Austin Cohen FlexIt Virtual: Private Aviation to Personal Training

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. I've worked with more business softwares than I can remember. The common theme is that they are overcomplicated, difficult to set up, far too many features to navigate, and most of all, expensive. But Pocket Suite is different. If you are a business professional or gym owner that needs clients to book time with you and want a seamless billing solution, then look no further. Pocket Suite has you covered. On average, fitness business professionals that sign up for this app see a 30% boost in income. That's because it's simple. It has everything you need and nothing you don't. You can easily sell packages and subscriptions. Control your billing in one place. No need for Venmo, PayPal, or any other merchant solutions. Save backforth time with clients and prospects with a custom booking link. Set up automations to cut down on admin time, like client renewal reminders, seamless client onboarding, contracts, intake forms, etc., etc. Look, I know this because I used it myself. It took me less than 10 minutes to get set up and fire off my first client invoice. If you're looking for a time-saving, simple application that allows you to combine three softwares in one with a clean, professional look for clients and prospects, then you have to check out PocketSuite. Go to pocketsuite.io. That's S-U-I-T-E. Check out the Apple App Store or Google Play to learn more and give it a free test run. You can also click in the link in the show notes for my special referral offer. That is PocketSweep.io. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. Insight Tracker can help. Insight Tracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Inside Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. InsightTracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Insight Tracker, the science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is insight tracker.com forward slash future. 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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Eric, thank you for having me here. I uh I I love focusing on the future and not looking back.

So yeah.

Glad that you started that for us. Years before the topic became all hot and heavy.

Yeah, it really did, right? Uh people always say, like, wow, that's a really good name for a podcast. How'd you grab that one? Uh because it was 2017 and no one was really talking about the future of fitness a whole lot. And uh yeah, it just turned out, you know, it worked well for the market given it's 2022 and everyone loves to talk about the future of fitness. So it's uh it works.

Well you started it. Yeah. Now now now we hear it everywhere, but you started it first. Hope you have that trademark.

Yeah, well, no, I don't. I definitely don't. Uh Austin, uh, it's gonna be great, man. Your your experience is um, and even just pre-recording talking to you, I just really enjoyed it. I can tell you're very entrepreneurial. Uh I think you um see things in a good perspective, not just from you know purely the fitness industry, but just from you know, kind of a global uh entrepreneurial viewpoint. And uh great story, great businesses, private jets, all kinds of cool things. Uh so maybe you could start by just give us some of your background and how you got to be one of the uh the founders over at Flexit.

Yeah, definitely. So thanks again for having me. Uh Austin Cohen, founder, CEO of Flexit from New York. I'm out here in New York at our global headquarters today at New York City, New York. Uh I spent about half my career in venture capital, investing across consumer, mostly luxury consumer, um, tech, entertainment, hospitality, food and beverage, health and wellness, sports, um, and the other half operating and scaling early stage companies. Personally, super passionate about disruption, innovation, consumer, really from an experience perspective, so helping people to create experiences that really improve their lives, um, make them feel better, look better, make things easier for them. Um really always about solving some level of a pain point for people, helping them to tackle something that hasn't been efficient, um, hasn't been possible previously. Um prior to this, was part of a group that founded a big private jet business that we IPO'd. Um there's back this past summer. This is called Wheels Up. Um, much of what we're doing here at Flexit is inspired by many of the things that we did and still do at Wheels Up. But yeah, it's uh uh hindsight's 2020 for me. Uh sentimental, personally cool just looking back at the series of experiences that I've had, you know, traversing between um jets and fitness, which is my passion, playing college sports, um 5 a.m. in the gym kind of guy. Um everything kind of trickles into the next thing and uh uh you know, take one experience and kind of lens to the next one and move all from there. So I started Flexit back in 2018. Uh we launched a business in 2019, so we had our third birthday just a few weeks ago, which was very exciting. Um happy birthday to Flexit. And uh the premise really for us when we started the company is the same as what our mission is now, which is to create flexible, non-intimidating, and empowering experiences for fitness consumers everywhere. Whether you were someone who's an elite athlete, works out every day and has for years, or you're someone who's never moved before, hasn't gotten off the couch, and is ready to make that commitment to yourself and to start to do so. Um and again, uh much of what we're doing here is in many ways similar to the things I've done in the past, which is about helping more people to access more things in comfortable ways that are super experiential to improve their lives. So looking forward to sharing more about it today. Um, love learning and hearing about your entrepreneurial experiences, your experiences in fitness, your view on the future of fitness. So thanks again for having me. I'm excited to dig in.

