Anthony Vennare - Fitt Insider & Megatrends For 2023

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 InsightTracker does. InsightTracker 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 InsightTracker.com forward slash future. That's insight tracker.com forward slash future. One of the most important and undeniable trends in our industry is the ever-growing consumer demand for personalization. That personalization is driven by health data. If you are a consumer-focused health and wellness company, you know that acquiring and making use of that health data is traditionally expensive, complicated, and full of friction for the consumer, but not anymore. Thanks to the good people at Sprint, a camera-enabled digital biomarker platform that connects any app to the human body. Formerly known as the Lead HRV, the patent technology behind the Sprint platform leverages a decade of research into physiology, behavior, and health insights, including collaboration with 117 universities, analysis of more than 4 billion biomarkers across 20 million users sessions. Using the smartphone as a sensor, Sprint's evidence-based machine learning algorithms deliver actionable biomarker insights such as body composition, HRV, stress, recovery, progress tracking, and more, all through easy to integrate STK and API. Health and wellness companies are integrating Sprint to better understand their users' holistic health, make their apps more personalized and adaptive, demonstrate measurable progress, and empower their members to understand their bodies and make well-informed decisions for their well-being. Go to Spren.com and learn more. That is S-P-R-EN.com. All right, we are live. Anthony Veneri. Welcome back.

Yeah, thanks for having me back again. Great to chat.

Yeah, it's always a pleasure. I I enjoy our conversations. And I think it's been uh about a year and a half now that that we've we've caught up and obviously the industry is changing extremely fast. And you and your brother and your team over there at FitInsider are uh doing uh great work. I love it. You know, it's very inspirational with the content that you guys put out there and really helping the industry stay informed and on the cutting edge. So if people don't uh you know subscribe to your podcast and your newsletter, I highly encourage them to go over if you want to hit pause and go check out fit insider.com. Um I check it out all the time and uh love it. So that being said, man, it's great to have you back. And I think the conversations that we can talk about today are uh really kind of looking at a year in review of of 2022. As we sit here recording, uh I'm just gonna say it's Q4 of the year already. Damn, that went fast. And then uh we'll look at you know what what's in store for trends going into the rest of this quarter into 2023. So uh let's let's do this, man. For for people who may not be familiar with you and Fit Insider, just give us a brief synopsis of of what you uh what you do over there.

Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Um, as you mentioned, podcast newsletter, but we look at it as kind of the leading B2B industry publication. So anything happening in the broad landscape of health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, and kind of all of the categories around that, like recreation, active lifestyle. We cover them from the trends and information that's happening, a lot of the reports and the data and information, as well as the news, what's going on, uh, why it matters to you, and then kind of connecting it all back to what founders, executives, investors should be doing. And then on the other side, we have a venture capital fund. So we have a fund that invests in help wellness, fitness, nutrition, all that fun stuff. And uh pre-seed seed stage investing, we can do later stage shows if it's a good opportunity. And um, Fit Insider is run by myself and my brother, and then we have a small team here in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, right on. So I think the last time that you're on the show, now that my memory serves me, uh you were just launching the fund. So that was uh, you know, an exciting announcement for for you and the team over there. Uh how's that been over the last year? I mean, uh it there's been plenty of investment opportunities, and you know, I'm curious how how you select who you're going to invest in and partner with. And you know, what any any announcements or things you can tell us that have happened over the last 12 months?

Yeah, definitely. Um, I think we just announced issue 200 of the newsletter, 150 of the podcast, and our 20th, now gonna be 21st soon, uh investment. So lots of stuff going on there. And uh the most recent one we did was a company called Any Distance, which is um kind of like a I'd say modern day Strava competitor looking to build activity tracking and social community around fitness. So, but as an example of them and and why we invest in companies, it starts with, you know, we spend so we're we kind of like to go at it much different than most investors because we don't need to go meet a company and then kind of build a work up of like this is why we should invest. We write the newsletter, we write about a topic like sleep or sports and recreation or activity, and we publish that out to, you know, tens of thousands of people. And then we get to hear from the founders that are in that space if we did mention them or ones that want to build in it. So we get to meet them very early on. And for us, once we get to meet them, it's really, you know, we know we know the market, we know what we want to find, and it's really just finding the personalities and the people that are doing it and people that we believe in, because I've been a founder my whole life. I'm new to the investing thing, technically. Um, and you know, for me, it's always about the founder and are they gonna stick with it and do it the right way? And that's it. It's all about the dedication of the company, the plan, and kind of the perseverance of it all. And that's you know, a majority of what we look for is that. And then the rest is can we help this company? Can we connect them? Can we help them? Can we spend the time? Because we get very active of companies because we're so early. We join boards, we get, we join as advisors, we we spend the time and talk to them on a regular basis and help them with you know everything that we can. So if it kind of falls on those lines, but it's very broad. We'll look at anything and everything in our space. And you know, before any distance, we invest in a company called Juno, which is a sexual wellness clinic. So much, much different than what most people would expect to fit insider and invest in. So or fit capital to invest in.

