibly passionate. We have a net promoter score of 85, uh, which by the way is a scale from that goes from negative 100 to uh to plus 100 of how much you love a product. And we're like we're at like plus 85, which is just like the best brands in the world, end up end up with NPSs that high. Uh Tesla, I think, is in that is in that range, so so it's a good, it's a very good analogy. Uh and so for them, it's like they they they've taken the leap of faith and they love it. In the fitness industry, of course, you know, you have people who have been like lifting barbells and dumbbells uh their entire careers. Maybe they're loyal to particular things like Kaiser, Kaiser machines, which are again great pieces of equipment and are many, in many places are the gold standard. And of course, there's a skepticism of anything new. And so for them, it's oftentimes getting them to physically touch the tunnel. And usually the first moment is when they can feel the resistance, when they could see that the resistance is dynamic, when they see you could press a button to turn resistance on and off, um, when they start seeing the data readouts on the screen and see like a richness of data they haven't seen before, and then suddenly it starts to open their minds. A lot of times we'll find that, especially like on a pro team, it's actually the athletic trainers who are the first to adopt tonal. And then the SNC coaches are maybe a little bit more skeptical, and it takes them a few more weeks to come around, but eventually, like they shift their behavior and they start using tonal more and more and more as they get more familiar with this thing and don't want to give up what you can do with it. Uh and but by the way, we see the same thing, like there's a similar effect with consumers. We have a lot of consumers who they're cardio junkies, they buy the tonal to augment what they do in the world of of cardio. Uh, but over the course of like a year, you'll see their their usage shift you know from cardio a lot more towards you know tr training on tonal, which of course is strength training, but it's just a lot more holistic uh as all the professionals who listen to this know. Uh but we we see this, it it it ends up being this shift as you discover how. Amazing it is. And it's a slow build. It's like when you buy an electric car, I think there are things we take for granted, like the fact that you never have to go to a gas station ever again. And there's a convenience there. But it takes you about a month to figure that out. About a month in, it dawns on you. It's like, wait a second, I haven't been to a gas station. This is amazing. Right. And I think there is a slow build as you truly begin to grok what this like new, innovative, disruptive thing is, uh, and how it's it's truly changed the world and how you can think about you know training people.

Yeah. You know, there's um I want to give Helene Knapp, she's the founder of City Row. She was on this podcast recently too, and she she put a name to something that we're we're all, I think, you know, just needed a name, and it's the recalibration, right? So post-pandemic, you know, during the pandemic, there was this just you know, everything blew up. I mean, you guys obviously saw significant growth and Peloton saw all of the all the at home connected, everything shifted. And now we're starting to see as things are opening up again, life is going back to somewhat what it was pre-pandemic. There's a recalibration, everyone's kind of waiting to see what happens, right? Like, how much of a foothold is home connected fitness going to have? Gyms are reopening and great signs for for gym owners and health clubs that people are really starting to come back. But there's going to be a permanent shift afterwards. Like, you know, a lot of people like me have an at-home gym now, but I also like to go out and get my hikes in, but I want to go to my gym just to, you know, do some weight training there and and you use the sauna or whatever it may be. There, there's there's a balance. So if you're projecting forward and this recalibration starts to settle in, I'm sure you think about it all the time. What do you see in the next like five years if you had a crystal ball?

Well, for connected fitness and for tunnel, I really view them a little bit differently. And and the reason the reason why is we actually don't consider tonal to be in the connected fitness sector. It's the best proxy out there, but we actually consider tunnel to be in intelligent fitness. Uh, because connected fitness generally leans into the world of media and entertainment, right? That's how they think about their businesses. Their content machines is about the consumption of the content. You know, we're about AI, the personalization, and all the technology that that we built. And uh, and the reason the reason that's important is connected fitness is always mirrored an experience out in the in the real world. The same way that like Netflix, well, you could do your Netflix or you go watch a movie at a movie theater, right? You could go to a group fitness class or you can do your connective fitness experience at home. Uh, but with tonal, you know, and the general rule for disruptive technology invented in Silicon Valley is are you 10 times better than the alternative? Uh and if you take someone's tonal away, like someone has a tonal alarm, you take it away and you say, hey, go to the gym, they generally look at you and say, it feels like you sent me to the Stone Age. Right? You just took away all the technology, all these things that have completely changed the way I work out. And you just sent me back to like, you know, and and so I think when you think about that, you know, as the economy reopened, as we saw vaccines roll out, we didn't see our business decelerate the way that a lot of connected fitness businesses decelerated as people started, you know, roll like they got excited. Like, I could finally go be in a class with other people. People who own tunnels are not excited to go back to the gym anymore. Like their mindset's completely shifted uh because this is their gym. This is everything they could ever want and more. And the alternative isn't an equivalent alternative outside the home. Uh, it's something that in their minds is now very inferior to what they've become accustomed to.

