Dan Uyemura - The Future of Gym Operating Systems

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. Insight Tracker can help. Insight Tracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly, my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Inside Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Inside Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. Inside Tracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Inside Tracker, the science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is insight tracker.com forward slash future. Dan, welcome back to the future of fitness, man. It's good to have you. Great to be here. I feel like it's been too long. It has. I didn't even actually look, but I presume it's something like two years it's been, which in COVID time is like 14 years. Yeah, I feel like we spoke right at the beginning of COVID, maybe. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So uh CEO of Are you currently still the CEO of Push Press? Currently still am as we speak. Yeah. Right on. Uh well, you guys have been making big moves, man. You know, I had Jim Kroll um on this podcast just a few weeks ago. And uh, you know, he's involved in in some of the work that you guys do, and it's always interesting to get updates from him, but kind of hearing it from the horse's mouth, I'm I'm really keen on hearing what's new with push press and and just the overall category of what we describe pre-recording as you know, gym operating systems, because it is evolving. They're more than just CRMs now, right? Um, you guys and in the category uh overall. So yeah, if if you can, maybe just give us a little synopsis, what's been new over the last two years?

Um yeah, it's been a while, two years. Um we we launched our free version of PushPress, which I think is still the only free version of like a gym operating system type company out there, right before COVID hit. So COVID came became like a really big rallying point in our industry. And um, I mean, if you know us, like most of us own gyms, have owned gyms, and we're pretty big advocate of gym owners. It's pretty near and dear to us. So when COVID hit, we spent that year really just focusing on how to help gym owners in a in a meaningful way, helping them get loans, helping them cut costs, helping them understand how to survive the the downturn. And um that year really felt like, like you said, 10 years. It was really long. But uh PushPress as a company did pretty good because I think we have the free product and because we're so just altruistically in line with the gym's best interests. Um the last year has been really interesting. We've actually um we've been growing pretty pretty good, which has allowed us to reinvest a ton of money into hiring more people. Um, we actually brought um one of Jim's companies on. We spoke about earlier. Um, we acquired a workout tracking system to allow us to start offering that that type of a service to our clients. Um, I think we probably tripled our team in terms of employees last year. We're probably gonna at least double it again this year. Um, it's just really about investing back into building a better product. And um that product isn't just the software, but it's also the support and uh how to use the software and the education as well. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on. I think when you and I talked last, uh you basically dared anybody to build a software. Still do. It's only getting worse.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been uh involved in a lot of uh, you know, development of app companies. Not me personally, I'm far from a developer, but just been in the process in some way. And it's it's always uh 10 times more work and time than everyone assumes it would be. And and resources, of course, finances are uh really can run away quite easily.

Yeah, it's it's it's it's a really challenging business to get into. Um the the adage is launching your product is probably about 10% of the work. And then it's like continually making it better and fixing the problems that come up and and all that stuff is just an ongoing forever cost. There is no such thing as building software and just sitting back and letting it do its thing. It's it's ongoing forever.

Yeah, yeah, man. Well, I I I like to get your outlook first of all, like what is changing with gym operating systems? Like what what's what's the difference between what okay, you know, Eric uh 2015, right, was just using, I think I was using whatever at the time, either Zen Planner, Mind Body, or Whattify, like one of these other ones. I never actually used push pressure, I wish I did. Um, but you know, those days compared fast forward to only seven years now, which you know is an eternity when it comes to technology. What's different in these categories between just classical business, you know, gym CRMs and now what we would classify as a gym operating system?

Yeah. So the two big things, which we can probably dive into in more detail if you want to, in from my perspective, is um we live in a world of interoperability now, and there's very niched and nuanced functionality that everyone needs for their own life. And as I was saying to you before this call, if you look at your own iPhone, you'll see an example of that. Like an iPhone comes with phone and messages and notes and SMS and just maybe like 10 apps, but you start to extend it down the niches you're into, and those could be very, very particular, you know, like very focused particular things. So the one thing, like when you're when you're judging yourself on like 2007 tech or two, when did you say 2015 tech? Um you're basically talking about tech that was probably conceptualized and started to be built in mid-2000s, right? So mid-2000s is before the concept of APIs, it might have been before the launch of the iPhone, it was before cloud computing, right? There's a lot of tech that has been it had been introduced around the late 2000s and early 2010s, before big data. So one of the biggest concepts that's going to be coming to market, we've we've been working on from kind of day one, but now we have the resources to really lean into it, is what we call platform. So it's the ability to extend uh your iPhone or your gym operating system in the direction that you need it to to keep it simple um yet uh very, very um lightweight, but doing what you need it to do, right? So that's the platform concept, isn't it the first big one. The second big one is um this concept of data analysis and big data that is happening everywhere. So um up until really recently, big data was very expensive in the terms of data collection, databases, uh, being able to parse the data and all this stuff. And that's as all technology has gotten cheaper over the years, and it's actually at a point now where a small gym can leverage that on the backs of technology built by companies like us. Um, and so we're actually entering a world where all of the big data efficiencies, like imagine an airline with all their dynamic pricing and all that all the data that they're using to do everything that they're doing now is available and accessible to a gym, right? And to me, that's the biggest thing about technology is it democratizes access to uh technology expensive and convoluted technological processes over time it becomes accessible to everybody. Yeah, those are really good.

