Brandon Cullen - MADabolic & The Vast Effects of Decision Fatigue

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. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. InsightTracker can help. InsightTracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, InsightTracker 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 save off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceutical test, just fertilized nutrition and natural supplementation. Lastly, 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. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash feature. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Insight 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, a science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform touched by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy the deep discounts. That is insightracker.com forward slash future. This episode of Future of Fitness is presented to you by the Fit Tech Club, a business network run by the creators of the FitTech Summit, Europe's leading conference devoted to fitness and health technology. But 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. Students 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 Fit Tech 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 contact 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 TriSport, says about the FitTech Club.

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If you're interested in the fitness technology game and looking to accelerate your growth, I highly suggest you check out fittechsummit.com forward slash club to learn more. You can join the highly valuable newsletter, apply for the FitTech Club itself, or simply learn more or connect with people like me. That's fittechsummit.com forward slash club. Brandon Cullen, welcome back to the Future of Fitness. It's good to be back. And I guess maybe I'll start with this question. And people uh you know, you can go look at a previous interview I did with Brandon last year in 2021. And um maybe if that gives a little bit of uh background, but now that we've wrapped up the year, and I know I'm not supposed to do this in podcasting, but I do it anyway. Uh today is January 7, 2022 of our of uh recording date. But looking back on the year, man, what uh did it go how you think it was gonna go?

It's weird. I I don't know if we talked about this, but I have a unhealthy uh ability to compartmentalize the past. Uh so I don't know if I could say it it went the way I thought it would go. It was uh it was a challenging year. I know there's a lot of doom and gloom around um you know, will boutique ever bounce back? I think we've we've proven that that's that's that's very that's not even a talking point anymore. People are back, uh they have been for a long time. Uh our revenue is well above pre-COVID, during COVID. So things are good in the boutique space. I do think, and and you've probably seen this too, there has been a consolidation. Um what I mean by that is the mom and pop kind of passion projects that might have been underfunded. It it was hard for them to really weather that storm uh during the COVID time, and and I think a lot of that that real estate, a lot of those clients um have been soaked up by the biggest, bigger players in the game. Um and um you know we're chasing some of these people, so I'm not I'm not even saying that we are soaking these people up, but but the big players, like we know them, you know, the the Orange Series, the F-45, that that are heavily funded. Um they've we've consolidated a lot of uh concepts. And the weirdest thing is is I I I really don't think it made the industry stronger. Um some of the biggest concepts I find also uh yeah, I think they offer an average offering, and some of these mom and pop shops were very, very good, and they never wanted to do anything out of this single unit. Um, so it was great to have them. I think it challenged each neighborhood to be better because you had to compete with that local stud. Uh so I don't know. Well, it'll be interesting to see it if it's capitalism, right? The strong just keep getting stronger, and I think uh COVID was an accelerant to that. Uh as far as us, um the hardest thing this year, and I think every boutique owner will talk about it, the getting open process. Like, you know, if you can use supply chain as a metaphor for this, and I'm not just talking about t-shirts arriving, but like put put subcontractors, contractors, architects, real estate, like if we can just use that as a metaphor, it was a year of every day was different. Um you had to be you had to be flexible as much as you had to be um scrappy to get shit done. So yeah, it was a year. It was a year for sure.

Yeah, it's uh I had Liz Clark, the new CEO of Ursa on this show, so it'll release I think maybe the episode prior to to this one, um, so people can go back and listen to it. But we talked about some of the numbers of you know the uh gyms that shut down over the last two years or so. And you know, it it's tough because a lot of them are those independents. And like you said, and they are you know, I I they don't just pop back up again either. Like you and I know that you know, starting uh your own kind of independent gym is there's risk. And if you make it to your five, that's a that's a big accomplishment, right? If you make it. And then you're profitable and you know, you can actually pay employees and things like that. It's one of those unseen heroes of communities that really could use more credit. And I I hope that there's a path for those to start opening again, but it may just take a little while, right? Yeah, your thoughts on that.

Yeah, and you know the other thing that's really challenging, too, for um that that component? It is the mom and pop shop that is launching for the first time. And the weirdest thing, real estate hasn't corrected that much. Do you know what I mean? Like we were in a we were in a real estate boom. I mean, in cities like where I live, Charlotte, Nashville, Austin, it has not it has not slowed down at all. Like the the kind of B plus um 18 hour cities like New York's taking a hit, sure, that that makes sense. You can catch a decent deal there. But you start looking at real estate in where I live, Charlotte, or in Austin, or in Nashville, all markets we're in, it is more expensive than the start of COVID. Um so if you are not an established brand, or you're not coming from a say a franchise system like ours that is going to bring expertise to help you open and bring the systems to open correctly. Like if you are, like you said, figuring it out for your first time and you are trying to make a five-year push to get profitable, it's a scary place to be to look at some of these real estate numbers for your first go at business with no support. You know, it's it's uh and and you know what sucks? The things that make um neighborhoods exciting, it it's not another cheesecake factory. You know? Yeah, it's not the people that can afford it, it's that homegrown you know, person that's looking to do something unique in their neighborhood. And that is I hope that can come back. I really do. Yeah.

