Curtis Christopherson - WRKOUT & Affiliate Sales Made Simple

[00:00:02] Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting edge technology experts within the extremely

[00:00:19] fast paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by FutureofFitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews with summaries delivered straight to your inbox. You'll also find our free industry report on artificial intelligence, five industry experts,

[00:00:36] five different opinions and tons of valuable insights for free at FutureofFitness.co. Thanks for listening and on to the show. Hey friends, Eric Malzone here. I've had the honor of interviewing over 750 professionals across the fitness, health, and wellness industries. There's one thing I know for sure.

[00:00:58] Without a doubt, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage a highly valuable and relatively untapped network of independent podcasters and content creators. Traditional advertising isn't what it used to be. Costs are high, consumer trust is low.

[00:01:12] I've seen the results firsthand and can assure you there's a much better way to connect with your target audience and emerge as a thought leader in our industry. That's exactly why I've launched the podcast collective. Ultimate solution designed to empower executives, founders, and thought leaders in the fitness,

[00:01:29] health, and wellness sectors. Our mission? To help you leverage the extraordinary opportunities within our handpicked network of independent podcasts. We don't just place you on podcasts, we make you unforgettable. One-on-one coaching ensures that you show up the right message for the right audience with confidence and swagger.

[00:01:46] We create eye-popping digital assets and social media overhauls to ensure that you're optimizing each and every appearance. Key introductions to strategic partners and potential enterprise clients provide unparallel value that only a professional network like ours can offer.

[00:02:03] We work with a very limited number of clients to ensure the highest level of service, so please don't hesitate to reach out and learn more. Go to podcastcollective.io to learn more and contact me directly. That's podcastcollective.io. And we are live. Curtis Christofferson, welcome back my friend.

[00:02:25] How you been? Yeah, great man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, it's a pleasure. I've got to know you pretty well over the past year or two. And really, I think it all started when we recorded the last podcast, which I was looking back, was November of 2021.

[00:02:41] And some things have changed, man. Yeah, industry, self, everything. So a little bit about you and people can easily search you up. I mean, you have your website, CurtisChristofferson.com, which we'll probably bring up a couple of times here, but you're the CEO and founder of WorkOut.

[00:02:59] You are the CEO and founder of Innovative Fitness, which is a high-end personal training studio brand across mostly Canada. But maybe you got plans for the States. I'll let you talk about that. And now you're launching some really cool, I guess, just content for entrepreneurs.

[00:03:16] I mean, you've been doing this for over 20 years in this industry, right? And you have a lot to offer. I'm sure you've stubbed your toe a couple of times along the entrepreneurial journey, and you've learned some things, and you've also had a lot of success too.

[00:03:28] So it's always fascinating to talk to people like you and just get an open, honest reflection on what it takes to be successful. And I think one of the things that I was reading about recently is you're talking about scaling up your business. You're like, scaling sucks, right?

[00:03:42] Yeah, oh yeah. We can get into that, but that's so honest, right? Yeah, kind of it's really freaking hard, right? Anyway, let's start with this, Curtis. If you don't mind, since November of 2021, a lot has happened with WorkOut. We changed and pivoted a few times.

[00:03:56] Got a really cool product out there right now. So maybe we can start with that. Like, what's the last two years now for you? And what's changed? Yeah, I mean, besides lots. As anybody in the fitness industry would know, I mean, it's been like a yo-yo.

[00:04:09] You look at 2019 when brick and mortar was thriving and digital was kind of making headway but nowhere near like it was in 2020. It didn't help the fact that the capital markets were healthy and strong and money was cheap and digital took off thanks to leaders like Peloton.

[00:04:29] And maybe I can give a little backstory. So been in the health and fitness and the personal training space for the last 20 years and prior to the pandemic, we were developing our own internal software for our physical locations.

[00:04:42] And then when the pandemic hit, we utilized and leveraged our own software solution, bolted a virtual training solution onto it and deployed 200 employee trainers to deliver high end virtual training services globally. And that opened up the door and the opportunity to really lend a hand to the industry.

[00:05:02] And we open up our tool and our platform for the industry. And we had about 1,700 so close to 2,000 fitness professionals utilize our solution to deliver the virtual training services as if they were delivering in-person training. And that's how Workout was born originally.

[00:05:19] It was a fast track go to market. Out of necessity and thought that we could scale synchronous virtual training service through video. And a lot of things have changed, like you said. It's two and a half years later.

[00:05:33] And I love to take you on the journey of what that looked like if you're good with that. Yeah, let's do it, man. And I'm curious too, maybe you'll weave this into the conversation here, the storyline is like, I think a lot of people are curious about

[00:05:48] virtual training. Like, what happened? Did it just fall off a cliff? Are there still people doing it? Like, is it mixed? Is it still in the players? Everything gone back to in-person. So yeah, I'd be curious about that. But please give us the whole enchilada.