I like these these topics. Let's start with platforms. I mean, dive into that a little bit more. Explain it to me like I'm five years old, because I think uh I kind of understand it at that level.

So, I mean, as a five-year-old, the easiest explanation literally is the iPhone because when you give your five, when you buy an iPad for your five-year-old to keep them entertained at the dinner table, it's gonna have a very different functional use set than uh for your day-to-day professional, you know, if you had an iPad for your for yourself for work. So that that's the easiest way to visualize it. In the terms and the settings of a gym, think of it this way: like um one of the pitfalls we've seen from um the previous generation of software is in order to make that software work for a dance studio, a martial arts studio, a CrossFit gym, and a yoga studio, is they have to build uh just horizontal layers of functionality that everybody has to wade through to deal with, right? Um, because there's no real way to do it without being super confusing and super bloated, but it did the job. So when you talk to most people using um, and I'm gonna I'll use their name, Mind Body, right? Like I fully respect what Mind Body's done. Um they have a great product, it does everything. But when you talk to people that use it, most of their most of them will say something along the lines of like, I feel like I use 5% of the platform. Like I don't use it to its ability. And maybe honestly, they are using it to all of its ability, but because there's so many other options and so many different functional features, it leaves them feeling like they're not using it all, right? So in the in the lens of what we're doing, what the where the platform will help is a martial arts studio can can we can develop things like a belt tracking system, or for a rock climbing gym, we can develop a bouldering wall app that will turn on functionality and user interface points and stuff like that, specifically for those gym owners. But for the yoga studio, that's would be noise, right? So we live in an era where everybody expects things to be fast, easy, and kind of done for you, right? And so the more noise there is, the less they feel that way. And that that includes gym clients too, right?

So yeah, I guess that's like the uh the business equivalent of personalization, right? Is what everyone wants with with their platforms. I mean, all those examples you said make a lot of sense. And I'm curious with what you guys do, because you know, I haven't operated on a uh a software package like you guys in a long time because I haven't needed to. I haven't owned a gym in you know five years. But it was always uh the setup, man, like getting it all set up and customized to what you need, like just getting the simple reporting that all I want. I just want these KPIs, right? I just want to get this data fed to me. I want these automations set in place. But to get there was just so it was almost like uh, you know, there's there's Salesforce consultants where you had to go externally hire a third party to come in and like arrange everything for you, right? How do you guys tackle that customization or that personalization on the platform?

Yeah, that's a really, really good point that I think a lot of people overlook. And to be completely frank, as of today, we do a poor job at that. Um however, what we're working towards is solve a lot of it solving things like that. So uh imagine a world where you identify what type of gym you are. Um to keep this non-like CrossFit specific, I know we're both kind of from the CrossFit world, but let's say you're a you know, a hit gym. When you join, you can say, I'm a hit gym, and we're building this uh a templating system. So it'll be like, okay, hit gyms need an unlimited package, a punch card, they have these certain types of membership types, they have these certain general classes, and it will pre-populate your entire system with them, which will then give you a tutorial to walk through and edit for what you need. Um, and the reason we kind of did that is what we realized is editing is easier than creating, right? So it's easier to look at like a couple predefined packages set up and then edit those, right? The the other thing we're working towards, and and you mentioned this, and I'm glad you did, is like building your reports, in my opinion, is a flawed way to think as a small business owner. Um, because you should be focused on your on what you should be focused on is your serving your customers' needs. And when you start to turn into data analyst and data, like being able to understand how to build a report and is the metric shaped right, and analyzing it in and of itself is hard. Um what we want to shift stuff towards is more of a we're telling you what to do based on the data versus you trying to figure out how to build the data, understand the data, and then decide what to do with the data, right? Um at the end of the day, there's gener there's a few different things that we want as outcomes, right? You want leads to convert. Well, you want more leads in the door, you want those leads to convert, you want them to be to be a member longer, and you want them to spend more money while they're a member, right? So like let's just say those are the four objectives, right? Amen. Um, yeah you we can we can sift through all this data. Now we're talking about the data end of things. We can sift through all of the data and say, like, what creates those, you know, what creates these four things, right? Maybe it's um when you send out a certain text message 13 days after they join, it increases this one, but decreases that one. I don't know. Like as we start to look to the data, we can just say, like, this is what has to happen. This person hasn't had this touch point yet. This person is not going to enough classes, so text them and get them into a class, whatever it is, right? Um, a more prescriptive model, right? It's almost the equivalent of you going to a doctor's office today and they say, like, hey, eat more vegetables and work out more, versus here's your workout prescription, do these three workouts a week and report back to me. And here's the here's your diet plan, right? There's two different success paths there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like just delivering the symptoms but not telling anyone what to do about it. Yeah. Or just, yeah, exactly. Um, yeah.