Well, I think the the pushback on that is that the community, right? People people like like I go, I go to the gym, well, more because there's specific pieces of equipment I don't have at home. But also like there's there's buddies I see there, right? You know, I like to kind of like I said, I like to sit in the sauna, you know, shoot the crap with someone who's just hanging out, right? I like that. I like to say hello to the front desk people, right? They're nice. Uh all kinds of stuff. So I I think there's there's a component to that, right? I mean, is there what and I know you guys aren't building necessarily community, you're building intelligent training and and personal training based on AI. So how do you see the community part of that working with tonal?

Yeah. I mean, there there is the fact of the matter is there is there is a really powerful online community. Uh and so there's you know, on Facebook, it's called the official tonal community. We have communities started by members. Um, like, you know, we have tonal tonal dads is a is a really fun one. Uh it's it's probably the funniest community I'm a member of. Uh but we have we have about a dozen different communities that that some of them are run by our by us and some of them are our member run. Uh and people make friends, people meet up in real life, they change phone numbers and you know help hold each other accountable. Uh, and there's there's like a real there's a real like equivalent to community there that you see at the gym, except it turns out that at the gym you may or may not run into your body, whereas your buddies are always online, right? Uh so there's that element of it. But even within the product, uh, you know, we have we have leaderboards, we have uh achievements, we have badges, we have all sorts of mechanisms uh that that help people stay motivated, stay accountable, uh, people who need a little bit of competition, people who need a you know, need accountability, people who need achievement, people who need friendship. We have we do have live classes, and there's a social zone as part of those live classes, you can you know basically high-five people. And so there's a bunch of elements that that seem to accomplish the same thing. And the truth of the matter is you can always go for a hike or a bike ride with with folks. There's so many other ways to get human connection. Uh, but for people who are looking for a way to guarantee that they're always going to get their workout in every single day or every other day or whatever they're they're aiming for, and get the best workout they can in the shortest amount of time uh with the least amount of friction, our member community will tell you there really is no other way. Uh and uh that's what I that's what I believe, especially having had two kids in the last two and a half years.

You said intelligent fitness, was that the category that I you you described it as?

Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah.

When you when you define that category, is there anybody else in it? Or is it just tonal?

Uh in my mind, it's just tonal. The bar, the bar for the level of personalization uh that you need and the amount of data that you need to truly uh you know guide someone. Uh and so let me give you let me give you here you know the best example. Like let's go to the world of self-driving cars, right? Uh there's a very, very long period of time where there are only a few people who are truly building uh things that we would all categorize as self-driving. And yeah, there were there were things, there were features showing up in like regular cars, like lane assists that would tell you if you were veering out of the lane, or sensors that would tell you if you were going too fast or at risk of rear-ending someone. But those are all like little kind of features. But when you actually start trying to put it all together to create the equivalent of a full-blown self-driving car, or I guess the full-blown personal trainer, uh, I haven't seen anyone else out there uh attempt to do what we're doing with the same end goal and the same like holistic approach. Uh, there are pieces of it. There's some people doing stuff with computer vision, there's some people doing things with data logging and analytics, but like when you try to truly bring it all together, we're the only ones so far uh that has that has done that. Look, I I'm sure that will change. Uh, but at this point, uh it's it's just us kind of like forging the path forward. And I want to be clear, that's a very hard place to be because you're you're often like climbing the mountain alone, right? In many ways.

Yeah, of course. Uh paint paint a picture for me, man. I mean, where is this going? I mean, last time we talked, I remember this clearly because it was it was very eye-opening to me, and and that's when I started you know formulating my opinions of where the future of fitness is going. But you know, having like this just smart ecosystem, like a smart home, right? And and maybe tonal being at the center of that, where I imagine this world of like, okay, well, you know, as part of your personal trainer driven by AI, is like it's gonna tell you what the shopping list is, right? The food's gonna be ordered, it's gonna be dropped off, you know, it's gonna link in how much sleep you're getting, and that's gonna dictate the type of workout that you get for that day. Uh, how much of that is futurist and how much of that is right now? And is that vision still something that you that you guys are are seeing? Like, where where are we in the future exactly? Is it now or are we waiting for it? Like, what's going on, Holly?