Yeah, very interesting. So let's let's uh let's start with the rear view mirror, man. What what's over the last 12 months? I know you you recently uh did a talk on this, so the timing's great. You know, what what have been your noticings over the last 12 months? What have been some of the um surprises, maybe not so much surprises? And uh yeah, give us some context for that.

Yeah, I think we might have touched on this a little bit on the last one too, but it's the same, but even more so now. It is hype and money flowing in from uninformed places, uninformed investors, uninformed groups, whatever it might be, flowing into a space that was hot because of COVID. And even more so previous to COVID, there was fitness was kind of boring and old. It was brick and mortar, it was PE, it was slow, there was a lot of kind of late-stage money and private equity money, but there wasn't that much venture, and people weren't really thinking about it as a business. And then that was scaling up over time, and then COVID hit and obviously accelerated that over the next, you know, following 18, 24 months. And honestly, it really just put the industry in a position that lots of ideas that shouldn't have gotten money got money, and lots of people that shouldn't have gotten money got money. And it just it was this huge hypes kind of scale, and people were growing and they were building these businesses, but it was off of the money they got and the spend to acquire customers, and those customers either weren't sticking around or the business models weren't thought through. And that left, I guess, the market thinking that fitness and wellness and health is on a downturn, but in reality, it's just kind of correcting to where it should be. It's still up from way before COVID and it's still kind of continue to grow. And from all the data we've published over the past year, it's the numbers are there for it to always grow, you know, over the next 10 years. But when it comes to the businesses, a lot of these trends of crazy valuations on connected fitness and these, you know, apps that are coming out that raise all this money and doing digital fitness, you don't hear as much from them because they're struggling right now and investors aren't putting money in at those valuations. And honestly, they were kind of set up to fail in some areas just because the valuation is too high. So it's hard to get more money unless you're doing a down round and all that fun stuff. So the past 12 months has been a slow perceived decline, but I think a market correct correction on what's gonna happen. And and I think fundamentally strong businesses that had actual revenue plans and growth plans and didn't get carried away, kind of drinking their own Kool-Aid, those are the ones that are gonna come out. And now looking forward, the opportunity is even bigger than the past two years. There's so much opportunity out there, especially as whether it's fitness creator markets or other ones, you've seen five, seven, ten businesses close down that all raise money, um, or at least do downruns and not in the same position. If you're a company on the other side of that and you're doing really well and you have a good plan and you're either generating, you know, break-even or cash flow and you're doing it the right way. I mean, there's never a better time to be running some of these businesses.

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Um the one that sticks out that I never really thought of that I I really like. There's two great founders that I can think of in it, uh, actually three. Um, the fintech side, the fintech and fitness side. It's the linking cash rewards with exercise and healthy living with credit cards and rewards and connecting that to your healthcare. It's this incentivizing people to be healthy. It's never really worked because, and I think we wrote about it about a month ago, the entire Affordable Care Act was set up to not let you be rewarded for being healthy because it was protecting on the opposite side so that you couldn't not get coverage if you had pre-existing conditions. So it was this weird both sides of the spectrum thing where you couldn't get rewarded for really being healthy unless there was like a workaround or you could do it for like quitting smoking and other things. But general reward for physical activity from your health insurance wasn't there. And that's where I think that the spin has gone towards fintech. So that's cool. Like Paceline and NES, and even on the corporate um side, there's a company called June that we actually invested in, and it's reporting rewarding employees and giving them benefits for being healthy and stuff like that. So I love that space. I think it any way that we can convince people and get them to buy into healthy habits is awesome. And it's just a new look at expanding the the space of fitness.

Is it my question on that, is it working? Like it, you know, we've had a a really hard go over the last like well, really since the inception in the fitness industry of getting people who typically wouldn't be engaged in fitness engaged, right? Um we joke about it all, we don't joke about it, it's not funny, but like you know, the same 20%, right? We we just recycle them through different gyms and different health clubs and different fitness programs. Um, but we're still not getting to that mass majority. So when you look when you talk about this this type of uh you know emergence of of the fintech within our industry, is it working? Is is is there proof to is there enough to to say whether or not it is?

Um not yet. And I think that's with most of the things that I'm gonna talk about today, it's all kind of theoretical because they're they're out there, they're building, they're raising money, but they're not doing it at any scale that is something that I would bet on is a sure thing. But these types of bets are things that I think will have an impact on the future of fitness in some way, whether it's the company themselves or the variations of what they're building. And if you look at all of kind of startups, tech, it's just everything's built on top of each other. And the one thing that really stood out to me, and the reason Joe and I went down this path in health and wellness specifically, having been gym owners and all the stuff we've done, the industry doesn't really innovate. Even if you think about like some of the connected fitness brands out there, they're just variations of gym equipment that existed and they look a little bit better. And in the gyms that are these new amazing gyms that are coming out, they're just the same gym with a cooler design or a new package. Like it it really doesn't change much. Um so if there's new ways to build businesses and incentivize people to work out and be healthy, especially we look at being healthy as like a broad spectrum. Walking, biking, hiking, like I spend an hour a week in the gym max. Um doing a bunch of other stuff to be healthy. So looking at those types of consumers and what that means.

