Andy Peat - LiftBrands: Two Steps Back, Five Steps Forward

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. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what's going on inside your body. People age at different speeds, and generic annual blood work doesn't properly evaluate your biological age, but Insight Tracker does. Insight Tracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add InterAge 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age and see how you're aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. That's insight tracker.com forward slash future. 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 Fit Tech 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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Hey, what's going on? Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, it's a it's a pleasure, man. It's been longer than I thought. We were just talking and just by nature of where you were when we recorded last, you were still in New Zealand, right? Now you're in Minneapolis. So it's gotta be at least two years since since we talked. So some stuff has happened. And maybe we can start with that. Like what's going on in your world over the last two years?

Yeah, well, uh big geography shift moving from beautiful New Zealand to freezing cold Minneapolis, Minnesota, which my knowledge was literally just based around the movie The Mighty Ducks. So I've learned a lot, and uh it's great. It's really weird where I am in Minnesota in a place called Chan Hassan. It's it's actually sort of one of the world's fitness hubs. It's this small 20,000 population suburb, town outside 30 minutes outside of the city, home of Snap Fitness, anytime fitness, lifetime fitness, and a couple of like equipment people. So really, really in the hub of fitness for the world, which is which is cool. But yeah, plenty, plenty happening. Obviously, moving is is a big one, but also you know, learning the American industry and and life post post-COVID with within Lyft brands and where we're you know we're taking the business and where we think the future is and and being in a franchise business as well, trying to try and obviously get franchisees to go along the ride as well, comes with its own fun and games. Yeah.

Yeah, what's how have you guys handled the last two years? Like what what's been you know some of the initiatives or protocols or or ways that you've kind of done your best to maneuver through it?

Yeah, we use COVID as a as a a time to essentially sit back and reset. So, you know, the chief product officer for for Lyft brands, we have four portfolio companies, or four companies in our portfolio. So Snap Fitness being the largest with 1,100 clubs around the world. We we also own a company called Fitness on Demand, which is traditionally a virtual on-demand content provider for clubs of fitness classes. Then we have investments in Nine Round and also Fit Stop, which is a hyper growth Australian boutique offering. So really what we wanted to do was when during COVID, we we sort of cleaned out the out the shed a little bit. We had a number of different other businesses in the in the in the company, and and we were just doing things like wholesale and tech, and we were just doing a whole bunch of stuff that was outside the the parameters, really, and we wanted to get back to what we do do really well, which is selling gym memberships and helping franchisees grow their own business. So we consider COVID to be two steps backwards to take five steps forward. We essentially cleaned up shop and our and our parent company as to all the things that we were doing to really just focus on our core four businesses, with the two main ones being Snap and Fitness on Demand. And then with Snap, what we did was we we decided we needed to bring in some additional talent. So we went out and hired a very, very good chief marketing officer. We didn't want someone from the fitness industry, we wanted something, someone external. So we got a uh a lovely lady by the name of Rose, who's just an absolute powerhouse, she's a weapon. She comes from hotels, and when you bring someone in from hotels into the fitness industry, you know, they come with a polished expectation of you know execution of marketing assets and ultimately member experience to be extremely good. So she's been great for us. And what then what she led during sort of towards the end of COVID for us was a big initiative of uh brand repositioning. So ultimately, we went out and we spent a bunch of money on a fancy, fancy agency to do a bunch of research and ultimately came back with you know where we needed to position the brand because historically Snap Fitness was based off three three key words fast, convenient, and affordable. And that paved the way for the business to to scale quickly and scale well. But those that time was over because everyone else was 24-7 and everyone else was affordable and everyone else was convenient, so we needed to do something a little bit different. So we ended up um changing the way the brand spoke to the public, changed the logo, still kept the name, but just made the logo a little bit more contemporary, and ultimately came up with a tagline of For the Feeling, which is based around we want our gyms to be ultimately to help people feel better versus just making them look better. So that's been a journey because that involves physically changing the design of the clubs, changing the member experience, changing the technology that we talk to members with. We released a mobile app about six months ago, a number of different partnerships, including Apple that we've coordinated with, and you know, over the past 12 months we've been rolling that out. So that's really what's been keeping me busy is that whole brand repositioning and not only bringing it to life in the eyes of the consumer, but also in the eyes of the member journey and then getting franchisees on board with it.

