Chris Clawson - How EGYM is Moving Fitness to the Forefront of Preventative Healthcare

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now on to the show. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a US headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs. No disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking? No problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They have invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. Today's episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by Flex, the only HSA FSA payments infrastructure built specifically for leading fitness and wellness brands. I have been so impressed with the Flex team and their vision to transform how people pay for fitness. They built a platform that makes HSA and FSA spending seamless, unlocking a new revenue stream for brands and giving consumers easier access to the products and services that keep them healthy. Here's why this matters. Flex helps fitness brands increase average order value by up to 50% and boost checkout conversion by 30%. That is not just incremental growth, that is transformational revenue powered by consumer dollars that are already set aside for health and wellness. What excites me the most is that Flex is changing the game for the entire industry. They're bridging the gap between healthcare and fitness by making it simple for consumers to spend their pre-taxed dollars on the products and services that help them feel and perform their best. Flex works with fitness leaders like iFit, Johnson Fitness, Tempo, and Allo Moves. Honestly, this is a no-brainer, and I rarely say that. If you want to see how Flex can drive growth for your fitness brand, visit with Flex.com. That is with Flex.com. Now onto the show.

Good. It's good to be here. It's good to see you again here.

Yeah, it's been great. So we have a lot of really important and deep and somewhat fun conversations, but a lot of it's you know big, large doses of reality for what we're doing in our industry. But last let's let's start with this. Last time you and I got to connect on the podcast, I think it was like a year and a half ago. It was live at Ursa. You had just uh recently joined the eGim team after a very storied career already in the industry. I'm guessing you probably could retire, but you decided to do something interesting and and uh and move, you know, help move the industry forward with what e-Gem is doing. So yeah, roughly a year and a half. What's been going on? How's it been so far in your role? What's what's uh what's new in your world?

Yeah, I think India told me I was gonna come back and start working full time in the fitness industry, I would say, poor where am I going? Right? I'd twice been CEO of Life Fitness and before that was with Johnson Health Tech and been in the industry for longer than I like to think about sometimes, but it's pretty exciting. I just in fact I had Philip hold a surprise. I mean, Philip Philip was our founder at eGem, surprised me at one of our offsites this past year with a video montage, and it wasn't a five-minute video montage, it was like a 20-minute video montage, and I had no idea it was coming. It started off innocuously, and then uh all of a sudden like light went on like hey, this is about me. But it was celebrating my 40 years in the fitness industry and included people that were talking about me that I worked with years ago, going back 30 plus years ago, and it was just really cool. But the reason I came to AGM was because of Philip and where the company not only has been, but where it's headed, and I and I say this behind his back and in front of him, Philip is a WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. The guy that walks up and hugs you and says hello to you, and you're you almost like you're a stranger, which I'm not. I've known Philip for 13 years. But he really is a kind-hearted human being. And the reason why he created why he created EGM and his whole strategy, which we'll get into, was based on his own life and his own experiences as a novice, as an uninitiated fitness person who said there's gotta be millions upon millions and millions more of people that are just like me that are uninitiated and they just don't know. I want to get to that. And so when I talked to him about where they were and where they were headed, and he said, This is what I want you to do, and I was like, how do you say no to that?

He's I will double down on what you're saying because every interaction I've had with Philip since I've I've initially met him, when I see him at conferences, he's the only CEO and founder of a large company in our industry that gives me a hug. And uh it's great. I love it. We have great conversations, usually nothing to do with business, you know, sometimes some politics, as you probably know. But it's it's it's great. It's a it's a great leadership team. And everyone I've met, I've always enjoyed my time with. And you know, Sean and I are also good friends. So, you know, I really, I really appreciate what you guys do over there. One of the big topics I want to get into is well, let's start with this, because we're gonna talk about our industry's. I don't know, some may find this disputable. Right to win, to move into the forefront of preventative health care, right? We have the tools necessary, we just lack a call to action and a direct path forward, in my opinion. Also, like where some of those functions and energy could go are towards public health and physical education of our children and our youth. These are really important things to talk about. Let's start with this though. Over the last like year or so, within your role, Chris, like what have been some of the biggest initiatives for eGym in the gym tech space? Like, what are some of the biggest evolutions that you guys have have put forth?

