Avrum Elmakis - CEO & Founder of CLMBR

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. 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 InsightTracker.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. Inside Tracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Inside 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. This episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at the Brand X Method. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated in working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and Certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take it-your-own pace, professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brandxmethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. All right. Avram, welcome to the future of fitness, man.

Eric, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. Uh, who do I have to say? Uh Stephon Silner. He was the one who got us introduced. So Stephon for listening. Thanks, man. Uh you know, I've been following a little bit about what you guys have been doing with Climber uh for at least a year. You know, I can't remember exactly. It's like pandemic time, it's like a time warp. I can't remember exactly what things happen nowadays. Um, but I am super keen on finding out what you guys are up to, exactly what your plan is, and uh more importantly, I'm I'm mentioned to learn about you, who's leading this whole thing. Um, so I think a great place to start, just like always. Maybe give us your backstory, um, your kind of founder origin story, and uh, we'll go from there.

Yeah, so just if we take it all the way back from to the beginning, you know, I'm a first generation American. Both of my parents were born in Africa. Um, and so born and raised in Virginia, went to undergrad in Virginia, built my first company in Virginia, um, just kind of an entrepreneur um from beginning to end. Um, and uh was you know focused on uh CBG, so consumer product, uh in the pet treats arena, and started a company there after working for a couple big companies, mainly in sales, and um and grew that company from my spare bedroom uh to hundreds of employees and almost 200,000 square feet of of warehouse space and had multiple exits in that business, um, and still serve as a as a uh board director and um advisor uh to that company. And then in 2017, um uh upon selling kind of the majority of the company, my wife Lauren and I moved to Denver, Colorado for lifestyle reasons, primarily, uh, with our four daughters, and have called this home ever since. So been here for about four and a half years. Um was looking for what to do, right? So, like the first thing I did was kind of take some time off and and kind of figure things out and started exploring different gym products, stumbled across a a product in Denver uh randomly, you know, didn't have an intention behind it to, but uh fell in love with kind of this climbing class um that used uh kind of a an uh a legacy technology called VersaClimber, and um just was so impressed with the modality, the efficiency, kind of how my body felt that I was kind of compelled to to kind of start down this path of of ultimately what's manifested itself as climber. So I don't know if that's a good intro or not, but uh you know, that's kind of a good mountaintop view from my perspective.

Yeah, I think it's a solid intro, man. I mean, it uncovers both questions for you. I'm curious. Uh so what was it about Denver when you moved out there? You mentioned lifestyle choices. What was the attraction? Is that the detail too?

Yeah, so you know, for for us, my wife's brother had moved out here uh from the East Coast probably 20 plus years ago and just consistently raved about quality of life, being outside, um, kind of uh, you know, a great place to raise a family, um, good community feel. And so that really is, you know, and not that we didn't have a lot of those components in Virginia, it's just we wanted to try something new. And um, and it's a much bigger city, uh, Denver, and it's um it's amazing, right? It's very active. You know, you've got the mountains, so you've got a lot of hiking and outdoor activity in the summers, and you've got a lot of winter sports in the winters, and um, you know, so so it was kind of embracing a a different life, you know, way to live, so to speak, for for both my wife and I and our kids.

It's uh there seems to be a lot of people nowadays, which I'm I'm grateful for. I think uh side effect of the pandemic was people really sought out a better lifestyle. You know, with the the migrations all over you know the country and all over the world, really, people are really starting to like and say, hey, you know, there's there's something to this lifestyle because I don't have to spend three hours of a a day in a car coming from California. That was that's a real thing, right? Uh, you know, what do I what can I do at that time? And it's been that's a three months, so I'm I'm glad you made that move. Uh so I'm gonna go back. So I I remember got circa say 2012, right? Uh I was there was another GM here, the one that I own that was having a kind of a liquidation sale, and uh they had a bunch of equipment and uh you know people were coming in and picking off things, and I was like, No, I want that thing, and I pointed at this machine in the corner, you know, like you want that thing? I was like, Yeah, yeah, I want that one. Like it barely works. I'm like, that's okay, I'll take it. And it was a little versatile, yeah. Because I know I had used it um with my time uh in OPT, which is now OPEX, uh trading at the facility, and just remember it being like nothing I've experienced as far as like the type of work you could put on that thing. And I'm curious, you know, and I used it and it I was one of the only people in my gym who realized it because no one else really got it. They just kind of looked at it and became something that people wanted their hoodies on, right? And uh so when you first saw this first climate thing and you looked at it, what was the cues for your mind to be like there's something here, there's something that can be done with this from a fundamental piece, and then what was your vision? How did you start to create the vision to create what you guys have now a climate?