Yeah, so you guys went and do a subtle yet significant shift to for the feeling, right? Did I get that right? Is that is that what the tagline was? For the feeling. Yeah, the reason I it's interesting to me because I've I've had this conversation so much and I've heard people talk about it like that you know, people aren't here for the aesthetics as much anymore in the gyms. They want to feel good, they want to de-stress, they want to feel healthier, right? Although I've heard all that, but I've never really seen the research that backs it up. So it sounds like your company actually did the research ones that you guys, you know, hired out to. Can you can you expand on that a little bit? Like what was that, what, what's behind that decision? What kind of information did you see? What how how'd that light bulb go off?

Yeah, it's a good question. I'll and I'll look I'll yeah, I'll answer it in a way that doesn't give all the data away either because we spent a lot of money for it. But so it's not it's not something you can do quickly, and you really need to get experts in. So we we got a company out of London that essentially does a lot of different market analysis, surveying, and ultimately helps you come up with conclusions. So that involved talking to current members, ex-members, staff members, franchisees, current franchisees, non-snap fitness people that just go to other gyms or don't go to gyms. Essentially, what it is is talking to a lot of different demographics and really finding out what the what they are actually saying, what are the bulk of them saying, what are the men saying, what are the women saying? And that really can define a market for you and define your place within a market. And ultimately what we found is kind of stuff that you you and I, we've been in the industry for a long time. We we already knew mo mostly, I think, and that was a lot of the gyms out there, and in particular in our space being the 24-hour franchise space, they all had just started to look the same. So, you know, I've been told for 24-hour franchises, they're like 30 flavors of vanilla, which I think was true to an extent for sure. But then they started to change the way they looked into being this kind of boutique hybrid-y type look with fancy lighting and and and and they're all their marketing was about hard and fast and results and and you know, sexy people on the on the videos, and the but but when you got into the club, you still just there was no programming to it because they were traditional fitness. So ultimately what the surveying came back at was you know, the bot a lot of our members, they're intimidated to come in, they feel like they join and then they're not supported, they feel like they want some sort of step-by-step support, they feel like they want some sort of holistic approach, that when it came to the digital space, that they would they were tired of having 10 different apps, they wanted just one aggregator of all. And it came to the conclusion that, okay, well, we're not gonna be the hard, the fast, the sexy branding that some of the boutiques are or some other other gyms are, and we're we're gonna start using real people in our marketing, and we're gonna start talking about like for a purpose, for a feeling, for the good vibes, for having fun. And what we're gonna do is really identify our our core personas, we call them, so our demographic that we target and and cater towards, and and we're gonna have a member journey for each of them, and we're gonna offer products that that suit them. And for us being a brand that historically was all about fast and volume and 24-7 and low service, starting to become more service-oriented, getting people involved and and making our clubs look look, smell, and feel extremely positive. That's the word we use is positive. So when you walk into a Snap Fitness now, a new Snap Fitness, you see positive affirmations, your phone gives you positive affirmations. We have a signature scent which is designed to uplift your your senses to be more happy than it was before. All of those little details all add up to just a positive experience for a member. And if and if someone's just a typical gym gym goer, they just want a squat rack and a bench press, we have that as well because it's all you know modern equipment using modern vendors. So that's sort of what the data came back at. It was a long-winded answer, sorry, but it came back suggesting suggesting a lot of the stuff that like I said, you and I have probably talked about for years around intimidation, and a lot of gyms say we need to go after the 80%, right? That that aren't currently members of the gym. And and that's what our data came back as as well. It's like hey, there's this whole population out there that gyms aren't touching. And we believed that even though everyone knew about it, the way that they made their clubs look, the way that their clubs marketed, and the way that their products interacted with their members, they still were going in that hard, fast results type environment. I think it goes as far to say really the only major chains out there now that are trying really hard to target the 80% of us and Planet, you know, Planet with the the non-intimidation and the alarm that goes off when someone does it. We'll never do that because we actually really like strength training and stuff. But yeah, so yeah, that's kind of where we position it.

Yeah, it's great insights, and it's interesting to me that I've I've done something like you know, 300 interviews on this show. And I think it's the first time we've actually talked about smell. Like how does a facility actually smell? You know, and that's like that's it's a really it's just it's what an ignored sense overall, right? Just the sense of smell, the old factory sense is like we it's so it's so pleasant. Like I came home after a trip and I noticed that my wife had candles in the house, and I was like, what a freaking difference that makes when I come home after like you know, long, you know, what travel's horrible right now. So you come home and you, you know, I was like, wow, it makes a real difference. So I just out of curiosity, like, is it what type of smell are you guys focusing on?