Well, you know, on an encouraging note, you know, to talk locally here, um, you know, I live in Whitefish, Montana, and and the the price of real estate increased by 25% over two years. Like that's bananas, right? I mean, everybody's real estate increased quite a bit. Uh but what we're seeing, and you know, maybe due to the speed, it's it wasn't like a boiling frog, right? It happened really fast. Like this this stuff was noticeable quickly overnight, seemingly. And communities are like this one, and no one's gonna cry for white fish. We're we're just fine. Like, you know, we're just trying not to make it the next Jackson, right? Or the next male, right? That's that's our goal. I try to keep it that way. But our community, there's there's developers who came in and they want to do some really nasty things, like you know, 360 unit four-level things, which is if anyone's ever been to this town, that's not the that's not what makes whitefish special, right? It's a small ski community, like this this really cool feel of the town. But the the community's fighting back, right? Um, you know, things are happening where like uh, you know, there was uh this development, people fought it. Our neighbors led the way, you know, 4,000 people signed this petition, that's half the population of whitefish to go against this developer. And so you're starting to see kind of the the communities fight back. And I think there there is something, you know, to counteract that whole thing. I think there is something about communities kind of everyone needs an enemy, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. So when you when you have it, it's amazing what happens when, and even that person may not be, or that that entity may not be the worst thing ever, but when that person shows their head and a community pulls together, it's a very powerful thing. So I guess on the optimist note, you know, when you look at local communities around, you know, maybe there'll be more of a grow and swell to really support the local businesses, which is something else that we've seen in a lot of different towns. And, you know, looking at what the pandemic has done, I think what people may not realize because we're too distracted by news cycles and you know who's vaccinated, who's not, right? All the stuff that we're tired, tired of talking about. But what really happened was that we had one of the biggest redistributions of wealth ever. And uh it's it's been something that we're gonna have to figure out a way out of because that's not going away. I mean, uh one of the things that we're gonna do.

And when you say redistribution you're talking about not not the good way. Not a good way. Like the gap, the gap got bigger. The gap got bigger, much bigger.

Um, probably in the history of the country. This was one of the biggest ones. And uh something that's uh an example of it was the um eviction moratoriums that took place. Now sounds like a great thing we don't want homeless people, right? But what happens is we seem to under we there seems to be this thought that like people who are landlords are rich, right? Um, you know, that they're bad people, right? We always assume the rich people are bad people. Um but what happened was that uh, you know, a lot of people just didn't pay. They just decided, well, I don't need to pay. And it was up to the um tenant to start file for you know the the paperwork to get the the support from the government. And that had didn't happen in many cases. So what happens was the the mom and pop landlord, the owner, was forced to sell, right? And who who buys these things? Uh people who own a ton of properties already or corporations because they have the bandwidth to kind of sit and wait it out. And then what do they do on the other end? They raise the rent, right? And that's that's not good. So it's been a it's been an interesting thing, and not to be doom and gloom, I've but I do think people need to kind of see that you know, that's a status of it in. And if we want to see like another metabolic pop up in 10 years, which is a great thing, like you started, you know, as a one location. You did a really good job with it. You figured out a formula, you were part of your community, right? And now you're you're taking that and you're you're helping it. It's gonna take time. And I I we'll see what happens.

Yeah, it's it's wild. Um we talk about this all the time. So my closest friend here owns an emerging coffee concept. Um, so it started off as not just coffee, they still exist, but and there was another company called Undercurrent Coffee, and they exist too, but they also decided to come together to create a new brand called Night Swim Coffee, and there's a more roasting component to it and distribution of beans and all that kind of thing. What I'm saying here is we were sitting around a fire recently. Um, funny you mentioned uh bourbon. Uh we were we were drinking whiskey and just chatting uh about business, um, like we like to do, and we've all admitted that we couldn't have come in as matabolic ten years ago today, or as not just coffee, or as undercurrent, there would have been nowhere to get your feet wet. There's there's there's no real estate even like even like poor real estate in in Charlotte, North Carolina today is way more expensive than um when we started ten years ago. Like we funny enough, we we always make this joke. We opened beside a methadone clinic. Now we knew the clinic was being demolished within the year. Um but we were one mile from center city, two miles. Like it was always gonna be an approachable place. Like that new place in Charlotte is fifty miles away in a in a place that nothing is happening. So yeah, it's it's I mean it's how our country goes in a weird way. We always bounce out of things, we're resilient, we make it back, but every time we make it back, the gap just gets wider. Like you said, it just we always bounce back, but it's the same people always bouncing back, is what it what it seems like. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's uh I guess when you look at last year, and in I admire it because like I remember when I started my first gym, it was 08, 09. We we started the business in 08, and it looks like people remember that wasn't a good time to start business. People thought it too. This is the greatest economic crisis we've seen in our lifetimes. What are you doing? And I kind of ignored it, I compared minded lized, like you said, in a very eloquent way. I was like, well, I'm just gonna go and we're gonna take step by step. Now, I would imagine you probably heard the same thing, right? Like you guys started your franchise model in the middle of a pandemic, um, or really started to push it hard. Uh yeah what were some of the things and and it's working, right? And we can talk about, I know just from watching LinkedIn and talking to you that you guys are seeing success. Uh what were some of the things that people were telling you? Like, dude, are you crazy? Why are you starting to sell franchises during when gyms are shut down?