Yeah, yeah, that's good points. And I don't think that's surprising to anybody uh who's been in the industry for a while, too. So let's get into the fun stuff, man. You you've uh you've isolated some things to, you know, I I don't know if you want to call them mega terms. I'll let you term it, but but things to look at moving forward, right? What what are you what are you seeing? How are you isolating them? And let's uh let's get into some of the the details on it.

Yeah, I think the the main trend that stands out to me is this transition from studio fitness to active lifestyle. And I I can't remember if we mentioned I mentioned this before, but it's you know, 2010 and 2020 was all about studio and boutique and cool finish trends. It was Y7, it was Barry's, it was Orange Theory, it was um, you know, Soul Cycle and so on in class pass. And I think that those aren't going anywhere. So this isn't a negative statement towards them, but I think they are all trying to figure out how to exist in a world which is shifting into active lifestyle. People that are health and wellness consumers are cons are consuming things in a mass scale uh differently. So it goes from you know, the gym in the studio used to be the hub of the the fitness experience, and now I think the person is. And we publish a really cool graphic about this, but like the person is the hub, and they're spending their money and time on a bunch of different stuff, and the gym is one of those, but it's not the center. And specifically in that, that I'm an area that I really like is like this pickleball, golf, tennis, run groups, hiking, being physically active for fun or competition and social and accessible forms of exercise, the growth that you've seen in that over the past two years, what obviously started with COVID when you had to be outside or you couldn't really go to the gym and do it, but people have really kept up with all those areas and and what's happening there. I I love that. I think it's a cool opportunity. And um, that's when I say like active lifestyle, like what businesses are popping up there because honestly, a lot of these things are you can do for cheap or free. So, like who can develop a business in that? And that's what I'm looking for. Or how can, you know, like if I was the gym runner today, I'd be organizing run groups and free workouts in the parks and doing different activities and like really bringing this social side in more than just having a gym.

Yeah, I love that, man. And pickleball, right? What a surprise. That just seemed to come out of nowhere. And I it it's so funny you bring it up because I think over the last month, three people have asked me if I play pickleball. Uh and now, you know, I'm probably at some point this weekend and go out. But like the firefighter community, right? I have a good friend here in uh in Calspell who say that you know, um, you know, pickleball has been hugely valuable to their department, just bringing together camaraderie and getting people moving and healthy and bringing up the whole mood and really just uh the mindset of of each particular fire department and station. So it's wh why pickleball? Why why has that become so popular?

I mean, there's so many of them. There's like, I think it's CrossNet uh is doing it, pick up basketball is exploding, uh Pickup Soccer, a company called Street FC just raised money, they're crushing it. Um it's all of the activities. Pickleball is just the one that is kind of funky and fun that the New York Times writes about every other week and other things. But it's funny, I was looking back, we wrote about it in two in 2020, uh, early 2020, right around the COVID hit. We wrote about pickleball. Uh, and I know it, I'm fortunate to know it early. We actually wrote about it in 2019, uh, but it was just a short mention. Uh, there's a company called Gamma Sports that is based in Pittsburgh, and a buddy of mine works there, and they are one of the largest pickleball manufacturers. So we got to see very early take try to take off, and they've been trying to get younger people to play. And I think stars aligned. People had time, they wanted to get outside and be active. It's cheaper than tennis, it's way easier to learn than tennis, and it's honestly way more fun, in my opinion. I play it a couple times a week. Um, and but that goes to like pick up soccer and all these things, it's just fun and social, and you get to be active, and that's one of the biggest kind of trends going forward. I I'm looking at the we published a kind of what's coming in this year thing that we put out in 2022 in January, and it was hybrid workouts, sports and recreation, uh, fitness rewards, and uh next gen wearables and a few other things. And even writing, even when we wrote that, uh, you know, I put it in there as well as when I talked to companies, it was like this is the space that I'm most passionate about because I think it's it's going to continue to be an area that new businesses are developed in. For example, there's a company called Cross Court. Uh, we invested in them, they are building these like pickup basketball gyms. And and I look at them as an opportunity almost like the exponential of pickup sports where they can build multiple brands that people can franchise and build in these areas. And you can play pickleball, soccer, basketball, build these kind of cool facilities and let people have a more organized sport thing uh that they can participate in. And again, a business you wouldn't have thought of as being something that would survive or raise money, but uh a space that we're really excited about.

Yeah, that's great. So active lifestyle is one trend. What else are you seeing? Give us another one.