It's funny. So I did a bit of research into particularly retail and hospitality, and what I found with retail is companies would actually create a certain scent that was designed to they reckon that certain aromas would essentially open your mind to to purchasing, like which is which is all just about the mood you're in. And with a gym, obviously, we talk about smell in the sense of you just got to make your gym smell nice because there's you've got sweat, you've got you know, uh body odor, like all these things you've got to compete with. But when someone walks through the door of a gym, they're either gonna smell like nothing just because of the way the air extractors all work, and or they're gonna smell something average. What we want to do is have someone walk in and they smell something that makes them move their mood, like actually feel, oh, that's kind of cool. Exactly what you did when you came home and your wife had candles. And then what that what would happen as well is if they smelt something similar out in the public, like similar, it would remind them of the feeling they got after exercise, which you and I know is the best feeling anyone can ever have, is after exercise. So we associated it. So what we did was we engaged a company, and there's quite a few companies out there that do this. They they you go through a discovery process as to what what emotions you're trying to tap into, and we and we ultimately created a bunch of different scents, and then we we picked one and we we tested it in two clubs. We took member feedback and and surveys, and we came up with what's called the snap scent. And most of my friends back home think it's pretty funny that I I created a scent because they call me they think I'm like JLo or something now. But actually it's pretty, I think it's it's just those little things like that. Like I said, we're just trying to create a positive environment, and the smell is is just one of those key senses that you have to touch, particularly in a first impression when someone's coming in for a tour, if they're looking to join. And maybe you smell better than the gym down the road, and maybe that makes the difference. Who knows?

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I could probably talk about that for a whole episode, but it's uh a scent can so one of our other taglines along with For the Feeling is move move your mood. And they reckon that a scent can have the power to shift someone's mood, and that's why you know they say you are and I won't I won't make up stats here because I can't remember the actual one, but essentially you're a certain percent certain percentage happier in the morning if you wake up to the smell of cooking bacon than if you don't wake up to the smell of cooking bacon. You know, in the gym environment, it's just so important because you're dealing with body odor and sweat and whatnot, that most people go to Target and they'll buy uh some sort of like smelling unit that's five dollars, but it's just not going to do the job. These are like I'm talking like an industrial type unit that covers 3,000 square feet and a smell that will never be found anywhere else other than our locations. And it's again it's just those little things to make a positive environment.

Awesome, man. Let's let's get into the Apple partnership. I was looking at as we were joking about your LinkedIn, you're not very active, but the one post you did have in the last 12 months was was about an Apple partnership. So that's that's exciting. Give us some details, man. What share what you can?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so we're really excited about this. I've been working on it for about 14 months now, and we're the first, so we're the first fitness brand to partner with Apple outside of the US, so on a on a global scale. And ultimately, what what we've done with them is we've created the ability for for our gym members who have an Apple Watch, whether they have one existing or or they want to purchase one, they can do it via our app. They can earn the they can earn credits towards their membership. So essentially make their membership cheaper by attending the gym and closing their Apple rings. So it's pretty simple, but you know, people we give them a goal each month of their their gym visits and their rings to close. And it just means that, hey, this is this person's moving around, and we know that Apple, Apple users are loyalists. We know, you know, 80, 80, we think 81% of our membership base are iOS, uh Apple users. And again, people like loyalty programs and earning credits and miles to put on their plane tickets and things like that. So it's a good start, and obviously, definitely partnering with Apple is is good for our brand because it shows trust and it shows you know, we they they they see our experience that we're trying to offer our members and and trust it enough to be able to put their brand next to ours, and it's good for our franchisees as well. So we only just launched it this month, so it's all very new. We have good big plans for it, and ultimately, yeah, it's been a it's been an interesting ride dealing with Apple. Their their detail and their perfectionism around just everything is why they are, who they are, and uh has been a great experience for us, and we're really proud to partner with them.

Right on. Right on. Yeah, so would you say it's it's a move-to-earn model, but in real life, like versus you know, most move-to-earn models are considered like in the you know, metaverse or or some other you know, online communities.

The the they the what are the ones these days you you earn they earn some sort of like crypto that they've got.

NFTs, brother. Yeah.

Yeah, but you know, people make their own crypto and you get it for by walking and but the value anyway. And ours is just based on membership. So if you're a Snap member and you're paying forty bucks a month, well, maybe you can make it 30 bucks or something like that, like 20, 35, whatever, whatever. Because we we actually and it's the thing that's cool with us is we don't we don't just do like you either hit your goal or you don't, we do partial credits based on the percentage of your of your effort towards the goal itself. So even if you just come to the gym once, you're gonna get a credit uh and we reward that. So we're really interested in, you know, now that we've started a bit of a Digital approach. We're really, really interested to finding out what really motivates people to come to the gym. What really motivates people to move both in and outside of the gym? Are they motivated by things like this? Are they motivated more by competition and leaderboards? I think the answer is everyone's motivated by something a little bit differently. And we obviously want to leverage a great brand like Apple and their hundreds of millions of users.

