Edward Hertzman - Athletech's Innovation Summit

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Thanks, Eric. It's uh good to see you.

What is it been two years since our last recording? It's been a hot minute, man. I think it's been a while. Yeah, you were uh really starting to pick up steam, I think, last time we we got on this podcast. And you've done a lot, obviously, over the last few years. You've been grinding it out. You and I talked often and uh or we talk often, and you got a lot going on. And I I I respect what you built so far. You know, Athletech has become uh, you know, one of the go-to resources for the industry, and uh you seem to keep doubling down on all the efforts and energy and time you put into this thing. So I don't know if people realize how hard you work. And I'll I'll go ahead and give you credit for that because you and I talk often, but the B2B media landscape is is not easy, right? I think that was what you and I talked about last time in our podcast. When we recorded on this one, it's like, you know, it's it's not you don't just step up, build an audience, and and start printing cash, right? You gotta put the work in, you gotta build the trust, you gotta get to know the industry. And you know, I uh kudos to you for what you've done so far. And I know you got a lot of big stuff coming up. You had the CEO summit beginning of this year, you got the innovation summit coming up in June, and yeah, man, there's a lot of great stuff. So, two years, what's been going on, Eddie? What's uh what's new?

I think the most notable difference is how much grayer you and I both are than uh when the last time we recorded, which is probably a sign of uh all those hours that we both are putting in. I mean, I think you're I think you're you're a hundred percent right. I think look, media as a whole is not like the best business to be in, right? Like it's not, and it's constantly disrupted and being disrupted. And like if you even ask me today my stance on how AI will impact media from leaving six months ago, I would give you a very different answer. Good and bad. Good and bad. So yeah, I mean, I think look, we the industry is is kind of spoken, right? Like they're the ones that open the emails every day. They're the ones that's clicking. We well over 100,000 subscribers. We see any given month, you know, a few extra 100,000 people coming in from search and referral. The amount of emails we get every day, people sending us press releases, 98% of them are crazy. Uh, but there's a deck directing. Do you see that? I mean, we even notice, you know, going to events and conferences ourselves, how much easier it is now to get interviews. People are coming to us, giving us the news ahead of time, giving us the exclusives, which is which is a great feeling. I know our journalists feel really happy about that. You know, one of the things they pride themselves in is being able to break a story or get a story first or get get an exclusive. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's there's a lot of stuff we have coming up the second half of this year. You know, a couple things we didn't plan on. We didn't plan on, you know, tariffs happening and the economy softening a little bit, although today the market's you know going through the roof, roof. So that's part of that that that uncertainty in that bear and bull market is is difficult. It creates companies get afraid to spend. There's a paralysis in the economy. And obviously, as a media company, you you feel that, which is another added piece of tension that like, you know, you you don't plan for, but you got to keep working through. I would say that even if the economy kind of has a little bit of a downturn, I think all of us agree that fitness and wellness is going to be pretty resilient. I think what we've learned is the likelihood of someone, whether you're a lifetime or planet, canceling that membership is very low. And the conversations I'm having with the with the big developers, the big franchisee groups, the the PE firms, they're still going to continue to on their growth and expansion and plan, those are very good signs that this industry is going to continue to grow. We see a lot of deal flow happening. I think we need to find a new word. It's not a it's not the fitness industry, it's not the wellness industry, it's not the health industry, it's like uh whatever. There's needs to be a new umbrella term. I don't I don't know if we'll figure it out right now. And if we do, I'm not gonna publicly air it off trademark it first. But but but like there needs to be something because it a new industry is is emerging here, and we're we're grateful to be at the intersection.

Yeah, it is you it does need a new name. I agree, and I've been thinking about this for a while because I'm tired of typing out fitness, health, and wellness. I started abbreviating FHW and no one really knows what that means. It was a phooah. Like, no, that doesn't make any sense. But I think there is something out there as a rebrand, and I've been talking about this for a year, and I think you and I interviewed uh Jess Weefle at an event last year in person. We were talking about like this whole the whole industry feels like it's going under a mostly unconscious but somewhat conscious rebrand, like we're just moving, migrating into this whole health paradigm, and we're we're shifting how we're perceived, how we interact with our consumers, our clients, and it's it's super exciting. I mean, I I think it is.