Yeah, I won't focus a ton on product because I think the product is unique and different and conversational. But I and I'll just mention, I mean, we've had two new pieces of equipment that we introduced that are been pretty compelling. We have one that's a hip thrust, which is taking a very popular movement in the clubs that has been thus far analog and bringing it into a smart fitness realm. Uh so the movements, the efficacy of the movement's really, really good. I mean, it's it's a solid product from an exercise from a kinematic standpoint. The second is our squat machine, which is just a great piece. It's a self-adjusting product. It recognizes where you are on the exercise that you get to. And one of the greatest challenges, especially with free weights, if you're doing squats, is when you get to fatigue, what do you give? And if you're on a Smith machine, you clip it back and step up from underneath it. But if you're on a lifting platform and you're doing, you know, these Olympic lifts, and in this case the squat, and you get to muscle fatigue, you get a problem. I mean, even if you have stops in place, you still got to get it onto the stop. So we have the capability midstream for to recognize and adjust, constantly adjust the resistance so you can continue your reps. But if you do get to the point where you're fatigued, you just press a button and it pulls you out. So those two products are brand new, they're and they're great pieces. But I would tell you that the most interesting part of it, as far as the industry goes, is this product that we have called Genius. And Genius is, to me, game changing. And I've talked about this going back when we when you and I met at the trade shows in both the case of FIBO and HSA, or HFX, sorry, I was going to say Ursa and I two mixed together. I said, this is the first time of my career where I end the conversation with the customer talking about product. I really start the conversation talking about the digital ecosystem that we have with our partners. And I talk about all the things that we bring to bear within that ecosystem, both from our product, including our onboarding through the Fitness Hub, but the entire array of our partners' products. And so for the last several years, an integration with eGim, where we have partners like Life Fitness and Star Trek and StareMaster and Pre-Core and True and others, and Natrix is another big partner of ours. Whenever you look at those conversations, they have been exclusively around cardio equipment. So they've been cardio integrations, which is great because we don't make cardio equipment, nor do we have plans to make cardio equipment. But what changed with Genius was we brought all their analog strength equipment into our digital ecosystem. That means free weights, selectorized, plate-loaded, functional training, on product, off product. All of that has been brought into this conversation. So now we have an entire ecosystem that is holistic in its exercise protocol, depending on your level. So if you're a good beginner, intermediate, advanced, or an elite athlete, whether you have injuries and you want to preclude yourself from doing specific movements because of an injury, all of these are part of our ecosystem. And everything that's in that club, all the way down to including free weights, are included in the ecosystem. So if your goal is specific, training for a sport, training for an event, we know everything that's in that club because we have it all listed. We have images of all the product, and now we can prescribe to you smart strength training with our products, training on selectorized equipment or free weights or functional training or plate loading or Olympic lifts, and then functional training off product, push-ups, burpees, bench, you know, bench bench jumps. All those things can be part of this. And to me, that's the most amazing thing is because we're bringing not only all of that that's in the club, but then all of our partners that exist outside the club that are bringing tracking. You know, like you go for a run or you go cycling or you do the these other things, that's all part of the mix. So I know that if you just got done doing a 25-mile run, I'm not throwing you on a treadmill the next day as part of your exercise and move you away to something else. So that is the biggest thing that we've introduced in the course of the last year plus is bringing all those products within their portfolio and bringing those to bear on behalf of our customer and our customer's customer, which is the number.

It is game changing. And I've been following this genius thing for really since I think you brought it up, right? About a year and a half ago, and it was it was just starting to come out because it seems to be where the whole industry is going is, you know, I was talking to Dr. Andy Galpin about like personalized AI assistance, right? And how this is all coming together. And that's kind of the promise is like this hyper-personalization that we have. And as much as I've used those terms and it's a huge buzzword, it just seems to me the most appropriate is hyper-personalization. One of the things that I get excited about with this is that I was at the Athletec Innovation Summit earlier this month, and then I was also at HFA, and I was also at a couple other ones throughout the year, right? Which I'm sure you travel around to as well. And you know, everyone's very excited about Maha and the conversations that are going on around, you know, our public health. And our industry feels that we are now at the point where we can move to the forefront of preventative healthcare, right? And I believe that is done through data, right? Having a common language that could connect, you know, you know, the consumers to the gym, to the trainers, to the coaches, to the medical profession. And that's that needs to happen, right? And it's digital health at its base. But no one, and everyone believes that this can happen, but no one's showing a clear path forward on how we can actually get to the forefront of preventative health. But I know you guys have thought about this stuff because you're working on solutions for it. So give us some insights, Chris. Like from your vast experience of 40 years in this industry, A, do we have a right to win to say that we should be at the forefront of health, preventative health? And B, if so, how how do we get there?