Yeah, it is interesting what motivates people. And the only conclusion I've come to is that it depends on the person and it's highly emotional in one way or the other. Right. It's you know, fear of aging, it's you know, desire for a mate, it's you know, and to procreate, it's like all these different things. It's stress, right? It's just so emotional and so individual. And that that's that's a hard thing to capsulate. I think it's why we've had such a hard time, you know, over the decades as an industry to really pick. Okay, that's why we have to get so niche down when we look at our avatars too, is we've got to speak to a specific person who has a specific problem, but to have a blanket, you know, reasoning for why people come in is is difficult. And yeah, what what have you found? I mean, is there any aha moments or things like that that you can share?

Yeah, for sure. Money does not motivate people the way you think it would. And I I learned that the hard way, like the expensive way. And m money's all good, but we've we've done things in the past where we've we've literally given money away for for effort, for visits, for you know, you know, during a challenge. And what you typically find if you've got some grand prize like that is within the first four days of a like a like call it a challenge, like a set time program, if people are behind, they just they drop off. They're like, I've got no chance catching up, and and you're really left with a small amount of people bidding for this big cash price. So money's money's not the answer. I think more people are motivated by time than maybe anything else, because time represents so many different things. So, for example, if I was a corporate wellness provider, or I, you know, which I'm not, but you know, I know I was some big CEO of say United Health Group said to me, How do I get all my employees to move more? What's the best way to incentivize them? Because we know that really only the existing fit take part in corporate wellness challenges and events. I'd say, well, most people who aren't fit already, you know, what are they? They they actually just want us, they want more time. So they want, whether it be, you know, more paid time off or anything, and what a business can do is reward by offering more paid time off, essentially. Now that's pretty hard to swallow for a lot of people, but I've found that the ones that have done that have had the best success getting the non-fit to move a little bit more by simply saying, hey, if you achieve these milestones, we'll give you an extra half day off a year. And to them, that person doesn't go, oh whoo, woo-hoo, an extra half day off. They go, Oh, that's a day with my family. So you've you've you've you've triggered the emotion from it. A lot of people are motivated by the sense of achievement, is what our surveying told us. So achieving something and then being told you've achieved something, you've got a pat on the back, then get some sort of recognition that they can share with their peers as well. That's why you see people on Strava posting their maps of how far they've run, which is just it's just a line, you know, that maps out exactly where they've run. People like other people to know that they've done something so that they can get, you know, those likes or those chairs on on social media. And really they like to interact with other humans, and that's why I think gyms are coming back in such a big way post-COVID. Is you know, you you and I did this podcast what two years ago, maybe when COVID was not going on, and the biggest question then was gym's dead. And the biggest question now is is at home fitness dead? Like, is you know, because it's it's it's swinging back, that's for sure.

That that's nice segue. Because that's when I want to talk about with you, is is the recalibration. And once again, you know, credit to Helene Knapp from City Row for giving me that term, which I've been using all the time. Because it it is what it feels like. And every month I feel like I see a new report come out that's showing us a little bit more data on how this whole thing is unfolding post-pandemic, right? You know, there's mad rushes to the in-person brick and mortar experience for so many people, and specific to different markets as well. You know, as I was telling you, talk to Mark Fisher last episode, and you know, he was talking about how, you know, tier one, you know, A markets are having a little bit more difficult time getting people in, right? You know, New York City, Manhattan, specifically for his case. But in rural areas like here, like the Flathead Valley in Montana, the gym I go to, you know, shout out to the wave here in Whitefish is having record numbers, right? So, and then I'm also seeing data that came out that's like, well, digital fitness is definitely taking a chunk, right? It's taking a chunk. Like there's memberships are coming back, but people are attending a little bit less. That was like the newest report that I saw. So if you're looking at it with your insights and maybe your experience kind of looking into you know the next year, where do you think this whole thing is gonna lie? What are you betting on? What do you think this re-accalibration is gonna look like?

