Catalysts For Change - Sam Pogue

If you want to transform from just being a gym to a brand, if you want to be one of these big Mark Fisher fitness type brands, you know, a Mike Robertson, an anatomy, a 1220, whatever they are, there's so much more to it than just what you do and it's how you share that with people. Because you don't have to be the best at the business and you don't have to have the best product, but you do have to communicate your message the most clearly.

Hey Fitness friends, welcome back to the Future Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number 133. I get to talk to Sam Po again. He's back. Sam's my guy. I like talking to him. And we had a great conversation about multiple multitude of things. So Sam recently made a move from on it to TrueCoach, and he explains a lot about his journey up until that point and what made him make that decision, what the future looks like for him and applications like TrueCoach and technology and where all that's going. And it's crazy, right? But moreover, I think you'll find that conversations with Sam are very inspiring, very real, very honest. And you're just going to get a lot from it because it's going to make you think, yeah, I can do that. I can do it. And you're going to want to chase your dreams and you're going to want to pursue them and you're going to want to do it with confidence and you're going to want to be like Sam. So great episode. Um, so much knowledge and uh insights in here. Uh it's pretty crazy. So without uh before, sorry, before we get into the episode, uh, two things. Number one, we are brought to you by certifiedcoursecreation.com. So, yeah, you probably heard me talk about if you haven't, go check out the website and you'll find out more. But it's very simple. You know, the online educational world is the future, right? Uh people are gonna want their education on demand, they're gonna want a specific skill set. Um, the specific specificity of it all is gonna be the big thing, right? Moving forward. So if you want to get in early, now is the time and we can help. So if you have a very specific knowledge set, right? Something uh that you've been working on for years and maybe no one else has or no one else has gotten to the market yet, even more importantly, then let me know because we will help you build out a beautiful, uh, lucrative, online accredited certification course that will not only help you get your your impact uh way farther than it is now, but it'll help you put some money in your pocket and really set you up for the future. So we're looking for some very, very selective partners. And my criteria for that is very specific, but it all starts with a phone call. Um, I'd be happy to get on a call with you and talk about it some more. So go to certifiedcoursecreation.com, uh, check it out. You can always email me, uh Eric Malzone at fitnessprofessional online dot com and find out more. So now if you are also in the gym business, uh, I got something for you. Elite GymInsiders.com. It's our online community growing every day at a rapid pace. And for good reason, it's a great community. Uh, there's a lot of very um there's people from all levels, right? Um, multiple franchise owners, uh, people just getting started off with their first boutique gym. We have health club owners, you name it. It's such a diverse group, and you can find out more at elitegyminsiders.com. It's free. It's a Slack community, which is my favorite type of online community for many reasons. Um, and not only do you get to be part of that community and learn and um ask questions and contribute and do all those things and realize that you're not alone. I think that's the biggest thing as a gym owner. You're not alone, right? Uh, but you're also gonna get a ton of discounts, uh, digital marketing agency services, uh, softwares, um, education, uh, geez, you name it, uh, franchises, even, right? So go there, check it out. It's worth being a member uh because it doesn't cost you anything, it's free. So leadgyminsiders.com, go check it out. Now, without further ado, episode number one three three. My guy, Sam Pogue. Enjoy the ride. All right, and we're live. Sam Pogue, he's back. Thanks for coming back, man. Can't get enough of me, apparently.

Well, the audience just loves me for bloopers. I don't know what quite what it is, but either way, happy to be here and honored to keep getting asked back, Eric. Thank you so much.

Yeah, man, I laugh my ass off every time we talk. So uh it's really selfish of me uh to have you on. Just like the last 20 minutes of pre-recording, of course, uh really thoroughly enjoyed it. So, Sam, man, welcome back. Um you know, people could go check out your your previous episode to get more of your story, but tell me what's what's new. It's been about uh, I don't know, four or five, six months since since we've recorded.