[00:06:02] Yeah, so to pick up where I left off, we deployed our software and we leveraged our internal staff to start delivering virtual training services and that synchronous virtual training services alive, not on demand.

[00:06:16] And as we were scaling and we opened up our solution for the rest of the industry, what we realized is that we had 1,700 or 1,800 trainers globally. Everything from across North America to the UK to Australia to down in Costa Rica as an example.

[00:06:30] And what was happening is that we were scaling this business and we owned the end customer. We were using contractors to deliver a service and all of a sudden, we were getting complaints around their trainer not showing up or the Wi-Fi not being connected.

[00:06:47] And we also knew at the same time that there was going to be COVID, there was going to be a post-COVID world and virtual training might not be as adopted as it was under the necessity. And so we were evaluating everything. Like is this scalable?

[00:07:02] Can we control and experience in the virtual world, especially a synchronous service? And so we started then transitioning the model into instead of us owning the customer, the trainer would. And so we turned into a SaaS product and part of that transition went from

[00:07:19] turning the virtual training service into a SaaS product. So we licensed our software, our virtual training software for those trainers and then they controlled and managed their own customers. But then we also knew that there was going to be a time where there wasn't,

[00:07:32] virtual training was not going to be as prominent as it was in 2020 and 2021. And so we wanted to build scheduling and billing tools, invoicing tools and a really end-to-end business solution, which we called Workout Essentials. And we did that in a fairly short period of time.

[00:07:50] We knew it was a little bit competitive in terms of the solutions that were in the market. But we also knew that we could differentiate a little bit. And one of the biggest differentiators was we were publishing our

[00:08:01] profiles, the trainer profiles on a dot com so that consumers could find, search and explore different health professionals around the world. And whether they wanted to work with them virtually or in person, we created a database and a community where just like Airbnb,

[00:08:18] you could get introduced to a health expert, whether you lived in LA or New York or you wanted virtual training from someone that had some level of credentials or experience across the world. And that was good. I think we found a little niche. No one really had that.

[00:08:34] A popular community, I think FutureCo as an example, Future.co was one of the ones that had that similar model, but they were asynchronous. So they weren't live, they weren't virtual. And we thought we could do it quite successfully and

[00:08:50] we were generating leads for those users, meaning the trainers. But then something unique happened, two things actually. So number one, this is I think probably about March of 2022. The markets changed drastically. So it just fell off a cliff with the likes of Peloton.

[00:09:08] So digital fitness literally overnight shifted, let alone the markets change, interest rates were going up. And technology, the technology boom, it's slowed down significantly. But we also, because we had about 1200 out of the 1800 profiles published on our workout.com, brands, some of the leading industry brands and

[00:09:28] products were contacting us wanting to partner with us. They wanted us to be a distribution channel. We had recognized that we built essentially an affiliate community, but there was no easy way that we could monetize off that.

[00:09:44] Sending those brands the names and addresses of all of our users so they could send products to, we could have done that. There was nothing in it for us other than the fact that we're helping out brands. But what ends if we actually thought about a recommendation tool?

[00:10:01] And so with all the affiliate platforms out there, they're more designed for the brands to manage. So they're essentially an affiliate platform where you can manage affiliate codes and your affiliates. But having multiple brands with multiple products without codes, like there wasn't much out there.

[00:10:20] So we went to work and said, hey, maybe our monetization strategy isn't a lead generation through a dual-sided marketplace. What ends if it's a recommendation tool? And we still have the scheduling, billing, and invoicing. We'd still have the virtual training as a subset.

[00:10:35] But we would look at an opportunity to partner and help out all these brands. And that's what we did. We said, hey, this is a cool feature opportunity. And we built a feature, a recommendation tool.

[00:10:47] And fast forward, what we've realized is that that's gonna be our sweet spot. We've opened up a door that doesn't exist in the market. There's maybe one quasi-competitor or someone that's doing something similar, but not quite the same for an adjacent industry.

[00:11:08] And what we realized is that even the scheduling, billing, and virtual training solution, let alone the marketplace, we didn't see as much value or opportunity in that. And so entrepreneurship is never a straight line. It's like that bird's nest. You see that bird's nest?

[00:11:26] And you wanna try and find product market. You finally get there. And what happened was that when we launched our recommendation tool, it took off. We partnered not only with all the leading industry brands and products, everything from TRX, Hyperice, Garden of Life, Thorn Supplements,

[00:11:42] Momentus, some of the top brands in the industry. But we opened up an opportunity to help wellness experts monetize from their existing influence. And finally, the recommendations that they're making daily, that they make no rewards or money from.

[00:12:00] Now they can make a commission and a reward from the recommendations they're making all day long. So in a matter of five minutes, I'm summarizing what took two years. And we couldn't be more thrilled and excited about our store feature, that's what we call it right now.

[00:12:17] It's a store by workout. And what we're bringing to this both community and the industry at large. Yeah, amazing man. And it's such a, you have to wonder when people quote unquote pivot, right? Is intentional?