Yeah, it's a great question. And shout out to Mark Fisher, by the way. I think the greatest thing that Mark would that could happen to Mark Fisher's business, because he's all about unicorns, is the business becomes a unicorn. I would love to see him wearing one of his crazy outfits on like the New York Stock Exchange ringing a bell. That would just be the funniest thing. But it's a great question. And I just I mean, no one has the answer, is always my first answer, because we don't know. What I personally am seeing is you know, people are definitely coming back to the gym. Attendance may not be where it was at, but one in five gyms in the USA are closed, according to Ursa, permanently. So there's a supply and demand shift that we haven't seen for a while, which means there's more gym members out there, you know, and less gyms for them to go to. So everyone should be starting to see increased numbers just through a natural market shift. Where I think the at-home fitness piece comes into play is a lot of operators now are saying, Well, I don't want to offer at-home fitness because I want them to come to the gym. That's, you know, we're out of COVID, I want, I want them to come. So why would I offer something at home? And I think that that is the wrong approach because we still live in a society where people are still getting COVID, which means they're having to isolate for 10 days. People are still, you know, they're back traveling now. And at-home fitness is whether someone uses or not, it's potentially going to be one of those box tickers in the sales criteria that people go through when they're shopping around. They may never use it, but they like to know that it's there if they do want to use it. And what we're doing at Snap, and you know, we have our fitness on demand business, which does this as its core, is we we we offer, you know, workouts that people can do either in the gym or at home cast on their TV with a with a vast library. And you know, the usage really shows about one in five of our members do something, which to us think we think that it's worth it, just having that on its on its own for that purpose, because that's a decent chunk of people when you add everyone up. And then where I think the digital side is really valuable for brands like Snap, we're never going to be experts in yoga or Pilates or some of those specialty classes, which I do think sometimes people, particularly with yoga, people quite often will do it at home before they do it in a studio because it is kind of scary to go amongst a bunch of yogis. So just to be able to offer that to members is is really is really valuable. But yeah, where where I'm finding maybe the biggest change from the start of the pandemic to now is is streaming. Everyone was getting into streaming, personal trainers, you know, whether it be through Facebook Live or Zoom or all these, I don't see as many streamed classes anymore. I think that I think I think we're settling into this in the gym and on demand. Even Peloton came out and said, you know, the on-demand offering was I think 80% of what people did, or don't quite be on that, something like that. It was quite high, versus the live classes. So everyone sort of panicked towards streaming during the pandemic. Now we're settling into this in-gym plus on-demand experience. And I think that clubs need to be able to offer both. And I think that clubs and even chains should not be investing in platforms or or sorry, should not be building platforms or content. They should be sticking to gym memberships, and it should just be a nice to have, even have a TV on the wall because on-demand classes are are good in a gym to to supplement uh an instructor that hasn't shown up at 5 a.m. in the morning or you know, something like that. And they're not overly expensive. So um, yeah, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the on the subject though as well. I know you've just come back from Ursa, so you've probably got some good come off some good conversations.

Yeah, I I agree. I I think overall that the in-person experience, uh, you know, just being in a health club or a gym in a group class, whatever it may be, you know, having that interaction, I think it's it's swing back. It's gonna, it's definitely not dead. That's for sure. We can agree all on that, that it's not dead. Will there be a chunk bitten out of it permanently? Yeah, I think so. I think I I think but that doesn't mean there isn't any less of an opportunity for brick and mortar chains to to grab more share. Like, you know, on-demand stuff is great. And the the live streaming thing is an interesting thing now, and this is just my own anecdotal experience, right? N equals one of my like I have a tonal system here. I have a you know, an Adam training in my garage from the guys from RPM. And I don't like streaming. I want it on demand because if I'm doing something at home, it's because I want convenience and f and reduce friction, right? I don't want to have to wait, I don't want to even have to wait three minutes for a live class to start. I'd rather just start at you know 557 than have to wait for a 6 a.m. class to start. And I think that's what all the people are feeling. They're like, well, okay, this this type of fitness over here, right, on demand is is convenient and it's it it allows me to you know get into my work at home schedule if I have that or whatever it may be, right before I need to go pick the kids up somewhere or whatever, right? The you go to the gym because that's you know either community or it has amenities or equipment that you can't access anywhere else, right? Or you just need to get out of the house nowadays, right? And then I think also people are embracing outdoor activities and sports a lot more. Uh, I mean pickleball, right? Like pickleball's blowing up. Never saw that coming. I wouldn't even pick it out of a, I couldn't even pick it out of a hat, right? Like three years ago. So I I think it's just I think it's getting, it's gonna look like a lot like it did three years ago, but it's gonna be a slight shift. Like the digital fitness side of things is gonna take, you know, maybe a 10% chunk. And that that whoever owns that 10% is still up in the air. It can be, you know, can be gyms, it can be, you know, classical purely, you know, fitness on demand, or you know, then there's also the boutique side, like Forte and what Lauren Fundos and her technology is allowing instructors and uh content creators to do too. But one of the things that I do think is interesting that's come out of all this is that the experienced, educated, engaging personal trainers and talent, they've been lifted up, right? Like they are worth more now, I think, at least on the content side of things. I mean, gosh, man, I don't know. Like, I've heard estimates, I've never seen a W-2 for anybody who worked at Peloton during the heyday. But some of these instructors from my understanding made anywhere between half a million to a million a year. That's bananas, right?