Yeah, I think understood the audiences um called it out early in in January in our in our what's trending, but it's it's really come from both venture capital investing as well as these new companies growing, like balanced and fit forever and age bold, and there's a long list. It's targeting boomers, seniors, and then on the other ends of the spectrum, targeting Gen Z and kids, and like how can you get them to on both sides? There's a lot of people and they're disengaged exercisers, and they're going to either age into this crazy existing fitness space that people need to target, or someone needs to provide access and get these people moving, especially when the decline with COVID of like silver sneakers and other things. So um, both massive populations and who is building for them because a lot of the products that we see come and are built for affluent, you know, young professional millennials that have money, space, and time to do things and easy access, and they're they're kind of tech-saving to get it. And then on the the kind of boomers and senior side, they don't know how to access it. They might not have the money or the capabilities. It's not something that's intuitive to them, and they just it wasn't a part of their lifestyle. They don't understand a lot of this stuff. And the healthcare system is obviously not catching up to what they what it needs to do. And then on the Gen Z side, it's just like they're disengaged on a lot of traditional fitness things. Yes, there's the Gymstart crowd and the bodybuilding crowd, which is actually big for that audience, but I think there's also the same side which is completely sedentary into gaming and other things. And how can you engage that? I think that kind of goes into the fitness and gaming thing, but um massive opportunities on both ends of the spectrum. And that's not just for fitness, it's for mental health, it's for wellness, it's for social, it's for all that stuff.

And Gen Z, uh, what is that nineteen born ninety five to twenty ten? Is that right?

I can really just say I think the oldest is is like twenty four, and the youngest is like ten or twelve. So I have I I have a number somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah, let's see here just to make sure. Yeah, 20, uh let's make sure. 10 to 25 right now. So that's Gen Z 1997 to 2012.

Yeah, that's an interesting segment. I mean, I have uh a bunch of nieces and nephews in there, and none of them seem to have engaged in any kind of traditional fitness regime like I like I I would have back then. You know, I was bodybuilding essentially in my 20s, right?

Right. I think a lot of us that played sports were, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So underserved populations, active lifestyle, uh, what's another category for you, Anthony?

Yeah, really kind of plays into this whole thing. I think everything I'm touching on is really the social fitness side, but um third wellness third places. Um, whether it's uh you know, Remedy Place creating these high-end wellness spas or restore hyper wellness or um there's what was the I can't remember the other name, but it's members-only clubs, and it's for not just wellness, but like climbing, fitness focused areas. And it's going off of Howard Schultz, the CEO and founder, I think it was the founder of Starbucks. I don't know if he was the founder or not, but he talks about creating Starbucks in their third place where you work, you went to work, you go home, and then you hang out with Starbucks, kind of. It's a place you can always go to. And I think because fitness is so social and people spend so much of their time and they're very busy, uh, when they go, they want to be a place they can hang out. And as a prime example, the building I'm in right now, that is part offices, part co-working space. There's a healthy cafe, and now we're helping them and working on building out a fitness center as a part of this building, as amenities. So I'm at home, I can come here, I can work out, eat, hang out, meet people, spend time, and work out. So I think wellness third places really and fitness third places is really just making them more than come in and get out, not just take your class and leave. It's really developing them in these places where you want to hang. Like I was in New York about six months ago and I stayed at the Equinox Hotel and seeing the multiple floors of the gym and the juice bar and the balcony to hang out and the pool and the like mini co-working space and the like I guess you call like a healthy bar where they had like organic ingredients and cocktails, like this whole level of people just hanging out, but being healthy kind of on the same way and and being in blue lemon gear. Um, it was it was fun, it was cool to see.

Yeah, it's it's interesting, and you and I are talking before the recording too, is you know, it may not even be third places, it might just be second places. Like I I work from home, you know, most days. And I just I go to the gym because I need a second place, right, to go to outside of my home, besides, you know, the the great outdoors, of course. But yeah, I think that's something that's really important for people too, is to have uh, you know, who are working from home to have that that healthy place to go to. And it's been uh I've I've noticed younger generations as well. I mean, you know, so I'm in my mid-40s now, squarely in my middle aged. And when I was younger, man, it was like there wasn't a whole lot of talk about healthy living, right? In my 20s, it was you know, go out, meet people, you work hard. Like that was it. There wasn't like wellness activities. And I feel like the younger generations too seem to have taken a latch onto okay, how can we live better, right? How can we live a healthier lifestyle? Is that a trend that you have noticed through through the publications you guys have put out, or is that just me as n equals one?

Oh no, we uh did a report on kids not too long ago, like gen, we called it the kids these days, so it's Gen Z. It was how they value health, mental health, physical health, and other things. And they are they're super informed because they they are they grew up kind of digital and they understand and they can find these groups and these informations and they they they can see it's pretty obvious if you pay attention, like being healthy, eating bad food, all this stuff, what that can do to you. The information's out there. And if you spend time on TikTok or layers, it's always it coming up. And that's not just that, you know, like I've created like four or five accounts and I look at different stuff on each one to see like what not just what's showing for me, but what's showing in general. And I think it's definitely something that is growing and the attention of it, not that they're actually participating or or doing the things, but they they are aware of it and they are aware of especially. I think we specifically focus on the mental health side, like they are very aware of like social social isolation and burnout and all that other stuff that comes with it. So, yeah, totally.

Yeah. You know, when I when I think about these uh, as you said, the wellness third places and some of these like the remedy, that's like a really high end, right? I I don't know what their membership was. I think I looked at it a while ago, but it's it's not cheap per month. Like you you have to have some some disposable income to engage in some of these places. Are are you seeing um anything kind of on the the lower end, like where people for a hundred or a couple hundred a month they can get these experiences, or is it you know still around the one to two thousand for for some of these higher end ones?

