Bjoern Woltermann - Katalyst & Personalized EMS Technology

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[00:01:47] and social media overhauls there's so much I want to cover as we were talking in the pre recording and like, oh, my God, there's actually a ton we need to get it get across here. So let's start with this. You aren't if you don't mind, just give us a little bit of your background, how you got to be the CEO and founder of Catalyst and then we'll take it from there. Perfect. I was born in Germany and after high school, joined the Air Force wasn't on the path to become a pilot or navigator and

[00:03:04] had a small accident where in that skating accident, they x-rayed my lower back and got acquired by Deutsche Talikom in 2009. Said I'm not going to work for a telco, I'm not going to do that, sorry. But my former group CEO, good friend, asked me, can you help me get into the digital age? The iPhone was one year old and the social media world just opened and everybody was trying to figure out how this

[00:04:22] world is going to evolve. So I spent the next years, 150 days a year on a computer all the time. So my lower back was like really a agony. And my physician said, you're either gonna fix this. For context, I was 35 at the time. You're either gonna fix this or you're gonna end up with a honey at a disc very soon. So he said, go to the studio, this training studio. I go there twice a week. So I, my physician, go there twice a week. I love it. And I was like, interesting. And he says like, you know, it's amazing.

[00:05:40] Like it's totally gonna strengthen your core.

[00:05:42] It's gonna fix your problems.

[00:05:43] And you're gonna get in shape.

[00:05:44] And the best thing is it's just 20 minutes.

[00:05:47] I'm like, okay I was like something, wow, your body is just so active, you get access to your body in a way that you never had it. And time flew by, like 20 minutes were short, it was intense, I was like panting and like, you know, doing an empty, like nothing in your hands butterfly was hard. And I was like mind blown just from

[00:07:00] an experienced perspective. I was not in pain, had no issues with super busy. Six weeks later, I wake up Sunday morning and I said, like, I think I haven't taken a pill in a week. And I can get out of bed without this weird role that I used to do. And I was like, huh, there's something here. And then my wife started to become a customer. And same year in the fall, we took a tour

[00:08:21] and we visited some friends in California.

[00:08:23] And we were sitting with like four couples

[00:08:27] and the girls were talking about fitness. data, even better. So the thing about it, and we're going to get into it, but maybe you can explain in a second what exactly it is. But you know, when I look back at like EMS, my first memory, I don't know if you had this, you know, in Europe, but I remember Bruce Lee, selling this abdominal, right, abdominal training unit where you stick these little pads and it, you know, if your

[00:09:44] muscle just flexing, he claimed to use it. I don't know, he's like, you know, has that and they actually use

[00:11:01] that.

[00:11:02] However, the productization for the mass market, where there I know about that. So it's the productization in the 80s and 90s was just really bad and the marketing went overboard. And this is actually why in 99, the FDA started regulating power muscle streamulators as a medical device. We can't just claim whatever you want. Got it. That's a good background. And is that part of the issue with the United States

[00:12:22] was the regulation around it?

[00:12:23] Yes. So what basically, yes, exactly what basically happened. countries in the world. In the US, you can only use your own and so on and so forth. So it's similar to that. Got it. Got it. And how big is it in other countries? I know Europe, where has it been adopted early and where do you think it's kind of... So Germany was the first market that really broke. So South America, Brazil, Argentina, or sort of early adopters, because that is where culture basically cross-pollinates. But the UK was late. So the US also didn't hear that. So it was kind of like a ripple effect. There were multiple aspects around that where it slowed down adoption or basically hindered adoption in

[00:15:03] the United States. But the biggest thing is for her. Now you mentioned that the studio model, like a franchise model, but you guys are direct to consumer, right? Yes, we are. So maybe give us a little background on like, how a normal franchise model would work for something

[00:16:21] like this, is it small group, is it, and how that does?

[00:16:23] And then why you decided now the customers what to do. Okay, now we do squats and he counts down eight, seven, six, five. And, and this is how the personal training would work. Basically you manually adjust what you think is the right thing for the customer, but it's guesswork at the end of the day and a little bit of feedback from the customer.

[00:17:41] It's not really that you can hand them like five pounds and you know, this is five pounds.

[00:17:44] So it's a, it's a lot of like, you know, guesswork around this.

[00:18:44] prescription device. Any medical thing that you get, it's prescribed by a physician in the first place, and then years later, when we find out it's safer enough to use for customers on their own,

[00:18:48] we get it over the counter. That's the same process, basically, with us. So we started with that,

[00:18:55] and our customers, like day one, by the way, in 2013, I brought a device over to California,

[00:19:02] and I had a few friends over and I gave them for us, ultimately, or for me, ultimately, the goal is to make it absolutely normal to use this technology. So similar to an electric toothbrush. So we all had kind of like exposure to fitness and as we had exposed it to toothbrushes, but an electric toothbrush has made the outcome

[00:20:21] so much better.

[00:20:22] And we can talk about like who's the audience

[00:20:24] like for EMS training, but we're using technology to motivate people. We still have a bike, we still have a rower, we still have weights, we still have that. It's like all the same as it was before, but now we put a screen with a fancy model in front of you and a great DJ in the background, and we tell you how you did, and we tell you how your friend did. It's all basically motivation. And in behavior science, where I come be a home product and this is why I pushed so hard to build a consumer product. Yeah, your insights on human behavior are really back up a lot of things I've talked about on this podcast and super interesting. I think it's something that people maybe don't, don't quite grasp within our industry all the time, but people, humans will always lean towards convenience.

[00:23:01] Friction is a big deal.