Yeah, like yeah, they're rock stars. They're mini celebs though now, aren't they? Like they have their own following, essentially, and and Peloton builds them up, but then has to restrict them to only Peloton. They can't, you know, trick a lot of group fitness instructors will go out and do multiple gyms, and but you're right, they're rock stars, and and because there's such a big difference between having an awesome group fitness instructor and having an average one in your overall workout experience that people will just they will book in advance for a good. I know, I I know I take I take classes at a gym that's locally to me, and and there's certain people I just won't book in with, even though I know I'll get a good workout still, because they're just not fun. They're not as fun as the other ones. And you know, it's the classic soul cycle approach where they hired actors and taught them the fitness versus hiring fitness and taught them the experience, teach them the experience because you can't personality is one thing you can't train, and you know, these group fitness instructors, in particular like a club company like Paloton, that is the business at the end of the day, is those engaging instructors, you know, interacting with with their clients. So I think you're right. I think PT's coming back, and good PTs have never had a better opportunity right now to make a lot of money than what they what they can do post-pandemic, because there is such a big separation between the good and the bad.

Yeah. Yeah, I I'm curious because this uh because you kind of brought it up, you know, what what the future Ellis is looking for. I I see the obvious movement towards health, and you guys are engaging with that just simply even with for the feeling, right? Like you're you're moving towards, I hate this word, but I'll use it holistic, right? When I think of holistic, I think of like, I don't know, you know, someone who likes a lot of patchouli oil and a lot of all that, but more of a holistic view on one's health and fitness. And are you guys, I mean, that that trend seems even like medical fitness is kind of out to the you know, the forefront, you know, at the edge of things and really incorporating medicine into health clubs. Are you guys looking to engage with that that possibility or where do you stand on that?

Probably not medicine. There is this theory that fitness and healthcare combine eventually, right? And healthcare is just such a joke. Look, like for me personally, moving to the US, I've had to learn the US healthcare and all the different insurance programs and how they influence the gyms because no other country does that. So that's different. I'm embarrassed for us at times when I hear that. Well, I mean it's I mean, at the end of the day, not people health insurance providers are paying people to go to the gym, or paying the gyms for their people to go, so it's not it's not bad, right? I mean the healthcare system here is pretty average, but anyway, we're not here to talk about that. So the whole getting back to the holistic thing, yeah, it's because studies and not just ours, but you know, other ones have come out and said, you know, weight loss is kind of third on the list now behind um like feeling better, and then I think strength is actually overpassed weight loss. So you know, as gym operators, what do you do with that? How do you change your physical space to represent it? And I think one of the answers is well, you do offer a little bit more of a holistic approach. Now, are you going to be experts in meditation? No. Or nutrition, no, and don't try to be, is my advice. We offer basic nutrition and and sort of meditation for beginners, but we'll look to partner with experts in those spaces to advance our offering. And it's easy for people to do that nowadays through through digital. And then in terms of the physical space with the strength side, because strength can sit under that holistic banner, really. One of the most, one of the most under, I don't want to say appreciated, but maybe underspoken about industry changes in the last five years is women's strength. And they've gone from the treadmill to the squat rack. And if I ask all my franchisees now when they say, what can I do to improve? I always say, How many people can squat and deadlift at the same time? And if the answer is less than three, you've got a problem. You need to you need to change that because you know it is by far up and coming, maybe only second to a treadmill. The most popular piece of equipment in a traditional fitness gym is a squat rack. And it used to be just people going in and doing three sets of 15 reps of an exercise. Now people take their kettlebells, their bands, and they'll spend an hour in the one spot. So you need you need to have quite a few in there. And that's one change that people, operators can make to keep up with the trends, is it's sort of the strength piece. The holistic one, again, a little bit harder because you probably have to do it through digital. But you know, there's companies like Fitness on Demand that offer that for gyms. And I think the digital piece, the the way moving forward is whatever the digital component to the fitness membership is, it needs to be this utility of joining the gym, booking a class, getting into the door, gamified you know, statuses or integrations with all the wearables, programming both offered by the gym and your PT, community challenges, and then you've got your nutrition and meditation side. So holistic, I agree. It's sort of a word that's thrown around quite a bit, but the data is showing that people want wellness over just fitness now. And so gyms have to evolve to be in that. Now, I've seen gyms get hyperbaric chambers and snow rooms and IV drips and you know infrared saunas, and they've gone all in on that wellness front. And I've seen other gyms that have got a Theragun and a stretching machine, and both, you know, both are right in their own sense. You know, stretching's an interesting one as well. I think gyms, gyms will will need to start doing a little bit more on that. But yeah, that's kind of my opinion on the whole holistic, holistic piece.