Yeah. So so that's, I think um where software's going, and this is not just in the gym space, but all software, it's moving away from like, here's your general workspace, like a blank Google Sheet, and you figure out what you want to do with it, and you can build your process around it, more towards like, we're gonna do everything we can for you. We're gonna tell you what to do based on data for the things we can't do for you. And then whatever falls to the bottom is stuff that you have to figure out, and hopefully that that trends towards zero, right?

Yeah. It there's uh, you know, interesting noticing that I've had too is just the um there seems to be two trends that I see when it comes to software, and one is just like super simplification to just a very specific niche market. Like one of my sponsors for this podcast, Pocket Suite. And it's like if all you want to do is charge money and have your clients schedule time with you, Pocket Suite's all you need, right? Super easy 15-minute setup. Then there's also platforms like yours, which have are incredibly powerful, right? Have a ton of access and things that you can do and bolt-ons and all that, and then getting that customized and kind of boiled down to what works best for your situation. And you know, I I think it's there's the space in the middle of those two things is where where things get a little bit uh, I guess, devalued, in my opinion. But what what do you think about that assessment?

I I I agree. That's generally how software is built. Um, it's it's either feature rich and confusing or feature less, or maybe not feature less, but it does one thing really well. But in order to make that work with your schedule, you know, the next thing concentric circle around functionality, you've got to figure out how to tack them together, which becomes the problem. PushPress started on that end. Like, all we're gonna do is help you run your gym in the simplest ways really, really well. And we're moving, we're actually trying to solve for the middle, right? Like being a platform that can be robust and complicated, but every niche app, every niche little thing that you need to do that you turn on is a done for you or super simple streamlined functionality that that you can kind of like leverage both. The complaint we had with PushPress early was it's so simple. I now I have to learn how to integrate acuity and I have to learn how to integrate, I have to build a zappier system. And you know, I'm spending hours doing this other stuff, right? So they're they're wanting us to still solve those problems in-house so that they don't have to figure out 18 different systems, right?

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So the AI stuff is now all um it's kind of baked into the cloud provider that uh a software platform will use. So, you know, we're on Amazon AWS, we've been on that since day one. So they have all, they've since the time we've joined them, they've built all of these packages that will allow us to start putting our data into data analysis engines, like really fast. I don't want to get too technical, but really fast, like uh unstructured databases that we can sift through the data, we can publish reports, we can start to do uh data modeling and regressions and start to build hypotheses and test or you know, test them against the data and basically run out, like imagine a stock pick, stock simulator, and you can go back to 1980 and say, like, what if I would have invested in companies that you know had a dividend of this much, what would happen? And you can run back through all the data and do it real fast. So that's that's kind of what's now available to software companies. Um, and that's kind of where I was saying, like, that I mean, it does still cost a ton of money to do, but relatively speaking, when you spread it out across all of our clients, it becomes massively affordable for every for us to build for all the gyms. It's still in a place where like a gym owner shouldn't have the skill set of knowing how to run this kind of data. And it was if I built it for one gym, it would probably cost like $5,000 a month for one gym to do. But when you have thousands of gyms that you're building it for, it the the economies of scale make sense. You know.

And what is it delivering? I guess you know, AI, that term is thrown around a lot. It's a honestly.

Am I allowed to swear on this podcast? Yeah, it's a shitty, it is a very shitty term, AI. It gets thrown around, especially in the investment circles, as the answer to everything, and it's not. Now I'll be quite frank, right? Yeah.

Well, I've uh I had a conversation, actually, you know, not to be a downer, but the man passed away, he was young. Uh, but he was he was truly an expert in artificial intelligence. And we had over New Year's Eve, we had you know a few beers and we were talking about it, and he he was giving me why AI is no one understands it. So no one should be talking about it. Basically, is what it all boiled down to. And he was brilliant. Like he truly was building these things. Like, no, no, no, it's never gonna be our overlords, it's never gonna be anything like that. People just don't get it. So, if from your opinion, what you've learned so far, what is it that people don't understand about AI?