I've been in there on this industry for 17 years, and I would exciting there is there is a desire to rebrand, there is a desire to change the image or the actions from the industry meeting that that desire. Like, are we showing up the way we need to show up? Are we aligned with what we're saying? You know, I I question, you know, I look at when auto had an issue in oh wait, the five big CEOs get on a plane, you know, they all went on their jets, which was a problem, you know, the irony of that, and they go to DC. You know, you look at the inauguration, put politics aside. The tech CEOs are all there. How do we how do we show up as an industry? How do we how do we want to be represented? How do we want people to talk about us? I know we're we're tired of that old fitness stigma, and rightfully so, because there's a lot of great innovation happening, there's a lot of money flowing in, there's a lot of outside talent coming in. But I think there's work that has to be done if we really want to rebrand how we're perceived on the outside.

If you were to look at the mission that you have, is is that it? Is that to help pull like the leadership of the industry together in like a unified fact? Because I mean, you and I have talked about how, you know, fractionized or whatever the word is, not using words well today, but like how fractional everything is, how very it's just distributed across and not a lot of communication across the board and little niches within niches of you know, boutique and health clubs and digital and all those things, but there doesn't seem to be like a uh a connective tissue at the very top.

Yeah, I mean you're speaking to the fragmentation of the of the industry and fragmentation. Well, now it's four or five years in, most people only think it's two, and you know the the old joke I say I was emailing myself for the first two years. Now I kind of realize maybe why there was so little industry resources dedicated to this. A little bit harder than I thought. Not harder to build an audience. I knew I I kind of had a gut feeling that again, like I remember sitting in Vegas and sitting next to these gentlemen, they're so pepperoni, they were there for a pizza conference. There's a pizza journal, like the things like this. But why has there not been the billboard of of fitness and wellness? Like, and not not saying there wasn't players, but why were they not able to evolve or why did they struggle? Or, you know, where was where was where were the shortcomings? And part of it is it's it's very expensive to run these companies, right? And and the cost of content creation keeps going up, keeps going up and up and up and up. Human capital costs are up and up and up. Productivity is actually down, which is why I think people are looking to supplement, you know, the human capital with all this AI or whatnot, which is a great tool. I'm concerned about what it's gonna do for the job market. That's a whole nother conversation. I'm sure for some people it's gonna be a boom, and for some it's gonna be a bust. You're very quickly realizing, like, probably feel like our parents did when the computers came out. Like we're at this weird age where now we have to like start teaching ourselves all this new stuff to still be relevant. And that the pace of change is so fast. Like, like it is remarkable how if you are not on this, like every single day, you're gonna be left behind. And I think that's the thing that companies are not realizing. It's like if you are not moving forward, if you are not learning every single day. I mean, one of my favorite books, Annie Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive. I wake up every single day and I say to myself, if I wanted to start a business to put myself out of business, what would I do? And then I better go and do it. Because if I don't, someone else is going to be doing it. It's a great question to ask an executive. Because a lot of times I'll say, Eric, what would you do differently? And then you start rambling off answers. I'm like, bro, if you why are you not doing that then? If you really believe that's what it would take to put you out of business, someone else is doing it. And so I kind of take that stance. And the hard thing here is I think when you're we're building a business, like I'm using a framework which already exists, but we're taking a big bet in June. A big, big bet on this innovation summit. I'm extremely excited, I'm extremely passionate, but it's a bet because again, you can't comp off of nothing. So I don't know what the industry's response is gonna be. I know they're going to love it. But loving something and it being profitable, two very different things. You know what I mean? So, and then the what are people willing to pay for something? You know, that's a whole nother conversation as well.

Let's start with this, and we're gonna get to the innovation summit in a minute. You have the CEO summit, I think it's the second year, right? The NASDAQ event.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, let's let's carve into that because I feel like that, partially, and correct me if I'm wrong, is inspiration for this bigger event in June, right? Something sparked. Like you're like, okay, I think there's something else I can do here, something bigger. So run us through that. How do those take place? What's what happens at those events? What was the turn?