Yeah, yeah, man. I guess uh first point what sports did you play in college? Uh well, cross.

Nice. Um, but I I played pretty much all sports uh growing up. And then somehow um once you kind of move beyond playing sports competitively, fitness fills that void.

Yeah, it does. It absolutely does. Yeah, I was uh a competitive um swimmer and water polo players, and that's why I I got allured to CrossFit in 2008. I was like, ah, this fills the gap. This feels so good. Um, you know, transition. Yeah, yeah, it was. Um so you had mentioned, well, we'll get into the the flexit, what it is, because I I got to experience so so thank you guys for letting me um you know work with Chris on your platform and experience what it was so we can have a good context for this conversation. You said that it was inspired by Wheels Up. And I'm curious, you know, when you when you've connect those dots for me. How is a uh you know, a luxury jet membership site, right, giving more act people essentially access to private jets, similar to what you guys are doing at Flexit?

Yeah, from the earliest days, some of what we were trying to do at Wheels was to help folks who previously had not been able to fit themselves into the pyramid of private aviation. So you think of a pyramid here, right? You can own a jet, you can own a piece of a jet, you can own access to jet time. We're trying to broaden the lower rungs of that pyramid so that more people could come in and access experience. So typically private aviation, inaccessible, super expensive, but the concept super early on was what if first class flyers could actually now move up into the pyramid and be able to start to travel privately, um, or at least do so more than they've been able to previously. So think about commoditizing time, about helping people to access things that had previously been inaccessible to them, about democratizing some level of access, making things easier for people to get their hands around, their fingers around. So here flex it, the same goes for fitness. Um, priority for us as a business now is personal training, and we'll get into it a little bit more. But personal training has typically been inaccessible. It's expensive. It's expensive at a premium gym. It's even expensive relatively compared to the monthly membership fee at an HBLP, a budget facility. It's something that you have to usually have a membership to a gym to access. And if you don't, it's difficult to have someone come to your home to do it. So we're trying to help more people, help everybody have access to personal training. You know, so so one is conceptual to answer your question, it's just in terms of what we're trying to do. It's create experiences to open up access, commoditize time. And then many of the other ways are just in terms of how we build our business, how we market our business, some of the players that are involved in our network and ecosystem and everything that we're doing. So there's lessons gleaned. Um, there's context for just how we're trying to open experiences up to the world, and confluence of it kind of pieces together what we're doing. A big element, for example, on a more granular scale is the attention to service. Wheels up, we had a saying on the side of our hats and our sweatshirts, which is 8760-8760, which is 247-365. So it didn't matter what time of day it was, planes were in the air, clients were being served every hour of every day. And we're doing the same thing here. We've got trainers in six continents, clients in six continents. Every hour of the day we're here. We we we get back nearly instantly to anyone who tries to communicate with us as a business. We're servicing these sessions, supporting the sessions, supporting the clients all hours of the day. So carrying that 8760 mentality forward. So whether it's on a super, super high level in terms of opening up access and experiences, um, who's part of our ecosystem network, the way that we're building and growing, and even more granular, just the way that we're prioritizing things like support, success, uh, making our customers feel like they're getting the light club service that they should be getting. There's a lot of inspiration that's been drawn from prior experiences that yeah, yeah, fascinating, man.

So you're celebrating your third birthday. So you you start, you're like, hey guys, we got a pandemic coming. We're going to uh, you know, do this in-home personal training thing, right? Um, I mean I jest. So the reason I'm asking that is like what was how did it change in that first year, right? Because you started from one reason. I presume you had a specific pain point, maybe you can touch on what that was, and then everything changed drastically. This whole industry just exploded and and you know, wheels up, no, you know, no pun intended. You know, this whole thing took off, right? So explain that first year. What was going through your mind as as this whole thing unfolded?

Yeah. So again, uh history formed the business in 2018, launched the business in 2019. Yeah. So we look at our business in three phases 2019 through end of the third week, 2020, March. Um, right, so call it the first 15 months. Um, that's phase one. Phase two was from there forward for about a year. Uh that call it the heavy COVID phase, and then everything from thereafter, right? So back end of last year, as we look forward to your points and the future of fitness, um, phase three for us as a business. So phase one was all about um commoditizing time. Uh, I think you'll appreciate this just having been a gym owner. We looked at clubs and we wanted to figure out how we could help them to market to the consumption preferences of Gen Zers and millennials. So, folks who are using smartphones, apps, a few clicks of the finger to get everything they wanted in their lives, right? It's their transportation, Uber Lyft, their hospitality, Airbnb, hotel tonight. We wanted to figure out how we could help them to use that same behavior to get through the doors of clubs. Because they were doing it at boutique studios over the last five years. So we put a model together for that where folks could go to any of our gym partners in a collaborative way. We worked with the gyms, we set the pricing. We figured out a way to access was super experiential, no tour, no paperwork. And we had people just walking in in the most seamless, frictionless, comfortable way to gyms. Um, so think Lee Gen tool for the clubs that we're working with in a new way to market to a demographic that was used to accessing differently. And uh product was growing like crazy. End of the third week, March 2020, the unimaginable in our industry happened. Good, good thing you were out of the business of owning gyms at that point.