So the true term AI is more referring to the ability of a machine to learn from itself and get better and better without human interaction. Now, when I say AI, I say that because it is the most generally broad thing everyone kind of understands. But we're not truly building AI. We're building some machine learning, which would normally it's like AI slash ml, right? And algorithms, right? Or uh Preset hand-coded algorithms that are like driving a machine down a certain route. So we are using like Amazon's data analysis engines to say, like, using all these data points, we want to know what reduces this event from happening, and this event might be a member quitting. And then it can start to run through it all and say, like, here's the most predictive things that happen that end up with a person quitting. That's not necessarily AI, very minorly, probably as ML, like if we're going to be frank. But it is actually leveraging your data to create predictive models into what creates the outcomes that you do or do not want to happen. Right. True AI would continuously refine that through all the data and get better and better and better through like an artificial intelligence layer, right? Which is at this scale not something that we probably will build. Right. But if you take it a step simpler than that, instead of it, instead of it doing that, we can just say like, we know when a member follows this pattern of events, they have a 72% chance of quitting at your gym. So you need to break that pattern of events. And this is how you this is this is what the data shows us how you break that pattern of events. You do one, two, and three in this order, and here go do it, right?

That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, it makes total sense, man. And uh so when you look at how you guys are applying this machine learning, we'll just call it AI, ML. Uh AML? Is that AML? I've always heard AI ML. Yeah, okay. Uh that's new to me. What what are the most like you mentioned like the benefits of retention and things like that? But what as a gym owner, as a facility owner who's busy, man, like you know, they're these are busy people. There's a lot of things like how are you, how is it gonna make my life well, how is it gonna affect two things? How is it gonna save save me time and how's it gonna make me more money? Which is what it always comes to boils down to gym owner.

So the easiest visualization and the initial direction we will start probably taking this, and again, a lot of this stuff is very future state stuff. It's just stuff that we're working on the foundation of, and it's gonna take time to deliver the whole uh end product. But the right now, the easiest solution I see for this is a to-do list, right? So you show up in the morning and we'll talk in like crawl, walk, run, right? You show up in the morning and it's like, hey, good morning, Eric. Here are the four most important things you absolutely need to take care of today. You need to you know contact this person and try and get them to do this. You know, this bill is overdue. That one, that one's an easy one. We already do that kind of stuff. I don't know. Um, this lead, uh, if you don't talk to them today, definitely probably won't, definitely won't join the gym. And um, you know, this member is primed to give you a review based on the data signals we're getting. So ask them for a review and you just do it, right? That's the crawl version. And let's just say, even for all of those, it's like, and here are the preferred channels to communicate to them on based on those people, and here is the preferred messaging you should use based on historical results. So it's all just kind of like pre-written and pre-formatted, and just click it and go. That would that would yeah. I want that for my business. That would help a lot, right? Like just having the to-do list. Um, a walk version of that would be hey, we know your schedule, and we slotted these things into time blocks for you to do, right? Like connect to your Google Calendar, and at 10:30, you have an open block. So I want you to do these two, two things so that you think it'll take 15 minutes each, and blah, blah, blah. So that would be a little bit nicer because it'll be on your calendar, slotted to do. And a run, crawl rock, crawl, walk, run. Run version is at some point you've indicated, like, I never want to do this one again. I'm sick of doing it. So you do it for me, right? And it will send a text on your behalf to the person. Um, and if they reply, it'll come back to your phone and you can enter, you know, you can intervene. Um, and then there's certain things that you know you're really good at. So I always want to take care of these, and so it'll just put it on your calendar.

Wow, that is cool, man. That that is that is really different. And it is funny after all the technologies that I talk to, how many questions I get asked about, you know, what what tech should gyms leverage? Where should they be looking? I'm like, well, there's a lot of it, but I don't really care unless it saves you time and money and it or makes you saves you time and makes you money. And that's this this is hugely valuable because I think anybody who's run a small business knows that one of the hardest tasks that you have every day is finding out what's the most important thing that you can be doing.

And otherwise you just and this is where data, like we want, we like we want to use technology for where technology helps, right? And data can tell us probably you know, with the probability of what the most impactful use of your time is based on the probability of something happening, and we know what the financial impact of it will be. You know, if someone quits your gym, it's very clear how much the financial impact is. And if someone joins your gym, we know what the financial impact is. If you get a referral, we can defer a financial impact. We can infer a financial impact based on like how many of your referrals actually convert into members and how long your members stay members, right? So asking for a referral might be a $4,000 impact to your business with a 42% likelihood of impacting, right? So that's like 2,000 bucks. Like maybe you should do that.