Yeah, so uh much like you, it was through self-experimentation, right? Like I was a triathlete, I had cycled a lot, I had ran a lot, I swam a lot. I'm a big fan of swimming. I think it's a great exercise, um, gets the whole body moving. It's just it's it's hard to schedule pull time or open water time and and things like that. And so, you know, randomly, just like I said, uh stumbled across a versa climber, and to me, it was kind of like the first time that I had experienced a machine, right, for exercise that felt similar to swimming, right? And what I loved about swimming was it was efficient, right? So it was accomplishing a lot in very little time. Um, my body felt good, right? It wasn't really impactful, and it was a natural motion, right? And so when we think about kind of our lives and what we're designed to do, right? Like we're all designed to basically do two things as humans, right? Whether we have progress, you know, parents or not, we crawl in a contralateral pattern, which is responsible for our cognitive incline, and we all know how to stand upright and walk, right? And so it starts with that premise of, you know, sitting down just didn't make a lot of sense to me, right? My low back hurt, my knees hurt, you know, running was really tough on my body. That was my experience with it, even though a lot of people love it. And I'm not here to say, hey, any of these things are bad things. I just think there's a hierarchy to the quality of things you couldn't you could do or you should do with your time. And, you know, for me, it was like, wow, you know, here I am. In 10 minutes, I'm out of breath, right? But I still feel good physically, right? There wasn't any real pain in the knees, there wasn't any low back strain from sitting down and bending over, you know, and I was like, the world really needs to understand this modality, right? But there's a lot of inherent issues with the technology, right? In my perspective, right? And that's the idea behind entrepreneurship, is it's in my opinion, solving problems that that you that you look at in your everyday life and say, hey, I could do that better, or I could make that more approachable. And so it was through that lens that you know kind of climber was born. And uh it starts with this idea of safety, right? Like how do we stand up to work out? It's why most people these days have the option to stand up at work, um, because we know sitting down is is tough on the body, right? And we spend a lot of time sleeping in a horizontal position, we drive to work, we take the train to work, we sit down at work, you know, but it's not really the way we're designed to be, right? And so for me, it was okay, start with the premise of safety, and how do we create a machine that's uh, you know, a modality that's addressable for anybody, right? Whether it's my mom who's in her 70s and has a knee operation, or a professional athlete that is looking to preserve their system, right? How do you create something for all? And how do you make it fun? How do you make it approachable? How do you make it not something that becomes a coat hanger? And so it was through that lens that I I looked at kind of three main principles for founding the company. One was safety, number two was efficiency, and number three was kind of how do I take up very little space and have something that's got a lot of intentionality behind the design. So how do I create something elegant that you want to see? Because for most of us at least I believe I'm speaking for most of us, we tend to put our gym equipment in a spare bedroom or in a basement or out of the way because it's you know, it's just not you know something where you're like inspired when you kind of look at look at it. At least that's my experience. Um and so that was kind of that third principle when I when I really thought about you know how to you know how to approach this.

You said fun.

Talk talk to me about that. What is well actually we rephrase that question a different way because we kind of attack it over how what is what is different? I mean you mentioned the the qualities and safety and efficiency and elegancy and love that's fantastic. What is specifically different about a product? If I put a versatile and what you guys have in your product line, obviously there's a lot more technology, it's neater looking, right? I've seen it, I haven't used it yet. But what what are they what are the primary differences in the evolution of it?