There's some coming, but it it's definitely still new. And it's like the kind of we called it trickled on health a while ago. It's what you see high performers and athletes doing comes down and goes to this like high performance lifestyle. It's the people that are following Rogan and buying, spending you know, 200 bucks a month on it, and you know, listening to Andrew Huberman and buying at home saunas, and they're above and they're more informed and they spend more money than the average consumer. And then it eventually makes its way down to the average consumer in some capacity, most likely a watered down thing, so it's more affordable, which is like restore hyperwellness. Like for what you can get there, it's pretty cheap. For you can go and do the different things that like I go and a buddy of mine here in Pittsburgh owns a float studio, and I go there and you can float for 60 bucks for an hour. Like it's not cheap, but it's also really affordable for what it is. Or you can do an hour-long session of sauna and cold plunge for $55 or whatever it is. So uh it's it's getting there, it's just not at any type of scale yet where the average person is seeing it regularly, but I 100% believe it will get there.

Yeah, yeah, I agree, man. And that's really funny about Rogan and Huberman. Um I basically am that person that you just described. Okay, so keeping this train moving, man. Um active lifestyle, uh, underserved audiences, wellness, third places. What else you got on your list?

Uh, I think a big one is consolidation. And I think more importantly, it's consolidation mixed with what we call outsiders, which is Meta, Amazon, Apple, Google, Nike, Lululemon, and others pushing into fitness, representing kind of deep pocketed competition. And then you could see with the number of things that have come out with Apple Fitness Plus and their growth and what they're planning and the things they're doing, Apple Health. And I actually, a prediction of mine is that Apple is going to launch something more advanced than Apple Fitness, and it's going to look like a membership that they have for Apple Arcade. Apple Arcade is where you can, you know, pay $299 a month and you can play like 500 different games versus spending $299 on a game. You just pay whatever that price is monthly, and you can play all a lot of different games that they own, or they're partnered on. I think they're going to launch a fitness thing where I can pay $25 a month, not the 10 or 12 that they have now, and I get to do fit on or I get to do all trails or whatever it may be. Either they buy these apps or they partner. So it's this, these big companies that own the rails and bridges, and you have to play along with them. Or they're massive brands that have massive apps like Nike and Motlemon and others, and they're going to launch their own stuff, or they're going to buy other stuff. Then on the tail end of buying, it's back to the old school mentality of fitness, like these somewhat vultury PE firms. There's a lot of really cool ones like the El Catertons and the North Castles and others, but there's a lot of ones otherwise that are kind of vulture penny pinching firms, and they're going to scoop up left and right these companies that have that raised on high valuations and did okay and aren't living up to their um potential. And I think more importantly, investors want to get out ever people want some kind of liquidity event from. So I see that really changing the landscape over the next year to two years because they have so much money. I mean, you're seeing it now every other week. We have to write about Facebook did this and bought this, and Amazon did this, and Apple launched this, and Google buys Fitbit and launches this, like everywhere, because it's just such a big market. And as I mentioned, previously, previous to COVID, there wasn't that much capital spending in in you know this innovative tech in health and fitness, or at least it wasn't a focus. It was still kind of coming up that way.

Yeah. Yeah, that that is uh that's a fascinating. I mean, there's so much money, and and the it's all playing out now perfectly for PE firms, right? Like you like you alluded to and talked about directly, is like these companies that based on huge valuations are now in trouble. They're in a perfect position to just be picked up and rolled into something else. And it's uh I've seen it too. It's been it's been happening quite often, and you know, some of the companies I work with too. So that's a great trend. Okay, what's next? What else you got, Anthony?

Yeah, let's see here. Um mindful movement. Uh it is looking at fitness on the movement, mobility, and it's not PT, it's not fitness. It's you move to feel better. And it it kind of touches on this like MSK side, which is like the musculoskeletal thing, and some of these hinge health big businesses that are doing all of these different things for like, you know, I guess treatment and um evaluation and what's happening with your body from like a physical therapy side. And there's some really cool brands like Myo Detox doing fun stuff in physical therapy. But on the other end, it's like I'm excited about the the ready states, what Kelly Star hat's always been doing, but like how it's more become a an app and a system, or what I think it was ROMWA just rebranded to reach a bigger audience outside of CrossFit because more people are looking at mobility and searching for it. And we invest in a company called Mover, which Lou Lemon also invested in with us, and it's kind of touching on the last thing. Um it's assessment and evaluation for typical exercise. Like if I'm gonna, if I'm working out at home, I'm gonna jump right into my free letix program. No, I need to be able to like see what I can do and figure out why I should move that way. And then on the other side of that is like the kind of AI trainers. There's Perch, just raise money. They do they focus on strength and conditioning in locker rooms like NFL and NCAA and stuff, but it's uh computer vision. There's a company called Guru doing it. The the Altiest guys are still launching the product out, I think. And um who else is out there? Extra training is another one. There's so many of them, and they're all variations. Xer is one, and it's variations of kind of computer vision in this high-end tech to like help you move better or address your exercise and all of that. So I'm personally more focused in the mindful movement and the mobility side of it all and what comes from that because I think it's gonna be a massive category. And into that fits like the recovery side, and Therabody just announced they raise 165 million today, and um, you know, hyper rice is launching new products. Funny enough, we're gonna show this one, like their Norma Tech Go boots, sick stuff. Um, yeah, there's a lot of really cool things coming out, and that's to me, that's the mindful movement. Feel better. It's not about looking better, it's not about being fit, it's about feeling better and how you move and recovering and being better the next day. Um, so I think both of those, each one, so we have it as kind of AI trainers in computer vision, and then we have it as mindful movement, but they all kind of flow into each other just like everything else.