Yeah, that's uh that's really fascinating, man. I wish I had these tools back in the day. Uh I would have definitely learned some more.

It's it's I'll inter I'll interject real quick and say it's easy to say that because if you would have spoken to a 1990s gym owner when you owned a gym, like he would have said, like, I wish I had recurring building and I didn't have to collect checks every day, right? So it's like we were benefiting from so it's it technology is a moving target. And that's that's the thing that I think is um hopefully all gym owners like realize like a lot of people come to us say, Why don't you just do this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you build that? You know, it's like it's a moving target, and we're always going to be behind because like what is getting built today is you know, it's like it's like you you can't build it until it's known, right? And it's like always you're always trying to get better.

So yeah, nice, nice segue on this too, because this brings me to the next topic of I feel like we kind of gone through the past, present, and now let's talk about the future of gym operating systems. Like walk us down the road of what you think the next 10 years are going to be like, how how the value delivery will change, the software, the technologies, what what do you expect? What you what gets you really excited?

I mean, what gets me really excited, and it's it's about, I mean, it goes back to what you what you said, saving time and making more money. So if you think across the board of everything a gym owner touches, whether it's once a year or every day, um, there are so many opportunities for an integrated platform like what we're building to do exactly that save time, make more money. Um, I'm trying to think of like some really easy examples. So uh nutritional supplementation, right? Or t-shirts, right? Apparel sales. These are these are two avenues that a gym owner can make a substantial amount of money, but it takes a lot of time. There's a lot of loss, like you lose shirts, walk away, you know, you you don't order the right protein and no one buys it, whatever the case. So they're what what what the the very interesting avenue that PushPress and other platforms, hopefully, that come up in our space will be able to do is as you integrate and leverage the data points that are coming in from your gym and you start using this like ML type stuff I'm talking about, you can probably start to learn like which person is very ripe will very likely buy protein. You know, which segment of people will probably buy apparel, right? You can also build in intelligence systems that you don't really have to keep stock. So it's like asking them real time for orders, keep batching those orders and telling them you're gonna get it on February 1st when it's January 15th, automatically sending that order to Driven or whoever your nutrition company is, and then you know, having it come in with a name stuck to the box. So it's just like it just shows up, you put it out, they take their protein, and the owner does no work, right? It's integrated through the member app, so the offer gets made there, the fulfillment gets made in the gym, the order is placed through the system, money just shows up in the owner's bank account, right? Like these integrated touch points to either your membership, your coaches, or your gym operations is the future of gym operating, and that's that's where this whole gym operating system kind of concept comes in.

Yeah. Wow, that's exciting, man. What when you look at data integrations, you know, from from other sources? I mean, wearable seems like an obvious one, right? Other, you know, there's other uh data that people can be pulling on, I presume through APIs, but also providing access to the data, something like Inside Tracker or you know, uh, you know, some of these more um medical health focused uh service offerings. Like where what data are you guys looking to add on to your your so yeah, health tracking, I think, is a big one.

Um I think the quotum in in the CrossFit circles, I don't know if you know, for for the non-crossfit people you can tune out for a second, but in the CrossFit circles, we were worried a lot about workout tracking. And ultimately, I think where everything needs and should be moving towards, and it's more universal across other verticals, is health tracking, right? So, and this all kind of ties together. There is gonna be probably a movement sooner or later of integrating fitness into the healthcare continuum, which comes with its own baggage and luggage. But um, what they're gonna be concerned about isn't your one or at max deadlift or whatever. It's gonna be your resting heart rate and your heart rate variance and your sleep and your water and you know, things like that. So when we get to a world where, and this is kind of coming together, it's piecing together from both ends. Um a doctor can literally prescribe you fitness and not just say work out more, but be be like, oh, you're on um United Healthcare, and I have 14 gyms in your neighborhood that uh accept United Healthcare as a provider, um, as an insurance benefit. So you can go to any of them for free or for, you know, so many times for free. Um, so that'll get you into the gym, and then on our end, it's like we can transmit that check-in data back to the doctor. So the doctor knows you've gone 14 times last month, and once a month you do an in-gym assessment on your in-body machine or whatever, or the the wearables are continuously feeding data back to your doctor, and the doctor gets a viewpoint into oh wow, your resting heart rate went down by 10 in the last three months, right? It looks like from the in-body, your body fat percentage has gone down by 14%. That's amazing. Like you can see the effects of the prescribed uh fit uh fitness protocol. Um, and then on the whole other track, there's the nutrition side of it. Like they need to be able to work with nutritionists the same and get the data feedback. So, talking to doctors and a lot, like we've been actively working on this, there is um, they don't have the accountability piece. The only thing they have accountability and um understanding the efficiency or efficacy of their prescription right now is in prescription medications and surgery. So that's the only thing doctors can prescribe and know that something happened. When they say eat better and do more workouts, they don't know, right? So that's a huge hole. And what will bring fitness into the healthcare system is being able to relay that data back to them in a in a very secure and HIPAA compliant way that a doctor can know, like, well, I prescribed you fitness, you did the fitness, and all your numbers are better, right?