There's there's more, there's more and more of it uh in there already, but this is kind of the litmus test, right? Is we we wake up every day and we ask ourselves the question what can a human personal trainer do that tonal doesn't do yet? And what is it going to take for us to get there? And to be clear, there's a lot of things that Tony can do today that a personal trainer can't do. We can predict how much weight someone can lift with far greater accuracy than anyone else can. There are elements of forb feedback that we can provide with a precision that a human trainer can't do, just eyeballing it, right? So there's stuff that we already can do that humans can't do, but there's also a lot of things humans can do that we we can't do. And we're constantly like we have this long, long roadmap of all the skills that we need to teach tonal. Uh and uh, and there will be elements of we haven't done much yet on in the way of nutrition, and nutrition is something that's definitely definitely down the line. Uh, but I'll give you, you know, I'll give you an example of something we just we just added. So so it used to be that we would choose how much weight you should lift. Now we have a sense of of muscle fatigue. Uh yeah, how have you used your muscles and which muscles are ready for how much load? And now we also have you know intelligence around recovery, recovery modes, uh, which is if you're in the process of recovering a particular muscle group, how much load should should you be, how much should you be lifting uh for those particular movements? And so like that's a that's a level of intelligence. We have much better form feedback than we did a few years ago. Uh, we're beginning to optimize for different goals. I mean, the way you would you would do different you the way you would do things depends, depending on whether someone's trying to you know get lean versus build muscles, you'll make you'll make different decisions along the way. We're doing you know, we're doing stuff like that. We've integrated uh additional data sources like uh Apple Watch, for example. We have Apple Watch integration, uh something that's used by a really high percentage of our of our member base. So a lot of it's about teaching skills, a lot of it's also about enriching our data set. So we now have what's probably or possibly the largest strength training data set in in history, right? From a physiology data set perspective, like most of the research out in the world has been collected, like most of the data we have on strength training and like 100 years of research is data collected on clipboards. Like your typical study is it's a cohort of like 25 college-age males for a semester. Like that's your typical strength training study. And to have data across hundreds of thousands of people spanning years, spanning age, spanning ethnicity, spanning gender, it's not like the richest data set in history. And it's with a level of precision uh we can adjust weight in one pound increments. So it's not just the 30-pound dumbbells, the 35 pounds, but we know the difference between 30 and 31 and 32, right? Uh, and and so we're now commissioning, like we're working with researchers, we're commissioning original research to go answer questions that have never been answered before to figure out the physiology and optimize people's workouts. Uh, and again, that's a whole nother dimension where we're not just doing something, we're not just answering the question, you know, what can a human being do uh that we haven't done yet? We're now asking questions like, what can we do that a human being could never do? Right? What can you do that you would never accomplish with free weights? Right. Uh and so we're pushing in all of these different dimensions, but the general litmus test is wake up every day and ask ourselves, how can this be a better personal trainer? What's the next step? What's missing? And how long will it take us to get there? What data do we need? What technology do we need? What algorithms do we need? What physiology have we not discovered yet as human beings? And and it's it's just it's just this this effort that we're we're doing. And uh the Strength Institute uh has just been an amazing step forward for us to to start really formalizing a lot of that research and a lot of that work. Uh the clinical trials from a rehab perspective, again, really, really exciting. And so we're making progress every day.

Yeah, it's it's like the it's the Henry Ford quote, right? If you ask people what they wanted, maybe we would have built a better horse, right? That's right. And you know, like I would imagine. So if you know from the mindset of a a CEO of this company and founder, like how how are you trying to stay away from the preconceived constructs of fitness, right? And trying to look at new, try to look at it in a new way. Like I that that's a hard thing to do. Like we're so programmed at certain things, especially me have been, you know, athlete in strength and conditioning for almost my whole life as an adult. So it's hard for me to think outside of like, well, what is possible? We always look at things in the same way. Like you're talking about, well, how do we be the best personal trainer? But what what if that category of being a personal trainer is not what you guys are looking for? Maybe it's something completely different that you guys are going after. So how do you approach that on a day-to-day basis? How do you keep those thought processes fresh without letting those old you know constructs come in?