So let's start with you know, like if I'm doing it right on an on a legacy technology, I'm staring at a pole that's about two inches away from it. So it's very claustrophobic. Um let's start there, right? So that's a physical design uh issue and a user experience issue, right? Hence why I think a lot of people look at it and say, this just isn't for me, right? So it's not really enjoyable, at least in my experience. Again, what I'm talking about is my experience. My experience is it's not enjoyable to you know have have this in front of me for a long period of time, right? So that's one big inherent physical difference. And then it goes to nuance between, you know, technology, resistance, gear mechanisms, uh, how fluid is it? How much noise does it make? How does it attach in a commercial environment, right? And so, like, I I was a consumer of them, right? And I had um a lot of them, and they're all bolted into the ground with eight, eight-inch bolts because you've got a monopole thing that you're trying to keep in one steady location, right? Um, and it it it's it's not it's kind of like the difference between a Tesla and a car, right? And a gas-powered automobile, right? They're both cars, but they both get you somewhere. So both of these devices utilize the climbing modality, very different mechanisms of action, very, very different um design, very different utility, right? Um and so I mean it's innumerable, right? Is it it goes from something as physical as that to where's the water bottle holder? Right? You know, do I need to grease a chain? Do I have to ungrease a chain? You know, what's the total cost of ownership for this thing if I'm a a gem, right? From a resistance standpoint, do I want to use hydraulic fluid that's continuous and I have no discrete control? Or should I use magnetic eddy currents that allow me to discreetly say to a client or myself, hey, you know, here's where you're at and here's why you're there, right? Because we're creating a certain amount of of uh you know of resistance that's discretely measurable. Um so again, not not to say it's uh you know, like a an another car is still a car, right? But it's not really this it's it's it's a very it's like an apple and an orange, is the way I would explain it.

Yeah. I think uh one of the things that probably a lot of listeners, right? Well, because you mentioned gyms, you welcome you mentioned what is what is the market strategy for you guys? Where where are you going after? Are you going after the computer gym market? Go after the connective fitness market, because it's kind of all it's all the above, right?

Like we started with the intention of creating a device for the gym market, right? Um and then we pivoted right post-pandemic to say, gosh, there's a lot of people that are starting to spend a lot more time at home, obviously, right? And how do we how do we address both markets with technology that hasn't really been popularized yet? Right. Although legacy tech has been around forever, right? It's legacy tech. You know, it's not cool, it's not innovative. It's the thing that you mentioned that was in the back of the room that was the last thing left over. Because I think most people look at it and say, gosh, that looks like a torture device from the you know 1800s or something, right? And so I think you know, it's it's for for the commercial market to me, it's all about space, right? In a post-pandemic world, you're trying to get you know as much done and as little space as possible, right? Uh for the you and and and with a total addressable market that's wide, right? When we think about the the you know the existing modalities that are out there, right? Running on a treadmill is hard for a lot of Americans, right? One out of every two people don't work out today in the US because they complain of median joint pain or low back pain. Um, and so yeah, huge stat. So um, you know, and and the reason for that is a lot of the sitting down we do, a lot of the exercise that we do, where we're given intuition on form, is inherently productive from a caloric deficit standpoint, but also destructive from a form. So if you were to walk by any gym today that has a bunch of rowing machines in it, you're gonna see this, you're gonna see this, you're gonna see this, you know. Um same thing on a bike, right? You're gonna see this, this, yeah, this, right? You're giving the user a lot of intuition for form in the third dimension, and inherently when that happens, um consciously, right, you go into your workout saying, Hey, I'm gonna, you know, shoulders back, I'm gonna pull this in, I'm gonna use my legs, I'm gonna do all that. Subconsciously, after about 30 to 45 seconds, nobody looks like the crew team um on television. And and so it's it's it's really not you know, it's it's not that addressable, right? So whether it's it if it's a commercial environment where they're saying, Hey, how do I see more clients of different types and how do I, you know, produce more classes in less time, right? Can I create efficiency through modalities that I use? And how do I do that in a very limited amount of space? Right. I think we've got a very compelling solution, right? Um for the at-home user, it's the exact same thing, right? It's a different experience, it's a much bigger screen, and it's like video on demand. And so that's where it gets fun, right? Because you've got music and you've got instruction and you've got motivation. Um, and it's it's kind of inspiring to kind of want to be on it, but it really boils down to results, right? And so everything else is a conversation if it doesn't produce results. And so we know that climbing is much more efficient than most other types of exercise equipment. And and you could probably even speak to it from your own experience if you said, hey, what's the difference of being on a climbing device for five minutes and being on a stationary bike for five minutes? Very different experiences, right? Um, but the other piece of that is let's say I'm 75, 80 years old, right? We have to agree that movement is good throughout the course of a life. You know, that might be like this, and that's easy listening jazz for 10 minutes, versus, you know, I don't know if you saw LeBron on our machine uh a week or two ago, and that's like wow, you know, you know, going all full tilt, trying to uh power into a workout. So hopefully, I mean you could tell I'm very passionate and and get excited. So hopefully that's not too long-winded of an answer, but you know, that that to me was you know is is what we're about.