Um I think the people you associate yourself with, you know, you have that natural grit and belief in your system that you can be resilient. I mean, definitely some of the deals that didn't close were based on fear of what may not ever come back, or just you know what? Just I I I chalk a lot of it up too, like mental fatigue. Like like people can't even make a decision uh right now because of the un the unknowable. You know what I mean? Like and and I and I'm talking about how some other people see the world. Like I'm gonna say this with a grain of salt. Like, I'm over the panda. I'm done with it. We we were joking, you know, earlier. Like, I'm I'm uh fully vaxxed, boosted, and have caught COVID as far as I I could run through a brick COVID wall right now. Like I'm I'm done with the virus. Um I believe we're coming back. I believe New York City will bounce back with the best of it. Like I am an optimist in what we how we will come back. But I am I am one like I'm just a singular voice and extremely biased and uh biased to a fault. But some of the buyers that were extremely interested and believed in Matabolic as a product, like the way that they approach risk, you know, that was the thing that stopped them um from pulling the trigger. Uh the so the funniest thing is we we used it as an opportunity to really beef up our system. Like I just finished a um 120-day project with um my partner Finley who's behind me. We built out an entire learning management software. Like everything from on-ramping the trainers to on-ramping the general managers to putting part of our pre-sale process in there to like everything. So like it was a wild 120 days. Uh we beefed up our team, we attacked grassroots and social strategies a different way. We even hired uh a consultant that used to be with Exponential Fitness, her name was Hensley, and started our own company. And we consulted with her about just like do we need to look at things differently? Like checkout. So like we took the two years of COVID and tried to learn and tried to get better and tried to better our system. Because we thought sales would slow down. Well, that that didn't happen. Um I just got off a call with uh a portion of my team just before I got on with you. And they they're they're trying to tease me to put out a LinkedIn post, like you said, because uh we signed a 12-unit deal yesterday, and we signed a three-unit deal the day before. Now we haven't announced either of these deals, and the post I am about to tease out there is gonna say something like we awarded 20 franchises in 2021, and we just awarded 15 in the first week of 2022. So if you thought 2021 was good, here we come, right? So obviously I can have some fun with it, and I'm gonna put it in my voice in this and that, but I'm very happy with what we did.

Um

Based on the circumstances, I'm very happy with our openings because like that is one of the harder things uh to do in COVID, like pre-sale, where a lot of people like uh every company, think of uh the Exponential Fitnesses, the F 45, to everyone um like us, explaining to people, hey, commit to a founding membership four months from opening in the middle of a pandemic, that's a that's a different kind of sell than when the country's great, right? So pre-sales had like a different kind of approach to be scrappy with. Um so I feel like I think what I love about my team is they are a scrappy bunch and they're resilient and they're always trying to get better. Like everyone on. It's just a cool team to be part of. Um so yeah, so 20 20 deals in um in 2021. We will be opening five units in the next six weeks, which is kind of exciting. So we have Stanford, Connecticut, Nashville. Um we just opened DC and Alexandria, and we'll be jumping into California for the first time. We're going into Santa Cruz in February.

Oh, okay.

And uh yeah, and uh, what was the other one? Oh, we got a unit opening in uh Fort Worth. So like six units in the net or about six units in about a two-month span, and I I think we'll probably get another ten open this year. So again, I now I'm sound like an asshole. I feel like I'm bragging, but I'm just I'm just excited with my team. It just is what it is. I'm proud of my team.

So yeah, and you should be, man. And uh it's okay, you can brag a little bit here. Yeah, I'll I'll brag for you. I mean, what um when you so you when you started your first metabolic brand, right? That was what year when you opened your that official branding name.