Yeah, I think when we were talking last, I might have been in the middle of this process of potentially accepting this job. Uh, and I'm not sure if I mentioned it on the podcast or not. Um, but you know, flashback to uh it's 2019 now, so 2015, 16, 17, somewhere in there. Jesus, I'm getting old. Um, that I went to the Barbell Business Mastermind, which was an extension of the barbell shrugged career back in the day, and went to this mastermind for which is an executive leadership retreat. And there it was there that I met Casey Jenks, who was the founder of Fitbot. And Casey and I met, and and we had a you know a nice rapport and whatnot, but we didn't, you know, um, we're trying to go out and visit each other by every other weekend by any means. Um, but you know, once again, it was still just a professional good relationship. And I get an email probably about October of 2018, and it's hey man, from Casey, I'm looking for someone that has a huge network in fitness, can talk fitness, can talk training, is able to travel the world. Do you know anybody? And I was like, Oh, isn't that funny? Uh, but which is nice because he was politely trying to gauge whether I was interested or not, right? And uh at the time, you know, I wasn't really looking to move on from on it by any means. And I got a ton of messages when I left of people like, holy crap, I can't believe you you would leave on it, right? Because visually what they're seeing is they're seeing me travel the world and go to every event and speaking at events, training athletes. And it's like, how would you give that up? And and to be honest, now for me, it was um, you know, having this opportunity approach me was, you know, took me a minute to realize it was going to be something I wanted my career to go down. And so I started calling through all my network and and wanted to to make sure that I wasn't leaving something on the table because you know, I watched Onyq go from being employee number 42 uh in a $30 million company to employee 220 something and over an $80 million company. So watched it grow exponentially, and I got to be a pretty big foothold in that in that success, along with my team and Sayla and John and Shane, and uh really got to watch this amazing company grow. And as you saw, Ana's a big marketing company, really, in the fitness space. And so I was able to learn a lot. Remember, I came from just the personal training realm and membership sales at 24-hour fitness, went privateer, moved to Austin, Texas from Portland, Oregon to get out of the fitness industry, only to be the very first member of the Awnt gym, coming on board to oversee the Aunit Academy Education System, then managing strategic partnerships, training athletes, teaching education. And so, you know, I the back to the email with Casey, I said, hey man, you know, I really appreciate you reaching out. You know, I'm not I'm not sure if I'm someone that's interested in that type of role at this very moment, uh, but you should talk to Marcus Gersey, who now runs GymRight and who was uh one of the members of Barbell Business back then. And I said he might know someone as well, chat with him, he he has a great network as well. Get a call from Marcus the next day. Hey man, uh just got off the phone with Casey. We pretty much just talked about you. Um I think this is something that you should heavily consider. I think it would be a really big move for your career, at least have an exploratory call about it. I said, okay, uh if I trust your judgment and I really value you telling me that. Um, you know, I just was afraid of like, holy crap, is on it on this trajectory that if I get off a ship now, I'm gonna miss the big, big break, right? Because I think that on it has, you know, Nike type potential in the wellness fitness space. And uh, you know, then I was like, well, moving into like a technology company that builds a fitness platform, had to really think about you know what I was looking to do. And so, you know, they came on, uh, you know, we started talking about this role, and and we identified that the needs of this position uh were to come on and build the brand out. And obviously they had just changed their name from Fitbot to True Coach. Uh, they had over 5,000 users worldwide and we're ready to start organizing and implementing some organic media and content uh to start driving that traffic as opposed to just the paid traffic and social media, which they had been using. And so for me, I always thought, you know, coming out of school, I went to school for business entrepreneurship at the University of Portland, and I always thought I would have ended up at Nike, Adidas, uh somewhere in the advertising at Wyden and Kennedy or something of that nature. And so, you know, this was my opportunity to finally get back into back into, finally move into a brand strategy role, which is what I thought that I always really wanted to do out of college, like really designing brands and really designing the mission and the drive of a company. And here was my opportunity where all of a sudden I went from being a fitness professional almost my entire career, 10 years in the workforce, and then all of a sudden did a hop and over and ended up now in an executive role in the marketing vertical for a brand new fitness technology startup. And it wasn't because I had immense marketing knowledge. I mean, I've learned quite a bit over my years, and in this realm, you're watching fitness professionals have to move from just being trainers to content marketers, email marketers, building websites, and doing you know content more so than just fitness, it just is the delivery. And I was able to look at my career and all of a sudden go from being a subject matter expert, quote unquote expert, uh, not really, uh, and then move into all of a sudden uh the marketing vertical because I had that expertise in fitness, because I had this massive network, it allowed me to step into this role, even though I hadn't been in the traditional marketing vertical. I didn't come from being an account manager or social media person all through it. I just learned the specifics of what the fitness business world of online marketing was gonna need. And it was, you know, a great opportunity for me to really, you know, level up my career and take the next step and take ownership of what this job and what my direction is gonna be, because um, you know, at sometimes it's really easy to get caught up being a doer and you know, going after day-to-day tasks, training clients, writing programs, answering emails, and you never look up to realize where were you going? And I may not be the biggest goal setter by any means, and it's something I'm trying to get better at, but I was, I don't sit down and write my goals out and hang them on my mirror in my bathroom and like attack those. I kind of let the world come to me and try to make the best decision possible at the time and watch what lessons I learn and the people that I meet and let the career kind of unfold organically, uh, which I'm really fortunate that I happen to do that, because let's say I was the type that, like, okay, I want to look very linear. And if I was at that 24-hour fitness setting, let's say I was like, okay, I'm gonna decide I want to be in the fitness industry. This is the clear path for me to grow and level up. So I would have taken a management job and moved up into club management and regional management and tried to take on that. Instead, I never really wanted to be in fitness when I was a trainer. So I just did my thing and just trained clients every day. And, you know, once again, tried to get out of fitness uh by moving. And here I am, like in this in this position where I get to really all of a sudden, wow, I ended up in the role that I kind of always thought I would be in. Additionally, my childhood dream job was to be the general manager of a major league baseball team. And now I find myself rubbing shoulders hanging out with some of my favorite MLB players, uh, getting to see them, hang out with them. And uh so it's been this wild ride. And I tell you that story of weird tangents and one-offs because you know, as you start looking at your career, don't look at your career as it has to be in this funnel, and this is the only direction that you go, and that the next job has to translate immediately over I do this task, and that company needs that task, versus develop skill sets, develop perspective. And perspective only is brought to you by time, energy, money, and pain. Right? You don't develop perspective without any of those four elements. And it sucks, it hurts, it's a pain in the ass. But when you come out on top, all of a sudden it's like, man, the years of being broke, the years of hating my job, the years of wondering what my career is gonna be finally kind of culminated to something I can be really proud of, to where I feel like, okay, you're in a spot that you really feel like you can take that next step. And so now I get to take TrueCoach from being this brand new company with some, you know, amazing uh membership or a subscription already of members, 5,000 coaches already, plus, you know, we just rebranded. So there wasn't existing branding on the back end. And so I basically get to start this from scratch. In addition, we just raised our first round of funding to grow. And so now it's like it's not even that we're a startup that's cash-strapped, we have we have some resources to play with and start pushing. So it's like, holy crap, okay, this opportunity was one I can't pass up, and inevitably is gonna build me into the next evolution of the story I'm gonna tell from my career. And if I stay here at TrueCoach forever, I hope you know that's amazing, and I hope that we build that way. Chances are most people don't work in jobs longer than three, four years anyway, if you're not working for yourself. And so it's like, okay, let me be the guy that takes us from uh X to X, and all of a sudden now it's like, holy shit, you went from being this startup to now you've grown, and along with all the story that I've developed the last 10 years, okay, now if I ever wanted to be in the platform like an Aubrey Marcus or a Gary Vee or Joe Rogan, right, I have that storyline building up so I can start taking on that and really that next evolution of growth and start opening up the doors for trainers to see that there is so much more potential in this industry for different jobs and different occupations that get you out of just training clients. I still love training clients, don't get me wrong. I train uh my guys every year uh in the offseason, and I still train from people here and here. I just went down to the NSCA headquarters and taught a steel club and kettlebell workshop for uh a master's class that Scott Caulfield teaches. So I still love teaching, I still get to do it. Um it just isn't the primary function of my job, and so um very blessed that this opportunity came up, and and really the opportunity only came up because you know, you develop a good relationship with someone, establish a rapport, and you create a storyline, right? Like even though Casey and I never done business together or worked together, whether it was social media or my reputation or him calling around and asking about me, you know, I was able to tell that story of like, holy crap, this guy's been doing everything. This is the person that you need for this job. And uh that's that's what you want to hear because you know, networking isn't just about how many people you know, it's about how how often your name comes up in other people's conversations. You hope that your name's getting dropped every minute, every day, all the time with other people, and then all of a sudden those get filtered out to be like, holy crap, you need to meet Eric. This is the best opportunity for you to you know talk with someone, yada yada. So, yeah, all in all, man, this this move um to this new company at True Coach, I started January 2nd, 2019. Um, I was still in Austin until February 13th, or I'm sorry, February 6th, uh, because uh uh the baseball player I trained was still in off-season and didn't leave for spring training. And so uh trained him up until he left, went out to spring training with him for a week and hung out in in Florida for a little bit, and then uh met my stuff in Boulder, and here we go. So now I'm in Boulder, Colorado, working for a fitness tech company.