Yeah, yeah, it's true, man.

I think there's only two things. Well, I think you there's only one thing other than a verse primer that's gotten me to an overload art rate, so I'm faster. And that's uh the ladder. Have you seen these things? Yeah. Archaic. And that is what I'm a bit that is a big footprint. Um that is a big machine, heavy machine they break often, but man, like I think uh I think I got up to like 200 beats per minute, which in like two minutes, it was insane. Probably not healthy. But the first climber is the close second as far as the capacity, right? I mean, you can, like you said, smooth jazz and you can spike it really hard, and it's good for um really. I mean, any type of athlete or trainee, that's that's a and that's a really quality thing to have. So when you guys now, where are you guys now? When when did you officially hit the market? When did the products start shipping?

Yeah, so founded the company in late 2018, spent a lot of 2019 on intellectual property, um, spent a lot of 2020 on that and building up the supply chains to support you know massive, excuse me, massive scale and adoption. We just started shipping um to both commercial and at-home users within the last two weeks, and we'll ramp up fairly significantly through Q4 and and into the new year.

And I know it's early, but do you have any indicators now that would signal like what's gonna be a bigger market for you, the consumer?

You know, I think it's it's kind of all the above, right? When we think about fitness equipment, right? Like just think for a minute, like it's in your home, it's at your high school, your university, your police and fire station, your floor gym, your boutique gym, your office building, your your rental apartment. It's everywhere. The the nature of it is it it exists everywhere because wellness is so ever-present and so interesting to so many different folks for different reasons. So it's kind of early to say, you know, one or the other, but it's it's uh there's a tremendous amount of interest from both places. I mean, we've sold thousands and thousands of machines. We started selling on Indiegogo, which is kind of a popular, you know, platform for kind of new emerging tech. Um, and a lot of those consumers were everything from CrossFit gyms to people at home to you know all the above. Um, but that gave us really great confidence to know that there was a significant amount of demand and interest in something new and different. Um and so I think the market kind of spoke to us in December, January of this year to say, we love what you're doing, and we're validating what you're doing with our dollars.

And so uh from that point forward, it's been uh it's been a really exciting ride for us. And we were you uh let's talk about the commercial specifically with Mitch and CrossFit and a couple others.

Is have you seen any uh, I guess, surprising adoptions within a particular niche?

No. I mean, it's everyone from, like I said, people looking for you know, the the constraints on the commercial side are typically is this piece mobile, right? Yes or no? How much maintenance is required to keep this piece of equipment, regardless of what it is, working in in tip top condition? How much space does this piece take up, right? And what's the utility for my application, right? And so it's been everything from, like I said, a CrossFit type of application to people opening their own climbing studios where they want, you know, 20, 30, 40 of these climbers in a room and fancy that kind of the new spin. Um, and so it's it's kind of all the it's all the above. It just depends on what the application and then it's rehab, right? It's rehab facilities, whether it's for professional sports or you know, people recovering from major life events, right? Is how do you how do you safely and confidently put somebody on something to keep moving? Um, and so that's why you see this tech everywhere, right? Especially in the professional arenas, right? There's not one professional sports team that you would ever go into that I'm aware of that doesn't embrace climbing technology, right? Whether it's baseball, basketball, football, soccer, you know, whatever, because you know, it's it's just it's all about keeping that athlete with a neutral spine, A, and B um keeping impact and load off the body in a non-sport environment, right? And so that knowledge, right, that tribal knowledge that's kind of held at that institutional level at the highest order, right, hasn't really made it, in my opinion, yet to the masses to be able to give give people a real choice to say, okay, do you really want to sit down, right? Let's start with that question, and then do you want to sit down and um you know have some wheels under you for momentum? And is that really productive, right? Is that really the the you know, is that fitness? I I don't I mean, for some people it, you know, again, none of these things were designed to be stationary, right? A rowboat's been used since, I believe, the 14th century. A bicycle's been used as a form of transportation since, you know, the you know, middle 1700s, right? It wasn't until we said, hey, let's make these transportation devices go nowhere, whether it's a robo or a bicycle or whatever, that what said that that that they became, you know, that they became quote unquote craziness devices, right? You know, the way I view the world is a lot different, I think, than most, in the sense that just because it exists doesn't mean that it's the right option, right? And so I look at our job as really educating and and sharing this vision with people in a very primal way, right? That's that's frankly fairly common sense, right? Around, you know, why are you doing, you know, what why would you do this if you could do that, and that is is demonstrably better in really every category.