So I know we talked about this a little bit, but we were in that CrossFit space in that 2008, like hanging out in that strength and conditioning space where it was really hot and fun and this and that. We saw that opportunity and started playing around within our CrossFit box in that 2010 area. And and in short, I won't spend any time here. We we removed the scoreboard and the barbell and started running like conditioning-based team workouts on weekends. And we started seeing like, holy shit, like people are bringing in friends because it's less intimidating, it's very coachable. Um, you remove the competitive factor, the scoreboard makes people feel more welcome, right? And that was like the birth of like what this could be. When we started franchising, it was 2011 because we just hit our uh a 10-year mark in November of this year. October 31st, 2011 was uh day one for Matabala, which is kind of cool.

That's really cool, man. And if you look back to that 2011 mark, what what do you think Brandon would be thinking then of what's going on now? Would he be surprised? Would he be grateful? Would he be overwhelmed, uh disappointed? What where do you think he would be?

You know what's crazy? So in 2011 I was also approached by Lululemon to um to uh be an ambassador for them, right? And if you're familiar with Lululemon, the company, when when you get intertwined with them, they are very much about helping you realize your potential, bettering yourself, and they do so by forcing you to do it through goal planning sessions and this and that. And one of those was a one I think it was a one, three, and five, or it was either a one, five, and tenure kind of goal. And it's kind of funny because I looked back, and this is before thinking of franchising the model, and I talked about having um five units in Charlotte that we had created a a name for ourselves, and we were known as the best training facility in Charlotte, and I'm now surrounded by an amazing team where I could enjoy like the company of that team and sweat beside my clients and all this. So it's interesting, and I I I was cleaning up my computer and found this PDF the other day, and I kind of saw that. Um here's what I can tell you. There was a point where we had to decide to stay corporately owned or franchised. And it very much the franchising uh started from a bandwidth and capital perspective. Like we we couldn't fund all of this ourselves and we didn't have the time to do it. So we were introduced to franchising and went through all that process. We did not care if we did 20 units by ourselves franchising or we partnered with a growth engine like our team now at Z Growth to to go try to get to 200. As long as we were able to maintain um the same level of professionalism and quality of not only quality of workout, but I think quality of the one-on-one attention to detail coaching aspect of the game. I I hate to use the word experience because if you think of Soul Cycle or if you think of Rumble or if you think of Barry, they are a hell of an experience. Right? And I think we are a hell of an experience too. But the experience is the attention to detail from the program to the way that a a trainer you know teaches you movement in a class, as long as we were able to maintain that, I didn't care how small or how big we got. I will have a problem, and this is something that now I get to deal with on a daily basis. Scale is coming. How do we preserve who we are? Um if we have to shrink the floor to get into a New York City, what does that look like? Does that mean a smaller square footage, or does that mean less bodies in the room so the trainer can get around? And if we put less bodies in the room, does the amount of classes you can run per day in a New York City and the costs you can charge compensate for the less bodies in the room? So it's always around maintaining a certain level of professionalism, and I find that it's a cool challenge when you try to apply that to scale because it's tough.

Yeah. Do you guys want to be in a New York City? Do you guys want to be in a market? Is that Metabolic's brand? I mean, is that something you envision? And if I mean, I would imagine the ego says, hell yeah, I want one in Times Square, right? Yeah. But does that make sense for kind of the ethos of what you guys are as a company?

Yeah, we're actually opening in um, and that was when I left off the list, because I think it's March, but we'll be opening in Brooklyn, um, which is like a bucket list for me, right? Williamsburg too. Like you can't even pick, like it's obviously it's not Times Square, but I mean I think that opens the Times Square conversation. What I you know what I don't know? What I don't know right now, and all they also don't know too, is this guy I'm gonna put it out there. But there used to be a math equation that involved 55 bikes paying $35 minimum per class at Soul Cycle in Chelsea. Those 55 bikes ne may never come back to an acceptable class, right? And what price point do you have to charge if you are not willing to go above 25 bodies in a class? And what does that look like again? It's not real estate in New York City two years ago. Can you catch something today in a 10-year lease? Like, I find all that like that's fun, right? Like, if it if it here's what I would here's what I will say. I'm a highly emotional guy that leads with emotion, but I make a lot of like business decisions on pure numbers. Like, I won't be mad if numbers don't work in Times Square at all. I can tell you this though, like no one would believe me this, but we got our real estate in Brooklyn for cheaper than you could get it in Charlotte, Austin, or Nashville today. And that's a wild, wild thing to think about.

It's wild. Why why is that? Just because of the pandemic and businesses just not Yeah, like they got hit.