Yeah, I think the conversation around preventative health is not a new conversation. It's actually done around a very long time. The question that needs to be answered is where do we fit? And I I think it it's not a keyhole that we're trying to find our way into. I think it's actually a doorway. And I and I think we can actually step through more than one person at a time. So I think the answer is it's not just a single place. So if you think about a person's what I'll call their their their exercise life, okay, their fitness life, their well wellness life, their health life, what if there's all these things that they add that are part of that, right? So their life, if they're hoping to be more capable physically, mentally, and in this case, from a health perspective, there are lots of things that come to bear. Nutrition, sleep, exercise, just general activity, and then joy, right? I mean, joy is part of it. If you work in a job that you enjoy and you work around people and you have friends, all those things are part of being healthy. So when you think about this doorway and and how we can help people through that, that I think is is really our opportunity. It's I think we can push people through the doorway, and I think we can pull people through the doorway. And I'll differentiate those. I think the the pushing part is recognizing that there are things that we can do that put people in a position to be more capable and successful from a well-being standpoint. And and Eric, you and I talk about this a little bit around things like physical education. Okay. In the United States, the really big push for physical education started in the early 1960s. It was with John O'Kennedy. And that's when he recognized, and this kind of goes back even to before that. If you remember, the very first what I'll call big scare around physical activity was World War II. It actually happened a little bit in World War I, but we were only in that war for a very short time, right? We came in at the very end, the last less than two years, and we were out. But World War II was a scary moment because what we found is when we started to send people to basic training to boot camp, they were woefully out of shape. Like woefully out of shape. Now they might not have been overweight, but they weren't strong and they weren't cardiovascular capable. So when they went for long runs or they're carrying packs, it was really challenging. And so coming out of World War II, people were concerned. Like, you know, it was really about war. It wasn't about healthcare system, it wasn't any about, it was about war and being ready for war. Fast forward to the 1960s. Remember, John F. Kennedy fought in World War II. So, you know, he was an 80 guy. So he understood the implications from a military perspective. He started to see it manifesting itself in society and said, we got a problem here. We actually do, and it's not just about war, it's just about humans and people and citizenry. And so he started this whole idea of physical education. So now you fast forward, it's 2025, and knowing all the things we know about activity and how important activity is, the scariest part of it is that our physical education system and education across the United States is so woefully underfunded. And in some cases, and I'm talking to some of the largest school districts in the United States, they have no physical education. None. This is the push part. I think we need to push for a reinstatement of physical education in schools, K through 12, mandatory, because if they're not exposed to physical activity and physical education in those settings, and everybody thinks this is an inner city conversation, it's not just inner city. The two places that are most susceptible are the country, out in the country, and in the city. They're the two places. Now, suburbs, you're okay. Suburbs, you have parks and most of those school districts in the suburbs, a lot of them still do have PE. It's when you get out in the country and you're in the city, which are large populations where you don't have the PE. But if you don't push them into activity, the chances of them being interested in it as they grow into adulthood is very slim. So that's the I'm gonna call that the push part of it. Okay. The cull part of it, and I think it's kind of a threshold thing where in some cases it's a push, in some cases it's a pull. But I think employers can truly encourage their employees to be more active, whether that's putting a fitness center in place, or in the case of our WellPass solution, it's offering those memberships to facilities in an area like yoga studios and Ploty studios and you know, gyms and you know, all sorts of different activities. But it's also encouraging them to say, hey, you know what, if you are physically active and you can show me you're physically active, I'm gonna give you a lower cost of health care. And a lot of companies do that already where people who don't smoke and people who are active and people who are engaged in behavior, their healthcare premiums as a company get lowered, but they as individuals have lower premiums as well. To me, that's sort of a push and a pull. I'm pushing you to do this, I'm getting the opportunity, but I'm pulling you by saying you get over this threshold, there's some good things for you. The second part of this, and this has been something that HFA and SFI, Sports Fitness Industry Association, Health and Fitness Association, have been working on since the mid-2000 is the FIT Act. P-H-I-T. Right. The FIT Act is allowing you to use your flexible spending account, your HSA money, so pre-tax for physical activity. So that includes dance, that includes gymnastics, that includes health club memberships, sports-specific things in gear. So it doesn't include track shoes or fashion, but it would be a lacrosse stick, it could be a hockey stick, a soccer ball, you know, soccer boots, those things would all be included. And to me, that's also a that's a pull, is to say, hey, we want you to be active. We're giving you a little bit of push. You've been exposed to the activity in physical education, and you see what it's like. And we're gonna give you this carrot out here, which is you can use your pre-tax income to do these things for yourself and for your family. So it's not so onerous financially. But again, that's reinforcing that you're active, you're doing the right things, and there's gonna be a reward for you when you do that, both personally and and as a society. To me, those are all combined together, are things that the fitness industry we have this shining light, right? It's this these places and these spaces with all these experts that work there, or they don't work there, it's just the place, the space for you to go and be active. I think we have a tremendous opportunity to show light. And I'll tell you right now that one of the areas where we have the greatest opportunity is that the biggest push right now on the fitness side, this is what people recognize, is the benefits of strength training. And so, and I'm not saying to the to the detriment and to the exclusion of cardiovascular training. I'm saying if you're gonna try to balance it out and there's 100% available, I think a 70-30 split is an okay thing for strength to cardio, and then that can swing, right? You there are times where you're gonna do the 70% cardio and 30% strength, but to me, it's a huge opportunity because that's where everyone's sort of heading. But there's another part of this, which is this this magic pill called GLP1 therapy, these shots, they they carry benefit and they carry opportunity. The benefit is for people who have all sorts of both self-induced and in some cases out of their control, things that they could not necessarily control, it does diminish that that situation, takes away some of those those hurdles they can't get over. But with that comes muscle waste. And you had the CEO of Eli Willy, Lilly, stand up and say, This is great, this products that we make are spectacular, but we have this other this this other side of the Coin, he's saying that aloud. It's not like he's saying it behind it, you know, it's a hot mic situation. So for me, there really only is one true, clear place to go to overcome that potential risk, and that's fitness. Whether that be in the home, whether that be at work, in a you know, corporate fitness setting, or whether that be in a facility where you have a membership. All of those are great opportunities for us to say we are a solutions organization. We're a health club, we're a studio, we're a boutique, we're we're selling you home equipment. We are solutions-oriented and we have the things that you need.

Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there, Chris. You know, and GLP one thing, I'm gonna sit here and kind of eat my words because I when this whole thing started, I I was very I'm like, I don't think this is gonna get people to work out. I think people are gonna take a magic pill. I think they're just gonna take it, and then it's not gonna incentivize them or motivate them to to get into the gym or change their lifestyle. Now, I've personally seen, and this is like, you know, this is directly related to my life of two at least two people who and one of them was my uncle who's lost about 50, 60 pounds, and now he's back to skiing, age 73. Incredible, right? Yeah, he took three years off. On the other side, my neighbor's daughter is 23. No, 22. She's lost about 30 pounds. Now she's playing volleyball again, right? Back to the gym. So it's like, I I I'm wrong. I was wrong, right? At least from what I've seen. And so it's it's actually much more exciting than I thought. So, so all these things sound amazing, and I think you're 100% correct. But I think here's what we're lacking is how do we convince everyone outside of our industry that this is the place to go, right? How do we get that messaging out there? Because we're still relatively small as an industry compared to pharma or you name any major industry, right? We're we're still kind of small. So, how how do we how do we inch that way to more of the public conversation?

So the you know, the the expression fish for the fish are yeah. So one of the places where the fish congregate is in corporate world, right? It's not corporate America, it's the corporate world. It doesn't matter what continent you're on, the corporate world. If you look at the most developed countries from a fitness perspective, the most Scandinavia leads. So the Scandinavian countries have the highest percentage of their population that are what they call regularly involved in fitness. And regularly involved, the way that I would see what I would call regular versus the way the industry defines it, the industry defines it as a few to several times a month. Not a few to several times a week, it's a few to several times a month, depending on you know how you want to classify their activity level. So they sit in around 20-ish percent of their population that exercises on this brocco regular basis. The United States, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, they're all on the mid-teens to below. So call it 10 to 15 percent. And then from there it falls off all the way down to very, very low single digits in underdeveloped countries or countries that don't have access to fitness. Then sometimes having access to fitness is not just not having a facility. It could be that the facilities are one, too expensive or two, they may live in an environment where they're not, it's not safe to be out and about. So they just you know stay close to home because they're worried about being up. But taking all that, the entire realm of this conversation, saying, Hey, in the best case scenario, that 80% of the population is in play. Where we've seen the dynamic change, and I mean change in a in a sense to the point where like your holy cow has been with well pass in markets where we have critical mass. When I say critical mass, there's two sides of the critical mass. There's the critical mass on the supply side, which is the health clubs, the studios, and the boutiques, right? And on the employer side with their employees. When you put those together in some of these markets, we have employers that have 40 for zero plus percent of their employee population that works on a regular basis. 40. So that's double Scandinavia, and in some cases, triple and quadruple other developed nations. So, and the reason it is, and this goes back to the push and the pull, is that the employer is saying, I think this is important. I think fitness is a good thing. I'm gonna use it as a recruit, recruiting tool as well as a performance tool for you to perform better at work. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is because I'm gonna pay for 50% or more of your membership. You're gonna pay for 50% or less of your membership. That's that's an approximation. So we both have skin to gain here, and I'm gonna encourage you to go out and do this because I think it's good. And oh, by the way, I'm gonna market to you that I want you to do this. I'm not gonna just gonna say I'm not just gonna, but I'm gonna market it to you as an employer if you say I have this benefit, I want you to use that. And then we can see, and and their HR department can see who's using it and how regularly they're using it. But to me, that is truly game-changing, is when you can go from single digits to double digits, and now we're talking about mid-double digits. To me, that is truly game-changing. And that is where if you look in the US in particular, we have most of these corporations are self-insured. It's a big deal. If employees have what I'll call catastrophic life events that are self-induced from behavior, that doesn't just hurt that person, although it's really obvious to them and their family, it hurts that company. And it hurts that company and all the employees. Because if you have hundreds and hundreds of people and have bad outcomes because of bad decisions, because they're not fit, they're not eating right, and they don't, and they don't behave the way that you might if you wanted to be healthy and and and work capable in life, those companies are affected all the way down to including the employees. So, you know, it's it's an actuarial exercise. It's not it's science. And if you have a company that has lots and lots of people with bad outcomes, they're the entire company's rates go up with that. It all the employees pay for it. So I think that to me that's game changing. If you can get if you can go from 10 or 15 or 20 percent to 30, 35, or 40 percent of the population working out, that changes everything.