[00:12:31] Is it just something that seems like just become all of a sudden it just opens up you're like, oh, that's it, right? It's been there the whole time. When you kind of realized the pivot, was it a sudden aha moment or

[00:12:45] was it like or was it kind of a gradual you had to make the decision over time? And then you finally green light it. Like what was that decision making process? I would say it was pretty quick.

[00:12:55] I think a couple factors amplified and accelerated why it was so quick. And one of them was the capital markets. Like we knew if we were going to build a digital business in the fitness industry with the market shifts and changes, let alone the industry changes.

[00:13:09] We knew that we couldn't run a business that had no pathway to profitability. We couldn't run a business that had a significant amount of capital that was required to get to profitability. And so, that accelerated it.

[00:13:24] But to be honest with you, when we launched the recommendation tool and had immediate users and immediate feedback that was like, this is what the industry's been missing. We knew quite quickly that this is what we want to focus on.

[00:13:38] And we also wanted to look at all of our features and all of our tools and all of the things that we've built and realize that, yes, when you build software there's going to be some tech debt.

[00:13:49] And when you build software in an industry that over the last four years like fitness where consumer and trainer behavior had flip flop significantly multiple times, it was going to take some time to find that product market for the long term.

[00:14:03] And when we found a tool that immediately got adopted and immediately accelerated from a growth perspective, we knew that this was it. And so, we're lucky enough to identify it when we did. And I think sometimes you have to go through these challenges and changes and evolutions.

[00:14:22] And I wouldn't say it's a complete pivot always. I think you can connect the dots looking forward, but you can connect them looking back. And if we had never launched a virtual training service and

[00:14:34] shifted that into a SaaS product and then populated our users on a workout.com, we would have never been approached by the brands and the products like we were. Would never, ever. And if we didn't explore that opportunity,

[00:14:48] we would have never actually realized that there wasn't really useful tools for wellness experts to recommend products outside the traditional discount codes affiliate and social influencer models. And so, yeah, we realized quickly that we had found something.

[00:15:05] There's a lot of, I look at the problems and if people, it's free to download, right? Like if you're a practitioner or a gym owner, you can just go to workout.com and download the app. Is that correct? Correct, yeah.

[00:15:17] You can go to the App Store too, so you can go to the Apple Store, Android Store, we have a desktop version. And you can download the app for free. And I would say that it's not even fitness experts or wellness professionals. It's anybody.

[00:15:33] If you have the love for a brand or a product and you're an advocate and you finally want to get rewarded for your advocacy, it doesn't matter if you're a top level executive in the finance industry or a stay-at-home mom.

[00:15:48] The beautiful thing is that we're paying for people to advocate for the brands and products they already love and trust. Yeah, I love it. We're podcast hosts, right? Yeah, bloggers. The store itself, so it looks... If people go and they do download it, it looks clean.

[00:16:05] It's very simple, right? But as what I've seen in my diving in and out of the world of app building is like simple is not easy to build, right? So when you're going through as you're building this, like what lessons from a tech perspective?

[00:16:20] Because you're a fitness guy, right? Like you own all these studios, you've been a trainer for a long time. Like can I dove in headfirst into the world of technology? Like as maybe other founders or in the tech space, like what did you learn about it?

[00:16:35] What were some of the surprises? What could you pass on to people from building an app and a platform like this? Yeah, that's a great question. And I love how the fact that I got cornered in to be that a fitness guy, which is true, which is true.

[00:16:47] But I started as a fitness guy. Yeah. The end of the day, when you're building a product, sell it before it's built. You know, test the market, see what the market, how the market responds. You know, if you can sell something that doesn't exist,

[00:17:03] you know, it's going to save you a lot of time and headache before. I mean, we were rushed to market just because of necessity and the environment of the industry over the pandemic. But that being said with the store product, you know,

[00:17:15] we validated some of our assumptions before it even existed. You know, I mean, we were approached by brands and products, and that's how this came to be. So I'd say that's number one, if you can sell the product before you even have it,

[00:17:27] validate your assumptions, don't make and rely on your assumptions. That's number one. Number two, know that there's going to be a percentage of tech debt. I think if you don't have tech debt when you're building something, it's because you're not moving fast enough.

[00:17:42] You know, if you want to get scrappy and find product market fit, the reality is that you're going to have to assume that some of the things that you build might not be the right thing. But if you're too conservative and you take too long, you burn capital,

[00:17:56] you take longer and you also risk the fact that there's going to be other people out there that are going to beat you to the, you know, to that product market fit before you.

[00:18:04] So I think you have to understand that there's going to be a level of tech debt. And if you can minimize it, great. But you also have to realize that like if you're not innovating, you know, and being a category creator,

[00:18:16] you're not going to have all the answers and you're going to find them pretty quick. And then I think the last one, you know, when you look at it and you launch it, don't launch and think and have an expectation that you're going to launch with,

[00:18:28] you know, a thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand users right away. You don't want to do that, to be honest with you. You want to launch with a small core. You want to test it. You want to see what the user experience is like.