Like they just there's so much real estate, there's there's so many good pockets. You know the other thing too is um a lot of real estate in New York has been owned for a lot of years. You know what I mean? Like people have had this in their family forever, and there is that um investor that has paid down the majority of their investment that just wants a body in there, too. So I think you find a lot more of that. Like Charlotte is all new construction. It's exactly like you said, someone has scooped up a mom and pop shop, grounded that corner, and driven, you know, 40 floors in the air, and they gotta pay for that construction cost. They gotta pay for that 10, 20 year lease. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't have a good answer. I'm just kind of speculating at this point, but it uh here's what I am confident in. What was considered an A plus market, an A market, and a B market is starting to get they're blending together in the weirdest way. So it was easy two years ago to say Atlanta, Georgia, quadrupled the size of Charlotte is an A market, and Charlotte's a B market. You can't you can't get real estate, I mean, they're the same. The price for real estate now is the same. But where it's interesting, it's it's uh where it's interesting is the consumer in Atlanta is still willing to pay more for fitness. The consumer in Charlotte, Nashville, Austin, they still think about that under $200 a month. When you kind of have like a ceiling on putting, say, like three to four hundred members in your door, having 30 bucks a head more really helps with commercial real estate costs, right? So that's that's the biggest challenge in these kind of like B plus cities, which I would consider Charlotte, Nashville, Austin, Denver. Um, they're starting to become Dallas's, Atlanta's, um, stuff like that. So it's it's a challenge. Yeah, it's very different.

Yeah, I mean, there's the challenge, it sounds very much like an opportunity more than anything. I think the uh, you know, we've seen such a um you know, people have just moved out of urban areas, at least for the short term, right? A lot of people, I mean, you saw like if you ever want to entertain yourself, there's a group uh in Facebook called Life After California. And uh man, I had some harsh ground uh in that group. But just being, I I every once in a while pop in there because you know we left California six years ago. Um but seeing where people move, and it's you know, Nashville is always out there in Montana and Idaho. I think I think Idaho and and and Tennessee tend to be two of the bigger areas, uh North Carolina is a huge area where people have moved to, right? Um so I think there's going to be kind of an evening out of all that. But these are, it seems like the uh what I don't understand is if everyone's leaving California, right? Everyone's leaving Washington and the urban areas like Seattle and Portland and Oregon and New York City. Who's moving in? Because there's still people, it's not these towns aren't going away, right? Like we're and people are selling properties in California for tons of money. Who's buying them? You know, I that that's a thing that nobody's I I can't quite capture.

I don't I don't understand it either, because and I don't know if it's just an inflated thought bubble, but yes, some people left New York. It's not what the papers will report. Um the the population hasn't diminished, like you said, the way people are talking about it. And and I'll be honest, like I thought you were gonna go there with this, and I know you you know you chose to move to where you live today for that life you wanted. Um where I sit today, like I very much am a city kid. Like I I love I love city. Um the thought of a New York not being a thing, the thought of like where I am in Charlotte, which I mean it's not gonna happen, but it's just I use it for an example. The thought that like the suburbs became the popular place to live, the place where the action was, like, it doesn't make any sense to me. And like I I I struggle to think about it because like what happens to our beautiful downtowns and uptowns at that point? Does that become Section 8 housing? Does that become a thing we have to really think about from a safety side of things, or um you know, where your tax dollars goes and and like what you can do with these buildings? Like, does that push people further out? So I I mean I've heard so many like uh arguments of what is going to happen. I don't think anybody knows what's gonna happen. Like what like let me ask you a question. So let's say this Delta variant, like we were joking about earlier, because we both just had caught COVID recently. But let's say it hits everyone in the United States. Let's just, you know, North America call it that it's Omnicron? Yeah, yeah, sorry, Omnicron, not Delta, that's right. But let's say it hits everyone in North America. I have family in Canada that they're locked down again, if you can believe it right now, um, for 21 days. Um let's say it infects everybody, and somehow in Q2 coronavirus has has vanished. I know there is the big work from home people that want to be like, things are gonna change and everything is gonna be different, and and all that stuff. We we tend to forget about our attention span. There is just a good chance nothing will change and nothing we will learn from this in this capitalistic place we live in to say that we are gonna turn on a dime and become a different society. Like you can make an argument that this was a two-year blip that we will go right back to overworking, commuting through traffic, to overpaying for real estate. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's not far off to think about that.