Well, the first year was kind of again like a little bit of serendipity, you know, getting asked to ring the bell for the wellness week and you know, 100, 150 top executives. I mean, on a Friday, I'm like, maybe my accountant will show up. I mean, two days later, we had a hundred people, and some of the biggest CEOs and executives came and it was a great photo op. I mean, candidly, it was a great press moment for us. The amount of impressions that we saw on social media was was phenomenal. We got asked to come back the next year. I didn't think that was enough. So I'm like, okay, let me let me tie into my previous experience and let's do a CEO summit. And that is a very intimate gathering. And I knew that we needed to bring some outside voices, we needed to bring people that were not usually on the scene. We needed to take the speakers who would normally be on the stage, get them into the audience, basically get rid of the whole buy-sell equation, make everyone unequal, and see what would happen. And very easy to say, very, very hard to do because it's very hard to tell someone that's used to not going to an event and now you're gonna go and be in the audience. Whoa, that's a big hit to the ego. What you realize is the people in that room really learned a lot from each other. Part of the content was personal development, part of the content was just personal interest. You know, we had Dr. Littman, a great OG of functional medicine. Like he's not pushing a product, so he's not there under the banner of here's my franchise, here's my supplement, here's my this. And I'm not saying there's something wrong with that, but he's just telling me he's micro-dosing GLP1s, he's micro-dosing Cialis, he's micro-dosing this. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Then lining up to like talk to this guy, like, what do you mean? Oh, this is bullshit. Like, don't do this, you're wasting your money. Like, he because it was completely candid. You know, you had Max or Catterton telling you this is a good investment, this is this was a bad investment. I'm not so sure about this, I'm bullish on this. People are like, wow, like, like this is really kind of unfiltered. And I think it was refreshing that people didn't feel like they were going in and out trying to be sold to and they could learn something. And I and I knew that that if we created it, see it's funny, you build it, they will not come. You have to force it to happen. And I knew if we forced it to happen, people would see value. A lot of people were talking about it. Look, you know, but the hard part then is how do you scale that, right? Now you can only have a hundred or two hundred people in that moment. So we knew that we have to keep the to keep the integrity of that event for the future. We need to have a different moment where it could be a little bit bigger. But the same premise. And that's really where the innovation summit is is coming to fruition. And again, other industries do this. Other industries have CEO gatherings, whether it's retreats, whether it's small meetings, whether councils, and then they have these bigger conferences and summits. But I think it's it's a different when people hear this and I explain it, it sounds like every other event, but it's a very different experience if done right.

So walk me through that. If this all plays out the way that you're you're planning. Like how what is my experience? What is the um just because I was just chatting with him, the CEO of 45, Tom Dowd, how is his experience different?

So well, let's let's let's talk about that. Right off the bat, I call it the buffet effect. You can't throw 500 people in one room and expect them to have a good outcome. Like a buffet has a lot of food, but nothing's really that great, you know. So what Tom's gonna want from an event is very different than his CMO Brian's gonna want, and it's very different than his CRO Luke's gonna want, and it's very different than his head of partnerships is gonna want, and it's very different than his CTO's gonna want, and his head of legal is gonna want. Think about each of those people, their daily jobs, and what they need to do every single day. And their head of procurement. So the head of procurement may be really interested in in finding out about the newest red light bet or the newest techno gym or the or a partnership with Red Bull or a meeting with Dr. B. Tom, he may be sitting with his investor colleagues or fellow CEOs and talking about the state of affairs. You know, the CMO may be going into hear the Sports Innovation Lab speak or McKinsey speak or, you know, a company like a Vanor Media speak because that's a very different lens.

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They want to understand where they sit from a competitive landscape, from a collaborative landscape. So it's a very much choose your own adventure. And I think that my goal is when each of those people leave, they're each gonna say the event was very different to that. There's gonna be certain sessions. I'm sure everyone's gonna have a general ins interest in hearing Gary Brackett speak and people like that. But for the most part, I think it's gonna be very individualized if done right.

So how do you do that? Is there like a track, right? Like as me as like a media creator, right? Am I gonna be like, is there certain areas that I'm gonna want to be at? Is there a roadmap for me to get through the event?