Or worse. I don't know. Yeah. That to me is one of the most exciting things, just you know, not uh gym operating systems aside, but for the fitness industry overall, that's the holy grail, right? I I you and I have been around long enough to know that you know, as a fitness professional, and okay, maybe it's just me, I'm gonna speak for myself. Uh you didn't always feel like you got the respect you deserved as a profession, right? Like personal trainers get paid shit compared to the value that they actually provide people. And we're always afraid to raise our rates. There's there's all kinds of, you know, it's changing slowly but surely that that is changing. But once you start to elevate to the to the medical and health side of things, then the value starts to become, and the thing that's the most important, in my opinion, is in order to get that to happen, is coming up with some kind of common language that health professionals and fitness professionals can share, like you said, to see if this is actually objectively working. And that seems to be data, right? That language is data because it's undisputable for the most part. So um, I think that's a huge advantage. And the faster we can get there, the better off the profession's gonna be. And people are gonna make more money, they're gonna have more satisfaction with what they do, and people are gonna stick around longer.

I don't know about where you I I I can guess. I can want to legend guess that wherever you where you live, there's probably a shit ton of health clinics and fast medic medical, you know, like medicine is blowing up because people are getting sicker. Imagine if there are that many gyms everywhere. So that's the crazy thing is like right now, to be fair, we service everyone who cares about their health well enough to pay their hard-earned money to go get their ass kicked in a gym, or or maybe another, you know, in yoga that likes to spend that time doing the practice that they love. But that's 8% of the population, you know. Like, I don't even think it's 10. Um, the the long tail of people are just sitting at home not knowing what to do. And everyone at some point is worried about their health, you know. So you want to talk about like raising the tides, it's getting it getting into this area. But yes, it has to do be data. And the good thing about it is there's so much money in the healthcare system. If you can actually show um Medicare or United Healthcare that, like, hey, getting someone in the gym costs 150 bucks a month and lowers their their their their lifetime medical costs by $10,000 a month, like it will be a no-brainer for everyone to do. So yeah.

Yeah, and and the the challenge, you know, I think this is where the medical profession can get on board. The challenge is getting, you know, I always use the avatar Susie from accounting, right? Who um, you know, really hasn't incorporated exercise into her life for one reason or another, um, her whole life. And stepping into a gym, extremely intimidating. You know, those first five workouts are gonna be really uncomfortable. Like if you haven't moved a lot, even the most minor, you know, uh level of intensity is is gonna be uncomfortable. So you got to get people over that emotional and that physical barriers to get them in. And, you know, I I think that's why we haven't, let's be honest, like the fitness profession over the last 30 years hasn't done a good job of getting to those people. We struggle doing it. And perhaps if a medical professional is saying, hey, you got to do this, you know, and this is the prescription, uh, you know, then if it doesn't work, you give it a good year, then we'll we'll talk about drugs. I mean, I don't know, something like that happened. I think the motivation for people to get in and working with uh with gyms be over.

It's funny, I was actually just having a conversation with this about this to my um head product guy. And um this morning, I was just thinking about how to get more people into the gym, which is kind of what you're talking about with Susie from accounting. And really, it's like like and what he brought up was exactly what you said. It's intimidating to go to group class, you don't know what to expect, everyone there knows each other. There's a million reasons why it's not ideal. And the the thinking that I had this morning was every gym has to have a personal training first option for that very reason. And not only are you gonna get paid more because it's personal training, but you're gonna be servicing these clients in a way that they actually want, which is to have somebody work with me one-on-one and ease me into this entire thing and feel like they're listening to my pains and my needs and my wants. Right. So I'm becoming more and more a fan of these personal training first, even I don't know if you're familiar with active life type concepts where you're you're towing the line of physician prescribing things that address their pain. Um, I think these are things all gyms and have to consider. And then on top of that, like you're not gonna win gym near me for certain. Like if I'm a if I'm Susie from accounting and I'm looking for fitness help, I'm either gonna search gym near me, but then I know I have to go and figure it out all by myself at 24-hour fitness, or personal trainer near me. Those are the two things I'm gonna search, you know, or maybe weight loss near me. Um, so if you're if you're only banking on, you know, whatever you do, yoga, crossfit, whatever, it's like you're losing all the people who are on the medical end of things who are worried about their health.