[00:23:04] Like, I, example, N equals one, just me.

[00:23:07] But I love going to place an order. You have two alternatives, so there's the hardware and then there's a subscription component for the content component, I would say. And you can decide how many years you basically want to commit to and there's a discount around that. And you're going to

[00:24:21] decide you want to place an order and you can either pay right away or you can affirm So we have a bunch of this and then there's an AI that is selecting the right pieces of our modular suit for you. And the reason why we made this, so the suit has sized and unsized pieces. So for example, the electronics are same size for everyone, but the suit comes in three components plus a base layer. The base layer is sized, it's like a 3D knitted,

[00:25:41] so seamlessly knitted compression, 2 piece base layer.

[00:25:45] And it's optimized for conductivity a guarantee, like, you know, we had a lady call us. It's like, you know, hey, I want to lose a ton of weight and so on. So far, this I'm not going to fit. If I'm successful with this, I'm not going to fit into the suit anymore in six months. So now I'm buying something that's expensive and I'm not going to fit in it in six months. What are going to do? Like literally what we tell people is, don't worry about that. If you shrink out of your

[00:27:01] suit because you're successful, we give you a new one. Like literally, like we don't ask

[00:27:04] questions, like it's part of our mission on and so forth. And then there is a first workout and the first workout helps you tune the system to your body because some people say like, I want more here, I want less there, I want it gets like a personalized profile. Like an equalizer in your sound system, like, you know, some people still remember

[00:28:20] that we have these.

[00:28:21] So I want more here, I want less there.

[00:28:23] And then from there on when you're working out

[00:28:26] and you're making even smaller adjustments

[00:28:27] or giving feedback in your product and service? Two groups. The first group is the group that is already active. They already have a regiment.

[00:29:40] Their run is their cyclists, their'm not going to do another rep. I'm not going to do it. No, you're going to do another rep like, you know, because you're on the right, like that's

[00:31:01] that's literally what it is.

[00:31:02] So emotionally, it's like much less.

[00:31:04] So again, for people as an adult for others. have better metabolism because the more muscle mass you have, the better metabolism is. People who tell us, I do this for weight loss, first of all, educate them a little bit and say, don't just look at the scale and the number. I'm today, I'm about 30 pounds heavier than I was when I started Catalyst, but I dropped about 6%, 7% body fat. So my body composition is significantly

[00:32:22] different than it was 10 years ago, huge difference. So great. You've subverted that. That's great. I would imagine too with the massive trend of longevity that this is becoming quite an

[00:33:40] attractive thing, right?

[00:33:41] Like, I haven't seen you in person, right?

[00:33:43] Nice.

[00:33:44] Legivity mindset.

[00:33:45] I love it.

[00:33:46] That's on this bug.

[00:33:47] I haven't met you in person.

[00:33:48] We're probably about the same age. on the markers of body composition, muscle mass, bone density, mitral-hondryl activity, like all these markers. And where a lot of longevity is nutrition, and I would say disease prevention, like we're actively helping with the one thing that's basically the antidote to all about one

[00:35:04] of anti-aging that's exercise.

[00:35:06] And we're really helping with that.

[00:35:08] And then you have, again less likely it is to break bones because that's your armor. It keeps you in place. It improves quality of life. Can you lift your grandchildren or can you not? Can you play with them or not? Can you take the stairs or not? Or can you

[00:36:22] carry your groceries home or not? It's like the level of autonomy that healthy muscle mass is we are fully booked out of Excel vests. So this is like 300 pounds plus people and we're booked out. Like we're totally like, okay, so we are like rushing them in, like in a few weeks we got to get them back and so on and so forth. So totally over indexed on an audience that is definitely not fit. And if we compare that, these are not bodybuilders, right?

[00:37:41] You know, it's just from an age and like, you know,

[00:37:43] other measurements perspective, like we lesser, it's not true. It's like it's literally the same specs just from a signal perspective that we're sending. It's just so much more consumer friendly. And I think like it's a 15 year more modern design. So we were able to like shrink things down quite a bit and improve on the technology.

[00:39:02] And this is why we can send it to the end consumer. Awesome. know each other. So we now spend like three days in Vegas and we're like an all together in a resort, often the desert by a large lake and had a great time, really spend time together and not really work on projects but work on knowing each other because then you're better on projects afterwards. We were supply constraint for about two and a half years. Chip shortages

[00:40:22] really hit us, supply chain shortages really hit us from a muscle contraction perspective. So we're not, we're not doing a blunt marketing claim here. We're just literally looking like how much time and attention does each muscle group have during these 20 minutes of workout. And that's like net 10 minutes for each muscle group. And then a portion of that is dynamic portion that is

[00:41:40] static or isometric. It's like kind of like it but as the fitness community, fitness industry community listens to this. What do you need help with? What would you like people to reach out to you about and then where would you like them to go? I love that question.

[00:43:00] So the most important thing for me is we're while they are not with them in LA or in New York, they're training on catalysts based on the training plan that they did and then they come back and then they will other work again. It's a complement to the existing fitness industry but then also it allows trainers to

[00:44:23] serve audiences that they weren't able to serve before. we're here, like we're like, we work with everyone, not against anyone. Awesome. And where do they go? They just go to the website under your LinkedIn. Yeah, go to the website, a contact our team, like contact support press, like whatever you like depending on like, it will end up in the same team at the end of the day, like, you know, reach out to us, DM us on Instagram, like, you know,

[00:45:40] anything that you want to do. And yeah, let's talk.

[00:45:44] Fantastic. Well, Aaron, I really appreciate joining me.