Yeah.

Um, I'm sure you you felt that relief then. Um good time for people to be listening to podcasts at home end of March 2020. And um, you know, it gave us a chance, it was it was painful then, but it gave us a chance to think about future fitness. We did two things super, super early on um from the third week, March 2020 for about a month forward. First was no furloughs and layoffs, kept our full team intact. Um, wanted to be able to hit the ground running when we got a move to make. Wanted to minimize stress, psychological toll, back to you know, mission as a businesses, helping improve people's lives, get them more fit and on their terms. So we did our part there, and um, doing so helped put us in a position to execute if there was something we needed to move on. The second was I like to use sports metaphors, big sports fan. We flux to do a lot of stuff with sports teams athletes um as we did it wheels up, which was we were calm in the pocket. Um we needed to find our opportunity. I felt that too many businesses were going to, and they did, start to get into lines of business that didn't have longevity for them. So I think back third week, March 2020, every influencer brand, company, equipment company, Jim Studio, started to do live streams, they started to create word content, pushed out. There's so much dilution in that stuff, so much optionality. Um, the amount of free content that was getting pushed there was just wild. And a few months later, even groups that started to try to monetize it moved off of it, right? So businesses went forward with new things, they felt the pressure to make a move, and then they are no longer doing it, whether it was a month later, three months later, a year later, you know, today. Um, we came up with a thesis pretty early on in that first month. Uh, we've been planning to launch a digital product, but not as soon as we ended up doing so. And the thesis is that there's really only uh two types of content in virtual fitness, and um that came from looking at the market and all the changes over that first month. Um, the two types of content are delivered across three media. Uh so live stream, pre-recorded, and hardware at home. But hardware at home delivers access to live stream and pre-recorded content, right? So if you're sitting on a spin bike and you're watching a spin class, you're consuming live stream or pre-recorded content. The theme across all those is that the communication is one way. So right now, you can hear me, you can see me, I can hear you, I can see you, right? It's somewhat approximating you and I being in the same room and doing this pod today. Um, but that's not what you get from a live stream or pre-recorded mechanism. So we call that asynchronous activity. It's one-way communication. Take a step back for a second. There's all sorts of comparables and other verticals for live two-way, right? So, what have we been doing for the last 24? Much less meeting in person. Now, hopefully, there's been more of it more recently for folks. Um, we've been meeting over Zoom, we've been meeting over Google Meets, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime. Um, that's live two-way communication. Um, again, helps to approximate a setting of people being in the same physical space even when they're not. IPO this past summer, talk space therapy, two people not in the same room but able to still experience two ways together as if they are. Um in fitness, I believe it's even more important, and I I our company really informed a thesis around this back in March 2020 through mid-April 2020, which is that there should be wide two-way communication because fitness is about results, right? And you know this as well as anybody. To get those results, you gotta get pushed, you gotta stick with it. You really need to commit. So prioritizing form correction, feedback, accountability, motivation is gonna be all the more amplified when there's someone on the other side of the screen helping you do it, uh, or someone in the room who's physically next to you helping you do that and get there. Personal training's tried and true industry for years, right? Even elite athletes, right, they've got the best in personal training to help them get to the next level. So I said, you know, we have business mentors, we've got teachers in education, people have therapists. Everyone should have a fitness coach. And historically, personal training, we talked about this a second ago very briefly, we'll get into it more now, is something that most people haven't had access to. So it's super expensive. Premium gym, very expensive, at a lower end gym, a gym that maybe costs 20, 30 bucks a month, might pay 60 bucks for an hour session there, right? That's relatively expensive, and that adds up if you're doing it all the time. Most people don't go and get personal training. If you look at the population just here in the US at gyms, most people most definitely don't have the ability for trainers to come to their homes, and even fewer people just work out with personal trainers and patches of grass and outside. So we said there's an opportunity to deliver a two-way, synchronous set of experiences in the fitness space, right? So we have all this live stream pre-recorded, and that's what hardware is pushing. But what about two-way communication, right? There is this gap in the market for a two-way experience. People are socially constrained. Let's bring them together, let's give them a social experience, prioritize motivation, accountability, form correction, feedback. We had all these gyms that we were working with since we launched the business. So we called our gym partners up. We asked them to bring their trainers who can furload or laid off. The gyms for X went to zero. We said, we're gonna pack the schedules to these trainers and we're gonna start delivering a live two-way experience, something called virtual personal training. We're gonna bring the price point down. We're gonna be able to have people doing it who previously felt the PT was too expensive. We're gonna help people who felt like it was inaccessible because they didn't want to be working out with others looking at them in a gym setting. They felt uncomfortable, they didn't feel like they were fit, whatever it was, they felt self-conscious. So now people in the confines of their home, confines of uh outdoors, um, and today it can really be anywhere, it can be in a gym. Um, we started to deliver a live two-way experience. And we built our own video tech that's optimized uh for two people who are physically not in the same space to interact as if they are. Bells and whistles of the tech help to alleviate the fact that people aren't in the same physical space. So, for example, in person the trainer can correct form, they can move someone's arm to adjust it. Well, our trainers now can draw on the screen to help correct the form. So we've really tried to bring down any barriers to entry that exist in personal training. We've built out this platform, quote, virtual personal training. And it just took off. Um, it's been amazing. Um, we'd love to get into your experience using it and you know what your expectations were going in, what you thought of the experience, and how it compared to those expectations after going through it, how you think about the experience of a live one-on-one workout for someone who knows fitness super well as compared to any other digital experience that you've had before. Um, but it's it's been amazing for the business. Um, we built out a suite of products around it. Now we've got all these products in the same ecosystem and just again committed to helping people access their fitness on their terms, wherever they are. Uh, virtual doesn't just mean at home, it means connected. You can use our tools, edge, outside, really wherever you are. But yeah, I'd love to hear, you know, what was your experience like with Chris? Um, what'd you think going in and what'd you think coming out?