Not year one. Because again, I don't know enough. And I'm being very frank, and I don't know if I should be being this frank on an on a live event, but I don't know enough where I want to say, hey, this is these are the five things you want to go to. Because you may have an interest in X, Y, and Z. I don't know. Maybe you have a partnership with a hospitality or a hotel or a cruise ship coming up that I'm not aware of. And so you may want to go to those hospitality panels. But again, I don't think too many people have heard the the International Luxury Hotel Association. Raka is gonna have a very different perspective of because he's representing the luxury segment and the Global Wellness Institute. We quote them every single day. We all do. People think, whoa, is that competitive? Well, maybe. But why not bring the people, the CEO on the stage that that's doing that that has research and data that we're all referencing? I think we all can learn from that. I can learn from that. So in that respect, I don't look at that as competitive. I've looked at that as putting the best minds in the room together. We have the Washington Post moderating, we have other media outlets moderating, we have other media outlets coming to attend and cover it. My hope is that this event is bigger than Athlet. The idea is now I know that these people could cover it and never reference me. And I'm okay with that. That's not what I want. I want people to say at the ATN Innovation Summit, June 17th, so-and-so spoke about XYZ. But again, it's the mentality of building the industry up, making it bigger than just I think that's a problem. We're too we we try to be too like contained. We need more collaboration like that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's uh it's it's been a very competitive industry since I've been in it. Like, you know, CrossFits up against uh F-45 and boutique versus you know HVLP and you know, like all these different categories, and everyone wants to know who's winning within the industry. And the fact of the matter is we were I don't know who was, was it Geisler who said this interview? Like we're competing with the couch, right? That's as an industry. Well, I mean that's who we're competing with.

If you ask, you know, in the HVLP space, you know, is is price really the the friction? You know, price is always probably the number one friction when you when you do a survey, that's what they'll say. And the price of gyms have got up, and the price of gyms probably will continue to go up if we see, you know, so some some relief on the tariffs today, but cost of building materials are going up, cost of equipment's going up, and capital's going up. Yeah, I mean, I think to his point, you know, it's it's their biggest compet competitor is the couch, because it's not the $15 or the $20 that's the friction. It's it's I don't want to go. I have no incentive to go. That's that's a personal choice someone has to make. Yeah, look, I mean, I think that there is there's a big enough, there's a big enough consumer base for many, many, many, many of these businesses to succeed. If anything, unlike let's say retail where I come from, where it's like if you're not selling to a Walmart or you're not selling to a TJ Maxx or you're not, you know, selling to Macy's or Costco, like you don't have enough critical mass because a lot of those mom and pop stores are gone, you could still be, you know, I think there's you could still be an equipment company and sell to thousands of locations and not be in some of the big guys and still be very, very successful. You could also have 20, 30 regional locations and be remarkably profitable and remarkably successful. You may not make the front pages of franchising today or times or whatever, or fast company. But I think that's something that we as a publication want to do more about is, you know, you look at some of these companies, if you look at a CR Fitness, I think it's either the largest or one of the largest crunch groups. Got 70, 75 on the road to 80. You know the size of that business operating 75 crunches profitably. That is actually bigger than some of the brands you and I interview on Unscripted. And they're a sub brand. You know what I mean? Like so there is a lot of there's a lot of unsung heroes that probably deserve more, more ink and more exposure that never get talked about. The problem is there's a lot of attention being played to people that maybe don't deserve it necessarily, but they yell really loud. They're screaming from the top of the roofs, they attend all the events. So there is a lot more success stories than you would think. But look, I feel like the industry is finally starting to come out of the COVID, right? And again, up until today, what I would explain that the the economic environment right now is COVID without the mask. You know, it's it's you don't look like there's a problem, but there's a big problem. You basically have a trade embargo with the manufacturer in the world, and the fitness industry buys the majority of their equipment there. So that's paralysis.

Well, there's a lot of converging factors. And why I think this this event is is timely, and this conversation is very timely. Uh and I hear a lot more of these types of conversations coming on too. We have post-COVID, right? We can just state that we're out of COVID. There is a bigger concentration on personalized health and wellness. Like the consumer wants it, right? And they're they're starting to see that you know, they have to be advocates for their own health. And then you're starting to see the political will is brewing in a very, very strong way, which is I know something that you're going to cover at the event as well. And um so there's a lot of things converging. And I think when you look at the summit itself, when you look at the speakers and the people you have, the the curation of the event, what are what are the big buckets that you're hoping to fill?