[00:18:39] And you want to see how they interact with the product. So don't over engineer something. Don't give them like two or three ways to do something. Give them one way, you know, because when you give someone three doors

[00:18:51] to enter a room, they get confused what door to enter. And so, you know, the simpler the better. And when you can do that and you can get feedback and gain knowledge instead of base your product build based on assumptions, you know,

[00:19:06] let the user create the journey and the experience, not yourself as an entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah, well said. And maybe walk us through the user experience. And by user I mean like practitioners, fitness professionals, James, the people who listen to this podcast, right?

[00:19:21] Like when you download the app, like what can they expect? What happens next? Yes, when you download the app, the first thing is you have to set up your profile. You don't have to. You can navigate the app.

[00:19:32] The app stores make it mandatory that you can navigate the app before you set up your profile. So you can still explore your, you know, the app functionality. But in essence, you know, you want to set up your profile, which includes,

[00:19:45] you know, probably a profile picture, your personal information, and then link your bank account because it's a recommendation platform and you're earning rewards, you know, we're going to pay you. And so hopefully you want to set up your bank account for sure.

[00:19:57] And then when you go in there, what you're going to be able to find is that you're going to be able to, you know, search based on brands based on product categories and based on goals or pain points.

[00:20:08] And so, you know, you can, you know, search if you know what you want to recommend. If I want to recommend a high price vault, or if I want to recommend a TRX suspension trainer, I can go in there, search based on brand

[00:20:21] or search based on product category. And then I can find that product. If you want to search based on goal or pain point, such as hormone health, immune health, you know, gut health as an example, then you can,

[00:20:33] you know, navigate those goals or pain points as if you're trying to solve a pain point for your customer, your client. And then products will show up in that way as well. And what you're doing is you're building essentially a prescriptive cart.

[00:20:47] So you're building a prescription just like a doctor does when you go to the doctor's office and you're building it could be anything from, you know, just recommending one latest and greatest emerging product all the way to someone has some pain points in their wellness journey.

[00:21:03] And you want to recommend everything from supplementation to equipment to, you know, uh, you know, products such as like a cold plunge in blue, like blocking glasses. So it could be any of that. And when you, when you create a recommendation, it could be one product

[00:21:17] or it could be many and it could be one brand or it could be many. And then when you build that prescriptive cart, you create a recommendation link and that recommendation links can be text emailed, embedded in a blog post or podcast, or even shared on social.

[00:21:32] And you can make a, you know, a prescriptive individualized prescription or note to that person. So just like yourself, Eric, I can say, Hey Eric, these are the, these are products I recommend for your wellness journey. And you're going to receive that in a cart fashion directly from

[00:21:48] myself to prescriber and, or, you know, you can do a general bundle, save it as a bundle, like my favorite recovery bundle. And then post this on a newsletter, a blog, you know, on social media or even in podcast.

[00:22:01] And so, you know, you can capture that in many ways. And then when the user, the end user clicks on that link, you know, they get a prescriptive recommendation and they can choose to add all items to

[00:22:13] cart and pay for it right then and there, or they can maybe, maybe you didn't realize that they already had a product. And so they can remove products from the prescriptive cart that you've built for them.

[00:22:24] And then they check out and the media as soon as they check out, you get notified as a, as a trainer and a wellness expert and you get compensated for that recommendation. So you make anywhere between 12 to 18% on any products that you recommend. Yeah.

[00:22:40] And you know what I, it's really cool, man. I love what you guys built the, you know, I was just reflecting on my own day or like it's not even 1235 here in Montana. And I've already recommended a tonal unit and a podcasting platform. Right.

[00:22:57] And with no, like I'm not going to make any money off of either one of those. Right. And I probably could, but the thing is like, it's just so much time. Like if I want to go to tonal, right?

[00:23:06] And like, you know, I can set up my, my affiliate deal with them, but you know, gosh, this is going to take like a couple of days, right? And this is so instant, right? It's like instant gratification.

[00:23:16] You can just sign up, get everything done and they can start making recognitions right away. And what I think is interesting for you guys too, and I'm, maybe I'm sure this is on your mental roadmap, but it's like data, right?

[00:23:27] You guys are going to get some really interesting data out of this. And one of the things I'm curious, like early on now, you guys are, you know, hitting the market strong, but is there any like indications like what trainers and coaches and practitioners are recommending the most?

[00:23:42] Like, is there any specific categories that you're seeing? Any interesting aha moments that you're starting to see early on? You know what, it's quite a mix actually. It's, it's, it's relatively early, but it, you know, what's unique about this is that we have, it's a good point.