That's a fascinating category. And I had uh both Aaron DeJang and uh Stephen Webster on recently uh on the same podcast to talk about what they're doing with Mover and A Sensei and um really cool stuff there. Uh Kelly was actually just on recently for uh episode 300 of Feature of Fitness, and you know, we talked about um his emergence over the last like gosh, I guess it's been a 20, 25 year journey for him, right? People don't realize like these things just don't happen overnight. Here's one thing I haven't heard you say, and I haven't heard a whole lot either uh lately over the last few years is that uh training for aesthetics is is a big deal.

Yeah, it's there a lot, it's there. So it's like um I call it the Gymshark crowd. They're there. If it's massive on TikTok, it's massive in these areas, like it's still there. It's like uh I mean, I was in that group for a long time. I did I entered like bodybuilding.com competitions and I had all of Arnold's books and stuff, but um I think it's driven the reason I don't pay attention to it much is I think it's driven by creators that most of the time are selling something that they don't use. A lot of these fitness creators, they're on some version of enclomophene or TRT or something to look the way they do. And they never talk about it. They talk about the supplement brand that they own and they talk about the workout program that they sell, like like somebody's gonna look like that. And it's a lot of uninformed people, and especially younger people that buy into this. There's actually been a few lawsuits that came out lately where people were suing fitness creators and influencers because a hundred percent they were on, they it was proven that they weren't using their stuff and they were lying about how they got the body and they were using edited photos and selling things in a weird way. So we don't pay attention much to it, but I think on the the market of fitness creators that fits under that, we are super excited about. Um, we invest in a company called Arketa that is was called Sutra, they're crushing it. They just not they're uh doing some really fun stuff there, and I think um for that space, it's cool, but that that's for all fitness creators, it's not for this like aesthetic side, which I try to avoid just because I I hate the I it sounds bad, but like I hate the people in it, the creators, those people, their ego and like what they sell. When when you know they're on something, especially like it's on the wildest end of that is the liver king guy who talks about he's the most obvious steroid user of all time, and he talks about no, it's because he eats actual beef liver, and he's he's doing uh literally $10 million a month selling beef organ powders based off of his insane lifestyle. And he's 1,000% on something.

And it's well, I know him, yes, he's a fascinating case study. Uh but I think also if you've been in the fitness industry long enough, you kind of know that the when we started selling fat loss and aesthetics, that's really where we we went astray. And uh, you know, that life is so much more than just I mean, we want people to lose weight and feel better. Um, but you know, really I think, and this is just one main opinion, when we got into the the game of fat loss, it was well, how fast can you get someone to their goal weight and you know, how inexpensively can you do it? And that was one of the reasons, you know, especially like in my gym ownership days when you know people had specific goals, and it's like if you weren't doing a weight loss challenge, you know, some kind of six-week challenge and weren't competing, and people would just leave and walk down the street and go to the next one. And um, you know, we all I I per I personally fell into it and I I played that game and you know I regret doing it because uh you know it just devalued it and it made it more it commoditized a lot of what we do as fitness coaches and trainers and gym owners. So um I think part of that I'm just psychologically assessing you, but I think part of it um is you're right. I don't like what the way those people are selling. Um I never you know really have, but also it kind of makes us look in the mirror and be like, okay, is this really the brand that we want anymore? Do we want people to think about fitness in like this person, like the liver king, right? Or do we want people to look at health overall? Yeah, that's a major trend that I've I've seen as well.