So a few a few things. So I think the first thing I'm gonna say is you hire people much smarter. Like yeah, I hire people much smarter than me. And and and so the the team is just the team of folks that I've hired, and and just the expertise that they bring as individuals is just it's mind-blowing. Uh and and they teach you things, right? And and a lot of times it's my job to connect dots or read things together or or put people together to go think about things anew. Uh, but innovation has always been a core part of our DNA. It's one of our cultural pillars. Uh, and in a lot of ways, the way that manifests for us is when you solve, when you approach a problem, you solve a problem, uh, you you always start from first principles. Uh and and I think there's there's a lot of businesses out there who have who have a habit of basically trying to take a proxy out in the real world and replicate it. Uh and and connected fitness, as large, like, what is the group fitness experience we're going to bring into the home? But when you do that, you instantly narrow your ability to innovate. And if you if you start from first principles, you recognize what your opportunities are and what your what can like there's a lot of constraints that existed out in the gym that no longer exist in the home. And there's a lot of things that exist in the gym that you can't replicate exactly the same way. If we tried to replicate community in the gym, we would have built a like a video chat function into tonal and like, hey, work out with your friends over video chat. I mean, that's absolutely the wrong way of solving it. You have to think of it completely differently. And so if you're always willing to go back to first principles, go back to the problem you're trying to solve, the outcome you're trying to achieve, um, you'll figure out how to get there with the tools you've you've created for yourself.

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Well, it often it all often means like throwing conventional wisdom out the window. Like whatever preconceived notions people have. And so going back to the Henry Ford example, there was this belief that animals got you from got you and goods from point A to point B, right? And if you held on to that belief, maybe he would have worked on a better wagon or better feed for a horse. Or and if you if you're willing to let go of that and say, no, actually, the goal here is how do I get from point A to point B most most efficiently? And and ironically, if you actually go back to the the origins of the automobile, it was also about trying to counteract pollution. It turns out animals put out a lot of pollution. Uh, we didn't at the time realize cars also put out a lot of pollution. Ironic hard, hard lesson, right? But but but you go back to like, hey, I want to solve the pollution issue. I want to, you know, but and we want to get people from point A to B. What are the other ways to do it? And you go back to first, and then you begin to realize, well, hey, there's all these other ways to generate force or locomotion. Uh and you know, and you we see what happens with trains, right, and steam engines. So, like, what is the compact for and and you you start working through it and you get there. And and in our case, a lot of it had to do with the way you motivate people, the way you um teach people things, the way you create a level of accountability. And and we we did take lessons from other places, like, how do you teach someone proper form? Well, lots of people have learned yoga on YouTube, right? And so, like, how how do yoga instructors teach movement? Right? Okay, like how do we how do we learn from that in in what we're doing over here? Um, but you can't teach someone proper form the same way you would teach it if you were a personal trainer standing in the gym with them and you're like, you know, you know, you know, touching their app, saying, I need you to feel it here. You can't do it that way. You have to do it a different way. That's what I mean by that.

Yeah, yeah, man. It's when you say I want to go back because this is something I'm I'm a huge fan of wearable data and how it can be used better, right? So when you guys talked about uh an integration with Apple Watch, like what does that mean exactly? I mean, what are you guys planning on doing with the data? How does that benefit the end consumer uh at the end of the day?

Well, there's there's so many layers to that. I mean, ultimately in the long run, we're we're trying to understand just holistically the full view of what they're doing from a fitness perspective. We're trying to understand things like sleep, stress levels, you know. Uh so I think like that that's at a high level, at a at a high level. In terms of what we we started doing immediately with Apple Watch is solving a problem which, believe it or not, has not been solved. There is very, very little research out there on how many calories people burn when they strength train. Uh and so like we know what mets are if you're running, we know what mets are if you're cycling. We have this very like like the research, the body research out there has this very like squishy sense of like mets for strength training. But what are mets for a squat versus a bicep curl versus a barbell bench press? Doesn't really exist. Not with a level of accuracy that you need if you truly want to figure out how much calories are people burning during workout. What is the afterburn as they recover from that workout? Uh, and when you can get heart rate information and correlate it across people's workouts, and you know what they're doing down to the millisecond, uh, and then you can longitudinally cut that across hundreds of thousands of people over the course of many years, like you now can answer that question, right? Uh and so that's like that's just an example of like the challenges that show up on your desk. When you're being ambitious and trying to solve a big problem, and you want to get from point A to point B, but you take two steps forward and you're like, oh whoa, I got I gotta do that too. Uh that's what it's like. Right.