Yeah, yeah. It was uh overall, Austin, it was favorable. You know, my experience was good. You know, I look at am I the right market for that? Probably not. I mean, I I kind of know what I'm doing all the time, right? That being said, that made for an interesting experience for Chris, the trainer, who dealt with it very well. I mean, very personable, right? It was like, first of all, I didn't tell my wife what I was doing. She walked in, you know, to the list. She's like, what is going on? Who are you talking to? Why are you like, why are you doing bicycles? Like, I don't do ab work, right? Ever. I was joking about that with with the personal trainer. I'm like, he was, you know, watching, he did a well, let me walk through the experience. So it was a 30-minute session. You know, I downloaded the app. Um, I just set up my phone. I went into my you know, main living space out in the area. It was kind of a nice day. Sun was out and windows coming through. It was a nice uh workout scene. Chris got to know me for just a couple minutes, right? Asked me a few questions, any injuries, anything, you know, asked me to do a couple moves that served as like a warm-up and kind of a movement assessment, you know, squat, a couple lunges, asked me, you know, how my shoulders are, um, asked me what I did, you know, as far as working out in the past few days, um, went over all that. And then on the fly, he just kind of came up with, okay, well, this is, you know, we'll focus on what equipment do you have. He's like, I see you got a kettlebell in the background, right? Can we use that? I'm like, absolutely. Um, so you know, I felt like the on the fly learning experience for him, given that he was only going to work with me probably once, was really solid. And then we worked through and, you know, he he watched me move, he counted the reps for me. And um, all in all, it was really kind of an action-packed 30 minutes. And uh, you know, we also talked about other stuff, you know, it was like that personal thing. It's like, oh, where do you live? And you know, he's in the Miami area, just moved there, and I live in Montana, and you know, talked about skiing, we talked about my lifestyle, he asked me about my nutrition. You know, uh, I'm trying, you know, it sounds like an awful lot for 30 minutes, but it kind of was. And you know, we we did core exercises, which I I never do, and I was sore for the next three days, uh, you know, and I was getting out of bed or getting off the couch or something like that. So it was it was good and it was rather seamless. I mean, I just opened the app, there was a schedule there, clicked on it, it opened up the window, Chris was there, and off we went, and that was it. So overall, it's just I guess it was easy. It was it was pretty fun. Especially, I don't know if I've actually ever bought personal training for me. Um, and it was kind of nice just to have someone walk me through everything. I didn't have to think about what my workout was for that day. You know, I didn't have to write anything down, I didn't have to do anything. I just was trained. You know, it was cool for me.

Yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. Chris is an incredible trainer and amazing at relating to people and helping the caterer workout to someone that you guys never met in person before. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it still felt like you were getting the level of attention to detail that you would if you were in person with him and you guys had a relationship for a bit of time. So I appreciate that. Um, I'm with you. Bicycles are no fun. Uh let's you know, let's let's stay away from let's stay away from them.

But they they really are good for you.

Yeah, they're good for you. Well, well, hopefully we see you back doing more bicycles with Chris. But I'm curious how you know you felt going through the session and thinking about a live two-way experience as compared to just watching a pre-recorded video. Obviously, again, a bit different, right? You own Jims, you have you know how to work out, yeah, how to self-motivate. Um, probably not the demo for that either, but I'm sure you've you know consumed a bunch of different sets uh of of live one-way, uh live uh one-way experiences. But how did how how do you think about that two-way experience, which is newer, which is a category that didn't exist two years ago, um, as opposed to that one-way experience that has existed for a couple of years?

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Yeah, no, you can't skip out on it. Chris is gonna be all over you if you uh if you try to bail on the session.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it was really good. Um there's uh you mentioned some of the bells and whistles, and and Chris did mention it, you know. We didn't get to dive into some of it during the you know, uh during the session because we really just got to work and didn't stop until it was over. But he had mentioned he could draw stuff and you mentioned some of the other things. But but tell me about the technology a little bit. Like what what are some of the bells and whistles? Like, okay, why not zoom?

Yep, yeah. So I'll preface with this is corny, um, but this is how our team communicates. Zoom's great for meetings, yeah, but flex is built for training and wellness. You're on Zoom, the structure of the frames, um, the way you can toggle between views, the way that you can communicate with others that are in your meeting, whether you're in a meeting style or webinar style, is incredible for meetings. But it's not optimized for a training experience. So, look, there's independent trainers out there that are using Zoom. They may be using FaceTime. Um, they're just trying to get on video and deliver it. The big thing for us is that our ecosystem is all-encompassing. People are never leaving the ecosystem. You can get your equipment from us, you can get your nutrition from us coming soon, you can get your food from us. Um, you're chatting with your client from inside the system, you're not going off and texting the trainer, and everything's tight in there, your calendar is in there. You can see the weather through our weather partner, Acuweather, from inside. So everything's inside our ecosystem. Think about content. You've got your Slacks, your DMs, your emails, phone, right? People are in a million places, very difficult to consume all that content. So we want to localize everything. But in terms of the experience, it's all about results. So when does fitness really get sticky for people? When do people really get into a routine? When they start looking and feeling better, right? It's not one workout, it's not what whatever it is. If you sit on the Peloton bike, you consume the Les Mills in the studio, um, it's not that one workout that gets you into that routine, right? It's the consistency when you start looking and feeling better. And so for people to feel like they can get there, we need to optimize for that experience, that first experience, the next experience in each of them. So for personal training to work, the trainer's got to be able to push, like we said, hold accountable, motivate, give form correction and feedback. With a straight zoom, it's just gonna be the trainer looking at the client and a fixed view. There's no flexibility. Um, we've solved for some level of speed, clarity, so queer faster than traditional video conferencing. We've changed the flexibility in camera angles and views that both the consumer and the trainer have at any time. So you actually don't know how Chris was looking at you, the angle and the views that he had, in the same way that he didn't know what you were looking at, but you had the flexibility to toggle so you could see what you needed to. And from there, um, it gets really extensive, right? So if we just talk about the trainer side, Chris was able to draw on the screen. He can perform, uh, he can project perfectly performed exercises onto the screen. So, for example, if Chris physically was not going to perform a deadlift to show you how to do a deadlift, instead, he wanted to stay focused on you and watch your form, he could demo to you by projecting a video of a perfectly performed deadlift onto the screen, project a video of him doing it. So you could keep your eyes locked on that, you could mimic that form, you could see yourself in the mirror, your screen, but Chris could stay locked in on you doing the deadlift and correct your form as you were doing it. And at the same time, Chris has the ability to take notes in that session. Oh, his, you know, he didn't get back far enough, right? His neck wasn't in the right position. Those notes carry over from session to session. So Chris, the next time you go to work with him, he's gonna know what you did last time, he's gonna know what you did between sessions. He's never gonna have you doing the wrong thing, so it's gonna keep you on track. Um, so there's about 50 or so of those bells and whistles that optimize for the trainers and for the client to have an experience that as close to possible approximates what it would have been like if the two of you were in the same room. You save the time, you didn't have to leave your house, you didn't need equipment if you didn't have equipment, right? All you need to do is have Wi-Fi or cellular on any device, phone, tablet, laptop, TV. You can get it in with me wherever you were. So we've we've had people use this in the beach outside, people use this gas stations, airports. There's some wild stories. Um, all you need is that Wi-Fi or cellular signal. Um, so the features really enhance and change the experience. Trainers that have come over and used this technology, much like the consumers, they don't want to go back. They don't want to do this again on FaceTime or Zoom. We're not built for meetings. Our tech is built for working out. Um, working out to us is it's not just strength training, it's not just doing apps. It's strength hit, yoga, meditation, stretching, recovery, do a lot of virtual physical therapy. We do a lot of nutrition, so nutritionists, dietitians. Um, and the features that each of the different types of professionals would be using is a little bit different. So some of the features uh for nutrition lobby, meal planning, a little bit different for the nutritionists than the stuff that some of the trainers would be using. Some of the trainers you know can also help um tailor to and target um folks to be eating right, um, getting their way, um, whatever it is. So, again, all that stuff's integrated into our video tech. You see some of it as a trainer, you see some of it as a consumer. Um, the more you get into it, the more trainers can leverage the features to get to know you better, they see your results, understand where you're heading. Um, so um it was there's a big difference between using the Zoom. Um, we went through a full process early on, and we said to really do this, um, it's gonna make sense to build our own video processor. Um, if we aren't gonna build our own video processor, just doing this over Zoom, not gonna be super differentiated. It's not gonna be really get achieved the end of again two people who aren't physically in the same space really feeling like they are. Kind of as we look to the future, right? Back, we'll keep wanting to bring it back to future fitness um for us concept of heightened immersion is where we're going. So imagine if you could feel to a much greater extent that you and Chris were in the room together. I don't know if you did on your phone or your laptop, right? Laptop's a little more immersive than the phone, phone screen's a little smaller. Think about it really feeling like he's there, feeling silhouetted, and you know, like Chris is actually in the room with you. That's where we're going. That's where we're going next. So that you guys, you know, he's in Miami or in Montana, but you feel like you know, you get to a point where after working out with him for a couple weeks, you feel like you've known him for years. You guys have spent time in person together, but you never really have. That's that's what's next for us.