No, it's not. And I think it's already we've actually seen a cycle of that happen through this last two years. I mean, I just when I had a I visited California a few times for for family stuff, and you know, at one point I visited and I was on the 280 in northern or the 101 in northern California, and there's nobody on the road. I was like, this reminds me when I grew up in the 80s, right? And then six months later, six months later, and this was all in 2020, got back there, same situation, had to drive my mom somewhere, and boom, just hours of traffic, right? Hours and hours of traffic. I'm like, how is this the same world? How did we forget already? Like people are still working from home. What is everyone doing on the road? And uh to your point, I I I people have extremely short memories. And we just want to get, and I think everyone wants us to get this past us. And I think there is gonna be a lot of a lot of and you know, even um Julian Barnes uh Boutique Fitness Solutions, he's having his conference in New York City in April, which I'm gonna be, I guess might as well plug now. I'll be speaking there as well. I'm looking forward to it, man. New York City, like in April of 2022, I'm gonna go hang out and you know, to me, I feel like uh it'll be if you look at Boutique Fitness Solutions, um, their website and Julian Barnes will have uh information on dates and registration there. Uh so I think not to hypothesize, but I I because I think it's already happening. I think people want to get this done with. I think there is a you know minority amount of people who are just want to hold on to the pandemic as much as possible, but the majority of people over it. I mean, just like we were talking about, you know, here over New Year's Eve and in left with everybody was clustered together, everybody was enjoying fireworks, everybody probably got Omnicron, but here we are, right? Not to joke about it because a lot of people are going to get really sick from it, but you and I had it last week. In fact, we're both right now probably still scratchy throats because we got over it. Um so I think it's it's gonna shift back, and I think people are gonna, you know, the the things that concern me about that sort of like, well, we pumped four, what is it, four trillion dollars of money into the economy. Like, how's that how are the long-term effects of that gonna happen? And that redistribution of wealth that we talked about, how is that gonna affect us? And you know, if you're an entrepreneur, a problem solver, or a critical thinker, you're you're hopefully, if people take one thing away from this conversation, I hope it's like be aware of the the kind of macro situation, right? And understand what that means for you locally within your business or within your business unit and how if you start to see, because these are real things, right? Like there's gonna be probably some kind of correction in real estate. Uh they're already talking about now, you know, um interest rates are gonna go up, right? So stock market is starting to crash a little bit. Like, you know, there's a huge tendency towards inflation because we did pump all this money in. So, how is that gonna affect your business? What does that look like for real estate markets and opportunities? And you know, what is the next B market going to A, right? Or the next A market that now has B prices. And I think that's an interesting thought for people to start thinking about as uh as they are entrepreneurs and business owners and executives.

Yeah, it's super it's super interesting. And I was gonna ask you a question, which so like I feel like the shift you made six years ago, right, is the shift that people are hoping that the majority of the population learns from. I mean, you were ahead of what people uh I think like maybe believe they want or see there's another way to enjoy life and and and you did it for your own reasons. So now like you did that. You see the the mass exodus from metro areas and cities. So when you sit there like is there a can you take something from COVID? Like we're supposed to learn from this. I just talked with someone about this and I was I made the argument that this is a pa this is uh an event in time that forces you to pause and think about things and we should be able to learn from this and move on. Um I'm probably the unpopular uh approach because I actually just want to go back to 2019 and keep going gangbusters. Like that's I that's what I love. You know what I mean? What about you? Like, do you think there's lessons to be learned here?

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And it's weird. Like, one of the biggest things that um, I don't know why that notification came through. Um one of the biggest things that I struggle with, I think you said it earlier, I think it was offline, you're about to talk about being put in a box, right? And I feel like I feel like this knee-jerk reaction, like all of a sudden, like in the fitness world, we were told um first digital is going to it it's going to be it. Right? And then it was hybrid is here to stay. And now everyone's kind of like walking back all their arguments. And and the weirdest thing is like if you think about fitness in general, there was always a digital component. It was there. It's just it's a lot sexier today. I mean, like the Tybo of 20 years ago is is rumble shadow boxing today. Like it's it's just or or or your P90X DVD series is is is coming off of a mirror on a wall. So yes. Is there is it a better product? Sure. So is boutique better. Is uh is big box gyms going to die? No. There's a huge force of people that like going to their social community big box gyms, and it's going to be fine. But there's been these there's been such hard statements, and I feel like you get defensive when someone's like, hey, you're in trouble, Brandy, digital's and sorry, boutique's in trouble, and I'm like, so it gets you defensive. And the same thing that me and uh my partner, we always talk about her company is a a Salesforce implementation company, right? And they're at that really kind of dangerous size right now, where I think they're about a hundred and thirty employees. So they're in these talent wars, right? And everyone's telling them that if you don't allow work from home or you it's not a very favorable hybrid, you have no chance at talent. And I'm thinking like you know, at like maybe Cisco level, okay, that makes sense. Like you're the Amazon of technology, you probably have to be a lot more inclusive. But to say that a Salesforce implementation company, if they wanted to be a gritty in-house community and they wanted to go higher for that, and they wanted to be more boiler room feeling, to say that that can't exist, I hate the argument of the the digital argument or the work from home argument that now is pushing their agenda on you saying the way you live is in trouble, and the way you live will never work again. I'm like, I think we're all gonna kind of just do what we always do. There's gonna be a lot of work from home people, there's gonna be a lot of digital fitness, boutique's gonna be good. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know why we got so angry that we have to all live one way now. It's so weird.