It's and you you see, like I've I what you're talking about, I feel it. So we're on my wife's health insurance, and it's expensive. It's really expensive, and it covers almost nothing. We still pay almost everything out of pocket. And I think you're starting to see small percentages of people who are in healthy communities, like the CrossFit Medical Society, I have no idea how they're doing, but I interviewed them like a year ago of opting out, right? It's like, hey, we're taking people who are very healthy, we're opting out, we're creating our own insurance plan. And it's so it's starting to kind of bubble up from the from the ground up of like the dissatisfaction with the costs and the services provided. Yeah. What you're talking about here, and maybe also as you answer this for me, Chris, is remind us of the relationship between Well Pass and EGym. But how do we accelerate this? Like these things you're talking about. How do we how do we actively get behind it and start pushing, putting a shoulder in it to accelerate these things in different areas?

Yeah, so I do think that one of the things that's happened in the industry, I mean, I I think the the the greatest change in the fitness industry in my 40 years, and I and everyone, whenever I say this, they always go, oh, what what piece of equipment are you gonna talk about? Oh, let's you know, not equipment. The the greatest change in the fitness industry has been the franchise model. The franchise model changed everything because from the beginning of the fitness industry, and right say the beginning, let's just arc save our say it started in the 1950s, okay? The late 1950s, the 60s it kind of stored it was, but it and then the 70s is where it came to be in the 80s, it grew and became prolific in the 90s. But almost through that entire conversation, so from the late 50s all the way through to the 90s, that was a brick and mortar capital expense. You know, I buy the real estate or I rent the building, but it's mine. It's my I've got a depreciable capital asset called equipment, I've got a depreciable capital asset called building, I've got a all this cost that every time I open, I have to do that over and over and over again. And some of these companies scaled. I mean, I we used to be part when I was with Life Fitness, you know, there was a period of time there from 1984 until the early 90s, we were part of Ballet Corporation. Okay, and Ballet was the largest health club operator in the world. And so every one of those clubs was a Ballet club, or the the different banners that they bought, right? They bought Jack Lane and Nordic and all these different companies, but eventually they became part of Ballet. Every time they opened a new club, it was on them. It was their expense. And there have been some tremendous success rates. I mean, I'm not taking anything away from it. LA Fitness, the original Fitness First Group, you know, out of the UK expanding. You know, there have been tons and tons of those stories out there, basic that so the difference is the acceleration, number one, you you would go from 10 clubs to a hundred clubs in a few years, right? Where in the old days it might take you a decade to have a hundred clubs. Okay. And now you're talking about thousands of clubs, and each time that they open, they're they're opening in clusters. So you have area developers who are responsible for getting operators, they have to open multiple clubs, and so it's it's spread out, the risk is spread out. So that's the first part it was a growth. And the second part is where the growth took place. So if you look at, it doesn't matter what country we're talking about, this is mostly true. It used to be large metropolitan areas that had clusters of fitness available. Then with the franchise model, it spread to the suburbs, and then it spread to beyond the suburbs to small markets, became 24 hours, keyless entry, low staff, pricing model changed. So when I came in the industry years ago, people used to say you can't make money at, and they can they had all their different numbers, right? And badly back in the day, my membership, my first ballet membership, which is going back 40 years ago, my first member and I family fitness membership, you know, soon thereafter in California, it was 20 bucks a month. 20 bucks a month, okay. So but as time wore on, that number was like you can't make money unless you're 29.99. You're not unless you're at 39, you can't make if you're not at 49, you can't make money. The number just kept getting ratcheted up. And then this franchise model changed everything. So now not only are they not not quite ubiquitous, but they're kind of everywhere. Not only do you not have the time issue because a lot of these places are open 44 hours a day, but that price point changed. And it went from being let's call it the $49 a month, which was sort of the mid price price point, to $9.99. $9.99. And all people were like, holy cow, it's close to my home. It costs it's two coffees worth of a membership, right? And in some cases, these places are open 24 hours a day. So to me, that that has changed the entire conversation. So we overcome that hurdle. I think in in most cases, people have access to fitness. Now, the second part of it is this this pull apart, right? How can I pull you in? And this is where I get to this what I call the seatbelt law. And I think the seatbelt law changes everything. And so going back to when I was a kid, nobody wore seatbelts, right? We had lap belts, you know, you put them on, you'd hold them tight. And you know, if you got in a really high-speed accurate accident with a you know, heavy negative G, it'd split you in half, right? It's like it's like just you know, like you cut a worm, you cut the person in half. They weren't that great. And they were better than Miller through the windshield or smashing off the dash, which back then they were metal dashes, but yeah, it wasn't that great. And then in the 60s, they started to have shoulder belts, but they were stuck above your head. They didn't, you know, they weren't again, you tightened away from the belt, it came down and hooked in, and you either made it super tight, like your race car driver, it was loose and it didn't do anything, right? It just was there. So you got better in the armpit. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, it got better and better and better. Became easier, like clubs being everywhere, right? And boutiques and studios being available. And so the ubiquity of the fitness industry today is a little bit like making it easier for seatballs where all cars had them, all shoulder harnesses, including the back seat, including including the middle back seat, including the third row, they all had it. It was all easy to use. But what changed when I was a teenager was the law got changed to say if you don't wear a seatbelt, you're gonna get a ticket. And well, by the way, it's not because you got pulled over for speeding and they said, Hey, you didn't have your seatbelt on. It's like they drove past you and said, Ah, you didn't have a seatbelt on, spun around, came back with their lights flaring and said, You ain't got to get a ticket because you wear a seatbelt. So we have behaviors changed. My grandparents sort of wearing seatbelts. My parents wear seatbelts, I wear seatbelts. Now you don't even think about it. You have already brief seatbelt on, right? My kids grew up with seat belts on. But the law changed it. To me, this is where I think everything changes for our industry and where we move our way into this solution conversation, which is we know why nutrition's good. We know why sleep is good. I can't control nutrition and sleep. That's not, I can't do that in a health club. And some of these places have food available, but let's just say you're only there for a few meals a week, maybe. But if I can show you the benefits of exercise, and I can track those exercises, that the exercises that you do and show you the benefit. So in our case, we have this fitness hub, and the fitness hub is going to measure in four, four distinct areas, and it's going to assign you a biological age. Okay, so I'll do a little product story here for you, but it's going to look at flexibility. And we have a more advanced and more what I'll call inclusive, more exercises of stretching to see how flexible you are, or a very simple one. You just squat down, squat back up. We're using three-dimensional cameras, HD cameras to measure that. But I'm going to give you a biological age and I'm going to contrast that with your chronological edge. So there's only three ways this goes. You're either younger than your chronological age, you're right on your chronological age, or you're older. And we all know where you want to be. You want to be at least the first two, right? You don't want to be older than your chronological edge. So flexibility is part of that. The second part of this is strength. So we can put you on a piece of smart strength equipment. I can do with one piece, but ideally, you like to have small group muscle groups, large muscle groups, pushing, pulling, just something, you know, plus minus. But I can determine your strength profile and your capabilities from a strength perspective to assign you a chronological age that I see in the Fitness Hub versus your biological bio age.