[00:23:56] We have data on so many levels. Number one, we have information and data on what people are recommending, which is what you're asking. And I'd say that's a little bit seasonality. There's seasonality trends, you know, in the wintertime, you're

[00:24:08] going to see people recommend vitamin D more than they recommend it during the summertime. Number one, you have emerging categories. So emerging categories like, you know, hot and cold therapy, blue light blocking glasses, you know, items that possibly the end user,

[00:24:24] the client or the consumer just don't know, you know, which brand, you know, they should be buying or, you know, validating some of their assumptions or going to their practitioner or their wellness expert to get authentic recommendation around something they kind of know a little bit about.

[00:24:40] So we see a lot of those kinds of brands and products. And then I would suggest, I would say that on the supplementation side, we're seeing a lot of brands and products being recommended because that is the brand and products that the wellness expert consumes themselves.

[00:24:56] Like, that's the unique thing with supplements. It's like your chances are you're going to recommend the ones that you you consume when, whether it's blue light blocking glasses, whether it's hot and cold therapy products like cold plunges, you know,

[00:25:08] chances are, you know, the wellness expert knows the leading brand and so they're going to recommend the leading brand, you know, whether they like it or not. And so, you know, there's some unique things that are going on for sure.

[00:25:18] What's unique about our solution is that we can provide data to the brands. And the data that we can provide to the brands include who are your biggest advocates? You know, your biggest consumer possibly, but who are the advocates?

[00:25:34] Who are validating, you know, your direction, your brand profile, your ingredients in your supplements, whatever it might be. Who are those advocates and how are they advocating? Number one, number two, when they make product recommendations, what are the adjacent products that they're recommending that those brands don't have?

[00:25:52] So every single time, you know, a collagen goes out as a recommendation. Is there a vitamin D attached to it? Or every single time, you know, someone's recommending, you know, hot and cold therapy is there blue light blocking glasses going out with, you know, those recommendations.

[00:26:08] So we can provide data to brands that they don't have access to and really showcase some categories that they might be missing, you know, revenue streams from or, you know, adjacent categories that they might be exploring that they can get validation around. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:22] It's it's it's going to be interesting to see the stuff that you guys are getting out of there. I want to give some time too to innovative fitness, right? You mean wow, right? You also have how many brick and mortar locations across Canada

[00:26:37] that you had to guide through the pandemic. Like, yeah, that going on too. So you give us an insight. It's like what's going on in the brick and mortar side? And how is that? Is it complementary to what you guys are doing at workout?

[00:26:46] I don't imagine it is. But yeah, give us give us some insights on that too. Yeah, I mean, workout was born out of out of it was born out of our brick and mortar my brick and mortar experience been in

[00:26:56] the space for, you know, longer than 22 years and built up a brand in a business not by myself with obviously, you know, strong leadership around me. And there, you know, we went into COVID with 12 locations. We exited with 13. We didn't permanently shut down one location.

[00:27:14] You know, we were lucky in that way. And I think it's because of the decisions our team made. And since then, we've put on three more locations. We have 16 right now and soon to be 23. Actually, we signed a contract in a deal with with a developer in Toronto.

[00:27:29] So, you know, from a growth perspective and as you know, surviving, you know, the pandemic, I think we've done fairly well. The brick and mortar, you know, world has not recovered. You know, if you ask anybody from the largest big box gyms to, you know,

[00:27:44] like chains like Lifetime all the way to Equinox, all the way to the F-45s Orange Series in the boutique world, you know, it's, you know, everybody's still down and they're still recovering. I don't know where the consumer is. It's almost like they just disappeared.

[00:27:58] But, you know, it's, you know, I'd say we're probably on average about 80, 85% of where we were pre, you know, pre pandemic. That's per studio sales like, you know, same store revenue, you know, revenue as a whole. We've surpassed where we were in 2019 because we have more, you know,

[00:28:15] more locations. And in terms of your question about, you know, the synergies between Workout and Innovative, well, Workout or Innovative becomes a test kitchen for Workout. You know, we get to try things, features, products, because the future of Workout, we've built a unique E-com solution.

[00:28:35] That's what we've built. We've built something that doesn't exist in the marketplace. And we believe that we've put the power of recommendations in the wellness provider's hands. And we are about to turn wellness studios into wellness retailers.

[00:28:50] So we have a, you know, not only is it an individual wellness expert or individual prescribers product, but we've also unlocked opportunity for clinics and studios and gym chains to now carry inventory they never had or never could, or never wanted to take the

[00:29:09] risk on and make money on digital inventory by selling products within their footprints. And so we have a wellness in a clinic version that's being launched here shortly. And yeah, we couldn't be more excited. What do you look for as far as the brand partners, right?

[00:29:24] We mentioned a bunch of names. We mentioned momentous. I think TRX was in there. Hyper-Ice, like a lot of different ones. But what do you look for in a good brand partner? I mean, besides having all of them, right, which eventually, you know,

[00:29:37] you'll probably get there, but you have to be selective, right? Time resources are limited at this point, you know, as you guys scale. But what do you think your mind makes a great brand and product partner? Yeah, I mean, our strategy to build our catalog is unique.

[00:29:53] We have to build it both in the United States, but we have to also build it globally as well and not all brands in the US ship to countries like Canada. So, you know, for us, you know, we have to think about that.