Yeah, that's a wild ride, man. And there's there's so many lessons and insights that you just provided in a in a 10-minute span. It's incredible. I I want to kind of go over some of them too because I think, well, you know, I've I've spent the last one year, eight months building my network, right? Um essentially I started my first podcast in December 2017, and it wasn't necessarily to, I wanted to always want to do podcasts, but I knew no one knew who I was, right? I'm like, I came from you know a town in Santa Barbara, California. The the stories are similar in some ways because you know, having a gym in Santa Barbara, California, well, technically two, is that I knew everyone, man. I knew everyone in that town. We go out to dinner, my wife would joke, be like, uh, can we just out of a restaurant without having to say hi to a couple people? I'm like, sorry. And uh then, yeah, and we laughed, right? It sold and we laughed, and I didn't know anybody. And I realized I had it to start building my network. And the value of networking um is really it can't be understated because it just it takes time. That's the problem, you know, is people don't understand, like, hey, relationships take time. You have to constantly be out there, you have to put yourself out there day after day after day after day, and it may seem like no one's listening or no traction is getting made, uh, but they do if you do it consistently enough. And you just have to have faith in that process and then look at you now, right? Sam Pogan name comes up all the time, and uh, you're in a great spot. And I think one of the things that's really interesting too is that you went from a job that every time I heard you talk about your job at Onit, I was like, Does it get better than that? Right? Like, really, does it get better than that? And uh I felt a lot of people, you know, look at me as a gym owner in Santa Barbara, like, hey, the guy runs a successful gym, he works X amount of hours, he's got it made, right? Why would he ever leave? But there's something inside of you possibly that's speaking, right? And you don't want, you have to really be honest and authentic with your own values to understand that maybe what everyone thinks uh everything looks like from the outside, if you're truly honest with who you are and what you value, maybe it is time for you to move on as good as the situation may be. And uh I'm curious to get some insights, you know, how that decision was made internally for you. I'm sure there's voices going back and forth, like, what are you doing? Like this is too good, but that sounds great too. I don't like how is how did intuition play into it?