It's an interesting trend that you brought up with the the five, you know, over the last five years is women in strength training. And I'm just gonna say, you know, traditional strength training too, and I mean that like that that's I that's what I love when I go in the gym. I want I want to grab my rack, right? I'm gonna squat or deadlift or do something heavy, and I love it. That's but I've been doing it for a long time. I can't imagine myself I have I've been doing back squat Mondays for 10 years. Like I just if I miss a Monday back squat, it feels weird.

And on a Monday, start your day with legs?

Wow, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because I figure by the time I get to the weekend, I won't be sore anymore. That's true. But I've noticed like at our gym too, it's you know, now we have three racks, right? And they're nice ones. They just renovated the gym. But it's it's harder for me to get a rack. Now, here's something for operators around the country because okay, once you're getting into compound barbell movements, right? So deadlifting, good mornings, I've seen a lot of that. And I promise my wife, I don't coach people I don't know anymore. But sometimes I'm I'm so hard for me not to say something. And I just feel like there needs to be because it it's different when you start throwing weights on your back and you're doing you know hinge movements and things like that, where you're putting yourself in some compromised positions if you're not training yourself. I feel like there needs to be a complimentary intro to barbell training at more facilities because I can't do it by myself. I had I finally broke down, I corrected a kid who was doing good mornings incorrectly, and I'm like, dude, you you know, you're young, you can maybe you get hurt now and you'll be feel better in three hours, but trust me, over time it'll keep up. And I saw another kid, you know, try to re-rack his barbell squatting and he missed one side of it, and I ran over there. I was only you know five steps away, but it could have been bad. And you know, air can't be everywhere. So, like, what do you what do you do? Like, I feel like you know, it's it's we we need to support people who are getting into it now. So I'm wondering how do we support those people who are now getting into strength because it's important and I welcome them into that world. I want more people in it, but we need to give them some kind of coaching up front.

Yeah, I think I think Jim, so we we we're introducing like a technique session, you know. We a lot of our clubs don't have group fitness studios, so they won't be able to do that, but we want some sort of community activity for people to be able to book into a technique sessions one which gets FaceTime with the trainer and and the public and the members around you know bigger movements. And I just want to be perfectly clear so there's no um no questions around my statement around women's women's strength. I think it's fantastic that women are in this quote, just to be absolutely clear. I think social media's played a big part of it, but I think it's awesome. So just just to be absolutely clear. Yeah, so tech they gyms can offer technique sessions. Really, you have to leverage your PTs because they're the experts, and one of the hardest things to do is get a trainer to do things for free. But I always I always try and teach trainers that if you have a philosophy of give, give, give, give, get, like you've got to give a free session, give a technique session away, give a bunch of stuff away. You will get more clients in the long run. Where a lot of trainers just do this one free program and then you want to buy? No, okay, no worries, see you later. It's a mix of two things, in my opinion. Getting trainers to give the time around teaching, and they can do it in a group sense. So they could take on nine people at once, 5:30 on a Monday to teach how to squat and deadlift. And then the other aspect is again the digital front, where you know, there's there's certain equipment companies that will have a QR code on each machine that will bring up instructions. Like I know in our Snap app, you know, every every piece of every exercise loaded in there, and there's about 700 has an instructional video and instructional um you know text reading now. And that's actually our third most viewed part of the app, and definitely where the longest amount of time is spent in one login is is on the instructional sections, which tells me that people do want to learn those those those pieces. And because you're right, it's it's easy to get wrong and very easy to get hurt when you're doing it, and compound exercise. Exercises, what I find is if if you're extremely heavy and do it wrong, you may feel strong, but you feel you feel pretty average when you like lot halve the weight but do it properly and feel sore the next day from there. It's because you're actually doing it wrong. Now I have terrible mobility, so you gotta add the discipline of stretching to your compound exercises. I know you're a crossfitter from way back, so you're you've probably got the mobility down pad.