[00:30:05] Number one, we have to think about the staples, right? What are what are the products that, you know, a majority of the industry is recommending, especially from a supplementation perspective? Because if they go on to the catalog and their favorites aren't there,

[00:30:19] the likelihood of them returning or utilizing our solution might be adopted less. And so we have to think about that. We also have to think about like the brands themselves. I think that's what you're getting to, you know, how do they show up in the world?

[00:30:32] Like what are their values? How do they treat their customers? How do they market? Do they control minimum advertised pricing? So that's really important to us. Like we want to make sure we are competitive for both our trainers and

[00:30:45] wellness experts that are recommending the products and obviously the end consumer. The last thing we want is that a wellness expert recommends a product at a certain price point that consumer gets that expert advice and expert recommendation, and then they realize that they could, you know, buy that

[00:31:01] product for 10 or $20 cheaper somewhere else. And because that breaks the trust in our platform, but it breaks the trust between the wellness expert and the end consumer. And we can't have that happen. You know, we're here to serve the wellness expert.

[00:31:17] And with the last thing we want is that so it's really important that we find brands that control their map pricing that really have can manage that. And then from a fulfillment perspective, we want to make sure that the end consumer has the ideal brand experience.

[00:31:35] And so that's another unique thing about our brand and products. So we don't fulfill any of the products that are ordered. You know, basically what we do is we provide a tool for the wellness expert to recommend brands and products.

[00:31:48] Then consumer then can buy from that wellness expert at, you know, guaranteed low pricing and so they can't get it cheaper anywhere else because of the brand partners that we partner with. And then it signals to those brands once they order to fulfill the products.

[00:32:03] So like a drop shipping. And what's great about that is that those brands and products or the consumer story gets the full brand experience. They don't get an Amazon box that was beat up along the way.

[00:32:14] They get the full branded experience straight from, you know, from the brand. And, you know, they get that entire experience as if as if they shop directly online with that, with that, directly online with that brand.

[00:32:29] You know, one of the things too, as I reflect back on my GM operator days is like I used to sell a lot of products, a lot of supplements. FS, which one was that camera, the protein powder is really big in the CrossFit world.

[00:32:42] And then I sold innovate shoes, right? That was the brand that I loved. Remember that brand? They're still around. I just, yeah, I don't know why they lost market share in CrossFit. That's a whole another story. But man, it was just a pain, right?

[00:32:53] Like I never had enough inventory, especially on the shoe side. Like I had a pre-buy shoes of various sizes. Yeah. Right. That was a recipe for disaster. That was a nightmare. Yeah. That was a huge learning lesson. But there's no inventory here, right?

[00:33:09] Like if I'm a gym owner, I want to adopt the platform and have my trainers use it. For example, like I don't have to worry about which supplements I carry, inventory, managing that inventory, what happens to my surplus inventory.

[00:33:22] You know, all that stuff seems to be a problem of the past if this is adopted correctly. Yeah. It's I can't wait to launch this in the wellness studios and the clinics. And we're already seeing it work in some of our pilots that we have.

[00:33:36] You know, think about this. You know, supplement stores and wellness retailers are, you know, they're being challenged right now. And they've been challenged for the last 10 years thanks to, you know, Ecom and Amazon. And, you know, they don't own the foot traffic. They don't own the audience.

[00:33:52] And, you know, they have to work hard to drive people into their into their, you know, four walls. You know, the unique thing about wellness studios and boutique studios like personal training studios, CrossFit studios, you know, any wellness,

[00:34:05] even clinics, you know, physiotherapy, chiropractic clinics, they own that foot traffic. So we're essentially transforming wellness studios and clinics into the opportunity to be a wellness retailer without any, you know, capital outlay without any built in retail area, without any, you know, risk of expired inventory.

[00:34:27] You know, all of these things, you know, and so, you know, we're creating digital displays in the studios, showcasing that, you know, the studio sells a variety of different products like thorn supplements and T-Rex and HyperIce. And, you know, and now the consumer can easily, you know,

[00:34:45] order straight from, you know, either their wellness provider's recommendation or just as they pass the front desk. And they know that within 24 to 48 hours it's showing up on their doorstep. And so they don't even have to have to juggle with the inventory leaving, you

[00:35:01] know, the store. Like the worst is when you go shopping downtown and next, you know, you got, especially when you shop with my wife, you know, you got a bunch of bags, you know, over the shoulders and in the hands and,

[00:35:11] and you don't know what to do with it. You want to go for lunch or something after. So they can literally work out, you know, order some products through their, through the front desk or reception or through

[00:35:21] their wellness expert, and they can walk out and go for coffee and they don't have to worry about, you know, putting the tub of protein in their, in the back trunk of their car. And so we are transforming and

[00:35:30] think about that, right? Like, you know, if an average supplement store, like a 2,000 square foot supplement store makes, you know, three to $5,000 a day in sales, you know, and adds, you know, anywhere from 90 to 120 grand a month in sales, you know, why couldn't a wellness

[00:35:47] studio do that? Like why couldn't a boutique personal train studio do that? And even if it was a fraction, it's revenue that they didn't have before. And they're making an error between 15 and 20 points on that. And so, you know, it's, we're pretty excited. And

[00:36:00] more importantly, we, you finally become the one stop shop. You finally, you know, provide the products that the end customer actually needs to elicit and achieve the best health outcomes that they're looking for. You know, we can't ignore that either.