Yeah, you had mentioned uh pre-recording about you know how it's really just common sensible. If you start looking at all the different options out there for fitness machines, uh this one just makes a lot of sense if you're right, easy to use small footprints. There's a lot of really common sensible reasons to to adopt it, at least try it out, right? Um question out of curiosity, so you came from pet products. That's true, right? Um I guess two questions. What what has been indifferent about the communities?

And then what has been maybe a surprising challenge? You know, they're they're the same in the sense that I seek to bring disruption that is grounded in authenticity and truth, right? And people tend to embrace that. It's why Tesla's never had a paid search on Google or a car commercial or whatever. It's just the truth, right? It's just it's that simple, and people tend to share that with other people when they realize, well, I'm not stopping at a gas station anymore. And you know, the technology's a lot different here. It's still a car, but it's that much better, right? Um, and so that's the analogy, right? In the pet business, it was all about how do we offer our our dogs, which are like our family member, right? Positive, healthy reinforcement in a single ingredient natural way. And do we agree that one ingredient is better than 20 ingredients, right? And again, getting back to that common sense kind of thing, here it's like the exact same thing, right? It's it's authentic, it's it's true, it's easy to understand, right? It's like it's just common sense, right? Like, why would you know it's why you know we're we're designed to stand up, right? We're designed to walk, we're supposed to be upright. And um that's the analogy, the diff, you know, the uh analogy between the two. The difference between the two is that in the pet business, you know, you're dealing with um only a population of people that happen to have a dog, right? Because we only sold products for dogs, right? Here, the market is everyone, right? And it's everyone from you know all walks of life, any country, it's humanity, right? It's how do you how do you promote a healthy idea of movement to really anybody for any reason, right? Whether they're 16, 85, professional athlete, somebody who's just interested in weight loss, somebody, you know, like how do you, you know, so the challenge with that is when you've got something that uniquely defined that has such a wide addressable market, it's all about focused, right? And and picking your battles, and and that's different than just saying, hey, this product is better than, and I'm marketing to people that have a dog, right? Um, from a community standpoint, very similar, right? People are very passionate about how they feed their animal and what they feed and why, right? And they share, right? They they go to a dog park, they walk their dog, they talk to their friends, they post on things, they say, listen, this occupied my dog for a really long period of time. It's amazing, and I feel good about what I'm doing because it's single ingredient nutrition, right? The exact same thing exists on the other side as we take control of our health and wellness journey, right? And people get very passionate about that, right? And so they share and say, gosh, I feel good, you know. I can't really quantify exactly why scientifically, but my knees don't hurt, my low back doesn't hurt, you know, and and so that's you know, the community is is um passionate, but it's passionate about authenticity, right? It's never designed, uh, you know, and I counsel entrepreneurs all the time. If you design a product where you hope to make lots of money, you'll fail quickly, usually. If you design a product that addresses a need and really helps people in their overall life journey, right, whether that's helping their animal, helping them lead a healthier life or whatever um that may be, it becomes a mission that everybody can support and and kind of believe in. And so it's uh you know, maybe that's a roundabout way to answer the the question you asked, but hopefully that that you know addresses that it uh it does, and it's it's interesting to me too.