Yeah, that's cool, man. And uh I'm curious when you look at I see a lot of possibilities for integrations, right? Providing, you know, the coaches more information, more data, um, you know, even stuff like uh DoorDash, right? Having meals according to the meal pan just sent out. And then you got technologies like uh, you know, inside tracker and lumen and uh wearable data coming in and all that stuff. Like it can be overwhelming. Are you guys do you guys have you know stuff on the product roadmap to start integrating more data for the coaches and making it easy? Or what are you guys seeing as far as partnerships and integrations?

Absolutely. Um we're a networks business marketplace. Um we're long on partnerships. Um, we've partnered with DoorDash, we've partnered with so many um other folks. Um I've really pushed our team to focus on keeping us at a very unique and special, I think, differentiated place in the ecosystem, which is that we can work with pretty much everybody. So work with almost every major uh uh gym and studio chain in the country, work with recovery players, we work with equipment players, um, we work with you know big marketplaces like Redoardash or American Express. Um so we want to sit think hub and spoke at the center of this ecosystem and be able to integrate. Thinking about wearables, we're thinking about you know larger format opportunities. Um yeah, we we want to pull and bring our fitness experiences, the ability to do wide-to-way communication into anyone else's ecosystem. Um so we do a lot of enterprise work. Um, we build a lot of custom white-level solutions. If you go to Blink's website, we do their virtual personal training as Blink member, you never know that. It looks and feels like it's theirs, but it's us behind it. Same thing goes for corporates. Um, so if you're working at a company that's got an employee wellness hub, it might look like it's theirs, um, but it's actually us powering it behind it. So long on long on integrations, long on wearables, more information for trainers, the better the experience they can deliver, the more feedback they get, the better they're gonna be able to help their clients to where they're going. So there's so much, you know, you hit the nail on the head, so much opportunity for integration. We want to take our experiences, just help make anything that anyone else is doing a little bit more powerful by being a value add partner. Um so, regardless of the type of company that you are, we're here to just you know help you guys take that to the next step.

Cool, man. I I uh you know, this is a kind of we've talked about the consumer, right? Um, and the advantages for trainers, but this really is a two-sided market. And you know, there is uh one thing we've seen over the past few years is that uh talent within the fitness industry is high in demand. You know, it it wasn't typically has been an industry that, you know, uh even the word talent would be used, but now, you know, with like you know, some Peloton instructor, well, this is January 2022, so who knows what's gonna happen with Peloton? But uh you know, some of these instructors are getting paid a ton of money, right? And you know, there's a lot of grab for talent. So when you look at like attracting good trainers, how what are the challenges there? How are you guys doing that? What what type of people are you looking for on the training side of things?