[00:36:17] So it's a great solution. And same thing with online coaches. You know, when you have online coaches, which just exploded the last five years with the rise of the creator. Now you can, you know, bundle up products and onboarding bundles in 30 day, 60

[00:36:32] day, 90 day challenges. And, you know, you can, you know, design programs and product recommendations, you know, within your, you know, meal planning, you know, and nutritional, you know, support. So there's a lot of functionality that we can explore. And we're pretty excited by that.

[00:36:49] And you know, probably the coolest thing too is as this gets into more people's hands within the industry, like you're going to see like, oh, I never even thought about that. I never thought it could be used like that, right? Or, you know,

[00:36:59] that's, that's always the fun part when you put stuff out into the universe and you start seeing like, okay, this was the intentional use which is being done. And then like, wow, I never thought like I look at like tonal because we talked

[00:37:11] about earlier, but you know, I use tonal the way it was built to be used. But I look at someone like Kelly Starrett and you watch him as Instagram videos he's doing like sled drags with this thing attached to his wall, right?

[00:37:21] Like you're like, wow, I never even thought about that. And it's super functional that way. You brought it up and people were probably thinking about it. But what kind of like commissions can you expect from workout if you sign up?

[00:37:33] Yeah, so it range minimum 10% on every product can go from 10 to 18%. And we'll continue to try to unlock, you know, more opportunities around commissions and rewards. You know, we have some unique features and functionality in the product roadmap that can really, you

[00:37:48] know, optimize rewards for sure. But yeah, anywhere between 10 and 18%. And that's no joke, you know, if you go and build, first off, the hassle to build an affiliate, you know, relationships with multiple brands is tough. You know, then you got to think about link trees and, you

[00:38:04] know, you know, other management, you know, managing codes, you know, but most people aren't getting much more than that if that anyways. So, you know, anywhere between 10 and 18% on every product recommendation that you make, you know, is a nice little reward or can be a

[00:38:20] large reward, you know, that you didn't get before from recommending the products. And you know what? I'm eating my own dog food. You know, it's funny because I don't have clients. I don't coach anybody anymore. You know, besides fitness professionals. And, you know, I just, you know, I

[00:38:38] use our own tool. I get asked two, three times a week someone's like, Hey, Curtis, I saw this online. What do you think of this? Or do you have any recommendations on brands around this category or do you have any supplement

[00:38:49] recommendations? I'm using my own tool to recommend products. And I think I'm actually one of the leading recommending parties on our platform, you know, because I'm consistent and I know it, I know how to use it, even though it's pretty user friendly. And so I'm, you know,

[00:39:03] when it's working, you know, it's amazing. And, you know, talk about the aha surprises. I mean, what's unique is that we're getting stay at home moms and executives that are not even certified professional personal trainers or qualified wellness experts like chiropractors and physios, they're utilizing it because

[00:39:21] they have the love for these brands and products. And they stumbled around our platform and said, Hey, I'm a, you know, high level business influencer. You know, I got my podcast, I've written a book, I'm on the speaking circuit and I lead a healthy lifestyle. And

[00:39:38] I talk about some of the stuff I do from a mindset perspective. And so now we're getting, you know, large influencers that are not, you know, in the wellness or fitness space per se, utilizing our tool because they don't want to manage, you know, some brand deals.

[00:39:53] They don't even know where to start. They're not in the wellness, you know, in the wellness field. So yeah, it's pretty exciting. From that standpoint. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me too. I got to get on my app and work out. I want to build a little longevity

[00:40:07] package and recommendation for people. It seems to be a topic that comes up on this show all the time. So I'm going to get that done this week or you just motivate me to make that happen. Yeah, awesome. You

[00:40:15] know, one of the things I want to touch on as as we have some time left here is you started kind of a new venture, right? And we did a little micro interview on it recently about healthy ambitions and

[00:40:26] what that is. And you felt, it seems to me like you just felt compelled to get this spun up and start getting your experience through content out to people within our industry or just entrepreneurs in general. So give me a little bit of insights, man.