And I just out of curious like I would be curious, I don't know if you know this or even this, but I want to I'm gonna say now uh I believe they do that people spend more money on the phone.

They do um that's a um a statistic that's publicly available. Um, you know, people, at least in the United States, right, really do look at their pets as part of the family, right? Right, like they would a child. And so um, you know, I can't give you specific numbers to say, okay, that market is X and the fitness equipment market is is Y. I think people now, specifically around this pandemic, are taking more and more control over their lifestyle, right? Where you choose to live, over their friends and their their networks, over their fitness journey, over their health and wellness, whether that be vitamins or sleep or exercise equipment or whatever. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that people continue to kind of go down that path. Um but both, you know, both uh both communities, even though completely radically different, are uh extremely passionate about what they do.

It's something I'm you know, you've probably seen this already, because I'm sure you sound like a guy who's done this research, but you know, I think if you've been in the industry for a little while, you've seen that we tend to compete over the same 20% of the population, right? And those 20% are broken down to like professional exercisers and athletes, all the way down to people who just have set a routine for years or years first. And it's always the challenge is like, well, how do we get to that other 80%? Because that's where the difference is made. It's the same in corporate wellness. Like you look at corporate wellnesses, you know, people we offer gym memberships for a while, we'd offer free classes, but that doesn't get the other 80% in, right? In fact, the other 80% probably shouldn't start with fitness, we should start with uh you know financial health or nutrition, things like that, that we can really start to make the um impact on a when you look at that kind of scenario. How are you guys approaching the 20% versus the 80%? The 80% interest. How are you trying to get to and you're right, because during the pandemic there was a marginal shift, more people started getting into you know, I think it depends.

I think it really starts with the research, right? Which we've done a lot of, right? And and when we talk about, I mean, it doesn't take long to do the Google search and say how many people you know don't exercise because of musculoskeletal issues, or right? That's one out of every two, right? So maybe the 50% of the age, you know, maybe 50% of that 80% is people that are just fearful that by virtue of doing an exercise on a treadmill or a bike or a rower, that they could exacerbate said injury, right? Um they're they're on what we call the sideline, right? And so they have a tendency to look at things that are mobility and flexibility oriented, right? Like yoga and swimming and water aerobics and things like that. But they're really nervous about you know going into a boutique gym and saying, hey, run on this treadmill. When you're done with this treadmill, get on this rower, do the do the rower, and then here, we're gonna go over here and do some floor exercises. That's not the right solution for for one out of every two people. And so I think as an industry, if we if we really think about addressing a wider market, we've got to really boil down to do we have what that wider market is is looking for?

Yeah, I think that's uh and that's key.

I mean, uh it's it's funny how to circle back to our earlier part of the conversation when you said half people out there have those issues, right? And uh that's I you know, I I I'm kind of surprised and myself that I didn't do that. And it makes total sense just from the experience I have. Looking at uh you know, looking at through your entrepreneurial life at the fitness industry now, uh it's changed a lot, right? Past uh 18 months. Significantly it's just been acceleration of trends that we're already seeing. But I guess when you look at it specifically the world of like fitness technology, uh what has you the most excited outside of uh reference tech specifically?

I would say metrics and all of the digital ways that we can like better track our performance, our sleep, our overall health and wellness journey. I see whether it's wearables, whether it's um tech coming from the screens that we're consuming stuff from, what what have you. I think it's just way more information than ever before, which is very empowering, right? It can be very confusing um for a lot of us too, but I think it's very empowering to be able to say, you know, okay, I I've slept like this, so maybe I don't go as hard with whatever it is that I'm choosing to do. And so for me, what excites me is just the amount of information available and the amount of you know of choice, right? I love to see all these new products, whether it's you know, I'm I'm obviously super passionate about climbing as a modality, but I think there's lots of really cool new tech coming out, right? Whether it's you know weight technology or you know different types of you know modalities, it's it's just it's an age of innovation that I think you know, if you look at if I looked at this puzzle three years ago, even, right? It's you know, here's a here's a treadmill, here's a rower, here's a here's here's a here's a bicycle, right? Today it's here's a tonal for your wall, right? That's using a magnetic resistance system, right? Here's a climber, here's a boxing machine, here's you know, here's this incredible depth of offering. Um that that that's really what inspires, you know, somebody like me is is just kind of that innovation. And I think it's with that innovation that we bring people back in, right? Because I'm not one of these folks, like I'm not I'm not gonna say, hey, gyms are over and people are just gonna work out at home. I love going to uh the gym, I love the congregation, the community of it, right? But I also want to look to those folks for being the place where I discover new things. That to me is a sense of discovery, right? Um versus just kind of the same old stuff. So hopefully that gives some perspective on you know the the tech side and then also the just the the breadth and depth of offering.