Yeah, it was uh it was weird. It was like everybody had god, everyone's got a freaking opinion now. I don't know if it's just that. Well, everyone's always had an opinion. We just have more ways to voice them, right? And one of the things actually going back, it kind of serves into this when you asked me that question is I think a lot of people realized, oh, I can work from home, but over a period of year or two, that turned from, holy shit, I live at work.

Yeah.

And that's that's a big thing. People need to get out, right? Like, um, I'll go to a coffee shop and work, I'll find other ways. Even just moving from this office where I'm physically in right now into my kitchen to work is a big deal. Like just changing that mindset and that mood. Otherwise, like, you know, I I I don't know how any, you know, you know it is. Like as an entrepreneur, you can't put hours on how on how much you work. You're always kind of thinking, it's always present, it's just part of who you are. Um, so that's not a big deal for me. But I think for a lot of people who needed that ability to clock in, clock out, right? I need that. It's yeah, everybody needs it. You should need it. It's healthy, right? So I think that's a big thing now, is like maybe that wasn't the best or the worst thing to have is an office to go to at least a couple days a week or something like that. But everyone's individual, and I think that was a big part of it. And once again, like we see these macro trends, and you're right, like the DVD to the digital thing, it's hysterical because that's exactly what it is, right? It's exactly what it is. And how many times I think in 2020 I had people on this were arguing like, are boutiques dead or are in-person experience dead? And is it digital, is Peloton going to own the world? Like, right? Like, what's gonna happen? And you posted something on your LinkedIn the other day that showed you know the rise and fall of Peloton's stock. And you're like, well, I mean, there's a physical indicator, right, of what's going on. And guess what? Peloton's gonna be five.

Like they're there, they're an easy access point for me to use their short, they're they're quick little blip, their little device to prop up, hey, boutique's coming back. I told you so. Like, let's let's not bullshit. Obviously, I also have an agenda to say that boutique is alive and well. I I just think what is crazy to go to that same point, whether it's like say uh let's say it's a Peloton versus boutique argument, or it's a work from home versus hybrid versus in the office argument. So if I if you were a work from home person, the conversation you and I should be having would be like, it blows me away, man, that you could actually like you could like you can be at home. You have the discipline to unplug, you don't you don't need to see people like explain like how that you know makes sense to me because this is how I am, and you you should be able to have this like interesting conversation as opposed to be like here. I mean, if you work from home, dude, we uh I just can't relate to you. Like, we just can't like it doesn't make any sense. I don't know where we got to this place where it was like I don't know, just so dogmatic. Like I work from home, sweet, hybrid, awesome. Personally, if I had the option and then a work from home was the only option, my work from home would be at a WeWork or something like that, so I could go there and come home at night because that's what makes me feel great. I it doesn't need to make you feel great, but that's what I like.

Yeah. And it's it's for me too, I've noticed that uh when I do go somewhere, I have a meeting here locally, uh, you know, I put together an entrepreneur group. That's one of the things I started on last year was working at Tuber Capital and putting in an entrepreneur group here in the valley. Just the physical act of getting my car and driving to a meeting or driving to somewhere for work, I was like, wow, this is really nice. I'm gonna listen to uh, you know, Dan Patrick in the morning and see what's up with sports. Like, I missed that, like that thing that happened, Jim Roam. I used to love Jim Roam, right? Like all these things that you kind of took for granted back then. And what I the thing that that is the most interesting to me is like how fast like, yeah, humans are highly adaptable, but all this was forced upon us extremely quickly. And I think that had a there was a lot of like it's a lot of knee-jerk reactions, but now people are starting to settle into this and thinking, like, oh, whoa, I do have more options. Like, what is the right thing for me? Is it a hybrid? Is it a work from home? Is it a you know strictly office or something like that? Should I be traveling more or less? And I don't know if that many options are good for people or not. Uh like sometimes people don't need that many choices. We just, like you said, we're, you know, there's so much fatigue in making decisions over the last two years that it that's going to be the interesting thing to people. It's like, sometimes we just we kind of want uh we want to be constricted in certain areas so that we can put our creativity to multiple areas and focus on the decisions that really matter. But when the world is full of decisions and everything you do is a decision, it's it's too difficult.