Absolutely. So I'm just gonna push one section of this conversation out right out of the gates. So um there's been a lot of putting the trainer on the pedestal, right? Turning the trainer into a pseudo celebrity celebrity, if you will, right? So Peloton, Soul Cycle, and that's all great. Large follower accounts, um, big audiences, um somewhat you know, um idolized um by their fans. We have a platform that again is about making the inaccessible accessible. It's called Flex of Pro. We launched it in 2021, and it's been very exciting. Um, we're so happy to have it in the ecosystem. The concept is that consumers can work out with celebrity and athlete trainers. So through Flex of Pro, our customers work out with the likes of Jennifer Lopez's trainer, Heidi Kloom's trainer, um, those types of people, 50 Cent trainer. Again, if those if you wanted to work out with those folks and reached out to them, you're probably not gonna be able to access them. Um, we're making that access um open to others. But I'll put that out in the corner for a second, because what we're really focused on is folks that most people aren't focusing on. We want really great trainers who love what they do, who want the flexibility of doing this from wherever they are, and they want to just deliver incredible client experiences. There's a lot of tools out there that are about empowering trainers that they can make so much money, and if they take the tools that the businesses are bringing to them, that they'll be able to market to customers and acquire customers and run their own businesses. And we just want to get rid of all that from the trainer's plates. All you have to do as a flexible trainer is deliver a great experience to the client during the session, before and after the session. We're gonna do the marketing for you, we're gonna do the sales for you, we can take that all away from you. We're gonna bring you the people, and all you got to do is show up and deliver that that great uh experience. We don't care how many followers you have. If you are a high-quality trainer who wants the flexibility to be able to do this from wherever you are, in a really professional way, and deliver exceptional, exceptional client experiences, and that's someone that we want to talk to. Um, we've gotten our trainers in all sorts of ways. Um, referrals are huge. Um, we have a very intensive vetting process, um, and we subsequently have an incredible uh trainer uh supply retention. We've got trainers, like I said, on six continents. Time zone efficiencies is important. Having the ability to deliver sessions at all hours of the day is very important to us. Um, we're very excited to recently have partnered with ISSA. Together, we have created a virtual personal training certification. So I am uh newly certified in virtual personal training, um, which I'm very excited about. Trainers that are going through ISSA programming or getting certified in virtual personal training and vis-a-vis us through ISSA. Um, it involves detailed education and resourcing around our video platform, um, how to deliver a great experience. A presence, the level of immersion for somebody on video is very different than in person. So you might be an incredible personal trainer in person, and you may not already have the tools to deliver as good of an experience virtually. We're here to help you with that as this ISSA through our partnership. It's the same thing as presence in a meeting, right? Some people have incredible virtual presences, and the presence in person in the meeting may be a bit different, but that's something we can work on. So we want to get to a place where every trainer on a platform is certified and virtual. We're on our way working towards that now. It's very important, um, and we want to continue to push and pioneer this concept that people get certified and credentialed in virtual. Um, this is a real category. It's a new one, but it's one that's here to stay across everything, right? Remote works here, uh, remote meetings are here and whatnot. Um and uh excited to you know uh think of ISSA as a minor league baseball team of ours, if you will, that is gonna be feeding us trainers. So a lot of different ways to get trainers, supply is really important, um, process, professionalism, having the right background, really important. But we want trainers, um, you don't have to be a celebrity, you don't need lots of followers. If you love personal training, if you love giving client experiences that are um very, very high quality, and if you want to uh be your own your own your own beater, your own business leader um and do this in a flexible way that fits with your life and not have to worry about marketing, um, selling, uh we're we're we're here um to talk to you. Um you could be a great fit for the platform.

Right on, man. How's the uh how's the competition for you in this market? I mean, I I've had a I know there's a couple other uh you know, Curtis from workout and a couple other, you know, a lot of people are looking to get into the virtual training environment. I mean, it's it's it saw a huge boom in the last two years, may show I don't know what's gonna happen, you know, if it's gonna flatten off a little bit, but it's not going anywhere, right? It's definitely not going anywhere. How's the competition here?