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Which is what I'm measuring. Okay, that's important. Because strength is an important component of being healthy. And I can put you on a piece of cardiovascular equipment and through relative procedure inertia, um, exertion, RPE, I can put you on our partner's treadmills, bikes, or ellipticals, and you can go through an exercise where you're determining your level of exhaustion. In this case, you're telling me how you feel and you're scoring it on scale. And I can determine your cardiovascular age, right? In this case, I can say your bioage for your cardiovascular capacity is here. And again, ideally it's it's it's less than your chronological age, but if it's more then, it's a goal. You have an opportunity here. So I have those three parts of the conversation. And I mean, what's maybe more important than all of these parts of the conversation is I also had your biometrics. So I have to have some sort of baseline, right? I've got this first time I've done flexibility, I have a baseline. I the first time I do your strength training, I have a baseline. The first time I do your cardiovascular test, I have a baseline. But I also need you to understand who you are as a person. So I need to see how tall you are. I need to see how long your limbs are so that when I'm prescribing exercises where I know what your seat setting should be, so you're in a good situation, you can tell me what your level is. Are you a beginner? Are you intermittent advanced? You can tell me if you have any injuries, and then I can weigh you on a scale to see how much you weigh, and I can look at your body composition. What percentage of your body weight is muscle? What percentage is skeletal? Which percentage of it is fat? Now I have a baseline there, and from that I can determine your biological age for biometrics. So now here's the beauty of it is as you I send you out into the facility to work out, where you go out and you work out in the world, wherever you are, and you come back in six weeks and you do this all over again. We get to see the improvement. I get to see how much stronger you are, and you get to see it. You get to see your biological age go down, you get to see your cardiovascular capacity increase and improve. You get to see your biometrics overall. You lose it, you're losing weight. You may not be trying to lose weight, you might be trying to gain weight, right? You might be trying to get bigger and stronger. But I can take all these things and I can measure those over and over again, and I can show you that improvement. And here's the beauty of this if you're working in a well-cast environment, I can aggregate that information and we can show that to the employer to say your biological age is improved by X percent across your entire employee population. And they can slice it and dice it. It could be males and females, could be under 35 or over 35. Different ways to cut and slice that one. But now we actually have something we can show you where you are making improvements, and then we can prescribe exercises to ensure that you are making those improvements, provided you do the exercise.

So do you see a world? I mean, is it possible that something like bioage will actually affect someone's healthcare or health insurance costs? Where it's like, hey, if your bioage stays at your real age or younger, right, then your chronic that could. You think that's possible?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible. I mean, I would say, you know, what what makes it more challenging is, you know, when you talk about hyper-personalization, an example of hyper-perspersonalization is our HIPAA loss. Right. So what what do you have access to? And I'm not going to tell you that exercise and and activity would necessarily fall under HIPAA, because it's not really it's not specific. And it doesn't have to be specific, right? It could be specific to you and you know. It could be specific to you and your employer knows, because it's part of the in them paying for after membership is they want to be able to see are you going to work out? Are you doing the things we're asking you to do? And are you improving? And at that point, I think if there's a groundswell from an employer-employee relationship, or if there becomes a seatbelt law where insurance companies say, if you can show us what you're doing and you can prove to us that you're doing the right things, we're going to give you lower lower healthcare costs, that I think people would say, Come in. I'm going to show you what I'm doing. I'm going to turn it over to you, and I'm going to every month and or every quarter, I'm going to show you where I was and where I am. Then I think that that conversation could be had.