I love that theory of operate forcing constraints on yourself. Um I know Google wasn't able to um pull the trigger, but before um this wave, I think the their CEO made a statement that they will be uh working Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and uh Wednesdays and Fridays work when you can float and be at home. And I think, and again, I now I'm selling my own agenda, I realize what I'm doing now. Like I think that's a nice high I think that's hybrid. I think that works for everybody. Um we are about to do our corporate uh our annual corporate meetings in Miami. We do them at the end of January, right? We will accomplish more in one nine-hour day with ten people in a room with a whiteboard hashing it out, yelling at one another, challenging one another, like dropping one another up. We'll accomplish more than I can nine Zooms together or nine, you know, and so like, and maybe that's the team that I am part of. But but but can I just ask the world, is it okay for me to have this team? Like, am I a FedEg edybody that we have to meet once a year and do it in person? Like, is that taking away from your at home or hybrid agenda? Like, can can we all just do what we do within our companies? And and that's the box that I hate. It's the being told this is the way you are going to live moving forward. Um I'm less concerned. I think we will have an attention span and we will go closer back to the way we were than this hope for this completely new America. That's just and there's there's a lot of um there's a lot of nuances in that time in in in that uh you know that that scale, I guess I would say. The things that I am starting to get more frustrated with, and um my family's in Canada, uh, I mentioned, right? So they are entering their fourth lockdown. My sister owns a metabolic business, they are going into another 21-day lockdown. And the way, and I'm not gonna get into this rant too too much, but if I could sum it up, America has always a debate, they always have an opposing voice, it allows us to work through some shit, um, even when it's if it's gnarly at times. Uh the Canadian culture is a compliant culture that when the government says something, no one pushes back. Um when I start thinking about my family there, uh, when I start thinking about um when my kids were not in school and in-person learning, I am more frustrated with um the mental health aspect, the youth aspect of their learning. The fact that throughout this entire pandemic, we haven't acknowledged the 90% of deaths that are coming from our lack of activity and health. And somehow the one business that should be essential has been um penalized as much as any. That is more frustrating than will Google figure out their hybrid strategy, or will my partner at home, my partner at home, her company, figure out their special sauce for the future. We will bounce back, we will figure it out. The ripple effects of these two years of isolation, uh, the lack of movement, the lack of calling out what is from a health component, that pisses me off. And and that's what stops me from watching news cycles, taking apps off phones, um, it's that ignorance that even though we we find a way out of things, we also we also forget about the root cause a lot. And um that's a frustrating place for me. And I really feel for my sister like when you look as a brother, um I'm gonna try not to like choke up here. When you look into your sister's eyes and you can see two years sunken out of her face from stress of trying to run a business, I want to fucking kill someone. I'll just I'll I'll I'll I'll say it. You know, and and to know that she's providing a healthy solution for her community, a mental outlet, it is a hard thing to sit here uh 11 hour car ride away and see your sister struggle. I'm just I'm just it's a it's a thing, yeah, it's just not cool.

Yeah, well appreciate you sharing that because I think there's a lot of any anyone who's in the fitness, health, and wellness industry will agree. You know, um I think there's you know I've interviewed a lot of executives and uh tech entrepreneurs in the space. Um, but people who you know really are kind of where the rubber meets the road as far as helping people with uh better fitness and health. Um I feel that statement because it's true. And that's you know what Liz Clark and I talked about the news to UV Ursa, that that that that's the issue is that that's where we had no advocacy, we had no representation at the legislative level. And some of the best gyms in the world, you know, I used uh, you know, um Kelly and Juliet Starrett, right? San Francisco. One of the the the gold shining light of CrossFit gyms, you know, super profitable, extremely well run, extremely well run. One of the best operators in the game, Juliet's Dorrett, right? Um had shut down because they just couldn't open the doors. We just eight months. They're like, yeah, we couldn't open the doors. And that is you know a pillar of their community of health and and just you know, just uh, you know, having people together and that mental wellness of of being a society was was taken apart. And I think uh yeah, man, I'm with you. I that that was that, and I hope that's something that we can change moving forward, that you know this doesn't happen anymore. And uh man, I I hate to do this, but we're kind of bumping out on time, and I kind of I want to leave it. I want to leave it with that thought um because I think that'll you know, a lot of people will resonate with that. Um Brian, it's always a pleasure having you on, man. I mean, I do as people could probably tell, I could have talked to you for another hour. Uh it's it's really cool. I'm really excited. You know, Metabolic is one of the brands that I like to talk about the most. Um, I love what you guys are doing. I think it's a really uh cool story, it's a really cool team. Um, you guys are doing it the right way. And uh I really encourage people to go check our website and then also um go check out your LinkedIn because you're putting some cooked stuff up there. I know you don't like social media a whole lot, but you are putting interesting thoughts and information out on LinkedIn and you're you're a fun guy to follow. So um, yeah, man, that's about it. Ladies and gentlemen, uh, you know, Brandon, thanks for coming on. It's it's been uh it's been a pleasure as always.

Always a pleasure, Eric. So look forward to any time we have together. So again, appreciate it. Thank you uh for giving me uh your time.

Yeah, any time. We'll do it again soon. Uh hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because I put a lot of work into it and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I'd love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Moundown, and this is the feature of fitness. Have a great day.