[00:40:41] Like what was the impetus? Why did you set to start this? It's a newsletter. Sure. It's going to be much more. What's the vision? Give us the goods on that. Yeah. So I think this just evolved over time and

[00:40:54] I was already doing majority of the work anyways. So as much as it might seem like a new venture, it's about content and it's about helping the industry. So for for 20 years, we built a franchise model at Innovative Fitness where we provided system

[00:41:09] solutions, leadership support, you know, and driving content and support to help our franchise owners run a successful business, you know, everything from documented documented systems to, you know, leadership meetings all the way to, you know, annual conferences. And so,

[00:41:26] you know, we were, we spent a lot of time on developing our employees, our teammates, our franchise owners, supporting them, you know, and and so and we've done that naturally over the last 20 years as an as an obligation, you know, as an employer or as a franchise or

[00:41:43] and then what was happening is that I was getting asked all the time like a lot of business leaders would contact me and say, hey, Kers, I need your opinion or, hey, I have a friend that owns three gyms. I have

[00:41:54] a friend that wants to scale his physio clinic and I would take calls. So, you know, one, you know, one of my downsides of, you know, who I am as a person, I'm probably too nice and I don't say no enough. And so I'd

[00:42:06] be on calls and, you know, people are like, Oh, my God, that was such valuable information an hour. Can you like, can you help coach me? And I just didn't have the time capacity structure or setup to go do that.

[00:42:17] And I wasn't ready to do that. And so, you know, then I started populating more content, especially on a platform like LinkedIn. And what I realized is I was writing all these thoughtful, you know, thought-provoking articles or, you know, tidbits or, you

[00:42:31] know, learnings based on my 20 years of experience running a brick and mortar, you know, business, let alone, you know, a tech platform. And, you know, I got private DMs asking me for advice or thoughts or ideas or how I can help them. And I wasn't controlling the

[00:42:48] content, you know, is sending out in the universe and LinkedIn owned it or, you know, social platforms owned it. And so I decided like instead of devoting all the time and energy to, to put great content out in the world and not to,

[00:43:01] to really control it, you know, why don't we launch a newsletter? And so I launched a newsletter called Healthy Ambitions like five years ago, was actually directed more to the consumer. And I realized it was still applicable. You know, there's so much ambition

[00:43:15] to be great in this industry, to make an impact, to change people's lives, to grow and scale a wellness business, whether it's online or a brick and mortar. And, you know, people don't know, people do not know how to do it healthily. You know, they follow their

[00:43:30] passion and then they run up to a bunch of obstacles. And so my main goal is how can I actually be a resource, provide insights, learnings, you know, and share some great meaningful content to people that aspire and have healthy ambitions to grow and scale their wellness business.

[00:43:48] And so we launched that and every Thursday, a newsletter goes out, you know, there's some meaningful content. We share some of that content on LinkedIn and other social profile platforms. And, you know, and now we're, you know, launching a group coaching and a Slack channel for just

[00:44:06] industry people in general. So I, you know, we just launched, you know, a Slack channel where if you're an industry professional, it doesn't matter if you're an executive, you work for a brand or you're aspiring independent trainer that wants to build their online profile. You can join on

[00:44:22] the Slack channel and you can just socialize and interact with anybody in the industry that's on the channel. So yeah, I mean, we're just trying to be, you know, provide resources. I think, you know, it's kind of my zone of genius to be

[00:44:34] honest to you as much as I'm a good operator, you know, man, do I love helping people? And if we can provide solutions and support not only in a form of a tech platform like Workout, but also through leadership articles and leadership content, you

[00:44:52] know, and a supportive community, then why wouldn't we do that? And so we're super excited. Yeah, you can find more information out at CurtisChristofferson.com to find out more about healthy ambitions. Yeah. And we'll put that link in the show notes too. And yeah, man, I

[00:45:07] appreciate everything you do and people, if they haven't figured out by the title of this or Kurt's t-shirt, it's workout is WRKOT. So it's only got one on it or any of the ads that have run on here. So first of all, man, thank you for

[00:45:20] coming on the show again. Second of all, from, you know, deep gratitude, thank you for supporting the show. Podcasts, it means a lot, you know, independent podcaster. It's, you know, everything helps when you're churning out episodes. So thank you for all that. And yeah,

[00:45:34] man, it's always great catching up and yeah, any other place you'd like people to go besides the two websites. You know, I realized that, you know, probably people might have troubles finding our workout app on the app store. So you search, if you're looking to download the app,

[00:45:50] you can access on the website like workout.com as Eric mentioned, but search store by workout, you know, simple store by workout and you'll find it downloaded, check it out, navigate, set up your account. And that's about it. I mean, I'm very active on LinkedIn,

[00:46:05] very active on social platforms like Instagram. And other than that, I'm thrilled and excited to be once again a guest on your podcast. I think it's one of the leading podcasts in the industry and I can't be more thankful to be a guest. Appreciate it, man.

[00:46:20] Ladies and gentlemen, Curtis Christofferson. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host Eric Malzone. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Feminist. If you did, I'm going to ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five

[00:46:35] 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, Cast Fox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put on social media, talk about

[00:46:52] 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 want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly,

[00:47:03] if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me. Simply go to the future of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there or you can simply get in touch with me as I'd love to hear from our listeners. So thank you

[00:47:15] so much. This is Eric Malzone and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.