Yeah, and I've honestly gone down that road, and I think we I I hate to keep saying this, but we write about everything we talk about. So we wrote about it a couple weeks ago. I hate when I have to say that, but um, and it was about specifically about younger men and the level of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and other things that they have nowadays because they are looking at the liver king and these thousands of other creators out there and saying, Oh, I gotta look like that. I'm doing a program, I'm eating their stuff why it's not working. It's pretty obvious why it's not working. Um, and it's an entire, it's it's an actual problem. It's been talked about, it's been talked a lot about in terms of women, in terms of body positivity and body shaming and other stuff. But for guys, it's kind of that mentality of like nobody cares, you feel like nobody cares. And it's a problem. I mean, I've gone through with my health stuff, my weight has gone from you know 160 to 250 and back down again and up again over the years with different stuff going on, and you can come out of that feeling like crap. And I think that's the part of our industry that turns people away. It makes them feel bad. And especially when you look at, and social media has just made it so much worse. You look at these people and they're they look absolutely amazing. Well, a lot of their photos are edited, they're all staged, and then they're obviously doing different things than you are to get to that, and it can definitely mess with people. So I completely avoid it at all costs.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, and you know, personal anecdote too, is I was a uh uh a chubby young boy uh who read a lot of comic books, and uh, you know, I was also on the swim team at like age eight. So I had this, I called it superhero syndrome. I gave a name to it. It's like, you know, you look at like how the the human male should look in this superhero fashion, and then there was me trying to like squeeze into my speedo twice a day and uh you know go out there and and look at myself in the mirror and had you know it's challenging. I think that's something that is not extremely uncommon amongst young men and or men in general, and we just I don't know, we just don't do a very good job dealing with it and talking about it. So um it's it's an interesting take on that. So I think we got enough time here, Anthony, for maybe just a few more trends that you're you're looking for in the next 12 months. So give us uh give us another one.

Yeah, this is the last one I got. Um I can mention so I think let's see here. This is the last one I think is impactful for the kind of the audience that you have is I I we called it open ecosystems. So if you think about Peloton, you're using Peloton stuff with Peloton content. And when you use a whoop, it's whoop is kind of a closed loop system. Um and it's the integration side of it all. Like the the Android of fitness is something we called it, but it was like, oh, Android is like, I can bring my device and my things and I can go and customize and build it the way they want, not like Apple in its closed loop system where you have to use an iPhone and these things and follow along. I think that's coming to fitness, and I think it's gonna be led by Pelpon because I think that they have to. They have to let they have to either they have to either license their content on the other devices or do a lot of different stuff that puts them in a better position. And then it's not just with content, it's with um data, like my whoop data being synced with this other stuff, and that's going into an app that I use over here for a different score and my eight sleep score. Like there's so many siloed things out there that I think we'll have to, just for the user experience side of it all, be able to be customized and built into this kind of open ecosystem that's out there where I can go and use multiple different products, content, brands, variations, and they all can kind of at least talk to each other and sync a little bit, or at the very least, like understand each other, let alone use one thing on another.

You know, you you brought it up. So I I want to talk about Peloton for a second. You know, I feel like they have uh man, they they have really carried the weight of both the astronomical rise of connected fitness, but also the the seeming, you know, from the outlook outsiders' perspective, the fall, right, of connected fitness that we've seen over the last year. Do they deserve it? I mean, is Peloton, you think they're uh you mentioned that you think they're gonna be, you know, they're they're gonna be making some key moves potentially or they should, um, you know, from your perspective. But what's your take on Peloton, man? Are are they just getting a bad rap?

So I have two very one, I hate how everybody talks about Peloton. They all like everyone shits on it. Everyone in our industry shits on it. Like, hey, they've done a lot for the space. Yes, they've messed up, but I mean, I think that's one of our biggest problems as an industry is giving credit where credit's due. Like, if people are doing cool stuff, they're getting people moving in the millions and millions. Yes, they they reserve, they deserve some level of respect for doing what they're doing. On the other side, it goes back to the very first thing I said, which is uninformed investors, people drinking their cool aid, getting caught up in their shit and just doing it that way. And that's what it was. If you read all of the different kind of earnings calls and the investor, you know, docs that they built and everything, it was Peloton was a great business with phenomenal timing. They they did content better than anybody has done content on a fit aside ever. Hands down, there's no way to compare. But John Foley's ego, which is what made Peloton work when it was a startup, did not work as a public company. And the scale, the growth and the demand that they thought was coming, which the only way you could realistically think that that was actually coming, is if you were drinking your own Kool Aid and you had a huge ego. There's no other Around it. The think that they were going to keep their pandemic levels going post-pandemic and not, it's the same thing that happened at 45. They missed their earnings mark by how much? You just not, you're, you're drinking your own cool it, you're not doing it right. You just don't know what you're doing. So it it was it was mostly self-inflicted wounds. And it's unfortunate because they do a phenomenal job and I'm bullish on the long-term opportunity, but you never know who if they can come back from like how badly they messed up on a personal leadership level and a company-wide level. That's the mess up. But yeah, I mean, their rower is nice, honestly. The rower's nice, their bikes are nice, their treadmills are like it's all their content is phenomenal. They have millions of members. They're generating, I can't even, I can't even remember the last number, but hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Like they're doing it at scale, but just lots of mess ups, and it's a bummer for me. Because I I like connected fitness. I want tonal to do well. I want Peloton to do well. I want Arena to do well. I want these businesses to be out there thriving because I think they're they're good for people to work out at.

Yeah, you know, so when we talk about we can you know, I've talked about Peloton and Tonal and F-45 several times on this show. But when you look at me and giving us an example of a company that you think has maintained a level head over the last three years and now set up to do well because you know, they had good business fundamentals and they didn't get, you know, out of their lane, their heads didn't get too big, and now they can, you know, maintaining and continue to grow moving forward. Is there anything that comes to mind?