Yeah. It's and I hope if people are listening to this, if there's one thing that I hope they walk away with, is like this is a big opportunity. And this opportunity has never been so real because we do have these health tracking and the the data is available, and now we just got to figure out how to facilitate, put it all into a nice system and facilitate these conversations with the medical and health professions. And uh it's it's very tangible, it's very real. So I would start pursuing it now.

Think of how many people, and the answer is literally everybody, know somebody who was completely out of shape who died during COVID, right? Like, yeah, this is a very real thing that is on everyone's mind. It's just nobody knows what to do. And and most people will just do what their doctor says, you know. So we as an industry have to figure out a way to package this up in a way that relates to the consumer and helps them find it because it will help them.

Yeah, yeah, I agree, man. So uh you're a bit of a technologist, whether you wanted to be or not, right? That's uh kind of where you found yourself. So, you know, changing gears a little bit, kind of looking at the the fitness and health industry overall, outside of gym operating systems, what technologies most excite you? What are you keeping your eye on? What do you think is uh is gonna change the game? That's a really good question that I wasn't prepared for.

Um it's funny because as a technologist, all technology concerns me to some degree because it's a double-edged sword. Right? Like all this big data stuff is really great when it's in the right hands, but I also feel like it's in mostly the wrong hands. You know what I mean? Like it's not being used for the benefit of people as as much as it could be. So when you ask that question, everything I could think of is I immediately counter with like that could be problematic, you know. Like I used to be I used to be really bullish on blockchain. Blockchain has a lot of applications. I also feel most of it has been um Ponzi scheme. Let's create a bunch of hype and get a bunch of people to dump a bunch of money into this stuff because everyone saw Dogecoin go crazy. And it's been a bunch of like a couple uh couple smart people who don't have scruples taking money from a bunch of people who saw their cousin make a ton of money on Dogecoin, right? Yeah. Technology in general is a democratization of access to things, which is always exciting, but then the democratization always ends up in the hands of a couple, which is why Elon wants to buy Twitter, and everyone's getting excited about that. But what happens when Elon runs Twitter? He's gonna run it the way he wants, which won't be democracy again, you know? Yeah, and he's gonna privatize it, which means he gets the beta. Yeah, so it's I find myself at a I'm I'm a human, I'm very humanitarian, like I believe in people always and and and probably blindly, and I'm a technologist, and they are very conflicting. And that's I feel like I've always lived my life at a kind of a conflicting stance, and and so I I really can't answer that because I see us heading faster and faster into Ready Player One and uh Hunger Games and all of that stuff before not.

I agree, Dan. I think uh you and I have enough gray in our beards that we've kind of lived with no technology as a young age, and we've seen this whole thing advance uh seemingly slow, but on the other hand, extremely fast when you look at the grand timeline of you know human history. And I I am very conflicted. I I ask the existential questions on this show all the time, especially people who are doing building like the fitness metaverse. You're like, well, what okay, yeah, we maybe we get a certain percentage of people to exercise a little bit more because it's gamified, but then when they're just walking around their living room with a headset on, like I don't I don't and no one seems to have a good answer besides, well, it's gonna happen either way. And I mean, unfortunately, that isn't that truth.

But yeah, it is the truth. It is. I don't know. I think like I couldn't have said it better. Like having having lived with no technology to where we are today, I can't maybe I'm just old, but it and it's funny because my living is in technology, but I do feel like there's a lot of better things about the 70s and 80s than you know, you had to go out and have dinner with people, you know. But you know, on the flip side of it, no, this is what gets me through the day. That's what I feel like these gyms I'm supporting are. Like I just I just moved to the Las Vegas area and I joined a gym because I wanted to have friends that, you know, like I sit in my house all day long working on this, and it's like you have to join a gym or church at this point to have a community, you know, or something along those lines.

So I I do believe in the mission of the gyms. I I agree, man. And I think that doubles down on the value that and the necessity of it because really, I mean, if if sorry for people if we talk about CrossFit too much on this, but if if you've ever been in a good CrossFit gym, it feels like church. Like on the weekends, everyone gathers, right? On a Saturday or Sunday morning, and then you know, maybe they go out to brunch afterwards. Like it's a thing, man. It's your community, it's your people. And uh I I think that the gym is a good thing.