Awesome. Well, I think there's another angle here, which I want to get your take on, because having the solutions in place and the technology in place that's scalable, that can can show this information broadly is really critical. And tying into the employers is a brilliant approach. I think one of the things that we saw that became very evident, and this is just my opinion during the pandemic, is we there is a void in overall industry leadership. Like we were not, you know, if if this happened in the 80s to the what happened to us in COVID for the automotive industry and quit it, you know, Ed Hertzman for this quote, Lee Coca would have been on a plane in Washington, D.C., right? Saying, hey, this ain't happening. We're putting our foot down, right? We didn't have anything like that that I saw happen. And I feel like if there's a lesson we can learn from that period, is like we need, you know, titans of industry, really, who who come up for us and represent us at the highest level. HFA is is doing hard work, you know, they're they're doing what they can on the hill. But I feel like there's something there. And I so what what's your take? You've been around this industry for a while. Have you ever seen us evolve into having you know those kind of heads of state who can represent the industry, or where where do you think we can do better there?

Yeah, I mean when you see think about this. When you see Titans of industry, the the automotive industry is a very, very large and very important industry in the US and it's just the U.S. but Western Europe as well. And Japan. So it's the three large Just manufacturing areas. And you know, China obviously is coming in that conversation. But let's just say if you talk about top five industries in the United States, how mortar industry is going to fall into that conversation. And so not only do they carry a tremendous amount of cloud because of their position in the industry, but they employ a lot of people all the way through their companies and then on the supplier side. So they're first tier, second tier, and third tier suppliers are a big part of that. So they do carry a tremendous amount of weight. So when they stand up and say, and guess what? We know who Lee Icoca is, right? And we knew who Henry Ford was and Henry Ford II and Etzel Ford. And we, you know, we knew people who were leaders of those companies because they're they're big, big companies and they're high profile. So number one, a little different there. I do think that the biggest change that we've seen in the industry, particularly from the move from Ursa to H to HFM, is Liz Clark. Liz Clark is smart. Liz I I helped to create the job description for Liz with some others in the industry. And I was one of four people that interviewed her for her final interview. And I love Liz because she's what we needed is we needed somebody who understood that a trade show is nice. It's not advocacy. Advocacy is everything for us. And so she has not only focused on advocacy, but she's doubled down and she's incredibly enabling, she's enabling herself, any industry, to say, guys, advocate, we can't be in this position ever again. We have to be front and center. We have to think about the industry and how do we promote and protect the industry. So I would tell you that if she had been in charge a decade ago, I think we would have had a more cohesive and more effective conversation on Capitol. We wouldn't have been titans at industry that, oh my God, the fitness industry is here. We have to listen to it.

It just showed up. Yeah. Oh my God.

But if you look at where they lumped us in, they lumped us in with restaurants and taverns. I mean, I'm not sure what we share in common with a restaurant or tavern. Who and by the way, in a lot of cases, the restaurants and taverns were allowed to stay open. So we're lumped in with them, but they're open and we're shut down. So I do think that moving that organization from being trade show centric to being very much about advocacy is I don't want to say a call to personality, because I think that's where we wanted as an industry, we wanted to see them move. I will say that Liz and the people that work with her are the reasons why it's headed in the right direction in what a direction we're a better place today.

Well, what I'll say to that is that I agree. I think they are doing, they're in the right direction, right? But I think we need more. And I think that comes from CEOs and founders and chairs of the board from multiple different companies who are willing to align and get into the same room and say, hey, there's very little competitive advantage is in our business. Let's just be honest. Like, you know, from a especially from a health cup perspective, like equipment, there are like you guys have smart equipment, it's heads and shoulders above most. But like there, there's no real things that we can't be getting people leadership in a room and having great conversations and saying, hey, how do we raise raise the tide for everybody? Right. I haven't seen that happen. I've never been in that room, obviously. Maybe you have, but do you think there's there's room or a motivation for that?