Man, it was really interesting. Like I said, I I called a lot of people to to check in, you know, Marcus Gersey and I talked, Mark Fisher and I talked, John Goodman and I talked, Jessica Webster and I talked, and you know, a lot of a lot of my other friends, Missy and Ryan, and it was um, you know, it was a big, a big mental challenge to look at holy crap, I just invested four years of my life in this company. And I was as much a part of the onit culture as anybody, right? As far as people were concerned in the forward-facing end, I was living that culture and a live a um of culture of of leveling up, and that's what on its fostered. And so, you know, for me it was a little scary because I never really considered moving to Boulder. And in fact, I asked to work remotely uh from the very beginning, and it was me talking about like, look, um, if you want me to shoot content with all these different people, you don't want me in Denver or Boulder. You want me out and about, and I'll come back into Boulder uh when I need to. But otherwise it's gonna be um planes and airports and hotels and all these things where it's like I can just go post up in San Diego for three months and get a ton done, then go up to LA for three months, get a ton done, Chicago, New York, Miami, and then all of a sudden I've hit you know four of the one, two, three, yeah, four of the biggest cities, and yeah, I'm not a math major, um, and all of a sudden be able to uh touch a lot of people. And then as I thought about it, you know what the deciding factor really was? I mean, obviously the job leveling up was a huge one. Uh stepping into a job, I I really wanted to be in brand strategy. But to be honest, you know, when I moved to Texas, uh, I moved down really without the intention of planning and moving. So I wasn't like forecasting moving months before I did. Um, and as I on the last podcast, I think I talked about it, but I went to my boss because I tried to get out of the fitness industry, was into recruiting uh for like technology positions, ironically, uh, software engineers and developers. And uh, you know, I went to my boss at uh Joel at the at the agency and I said, Hey man, look, I really love working for you, but I hate this job. But it's also unfair because I'm still training clients um 15, 20 hours a week. I'm working from you for you eight to five. I'm on the board of two different nonprofits, I manage a semi-pro baseball team, and I have my friend and family schedule, and like I there's too many distractions. So let me go work remotely for you, where I can give you 100% of my time, and we can find out if this job is really right for me. And if it is, great, we both won. I got to move away from the Pacific Northwest, which is something I'd always wanted to do, but had never been able to bring myself to, whether it's because, oh, you don't have a job lined up and I hadn't been looking for jobs, or you know, you get comfortable, right? I had all my best friends. I lived in Portland for 10 years. You know, my best friends today are still the guys I live down the hall from, freshman year in college, and I freaking love it. And, you know, it was like it was a little scary to think about stepping out and moving. And so when Joel at the agency said, Hey man, all right, tell me where you end up, and I pick Austin, Texas, and just drive down there with like no money saved up. Um, and now I was I lost my training income, so now I'm on a commission-only job and had to just move. And I only took what fit in my SUV, so that was like couch and a TV, and you know, just stuff for your house. And all of a sudden I was broke. I was like making my own house cleaners, you know, a little rubbing alcohol uh and uh some uh peroxide or some bleach or whatever. You can get most things clean in your house, may not smell as good as like whatever, the commercialized stuff, but you get it clean from having like crap all over. And uh, you know, I was the very first member of On It Gym, and and uh that was my only social circle. And so from the very beginning, I didn't go out and try to meet friends. I didn't try to go out and build this network like I had built in Portland. A part of me was also because I didn't want to replicate it because I had such a great network and a great relationship, great relationships in Portland, that I was like, oh, I'm gonna go back. So there's no point in me really investing in living in Austin because I'm only gonna be here for like a year and then I'll go home. I just want to say I did it. But then it was like all of a sudden I got caught where the only social circle I really invested in, which was the gym, which worked out, let's be honest, um, ended up being my my uh job. And so now the only other place I knew people, except for my friends that had triplet one year olds, uh, were was at the gym at Onit. And then all of a sudden, uh started working a ton of weekends, you know, at seminars and and certs. And uh then I started traveling. And so then I never really built a life where I was going out and after work happy hour, grabbing dinner with friends, uh Going to concerts, which is Austin's the live music capital of the world. And you know, and that was my life in Portland. And that's also what I was escaping. I was probably partying too much in Portland, uh, being a little too much social because I had too many things going on, right? Every night was drinks or uh a meeting or something. And so it was just never it was always social. I would get up at four in the morning and I'd get home at 11:30 p.m., 12 p.m. and I'd do that every day or 12 a.m. And so Austin, I was like, nope, just gonna really focus on my career. Like I shut out, really, I really shut out like dating out of my life. I didn't really start socializing. I mean, there were times, if there were certain outings, I would go out. If I had someone in town, like a coach that I was hosting for a seminar, I'd take them out to dinner and we'd do things. But I was really I probably went out socially under, you know, 20 times in four years in Austin. And so then all of a sudden I started thinking about wow, you really shut down a lot of your hobbies in life too. I didn't play baseball anymore. I didn't compete in powerlifting, Olympic lifting, strongman competitions anymore. Fitness really took a turn from being um something that I just passionately loved. Like when you're a brand new coach and you just think that, you know, progressive overload, mechanical stress is everything, and you just want to get raw, rah, strong. And then now I'm like, eh, I don't really care. I move well enough that I move better than most and I'm stronger than most just without having to try. So, what is my real goal here? Um, but learned how to shoot videos, learned how to shoot content, and that was a really powerful tool. But yeah, man, um, when I started thinking about Boulder and this idea of taking this job with this company, it was like, wow, what a great transition for me to take the next evolution of my life. Clearly, I'm not going back to Portland in a year. Uh, as much as I want to go back and hang out with my friends and and do the whole thing and play fun uncle because they all have kids now, um, so I can be the one that you know buys them beer or whatever. Um, you know, that's definitely the social role I play in that in that group. Yeah. But I was like, oh man, Boulder's kind of like the best mix of Portland and Austin. We get 300 days of sun and we have a ton of outdoor activities to do, which coming from Oregon, I wasn't in the biggest hiking buff or camping buff, but I still did it. And so it's so nice to have outdoor activities within minutes from you know the city. Um, and I'd be lying too if I wasn't in a better financial situation as well, taking this new job, you know, stepping into a fitness tech company uh as a vice president obviously that plays a different role too from being a director. Um and you know, we're a small startup. So uh that also changed my lifestyle. And so to be honest, like the job, yes, the being able to build this company out, uh, huge wins, definitely from a career ego standpoint. Like that's me going, yeah, everything I've wanted to build because at Onit, I was a key in the COG or a factor in the COG, right? I didn't, I wasn't the founder of Onit. I made a big impact, I had a lot of reach, but I was still executing Onit's vision and John Wolfe's vision. Uh, John was my boss, the chief fitness officer at Onit, which I agreed with both of them. So it wasn't like it was hard. I wasn't having to like not serve my soul to do that, but it was still someone else's vision. Whereas now, sure, it's not my company, but I get to build this brand out from scratch with my vision and all the skills and all the resources that I've accumulated over the last 10 years. I get to not finally now like lay my hand down, like, all right, this is the direction we're gonna go, and now it's all on me. And so it's intriguing to step into that where you know, we were talking about this before we started, that this job, it's not like on it where I came back from a trip, it's like, okay, here's this relationship, this relationship, this relationship, here's the ways I think we should do them, or here's some ideas I think we should be doing. Um, let's go. And then we had a 220-person team. So, I mean, we had a 35-person marketing team, you know, we have four graphic designers, four videographers, and like four internet marketers on staff plus web developers. So we had everything in house, so I didn't really need to be that. Whereas now I step into a I'm we're I was employee number nine, we're you know, 15 people now, and it's like, holy crap, you're everything. Like, you want to have this social media campaign or look social looks this way, you better design it. You better get the photo shot, the videos shot, write the post, design the post, schedule the post. Oh, you need want to do build a blog? Cool, you better write the blogs, you better get the funnels built, you better get the email campaigns, you better design the emails. You know, and obviously there's some contractors out there as well. I'm lucky enough to have those, but you have to decide on what it is, and you have to decide on what the mission and the vision is, right? Sure, we have a platform, we have a product, but you know, if you guys a great book, if you guys want to get into really good marketing, uh Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller is an amazing book on marketing. And it really, I mean, it's all about the hero's journey, right? And so I'm gonna start you guys off with this idea. If you guys ever see the Serena Williams Nike ad that just came out, where it's about uh women's empowerment and and women taking charge and doing their own, um, tracing their own dreams and doing it from whatever platform that looks like, whether it's a tennis player or a Paralympic uh sport athlete, whatever that is. And I'm like, look, it had nothing to do with selling clothes or shoes or anything. It had everything to do with following your dreams. I go, that's what Nike is. It's not about selling the product. You know what the product is, it's about creating an emotional connection to what the product means to you. And that's what good marketing is. And that's the difference between being a company and being a brand. And so, you know, really blessed to be able to start this process and and you know, go through this because now we get to take this role of if you know, if the trainer is Luke Skywalker and he just lost his aunt and uncle, and now he's wondering what he should do, and he wants to join the rebellion, and now he meets Obi-Wan Kenobi. Well, TrueCoach gets to play Obi-Wan Kenobi. And now we get to come in and be the guide and help showcase to trainers hey, there's a life for you that's not, you know, beating uh beating the horse on both ends, no, burning the candle on both ends, or beating a dead horse. There you go. And uh we're like, and that's most trainers' lives, right? Up at 5 a.m., training till 9 p.m., answering emails, and then God forbid you have a family. Like I reckon I tell people all the time, like I have so much more respect for people that have families and do this job or this industry, because I gotta come home and be me. If I want to lay on the couch and watch a movie and do nothing, I can do that. But you have to come home and be dad and husband and father and companion and part, you know, business partner. And it's like, holy crap, you have six other social roles you have to play when you come home. I gotta just be my bitch ass and just come in and just be who I am, right? Like I don't have to play those roles. So I get to really focus on what I'm doing. So didn't mean to get off on too much of a tangent there, but you know, building a story brand is an amazing way to learn about uh marketing and uh an awesome resource for you to look at what you can do with your business and take it to the next level. And it has nothing to do with, yeah, sure, you like you're a powerlifting gym. But it's not that you're a powerlifting gym, is that you're empowering people to have self-confidence and you're empowering them to want to get better. I go, and you're not you're not showing them fat loss and one RM changes, you're showing like their success is that like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better, or I'm so much more confident, I'm so whatever that is. That's the story that you're telling. It's not that you're telling them that you use a this we have a Texas strength, you know, deadlift bar, or we have a full set of rogue racks or what a glute ham rays or whatever. Like those are cool things, right? But that's not going to sell you, right? And if you want to transform from just being a gym to a brand, if you want to be one of these big Mark Fisher fitness type brands, you know, a Mike Robertson, an anatomy, a 1220, whatever they are, there's so much more to it than just you know what you do and it's how you share that with people. Because you don't have to be the best at the business and you don't have to have the best product, but you do have to communicate your message the most clearly. And so, yeah, so to get back to it, it's um, you know, really blessed that I I get to step into this role and um, you know, it's something deep inside me that I knew I always wanted to do. Um, I get to now, you know, I have an ego. I I I love my ego, it's what drives me. Right. Like, you know, it's checked, it's been checked thousands of times by thousands of people, but I still have it. I know I'm good, I know I have talent, I know I'm an ex. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna run with it. And so now this job represented that. So really it was like not only lifestyle habits of me being able to, you know, step out and recreate new habits, like, oh, I better install dating back into my life, or oh, I should go out and like meet friends, because now I don't know. I know like a handful of people. Um, thankfully, uh Mike Fitch, founder of Animal Flow, is like my next door neighbor. So I have a fitness friend and someone I know right away here, and I've got some other buddies from college that live here. Um but yeah, it was the lifestyle piece of Boulder, uh, and then this uh being able to take on this new job and put myself out there and put my stamp on something and like, hey, this was obviously it's the team, it's true coach, but it it was me, right? And so now I get to step into that executive leadership role and like, okay, here we go. It's my vision, we're executing. And it was those reasons that really uh were the deciding factors of of the job. Uh, I tried not to make it about pay. I've made those moves before and they backfired, and uh, so it wasn't about that. Obviously, that was that's a perk. Um, you know, but at the end of the day, it was I had to do it for me and what was gonna drive my internal happiness. And to be honest, just sitting here in Boulder today, I'm so much not that I didn't love my time in Austin and all the people that touched my life, but emotionally I'm so much happier in Boulder. Uh, and uh I'm like taking on things. I realized that my energy was so blocked that now I'm like I wake up at five in the morning and I go swimming every morning for 20, 30 minutes and I quit drinking coffee, which was really hard. And yeah, freaking sucked. Um not sucked in that like it was headaches, but it's like I love coffee. Like if you guys follow me on social, you'll see like I used to like post a picture of my chemics with a stupid song that had to do with like waking up. Like I weigh my beans out, make my nice pour over coffee. Like, I love coffee. Um, but you know, four years of you know, 50 plus days of travel on the road, 150 nights in a hotel and burning the candle on both ends, I my adrenals were effed. And so maybe I go back to it, but like no coffee, I'm training hard again, like I haven't trained hard in a while. Um, I'm like pursuing like, ooh, what do I want to do for my new hobbies? I start well, I recently started journaling. Um, I think I want to do a biathlon next winter, which is like the cross-country skiing with the shooting and the targets. Yeah, it's awesome. Because it's the opposite of my skill set as an athlete. Like, I'm built like a South Park character, and so uh I'm a little short and stocky, and like 5'7 and 205 pounds. Like, I'm built the power lift and Olympic lift. Like, yeah, yeah. I'm not built to go and do endurance shit. So it's like, oh, that would not only challenge me athletically, but as a coach, I would have to like really learn how to manage energy systems more effectively. So I'm like, ooh, what a good opportunity. Like now I'm gonna go tap my buddy Lawrence Herrera to train me and maybe have him do some programming for me for endurance sports when I get closer to that. Lawrence is uh at Performance Ranch in New Mexico. He's uh John Bones Jones strength coach and cowboy Cerone's strength coach, very well respected in the strength conditioning space. Um so yeah, man, sorry to go on the tangent, but um yeah, like a lot of reasons went into me doing this. It didn't go on a quick wimp, uh, not like Austin did where I was like, yep, gonna go. And here I am. And if I don't start telling people I'm not gonna go, uh a lot of, I mean, it took probably three months of conversing back and forth with a lot of people I respect to make sure that this was the right move for me. I was doing it for the right reasons. The opportunity was exactly what I was hoping it would be. And then it was okay, here we go, let's do it. And so packed my bags and went to Boulder, Colorado. Yeah.