Um, I would say um the more folks that there are in this space, the better. And by this space, I just mean virtual optionality and fitness. I mean, let's go back two years. Um, virtual fitness wasn't new, but it started to accelerate. The more people embrace and adopt virtual experiences, then um the more that what we're doing is gonna make sense to them. And the more that any what anyone else is doing is gonna make sense to them, right? So the pandemic hadn't happened, and we started what We're doing five years ago. People hadn't embraced virtual solutions to a super meaningful extent that at that point in our industry. It's probably would have been harder to get adoption here. So we love that there are lots of players in the space, just general virtual players. We created this category of virtual personal training. There's nobody doing what we're doing in the way that we are with the ecosystem network that we've built up. So, in terms of competition in that sense, you know, we think we're leading owning this category, that there's a large gap between any other players and us. We rank first organically if you're Google virtual personal training. First thing that comes up is flex. So we started this category. We know how to deliver this in a very unique and different way than anything else that's out there. But again, I think the more that there is here, the better, the better for the community. One of the things I love most about this industry, it's a small world, I like to say. It's a smaller world in New York, and it's an even smaller fitness industry that we share, is that everyone's unilaterally, pretty unilaterally committed to um just helping improve people's lives as passionate about fitness and fitness is some level of meaningfulness to their lives. So I again, in summary, I think it's important that there's more optionality because people are going to embrace it more and it's just gonna make for more excitement for every company that's playing in space.

Yeah, yeah, I agree, man. Um last question and share what you feel comfortable with, but from uh uh a business number standpoint from you know how you guys doing. Um, have you raised investment? Where are you at with that, number of employees, revenues if you want to share? But give us some insights into the numbers because I know a lot of people are probably gonna be interested in hearing that.

Yeah, of course. Um got our team spread on six different continents, um, led by a private equity fund. Um growing very, very quickly month over month. Um I've had uh over 100,000, well over 100,000 folks have got us on their phones. Um so we've been scaling really quickly. Um it's been amazing. Uh you know, our business is very different. We had the virtual business before the pandemic and launched it. Um didn't expect it to necessarily be our leading product, and it is, and our legacy business is up and running and how they fit together in the in the same ecosystem. Um so um feel grateful that we had the opportunity to think um that we were patient during the pandemic and that we've been able to help so many people along the way as the businesses succeeded through the pandemic. Um really proud of the team. Um team has spread all over the world, which we were not before the pandemic. We were pretty localized in New York City, and now we're uh Europe, Australia, Canada, trainers in Hawaii, Manoa, Asia, many, many different states across the US. Um so um, yeah, it's just it's been a wild ride. Excited to do more, help more people.

Right on, man. Uh last question for you. Um What do you need right now? You know, I asked that sphere of collaboration for people who might be listening, but what it's uh what's what's what's one of your challenges and and how could people help you?

Yeah, uh I I'd say the main one is educating people on why virtual personal training is a better experience than other things that are out there and that it should fit in with other things that are out there, right? We all know uh fitness isn't a zero-sum game. Um and I think all these experiences I just mentioned a couple minutes ago fit together. So if you're just you know going to the gym seven days a week, um let's figure out how to get your personal training and understand that if you didn't want to do live one-on-one with someone in person, uh the virtual live one-on-one, something that can help you out. Or if you're doing seven days a week of pre-recorded classes or live streams, let's help people understand that they should be personal training. Um, there's value to it. Um, but we just want to help people more people do more, you know, here. Um we uh are big believers that the future of fitness is about the connectivity of digital experiences and in a creative manner to physical fitness center experiences. So we'll have to talk to anybody that wants to build out digital, see how we can help. Um, you know, if you're on the business side, uh, we white label solutions, we'd love to talk there. Um, always happy to just talk about the industry, um, help others as well, um, connect the dots. So, you know, just spreading the word. Um, want to get flexed out there to more people. Um, want to spread the value and importance of personal training and the fact that everybody, everyone's body's different needs a coach, and the coach that works that person's different. And you know, also want to continue to spread the importance and value of in-person personal training, even though that's not our business. Just a big believer there, too, right? That uh, you know, what we're doing doesn't mean that people shouldn't be doing that. Not a zero-sum game. People should be integrating all these different experiences to get themselves to where they need to go. Awesome, man. I'm I'm super, I'm super reachable, Austin at Flexit.fit. Um, we're super reachable as a company, very responsive. Um, so you can email me anytime. Um and uh yeah, it's been awesome being on here. I hope uh hope you come back for Chris. Um but uh appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about my experiences. We'll have to set up a part two to talk about jets sometime.

Yeah, yeah, I'm really interested in that. Uh yeah, man. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, Austin. I I uh yeah, I know you're a busy guy. So coming on here and sharing your thoughts and where this thing's going. And uh it's it's an exciting space to be in. So um, we'll definitely you know get you back on and uh get an update from me in the in the next year or so and uh and see where this thing goes. So yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Austin.

I look forward to that. Thanks, Eric.

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.