Yeah, I mean, I I do think that it is difficult when you're in a in a in a group. Let's use HFA as an example. They're most of the people that are on their board see some of the people on the board as competitors. Right. And they're not all competitors because they're from all over the place, right? They they can be different countries and can be in you know from a different part of the industry where they don't see them as a direct competitor. So, you know, if I if I you have a thing that you offer that I don't offer at all, I I see you as being a service, but I'm not competitive because you're not offering the same things I offer. So you're you're always going to have a little bit of that. You are just because it's it's human nature. This goes back to the whole conversation of HFA being advocacy, is there you have to decide what things are sacred to the industry that transcend, this is kind of to your point, Eric, that transcend any competitive conversation. Yeah, because it's more important that we solve this problem for all of us than worry about how we compete, which we're gonna have to compete anyway. But if they shut us down, not number one, we're not none of us are competing and and potentially put our entire industry in jeopardy, you know, ourselves included, they being the the operators that are on the on the uh the the board there. But we we need to have another group of allies that are outside of our industry, because of course we're gonna feel this way, because that's our industry. But this is where I think if you start to see employers and employees embracing the the necessity of fitness and activity, that if it were to be taken away from their employees, that now these titans of industry, these large corporations like Apple and Google and these big giant companies, even pharmaceutical companies that have employees, right? Imagine the McPfizer said, no, no, no, my employees need to be able to work out. This is not going to happen. Maybe to work out, this is good for my employee, it's good for my company. That's when our small groundswell called HFA, fitness industry, called EAFA, Europe Active, we're swell-time players. But if these large employers rise to the occasion and say, no, no, we're carrying this mantle, and that flag says fitness on it and activity and well-being, now we have their their attention.

That that I can get behind. I think that was a very thank you for articulating that so well. It's something I've been struggling for years to put together. So well done. I think that's that's an amazing call to arms for for everybody. Is you know, and and I know that you guys offer solutions through Well Pass to integrate with the employers as well. And we didn't really cover this, but maybe give us a quick synopsis of how does eGym and Wellpass work together? How is that relationship? Sure.

So Well Pass is is most developed in the Doc region, so the German-speaking countries. We're also in France, the UK, and we just opened up offices here in the last year and a half in Denver. And so I'll use Germany because it's the best example where we have critical market quote from the supply side and on the employer side, employ side. So for instance, when I when I'm in Munich and I want to go for a workout and I open my well pass app, I had 122 options of places to work out. 122. That's in Munich. That's not in Germany, that's at Munich. So, and I could walk in like I'm a member holding my head high, and I just check in with my app and boom, I'm in there working out. So that relationship, that's that's a well passed relationship on the supply side and the employer side. Where it becomes, where it crosses over and where technology interplays is we have this solution, as I mentioned before, called Genius. And genius is in those facilities now, and well pass will be rolling out as part of their app. So right now, the only place that you see genius is in clubs that have a solution around each smart product, the fitness hub and our products. Within the well pass community, some of the clubs that are our well pass clubs do not have our equipment. They don't. Because they don't have our equipment. Doesn't mean they don't have our something in our ecosystem. They may be using our app. So it might be our app that's white labeled to their brand. So they do have something, but what we're doing now is we're going to bring that into the well pass solution. So when when they have our partner equipment, now they can still work out and still have an e-gen genius experience, even though they don't have e-gen physical technology equipment. We can still have the elements of it. But but in order to fulfill the bio strength, the bio side of this conversation, so the the bio age for strength, the flexibility, and for or the the body mass and biometrics in cardiovascular capacity, every six weeks you're gonna have to go to a facility that has a fitness hug in order and strength equipment in order to do that that measurement. So to me, that is where it sits today. It's where it sits in some cases today and then tomorrow. And then longer term, what you're gonna see is we'll have facilities that are completely outfitted with our partners' equipment, with our equipment, with the fitness hub, and they become these highlighted, what I'll call trading centers, eGM well pass trading centers, because they are a total solution. Everything that they have is brought to bear because it's part of our ecosystem. It's really the partner story.

Oh, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. Last question for you, Chris. As an industry, what do you what can we help you with? What's a challenge you're facing right now? If people are going to listen to this and reach out to you, what would you like to hear from them about?

No, I I just think it's for people to to wrap their their head around what it is that we do that makes us different. And I and I we talked about Philip at the very beginning here. And I tell this to our partners all the time. I said, if you're to sit in behind closed doors to listen to our leadership team, if you were to sit in and listen to an investor meeting or a board of directors meeting, it's like flying the wall. What you would hear behind your back is the reason why we're doing what we're doing, is to change the dynamic of the industry. It really is to move us from being fitness companies and fitness suppliers and to be part of this health and well-being and this continuum that ultimately ends up in healthier lives. And we're trying to do that as fast as we possibly can. And so when we talk about the ecosystem, recognize that a year and a half ago we had seven billion workouts in our AI engine. We're now approaching nine billion. So we've added almost two billion exercise experiences in a year. Why? Because we keep bringing in more partner product, and that partner product keeps building. And now we've taken it from just being our smart strength and their cardio to our smart strength and their cardio and their analog strength with guess what? Exponential. So it really is around building out the capabilities of the ecosystem. How do we benefit? Well, we benefit by doing the things that we said we were going to do for our partners and for our club operators and their members, and we just keep raising the water level. That's how we that's what we all benefit.

Oh, beautifully said. Well, Chris, thank you so much for doing this. You know, spending a slice of your Friday with me. It's been it's been a lot of fun, insightful as always. And uh yeah, if people want to get a hold of you, where would you like them to go?

Sure. Well, I mean, the easiest way is probably with an email is Christopher, C H R I S T-L-P-H-E-R.clauson, C-L-A-W-S-L-N at EGim.com. Beautiful.

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