Right on, man. Yeah, and I can just tell, you know, hearing you speak too, you you sound like you're in such a good place. You know, and that that's really important. Like you're you're made of change and you're using that change as a catalyst to overhaul the whole thing, right? And that's that's a powerful uh you sometimes we just need that interjection, that that shakeup, that shift to change everything else. Because once you change one thing, you're like, well, I might as well just change it all.

And sometimes that comes from something really shitty happening. Yeah, oh totally. Like I like I wouldn't be in the fitness industry. So if you guys haven't listened to the first episode, I finished college in 2008 when there's a massive recession and uh not an awesome time to enter the workforce with no real work experience, and had to accept a job selling memberships at 24-hour fitness. And I went to a bougie private Catholic college, and I've got this arrogant ego about me, and I had to take a job where I'm selling memberships where I could have done that at high school, and I've got some kid who's 19 years old telling me how the world worked, and he was my manager. I'm like, in no world is this ever gonna happen again. So let's just go ahead and call Spade a Spade and you don't talk to me about this. Yeah. Um, which was my attitude at 21 years old, uh, because I was a cocky little fuck. And uh, but you know, it was then I left to go get a job at an action sports company, got fired two months in, and came back to become a trainer, right? Moved to Austin on a whim, right, ended up working on it. So it's like sometimes these really, like you said, these catalysts of change, all of a sudden you're like, F it, throw it all out, let's do it, let's start over and start fresh. So you're absolutely right. Uh these pain points, these um these issues, these challenges, uh, they are really hard to go through at the end of the day. And if you're going through one right now and you're really just been beating your head against a wall, sit back, close your eyes, take five big deep breaths, and think about you know, what is it, what do you think you're really being challenged with? And you're being reactive to that challenge, probably because in your heart you know it's something that you've been lacking and that you need to do. For me, I knew that some of my challenges have been like, oh man, organization, execution, and planning are not my strategies because I've been blessed with massive social bandwidth. So I can just go out and do, and like it never really affects me. But now I have to play a different social role. So it's like this the challenges I'm experiencing with this job are like, okay, that's the lesson that I'm supposed to learn during my time here. And that's what I'm getting out of this, not just from my job as VP of brand coach or who I am as Sam Pogue, but what does my person need? What am I trying to do to grow and develop? And these experiences, if you can sit back and objectively look at what the challenge that's in front of you, it's there because you haven't been doing it. And the world is telling you that you need to adapt or grow or learn. And so if you all can take a step and either take a breath and look at what are you being challenged by at the root cause, not why you're feeling emotional, but what you're getting challenged by, or what is it that you're really working towards, and maybe you need to full reset and just get out of X. But either way, um, I encourage you all, if you're going through some shit, to really take a step back, take a breath. It'll be okay. You have people around you, right? And I feel bad saying this, but you know, when I look at someone who's a transient that lives on the street, and and obviously a lot of people are there because they choose to have mental illness and obviously they need help. But the first thought that runs through my head is holy crap, how did you burn every bridge in your life that no one would give you a couch to sleep on? Like that's what the first thought that goes through my head, because I'm a connector, I'm a networker. And so it's like, oh my gosh. And I think that's what allows me to run just with this cocky arrogance and just go whatever, do whatever I want, is because I know if I crash or I fail, I have a million couches to sleep on. I have a million people that will let me come and help them do what they're doing already. It may not be what I need to do at that very moment, but I have those safety nets already in place. And that's what building a network does for you to go and kind of go back to the beginning statements. And so, yeah, it's like that's the first thing is like, oh my gosh. So um understand that if you're going through it, you have people, right? If you're if you're having a hard time, if your gym is struggling, if you're struggling as a trainer, um, you know what? Like, I'd be perfectly totally honest with your clients and your uh your friends because you never know who can help you. And if you don't talk about it, no one's there, no one can help you if you if you don't tell them what's going on. And hey, one of your clients might be willing, like, hey, I'll make an investment in your gym in exchange for like free training, and that might get you over the hump or solve some cash flow issues or whatever it is, but be vulnerable and really come into it with an open eye and look at what you can do to be getting better and try to look beyond the pain that you're experiencing and look at what the what's causing the pain.

Yeah, yeah, great messaging, Sam. Really, really good. So we should talk a little bit about True Coach while we're here. I think uh, you know, like I was telling you before, I I believe I started with the Fitbot somewhere around 2014. Uh you know, I was doing the online coaching, I was a spreadsheet, email, hot mess that was back in that time. James Fitzgerald was my coach. He introduced me to the Fitbot through, you know, they were one of the originals at OPEX. And then I made the transition. And it's been great. I still use it on a weekly basis for the people I do coach for remotely. And uh it's a great tool. And I'm curious to see, you know, from from its inception of just being a tool, right? It was a tool for program design and communicating with clients. How is it growing? How has it grown? And now what is the vision that you're putting forth for what TrueCoach will be in the near future?