Yes. Uh arenas one, we invested in. I'm not saying that because we invested, but they purposefully went after lower valuation and did things because they they assumed it was gonna happen that way. And they just uh got some new financing that will come out soon. So that's a good look at like ones that knew it was coming and had informed founders or like we're gonna take your time, but it's different. They're at a much earlier stage than Peloton, which was already big enough. So at that scale, I would say, I mean, obviously Planet Fitness has done a good job. They have they have been able to keep their stock, their plan. I don't know how, but Anthony Exponential is doing it well. It blows my mind how well they do time and time again. He's just the killer. It's absolutely absurd because they don't have some of my favorite brands. Like I've taken cycle bars and club polys, like they're good, but they're not like these crazy killer businesses. A lot of like better higher end classes there, but they just thrive. Um obvious one is rogue. They they always are and will be, but no one really knows how well they're doing because they're so secretive. And then I I got caught up on like a I got a message, I get messages a lot from like employees and people that are like, hey, this company sucks, or this is why. Like I got one from F45 like a couple weeks before it went down with everybody hearing that. And I got I've gotten a few from rogue that are like it it's a bad environment to work at. And I'm like, okay, I don't know, take that with what it is. But you that's the only thing I've ever heard from Rogue, because they don't talk, they don't show, like, you just have no idea. All I know is they make the best equipment out, it's all that we have. And they crush it. It's just insane. And then another one, which I I really like the people there. I've never talked to the rogue people, but I really like the I actually talked to them when I first bought equipment by driving down to their Columbus location when we first opened our gyms back in the day because they were like a small team. It's increasing to see what they've done. But on the other side is um Beaver Fit is doing it phenomenally well. They have military contracts, they produced equipment, their pods, they really adapted to COVID and kept running with it. Um, super, super cool. Really liked what they've done. And I think one more, sorry, they just keep coming to me. The other one that I liked previously, we talked to them. They were set up to succeed before COVID. They crushed COVID and I haven't checked in lately, but I assume they're crushing it. Camp Gladiator. There's like outdoor workout classes. They were doing millions and millions in revenue pre-COVID, built a phenomenal business. And then I think the last one that capitalized on a lot of different opportunities is a company called FitOn. Got Russell, former founder of All Trails and his wife, um, Lindsay, I think, is the CEO. They built a business, they did the digital fitness thing as an app, they did the freemium model, and they they made it work. And then they just bought PureFit, which was a crazy move to go the healthcare funded fitness route, which touches on all the stuff we talked about either, or earlier rewarding people to work out. They're doing a great job. So there's a lot, that's what I mean. There's enough companies doing well. It's just every move as you run down the line, the Pelotons, the F-45s, the some of the Soul Cycle stuff, and others, it's just self-inflicted wounds of bad business decisions and leaders.

Yeah, and they and they get all the headlines. I'll throw another one into the the ones that seem to be doing it well is concept two. Like, how long have they been around? They just produce really high.

I talk about them all the time.

Rowers. They're they're fantastic, right? And they they they're small mom and pop shop, they keep their mouths quiet, they don't do a ton of interaction, but they just make the market's best rowers and herb equipment. It's it's they're solid.

It's funny. I was a rowing coach for a string coach for the rowing team at a school for a while, and I was really deep in that. The only thing I'll say about concept two is they're so far gone down that path that you mentioned that I think they're just they let an entire market pop up on top of them that they shouldn't have. They should have made their devices easier to connect and stream, and they should be selling the devices that let your phone hook onto it, not me buying them on Amazon and Shane Farmer marketing them. Like they should be doing that. They should be leading, they should have Shane as their full-time employee, repping them 24-7. They should be, there's just so much they could be doing. Yes, they do whatever $30, $50 million a year and they're a great business, but they they went too far down the recluse route. We're like, don't talk to me, don't don't think about me, just buy my rower and never speak to us again. Too far. And I and that's a bummer because look what Hydro's done, look what Peloton Rowing's doing, look what Averron's doing, look what Assault was able to do, look at all these different companies that popped up because they just didn't give a crap.

Yeah, interesting take, man. Well, yeah, I know uh I know we're butting up on time, and you know, this is this is it's always great to catch up in the Anthony, especially just talk about the industry overall and the trends. I think it's really valuable. And you know, once again, as one content creator to another, I really appreciate what you guys do there and uh always urge people to to go check it out. And I uh glean insights from your uh your your podcast and your uh your newsletter as well. So man, appreciate you coming on. Keep up the great work. If people want to get a hold of you, where do they go?

Yeah, I really appreciate it. It's awesome the chat. Always happy to. And it's uh Fit Insider. I'm on LinkedIn talking about it. The if you go to fit insider.com, take you to the site and newsletter and podcast, just kind of doing it and really out there. And then if you have a company or an idea you're working on, um, Fit Capital, just go to the Fit Insider site and click the Capital tab and let's chat. Thank you.

Right on, ladies and gentlemen, Anthony Veneri. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. 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, Catbox, 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 I put a lot of work into it and 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 feature 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 Malone, and this is the feature of fitness. Have a great day.