Yeah, yeah, it is a it's a crazy cool time for innovation in the fifth century.

And uh like I was telling you pre-recording a CERN's podcast four years ago, because I just saw a change coming out. I was like, well, might as well take the opportunity to interview people, learn about it, and then maybe educate a few people along the way. But man, the last two years have been bananas, right? Like you just see so much coming in. And you know, I'm part of Morpheus and only other sponsor on those shows, it's a tracker, and they're pulling all these different data sets in from wearables and HRV to DNA to blood tests. I mean, you combine it with steps and all of this stuff. It's just uh it's a wild world and I didn't I just didn't see it coming this fast. Man, I thought it was gonna be a little bit longer. I'm glad it's here. Um one of my questions as we kind of wrap up, I don't want to respect your time. I always like to ask this because um a lot of this show, um the audience I interact with, the people I get to talk to and the guests who have been on. Um it's a lot about networking and you know, helping the industry kind of move forward together.

So when I asked this question, that's the spirit of it, but what's the one of the biggest needs that you have um as the C August 26, 2021? My biggest need is finding people, right? People who are um functional experts at at a variety of different things, right? Because without a solid team, you can have the most incredible product in the world, but it's it's it's just finding, you know, biggest challenge for me right now is finding the right people, um, you know, to help kind of advance the mission. Um, there's lots of other nuance below that, right? But it's to me, I feel like, you know, when you and not that we don't have incredibly talented people, it's just when you're growing as fast as we are, you've got to continue to, you know, add folks to that puzzle. And it's a challenge, right? Because we're all spread out now. People want to, you know, people have moved to, you know, different countries, different areas, and it's hard, right, to to kind of um as a business owner, recruit um, you know, all the folks that we need to be very successful as a business.

Yeah, and that that's a huge thing.

I mean, there's uh one of the first times I've ever seen this industry too that we're sentencing talent agencies, right? Placement firms, specifically for the fitness industry. Once again, that blows my mind, you know, having been in this place for so long. It just didn't seem like that was a thing. So uh is there any particular are you looking for? All the above, right? It's development.

To software developing, all the folks that really love build-day applications, right? It's just it's it's all the aspects of of of kind of the business, but it's the nature of the world we live in. It's just more challenging than ever to find and identify great folks and um you know, at the speed at which which I'm accustomed to pre-pandemic. Right? And so it's a it's a challenge, you know, that that to me would be the number one challenge.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's uh one of the noticest things I've had over the past few years too is that uh the fitness industry, like uh interviewed a lot of CEOs and founders maybe something who have come from other industries selectively attuned to the fitness industry. For some reason that creates me a great amount of pride. That means that people you know are showing up in the talent like yourself, industries are kind of interested in this. They're seeing the opportunities to not only you know make the bottom line big, right? But also do some good and make an impact on one of the biggest problems we have, which is helpful, health epidemic, right? Um, so it's really cool to have the industry. Please stick around for a while. I'm sure you plan to. Um, and uh man, thank you so much for for sharing your time. I'm with just Glimer.com.

Um it's C L.com at your job. There's a ton of information there. There's lots of ways to get in touch with us. And um, and then I'm personally uh, you know, for me personally, I'm on LinkedIn. Um and uh find that that's a great way to connect with folks professionally.

Right now.

Well, thank you, sir. I know we're butting up on the pleasure with someone of tennis valuable. It's been an absolute pleasure. Uh thanks for coming on Future of Fitness. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.