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So, you know, yes, we're an online platform that helps coaches deliver a solution to be able to train more clients in less time, right? So it manages your clients, it's a workout builder, it's a calendar uh scheduling function with uh delivering those programs to your clients. Um and so at the root cause, like it does that element really well. And what I really appreciated prior to coming in was that prior to me showing up, mostly everybody on the team was engineering background. And so because they were engineers, they wanted to build a product that was super human friendly, not just super coach friendly or strength coach friendly or trainer friendly. And so they wanted to build a product that was super intuitive. And I think they did that, right? Like in the calendar, the workout builder, it's like, oh, you go over a date and you hit the plus button, that starts building a workout builder. Oh, the trash can, like that's how to delete something. Oh, the two pieces of paper, that's purely copy, right? And so it's very intuitive, very simple, easy to use, which I really appreciate. Um, you know, we don't have the most features, right? You know, there's some other online platforms that definitely have more features like volume tracking and 1RM, and and we definitely want to have those for coaches too at the same time. But yeah, at the same time, like if you've been coaching, you probably know how to calculate those things manually. Um, so is it the end of the world? No. But in terms of what we also wanted to do was make sure that if you, as the coach who's paying for true coach, and uh all of a sudden you're delivering a client experience, that client gets to use our iOS app and they get a beautiful client experience with messaging function, video comments, being able to send gifts back and forth. Uh and so it makes it really it makes you look really polished as a coach and trainer. And so I really appreciated those on the front end. Now coming in, you know, Kate, our customer service Maven comes from being a super high-level CrossFit competitor, so she's got great coaching knowledge. Emily, one of our front-end developers, uh, owned a CrossFit box for like about a decade up in Bellingham, Washington, and is a front-end developer for us, so she's also a coach. And all of our employees have trainers uh either online or in person, so they're good to experience the brand. And it makes for it really cool that people are starting to understand differently about what coaches and clients need from the app, not just from like a top-level view of like, oh, we need to build this, but like we're dog fooding it, we're using it, we're everyday, we're coaches, we're everyday clients. Like we really value trying to build really quality software. So where we may not have the most features, we're working really hard to make sure that what we do execute is the best possible version. Now, coming in on board for me, you know, Robbie uh Jack is their CMO and he's my boss, and and for me, uh, we're the only two people on the marketing team. And so I get to also play the role, like I get to be the fitness voice of True Coach as well, right? And and I get to do things like uh podcast with you and go to NSCA and teach headquarters and go to hang out with major league baseball players. So I get to do all the things that a fitness person would love to be able to do. So I get to tell that story and at the same time let that message transcend. So as we're getting ready, we're you know, we're working really, really hard on getting our payment solution out. Uh, hopefully by the time you guys hear this, maybe it is out, um, supposed to be coming out soon, as well as a new native messaging app. Uh so it's kind of like Facebook Messenger, but where you can keep all your clients messaging in one spot, which is really nice. You're not knowing, did they email me or did they text me? Did they send it in the app? Like you can literally keep it all in the app. And some coaches don't have social bandwidth like I do, so they can't have 50,000 notifications popping up and like it keeps them organized. Like it might be really nice for you to keep it all in one spot. You know, for me, the message that I really want to tell from TrueCoach, beyond the technical uh proficiencies of what the app does, is the game I want to play is TrueCoach gives you your time back. And as coaches, right, and that's the game that I really want to play is you know, let's help you use the platform so it works for you, not against you. Let's help you learn how to use the platform so you can build a six-figure business. One of our coaches has over 130 individual online clients, and he's a machine, and it allows him to do 130 clients a month in programming and one-on-ones back and forth because he uses the platform to build systems, right? And everything's built in for him, so he's not over here and over here and over here and having shiny light syndrome. And so, what the message we want to do is give uh help coaches, true blah blah blah, help coaches realize they can have their time back by using this platform, whether that's online coaching or going from in-person to online or a hybrid of both, um, and really saving that time so you can go to things like certifications, take a vacation, hire another coach, stop training all day and then emailing people all night, because that's the game. This industry has massive burnout, which is ironic because it's a game of helping other individuals not burn out and get healthier. Yet at the high level of fitness, a lot of people get burnt out. So we want to help avoid that because there's a lot of coaches who've been lost from this industry because of burnout or other opportunities come up, and that's unfortunate because this industry isn't going away and people aren't getting healthier right now. In fact, fitness is bigger, fitness and health and wellness and whatever from food edibles to training to uh online tech and AR and AI, fitness has never been bigger than it is right now. Yet, as a species, we're not getting healthier. And so our jobs aren't going anywhere. And as much as we'd like to think so, for all you trainers out here, I don't care if you're at 24 hour fitness or you own one of the bougiest spots in the world, uh, personal trainers are the first line of defense in health. Like that knowledge worker, that desk worker, that person, they're gonna come up and talk to their local trainer at the gym quicker than they're gonna call their physical therapist or Their MD or their even their friends, right? Because it's a trust, like, oh, they have referent power. There's someone that knows about fitness. Like, I can talk to them. So plenty of plenty of opportunities. 1% of the world has gym memberships. Like, you're not losing clients to me, you're not losing clients to Eric. There's plenty of people out there. You just got to go out and get your message across better. So, yeah, that's the game that we want to play. And also, like, I also want to help coaches humanize the online coaching experience. Because, man, it's hard enough to coach a kettlebell swing in person for someone who doesn't know how to use their hips, let alone doing it digitally where you've never met the person. You can't use corrective cues in like from a tactile feedback standing. You're not there in real time to give them regressions right on the fly, right? So you have to build those systems in. So we want to help coaches learn how to communicate with their clients better so that way they can deliver the most humanized, personalized experience where it doesn't feel like you're always talking on a screen. It doesn't feel like you're only emailing back and forth. You should be building amazing relationships with your clients. I just went to New York back in February to surprise one of my old clients for her baby shower. I haven't trained Meanie since 2014. And I still flew out to go surprise her for her baby shower because we still talk on a regular basis. I still text all my clients, happy birthday, how are you doing? What are you doing? Right. And it just goes back to that networking. Like I want them to know, like, sure, they paid for my services, but like, holy crap, I haven't trained with this guy in over five years, and he still texts me, how you doing? What's going on? How's your fitness going? Right. And they're just like, holy crap. And so it's sure, I may never train them again. They may never be someone, but maybe if I launch an online product, or maybe they send someone to me, or whatever that case looks like, that's just being a good freaking human being. And uh that's what we want TrueCoach. Like, I like Facebook and Instagram are designed to keep you on the app. They want you just freaking scrolling, like it's highly dopamine uh driven, and you're just like getting all the love. And I want TrueCoach to be an app that you're on and off. Like, as much as I want you sitting there, use the app for what you need it to do, and get off and go live your life. Go take a seminar, go teach a workshop, whatever it is. That's what I want TrueCoach to represent. That's the angle I want to play. I want to turn us into the ESPN of fitness, right? So if you want to check the score of the Phillies game, you don't have to worry if ESPN's information on their site is correct. You don't have to worry if it's the National Inquirer plugging an article or whatever. And fitness, there's so many people out there disseminating information that you're like, who's right? Who's wrong? And for me, I've been trying to build my network over the years in fitness, and I really want to build this idea around that fitness is about community. It's less about dogma. It's less about you like the barbell and I like the kettlebell or I like body weight or I like uh gyrolottis, whatever it is. I don't really care. Because at the end of the day, and my early self probably would not have said this. My early self would have been like, if your ass isn't scrapping the ground, scratching the ground on the bottom of a squat, you're not squatting and you're not doing it right. Uh whereas now I'm like, okay, let's meet them where they're at. And so, you know, I really want to help coaches find out what's out there and how do we get the trusted resources and build this community of information to where all of a sudden we're just cross-pollinating and sharing. Like, I don't want to hide you from Dr. John Russin. If you want to learn about how to get pain-free performance and get strong and with it from a physical therapy lens, oh my gosh, why would you not go to him? If you want great information on fitness business systems, Mark Fisher, Business for Unicorns, is an amazing resource. Like, how can I just play the marionette and just like, hey, this person's great, this person's great, this person's great, and how do we all get better together? Because that's the only way this industry gets better. I remember being that 24-hour fitness trainer where you don't know what seminar is what, who is who, you're just trying to do you, and you only know what you don't know, and you know that you do amazing freaking work and everybody should be working with you because you have whatever, whatever cert, whatever voice, whatever style that no one else is doing, and everybody else should be doing. And, you know, really it's not about that. Really, it's about sharing. How can we figure out how can we learn and get better? And we'll find that we'll get better through community and sharing rather than this scarcity mindset where we're closed off and held off from others, right? You don't want to be that guy in the top of the hill yelling at everybody else, you guys are all effing stupid. Why would you even listen to that guy? I'm over here clearly doing things the right way, right? How many gym owners have you talked to? It's like, I don't understand why I can't get leads. I'm the number one gym in the area. I'm the only one with this cert and this cert, and they're going down to foobar down the street, that's just whatever crap, but everybody's going there and not here. And it's like, well, maybe it's because that's your message. Maybe it's like it doesn't, yeah, sure, you might be giving way better training, but your marketing is off. You're not telling them what they want to hear to help their goals. So, yeah, true coach, I really want to be able to build that community. I really want to be able to build this um uh network of amazing resources for coaches to get better and level up. Uh, we want to continue to build out a really amazing platform, payments and a messaging app. Obviously, an Android app is something that we'll work on as well, um, and continually work on and building all the features, right? Like, yeah, I want one RM calculators and volume trackers in there, and I want business intelligence uh you know software in there that is like, hey, how to like how to calculate your ROI from a client and how to look at lifetime value, et cetera. And like, what are your KPIs for the month? I would love if our app can do that. And so that's a direction I'm really hoping I can take us, uh, and not just be a great platform for training people online, but be a great platform for just working with people and working with people in whatever capacity. I don't care if you're doing bar or Pilates or powerlifting, Olympic lifting, I want to touch and be a resource for anyone who is in the business of helping other people have a better relationship with their fitness and health. That's what I want to help.