It's gonna be one of the bigger value points that build. And if you're not in the CrossFit space, I would explore a Like go to a CrossFit gym and and pay attention because um there's an age-old saying that I'll steal from Stu Brouwer is that people will quit businesses, but they don't quit relationships, right? So I think there's a huge, huge reason to build community and relationships in your gym. I've been to some non-cross, like um I don't necessarily want to call them out by name, but there's a pretty awesome gym here in Las Vegas that is very uh, you know, black lights and high music and high intensity type gym. But it's like, you know, nobody knows each other and they just leave after. And you know, I can see everyone there being a member for four months and then finding the next cool thing to do.

So you know who else is a really good model for people to look at is uh BJJ. Like you look at those, I the communities. I've it feels like to me what CrossFit was 10 years ago, where it's like if you talk to someone and then you know, how do you know if someone does BJJ, don't worry, they'll tell you, right? And but they want they're they're bringing you into the community all the time. Like, you should come, man, you should come. You'd be good at it, you'd like it. It's just so challenging. The community is great, culture is amazing, like the people you learn and the quality of the people, and all that. I'm like, yeah, I've heard this before. Where have I heard this before? And uh it's great. I think it's a very good thing. And I think people can stop in and and and check these places out and see what they do. Um, there's a lot of value to the way they present their offerings as well. Um, real career, you know, last question, what made you move to Vegas?

Oh, it was a kind of like a long thing coming um before the pandemic. So as a preface, I've lived in California my whole life, NorCal for half my life, SoCal for half my life. And um, I never really traveled at all, ever. Um, and maybe about two years before the maybe three years before the pandemic, I started doing work. Like I would go somewhere, Nashville, and stay there for a week and work during the days and explore the city during the evenings. I would go with my wife. And I started to realize that like I had all these preconceived notions of what people in other areas of the United States were like, and they were maybe a little bit true, but mostly not, you know? And um, it really opened my worldview up. And so I kind of decided at some point, like, I want to live somewhere than California. Um, pandemic hit, and I'm like, I really want to live somewhere other than a big city, because we were in LA, right? I kind of started thinking, like, ah, it doesn't make like this is gonna happen more and more, and in the future, big cities probably won't be as ideal. Work from home is never gonna go away now that people have tasted it, so whatever. Um, I'm gonna find a smaller place. Was gonna move to Kansas, was strongly considering it. Um, and then realized, like, well, what if I don't like this? Like moving to Canvas is or moving to Kansas is kind of a bigger commitment. If I don't like Vegas, I can just pack up a van and move back and just break a lease if I have to, like, much less of a commitment because this was a big leading into it, I realized how emotional of a change it was. Like, it was a big change for me. Sure. And so it was Vegas, like it was it's easy. I can go home in 45 minutes if I want to and see my see family or friends. Um, but it's far enough away and everything's different enough where I'm I'm getting to see life from a different place. Yeah.

That's great, man. There's uh if you want to be entertained, there's a Facebook Facebook group called Life After California. And you know, my wife and I left California in 2017 and we we explored, we stayed in a bunch of different places for two, three months at a time until we finally found our spot here in Whitefish. And um it is, I mean, even though you're still in the same country, I mean, we technically went to Canada for a lot of it, but the the culture is different, and these these preconceived notions of what you thought someone in Kansas or Montana or you know Nevada would be, it there's you're you're more similar than anybody, even on a small island, we stayed in the you know, the gulf between Vancouver Island and Vancouver. Like it's just people, dude. They're just people, and it's great to get those cultural differences. So that's great, man. I'm I'm really uh happy that you're enjoying it. Um I guess last thing, Dan, is if people want to get a hold of you, they want to hear more about what you're doing, they want to get you on an interview, they want to ask you questions, whatever it may be. How do you uh where do you want them to go online and how do you want to be in touch with you? Hmm.

Again, hard question no one's ever asked me. I I guess just email me directly if they want to chat with me. I'm pretty much open to chat with anybody. Um, Dan at pushpress.com, pretty easy right there. Um I don't even have an EA yet, so it'll be me who's reading the email. Hopefully that changes soon. Uh yeah, as far as pushpress goes, just pushpress.com. Um, I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, you know. I think my uh my Facebook, well, Facebook's easy to find me. Instagram at hook gripper. I use hook gripper for a lot of my my um, even though I suck at Olympic lifting, it was just something I picked at one point.

Yeah, it was a good handle to grab. Well, uh Dan, it's a pleasure, man. I really appreciate your insights. I mean, you're very thoughtful in the way you present things and very authentic and honest about it, too. So um it's really appreciated, got a lot of value today. And uh yeah, man, just channel with Eric. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Dan Boymur. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. 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. 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 futurofitness.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.