That's an interesting problem. And immediately, like anybody who's been in the industry for a while knows that you know, strength training is one of the best overall things for health and weight loss and fat loss, I should say. Not weight loss, fat loss. Yeah. And uh just bring back this anecdotally when you know I was running my CrossFit gym, and today it was a strength day, I remember, and there was a new client, and she was just obsessed with calories, right? Obsessed with heart rate, all that, which isn't you know necessarily a bad thing, at least it's a good thing to be obsessed with, I guess, you know, better than donuts. But the like during in the middle of like this between rest periods between strength training sets, she insisted that she needed to be jump roping. And I'm like, what stop it? Like, what are you doing? And she's like, no, I need to keep my heart rate up. I'm not burning enough calories. That this I this class sucks. I'm not burning enough calories. And I'm like, oh, and I it just it went out and I'd pull her in my office. We had to talk, eventually I fired her as a client. But anyway, that there's a lot of mentality about that. And I think people who've been in the game for long enough were like, yes, I want that information. I want the proof that strength training does burn calories, that it is one of the most effective things for fat loss. And overall, wealth, like or health, like metabolism, metabolic metabolic health over time, you got to have lean mass, right? That's we know it, but the consumers don't quite grasp it all the time. And of course, there's the you know, I don't want to get bulky conversation on, you know, for mostly women. So it's it's an interesting problem, man. I love it.

You know, it's it's the research, like the bodies of research that are out there are staggering. Like if you if you want to take out an insurance policy against every longevity-related disorder, you know, whether you're talking about metabolic or muscoskeletal or you know, every like strength training is the antidote to every single longevity uh disorder that that exists. And there's there's uh like staggering amounts of research to prove that, but it's not consumable for consumers. Uh and part of the reason for that is frankly, I don't I I don't know that they want to know that level of detail. I think what they want to know is that you know, the same this is the same reason I hire personal trainers. Like, I want to be healthy, I want to live a good life, I want to look good. Uh, and if you can understand who they are, what their goals are, and you just coach them along the way, you know, in our case, you can hire. Personal trainer for the rest of your life, right? Uh that's really, I think, all they really want. And the more you try to inundate them with the details, just it at some point it just becomes overwhelming. And there are people who will geek out and they want to go deep and they're gonna read this this part or that part, but but when you go into the research, it's just there's just so much of it. Uh and uh and it's really part of our job here is to is to make that accessible, right? Yeah, and then I I don't just mean tunnel, I mean like as fitness professionals.

100%. Yeah, I mean that it's really important because I mean ultimately like I've said this so many times from a broken record, and it's unpopular, but it's just you know, as a if you look at the fitness industry over the last however its inception has been, we haven't gotten to the end goal. We're far from it. And that's just making our community people healthy. I mean, our country's fattier and unhealthier than it ever has been. And that's a problem, you know, and we have to take a hard look as like, okay, well, what we've been doing actually hasn't worked. Yes, we can make a difference in a select few people's lives who decide to come in and commit to being, you know, in the gym or working with a trainer, but the people who we really need to be working with, they're not even anywhere close to coming in the gym, right? So we need to reduce that friction. I think that's something that that you've talked about numerous times is you know reducing the friction to get people in. Yeah, one of the things I see with tonal is that there's there's a price point, right? But that's friction. So I guess when you look at the population of the people that are working with, you know, are using tonals and adopting it, uh, are we still just tackling the same 20% that would have gone to the gym anyway? Or are we getting to the markets that actually need our help?

No, you're you're going you're going a lot further than that. I mean, there's definitely cannibalization, or we've taken people who would have were canceling gym memberships in order to get tonals. Uh, but just from a price point perspective, we have financing programs uh through a firm uh where a tonal rather than being you know 29, 2,995, $29.95, uh for the off-front purchase of a tonal, you can now finance it for $63 a month, right? And for a lot of folks, you compare that to what you might pay for a gym membership, a single personal training session, your daily coffee habit for people who spend four or five dollars a day on coffee, sometimes for two or three people in their household, what you spend on your cable. People spend far more than $63 a month on a lot of different things. And if it's at all important to you, the average person uh in the United States can certainly come up with $63 a month to pay for this piece of and so from that perspective, like we believe the accessible accessibility is there. The next the next question, of course, is is reaching folks with all the different pieces of content that you need. And you know, when you look at our member community, it's just gotten a lot more diverse. Compared to the weight room, one example is we're 45% female, 55% male, uh, which is not something you you see in most in most weight rooms. Uh and fitness at large, if you actually look at stats from like SFIA and others, uh fitness is generally about 45% female, 55% male. So like we mirror fitness at large within within the tonal community, uh, which is which is amazing. Uh, we're seeing a lot more in terms of age ranges, like the number of times that like we get, we see it on social media or we get emails or or or photos of grandpa Willie using tonal, like it's it's really starting to go really, really broad and it's touching people who otherwise wouldn't go to the gym. Sometimes the secondary or or third user in the home, right?