Oh, that's awesome, man. And when I think, you know, having used TrueCoach for such a long time, I do believe a huge opportunity is the community aspect. And you mentioned 5,000 users, right? I mean, that's a lot of people. And if there's, you know, building community around that, having people sharing ideas. And I think it was actually Mark Fisher I had on a previous podcast. And we talked about scarcity mindset in the fitness industry. And it's it's crazy to me. And I'll give you an example, you know, I have an online community, a Slack community called the Fitness Accelerator, and it's, you know, uh averages anywhere between 20 and 40 people in the group, and it's all people who um, you know, are either online, B2B, or um or tech entrepreneurs. And, you know, I I've had early on when I was admitting people into the group or inviting people into the group, you know, I invited everybody. And then, you know, and then I would start getting things like, you know, someone would be like, hey, I don't understand why am I in here? There's a lot of business coaches in here. You know, why would I be in this group? I'm like, yeah, you're right. You shouldn't be in here then if that's the way, you know, if that's the way you're thinking, like you don't want to be in here because there's other business coaches, like it's you need it's crazy to me. I'm like, well, what do you have? What are you scared of? What are you worried about? What if we share ideas? What if it what if you meet a business coach who has a similar audience but different services, and all of a sudden you just doubled your your audience? Like, what if? What if those opportunities are out there? Because they're everywhere. And I love nothing more than collaboration. I think it's the most amazing thing ever. And having, and I think that's the beauty of of being able to be a connector, because I I play that role as well many times in my day. And being able to do that and seeing how things fit in, be like, hey, you should talk to this person because you guys could have a beautiful synchronicity if you allow it. Um, but then you follow along with people who don't get it, and that's frustrating. And it happens a lot in the fitness industry. And I think people just open up, and I look at this like just like you, I look back in my gym owner days, I saw everybody as competition, every single person, every personal trainer. And it was a horrible way to live, number one, right? Because I was always worried like someone was conspiring against me, right? And then I opened up, you know, like maybe it was something that happened in my life, or just sort of see the opportunity. I'm like, well, God, what if I had actually collaborated with that gym owner for something else, you know, maybe a specialty program, or we co-promoted, or we did an event together, or something like that. Like, doesn't everybody win? You know? And uh it's it's wild. And I'm glad that you're out there doing that stuff. I think it's really cool. And TrueCoach has um so much opportunity to grow. I mean, just from you know, what they've done with just the basic functionality and the things that they've added on through their, you know, updates and things like that have been great. But, you know, what you're bringing in to do and build that community and and start creating a different message and to telling the story, uh, I think is really cool, man. I'm excited for you.

Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a ton of fun. And and uh, you know, really it's it's also you know, my way of wanting to give back to the fitness industry, right? Because, you know, I came from that realm. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I had no idea that I my career would turn into this or that fitness would be that vehicle for me. Um and I think it was where I really appreciated uh fitness for me was when I finally got to touch hang out with baseball players, right? Like, because that was the that was the little kid in me where it's like, holy crap, this industry opened that door to me. Like, and I have to tell my guys, I'm like, hey, you have to understand this is still pretty freaking cool for me. Like, it's you know, to sit in the in the clubhouse of a major league team and jaw it up, hanging out, you know, playing at BP and whatnot, like that's really cool. And so, like, that's where I think I really got an appreciation for what the fitness industry is, uh, because it gave me that opportunity. And now being able to step in and like, okay, how can I help those coaches who felt lost and hopeless? Because this industry doesn't need to have a 75% burnout rate, right? Uh, it needs to have amazing people touching others because your voice is gonna connect with someone entirely different than my voice is. And we might even both be powerlifting coaches, right? In the same area, right? But for whatever reason, people like me different than they like you, and they like you different than they like me. But I tell you what, maybe we come together and do meets together or something, right? But we can all live, we can all be friends. Like, you know, really if you're a local trainer in a local gym in a physical facility, you're really only touching people within a three to five square mile radius from you anyway, right? If someone's driving across town from you, it's probably because you have something very specialized to offer. But if it's day-to-day training, like I'm not gonna drive 40 minutes through traffic to come train with you, no matter how much I like you, because it makes my life a hell, right? So you're really just touching the people down the street. And so uh, you know, look at it, it's like there's plenty of people, right? There's plenty of people for you to touch. And now with the online realm, the world is your oyster, right? You could be training someone in New York, Hong Kong, Australia all at the same time, right? And like, how cool is that? And that's what technology is bringing us, and that's allowing us to do, as well as allowing us to sit here like this. Like you're in Whitefish Bay, Montana, and I'm in Boulder, Colorado, and we can sit and have an amazing conversation face to face. Um, and uh, like how cool is that that fitness and technology have brought those platforms together? So a part of me also wanting to join this team is holy crap, looking at it from like, let's look at from a networking and resource standpoint. You know, I went from being in a heavy marketing, influential space with uh influencers and athletes and whatnot, educators, to now I'm in this tech space where it's like, now I'm gathering all these technology resources. Like, I don't know if I'll start an app or I'll do my own thing someday like that, but tell you what, learning how this game works because technology isn't going away. And I'll tell you another piece as to why I wanted to come here is because AI, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality are coming in hot. It's gonna be a big benefactor of it. And so for me, it was also like, okay, get in the technology game now, right? Because we're at the tail end of a wave right now. We're at the tail end of the content, not that content marketing is going away, but everybody jumped into it so fast podcasting, blogs, ebooks, click funnels, blah, blah, blah. And now it's like, oh, all the Instagram trends, like a little infographic with the six like things you shouldn't eat, and then the people who do movements, the half anatomy picture with the half of a movement. Like those trends are starting to kind of dwindle down, and there's gonna be another trend starting to come up as well as we just went through this education space. Everybody and their mother had a workshop, right, in some sort of capacity. And now it's like, oh, people realize it's really hard, but now that next wave is gonna be technology. And so, like, I want to put my butt in a seat that has a front row seat to the technology wave and make that effort kind of going forward as well.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, man. And it's awesome. And you know, one thing that's not going away ever relationships. Totally. Never. So, you know, work on that. If you're ever wondering what you should be working on, work on relationships. And the best thing about technology is allows you to meet people where they are. Um, and that other 99% you mentioned, 1% in the world, it's 16% in the North America who actually have gym or personal trainers. Um there's a huge audience out there, and we can reach them now. Totally. You know, I had a great conversation with uh Trish Montgomery, who runs this company called Canine Fit Clubs, right? And uh what they do is it's it sounds at first you're like, wait, what? Yeah, you work out with your dog. But these are people who never step into a gym, but now they're going to work out with their dog. I'm like, this is fantastic. And that's the kind of stuff that you can start doing now is like, okay, how do we get the other 99%? And technology is one of the best ways to do it, and it's only gonna get better. So it's awesome.

Do you know Andrew Deutsches? No. Andrew runs a gym in uh in North Hollywood called Nerd Strong. Uh not to be confused with Nerd Fitness. Uh, but Nerd Strong, so Andrew was a uh a creative director uh at a tech company for a long time, and and he was always into fitness and uh you know started taking it more seriously as he went through some life changes, and he was trying to get his friend to come work out with him. And Andrew's, you know, yeah, he's a creative director, but he's also a super nerd, loves Dungeons and Dragons, Pokemon, Marvel, DC, like all the all the comic book stuff. And clearly I don't do it because I don't know how to talk about it correctly. Um, but he wanted to help his buddy work out, and his buddy would not go to the gym with him. So he's like, all right, I'm gonna build a storyline. He's like, all right, when his buddy came in the garage to work out, he's like, okay, here's the game. There's four goblins in this room, and to kill a goblin, it takes five squats and five push-ups. Uh after every five minutes, another goblin shows up, and it'll show up every minute until you knock them all out, and that's room one. And then to get to room two, you have to, you know, run a 400. And then uh into room three to kill the magic dragon, you gotta be able to, you know, hit, you know, whatever, do a deadlift or whatever it is, right? And so he gamifies it to Marvel, Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, uh, Pokemon, whatever it is, and this dude crushes like such a good freaking guy. And it's like he got all these people, because his buddy was like, Oh, that's super that's a fun way to do fitness, because it's like me playing DD, but I'm not playing DD. And so it's like, who cares if it's themed funny, right? He's getting them to squat, hinge, push, pull, run, jump, do things, and he makes it fun, and he's getting people who would never go to the meathead gym. And it was so funny talking to him because he's like, Man, coaching here is so interesting because they're these people aren't motivated by competition at all, right? It's who can run the fastest? It's why? It's oh, you so you have to build in the story of what it does for them or why they should do it, right? And so it's like if you're getting more people to be healthy because you made it fun, who cares, right? Mark Fisher Fitness did the same thing. Yeah, right. Make it fun, make it inviting, build community, right? Touch people's hearts and lives and help be a better person. And you're gonna be more fulfilled and you're also gonna have a pretty good business, I promise you. Right? So many people want to train the athletes and do the high performance place, which is great. Like if that's your dream and goal, go do it, but go learn from the best, go hang out with the Exoses, the Eric Cresses, the Mike Boyles, right, and do that game, uh, Mike Robertson, etc. But um, you know, for for each of you, it's like, man, you there's so much to win by just creating something special, right? And it's the whole like, what's that Budweiser commercial, where it's like it's only weird if it doesn't work, right? And so it's like, you know, like focus on the really good execution of business, right? Do best practices, right? Have all that game set up. But how you deliver that message of fitness, who cares? Make it so that way people enjoy it and want to come back.

Yeah. Uh Sam, so much. I could go on for days and days and days with this stuff. So uh give it give us the goods, man. Where do people find you? What's what's the best place for them to go online? Yeah, you can find me on Instagram personally.

I try to throw up a lot of different like uh training tutorials, educational content, mobility flows, maybe some feats of strength if I feel a little a little flossy that day. Um and you can find me at S P O G U E 86, S Pogue 86, uh, and then head over to TrueCoach, T-R-U-E-C-O-A-C-H dot C O. And you can check out our Instagram there, or head over to truecoach.co uh and check it out. And we have a free two-week trial, uh, no credit card needed, and uh just play with the platform and see if it works for your business. And if it doesn't, I'm really sorry. I hope that we can be a valuable resource for you in the future. But SPOG86, uh, truecoach.co, uh, and I'm about to relaunch uh my podcast, the fitness break room, which is uh it got put on hold since August because I've just been slammed. Uh and a podcast, if you guys don't know, a podcast is a lot of freaking work. Um, even if you have a team, I'm sure Eric can tell you, like, oh yeah, it seems great, it seems like something fun, and it's a great way to network, right? If you want to meet people. Uh, and you got to start locally, you gotta start with people you have access to, and then you can start moving up into the people that you want to get. But um also check out Fitness Break Room on Instagram or the fitnessbreakroom.com uh and check that out. iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. Uh, got a lot of amazing, got 50 episodes in there now with amazing guests. Um, they're both N video because they're on YouTube as well. Um, so yeah, that's where you can find me. Uh super appreciative of you inviting me on to come and chat. It's always a pleasure getting to connect with you and learn what's going on. Uh hoping we get to meet in person one of these days and get to hang out, man. But such an honor. Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, man, likewise. Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Pogue. Till the next time. Thanks, guys. Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I asked you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us. It's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh, I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh, it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel or Fitness Marketing Alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge. That's a big deal for us. And we're we put a lot of work into these episodes, uh, trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh, if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness MarketingAlliance.com