I have it within specific in context of certain function, like I don't touch my toes very well, but I can squat if I'm under load. But if you ask me just to squat, like hey, Eric, do 10 air squats, it's you know it's gonna have the same issues that most people have, you know, get the little butt wink at the bottom and you know, can't keep my chest up all the time. But it's weird if you throw a barbell on my back, it's perfect. I'm sure there's some kind of scientific explanation to that. As we kind of wrap up, I'm just curious because I asked you this last time and it's always kind of a fun question. But now that you know technologies are moving forward pretty fast, is there any piece of technology out there within the industry that has you more excited than some of the others? Anything you're keeping an eye on?

That's a good question. What am I most excited about? I won't say excited, but interested to see how it goes. There's technology out there there now that maps your facial expression in the gym, which ultimately can can tell you your how much you move, like effort and calories you're burning and stuff. I've I just find that kind of interesting. I'm just to see how that goes. Really, for me, it's probably just all about personalization. Yeah. So everything just becoming personalized to the user from a fitness sense. So understanding and and the more integrations that occur, the more that will become prevalent. So essentially, you know, my phone being able to tell me to rest this day. And I don't know, you know, some of the stuff you've done with with the Morpheus product really, really is in a league of its own when it comes to that piece. But I'd say personalization around content and recommendations will be big. I'm interested to see where personal trainers come. I'm I'm very interested to see how boutique fitness goes over the next 12 months. You know, we're potentially entering a rough economic ride. Does the $200 a month membership survive? Does it not? You know, I I think it does. I think that those brands will start to look at other offerings. Do they add a virtual component to it? I've heard of boutiques going 24-7 now. But yeah, I haven't seen I I was at Ursa actually, so I'm disappointed that we didn't get it beer. Yeah, but I saw at Ursa the only thing I saw that was like I'd call it different on the trade show was I saw a couple of like mobile gyms where people have turned a truck into a gym. Fit truck? Yeah, yeah, I guess it was cool, it kind of looked like a tank. Like this thing looked like a beast of a truck. And when you open up the sides, you can pull down like a concept to roller, and it's got a squat cage that comes down, it's got a screen on it, it's blasting music. It's super cool. Now, how you monetize that and commercially like I don't know, that's not my jam. But that was so maybe maybe more mobile, mobile that. But I think we'll just continue to I think we'll just continue to get into the wellness space. I think that I think that gyms will get more into the mental health side of it as well. Now, they're certainly not experts, but I think people are starting to realize it is one call it cause that we can have an impact on because we offer physical facilities to help someone feel a little bit better. So that that's something I'm excited for just the industry to get more involved in is the mental health side of it. But but yeah, there's not one thing that's sort of happening at the moment, sort of a combination of all of them. So really it's coming out of COVID, where we're at with the economy, how's that going to affect the premium offerings? And then, you know, if you're from my neck of the woods, like in Australia, for example, you I'm from New Zealand, so I'd um but you know, very I've lived in Australia, very interested in Australia, a big rise of big box gyms down there that are extremely well funded. And they've just got Planet Fitness arrive as well. So the very first discount player has arrived there. So how much that shakes up the industry? Well, I'll watch that extremely closely.

Very cool, man. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't we didn't see each other, Ersin. I did see the the fit truck, and once again, it was like I'm always look at things, I'm like, damn, that's cool. But is it actually going to get people better fitness and health results? And that you never really know until it gets applied. But most of the most of the time it's probably not. So I wish them the best of luck.

Totally, mate. Super cool, cool people and cool, cool product. I thought I thought it was awesome. There's definitely more like member management companies now than there's ever been. So the payment process has been. There's more of the kind of like tonal type. You mentioned tonal, more like commercial versions of those mirror type technologies. So there's just a lot of like programming offerings to go along with equipment now. Nothing will ever beat a clean gym with a happy owner or happy staff, some great personal trainers and modern equipment with a great smell. You know, you can't forget the bread and butter stuff. Because at the end of the day, people they're coming for a great workout, but they're also coming for a bit of social, social experience as well.

So awesome, man. I think that's a great place to leave it. And Andy, if people want to get a hold of you, they want to reach out and and connect, uh, is there a place you want to send them?

Yeah, just yeah, you said before you LinkedIn, I poor Eric was uh doing some research on what's new with me, and he found I only did one post in the last 12 months. I need to get better at that. But yeah, just LinkedIn, Andy Pete, um, and the chief product officer of Lyft Brands. So uh always love chatting to other industry people and and hearing everyone's thoughts and feelings. And you know, we're all we're all, you know, there's plenty plenty of it to go around for all of us. So it's always fun to hear from people.

Right on. Well, Andy, it was a pleasure catching up. And uh, thanks again for coming on. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy Pete. Thanks, man. Cheers out. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. 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, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.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.