Yeah, I I I know we're kind of bumping up on time, and I want to cover this because it I've just seen I had you, you know, on the podcast twice before the pandemic, and then you know, a lot has happened since that point. Uh, and now having you on for the third time is great and getting caught up on everything. But man, I uh your personal journey, right, from someone who just built something because you needed to lose weight, you felt unhealthy, right? And then you kind of took this technology and then a company started. And all of a sudden, here you are last year, you know, uh 1.6 billion, billion with a B valuation, right? Uh investors are coming in. And what has this journey been like for Ollie personally over the last you know, six years or whatever it's been? I think it was 2018 when you kind of formed the company, right? What's it been like, man? Give us give us an idea about what that roller cost is.

It's been I mean, it's been intense, right? Uh to say, to say the least. And uh it's intense in two ways. Number one is it's it's just it's exhilarating, it's incredibly just motivating when you can see it working. Uh and and your ambitions rise over time, right? And there's a there's a place where you start and you're like, I can make the world's best strength training machine. It's like, oh, I can make everyone in America healthier. I can make everyone in the world healthy. Like you're you're you you know, you're you keep aiming for greater and greater things. And and you know, you start out like, I think I can make it kind of like a personal trainer. Like, I think we make something better than a personal trainer, right? Like, and so so I think that that's just it's so incredibly motivating. And part of that is when you can see it working, and part of it is when you start surrounding yourself with people who are so much smarter than you, uh, who can say, Hey, Ali, I know you invented this thing, but let me show you what it can actually do. I've had those sessions. It's like, like, wow, I had no idea you could do that. Like, and and then suddenly like you're like, oh wow, this this could be even bigger than I thought. Right. And so uh so that's one element. The other element of it is is just like just personal growth as a leader, right? Uh it's one thing to to lead 10 engineers standing in a lab building prototypes, it's another to lead you know, hundreds of people, you know, in multiple countries and multiple cities with a community of hundreds of thousands of people growing to a million, uh, hopefully soon. And that's just that's a very, very different skill set. And I have I have coaches who help me do that. The same way that any athlete has coaches to make them better athletes. I have coaches to help me become a better leader and a better manager and a better business thinker and a better business strategist. And I have board members who've done this before, independent directors who've been run massive companies, massive public corporations. And so you start surrounding yourself with amazing people and and you're constantly learning and just becoming much, much better at it. Uh, but holy moly, it's intense. It's like it's like driving a Formula One car continuously on a track with that level of intensity, sometimes through good weather, sometimes through really terrible weather. Uh, but you never, you never, you can't pull over, right? And and that's that's kind of what it's like. And somewhere along the way, I had two kids, which by the way, having kids is the most amazing experience anyone will ever have in their life. It's just it's it's incredible. Uh, but it's it's just a whole nother like workload on top of all this.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, man, it's uh it's it's really exciting to see how far you come. You know, I when we first connected, I just remember I'm like, this is really cool. There's something here. And then just seeing from a distance is a growing, growing, growing, seeing you getting that more into the public eye and and all of it. So it's it's uh and then just seeing the people that you have on board, it's incredible, man. Like at that list I gave you, like you get you're working with LeBron James and Serena Williams, two of the best ever in their respective sports. It's uh it's pretty wild ride, man. So pinch yourself, I guess. It's it's really happening.

It's amazing, and um, we love them both and and all our athletes. And I love our team, I love our community. Uh, and it's funny because I feel like I could have said this to you last time we talked, but in many ways, it feels like we're just getting started. So uh please please keep rooting for us. Uh, we have a long way to go and a lot of value to create uh for for everyone, for everyone's health and longevity. Awesome, man.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time, Holly. I know you're really busy uh driving that Formula One car. So uh appreciate you take it a pit stop for an hour and uh and joining and joining me for this. It's been really insightful and and I am rooting for you. Keep up the great work. And uh yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Ali O'Reilly. Thanks for having me. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minnesota. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the future of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.