I mean, it's a lot. There's a lot of content happening. I mean, maybe we overprogrammed it. I think we have like 75 to 100 speakers, like 30 sessions. It's a lot. There's certain themes that are going on, right? Like right now, HVLP is is really that that is a category is doing really, really well. Okay. I think if we look at connected, people like to write them off or like to you know speak ill of them. But I'm like, hey guys, you need to control your own narrative. You need to get on the stage. And whether it's the chief product officer of Peloton or the CEO of Tonal or the CEO of Hydro, why don't we hear from them how they're reinventing their businesses, how they're reimagining it in a post-COVID world, what it looks like? Because I would disagree that Connected is there. We have never been more connected. My bed is connected, my watch is connected, this water bottle is telling me I'm thirsty right now. There's 100,000 apps that are connected. So it's not that connected is gone. It's some of these business models. We just, they were, they were derived during a time when everyone thought the whole world was going to stay home, never leave, and we're all going to never go to the gym again. It's clearly, it's not one or another. It's an end, not an or. So what does that mean? McKinsey's going to be doing a presentation, which is amazing, and Cadeton's going to be joining them. They have the thesis that there's going to be massive consolidation in the industry. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe some of these players need to come together. Maybe there's going to be more MA, more deal flow. You know, again, like one of the things that I'm hearing about is how fitness and wellness is re-imagining, residential, hospitality, corporate. So again, when we think about fitness, what we have to get out of is that it's a gym and a treadmill. If you're building a luxury building, whether it's in Del Rey or Fifth Avenue, that's an amenity now. When you think about travel, and and and said this to me, the president of the International Hotel Association, you have to figure out there's there's two things in hospitality tourism. There are places like Canyon Ranch and they'll be speaking that you go to to get healthier, whether it's a longevity retreat, whether it's a parametapause or a menopause retreat, or just, you know, going away for the weekend and you want to feel better when you leave. But now, if you and I go on a business trip for five days, we don't want to come back home feeling worse than when we came. So our expectation of that hotel is that they're going to have a fitness facility that will allow me to continue working out like I do back at home. But what does that mean? Does that mean tonals? Does that mean red light beds? Does that mean strength training? Does that mean car? So why don't we hear from the people that are actually building it out? You know, I could pontificate on it, but like let's hear from the operators, let's hear from the developers. Again, if I move into a new building, my expectation is that building's gonna have a really great gym facility in there. Well, let's hear from the arts amenities of the world that are actually building it out. Let's not leave it to guessing.

Who are the big draws for the event, Eddie? I mean, you you mentioned Gary Breca, right? Anthony Geisler has been announced. It's like who do you think are the biggest names and who are people most interested in coming to see? Because I think there's a lot of all this sounds super interesting, right? But people don't know that they want it until they sit down and they listen to these people talk about like different parts of the industry that they haven't discovered yet, right? Different opportunities that they didn't know existed. But who what do you think are the big ones that are going to draw people in so then you can teach them everything or show them everything that you want to show them?

As long as I've been doing these events, which are 15 years now, sometimes the biggest companies say the least and the smallest names actually say the most. Now, this is not a an industry that's that's largely publicly traded, so they're not as many guardrails. Like, you know, a lot of times people get up there and they read a script about you which is very similar to their earnings call, and you're like, okay, well, uh, that wasn't really that exciting. And then some independent, you know, operator or retailer tells you all these things, you're like, oh my God, like I can't believe how candid, you know, he or she was. And I think you're gonna see some of that here. But, you know, everyone's very curious what Anthony Geyser up to, is because, you know, whatever you may think of him, he's he's he's a great entrepreneur. And he and Expo is is is a is a big success story in the industry. So whatever his you know, 2 or 3.0 is gonna be is is if you're an investor, you're interested. If you're a franchisee that's looking to expand, you're interested. If you're again, how many partnerships did Expo have? You know, like he's he's a rainmaker. And so people, there's this intellectual curiosity. Media has curiosity over what that person is doing. Yeah, again, Gary Brecca. I'm not here to say I agree or disagree with with his with his with his science. I mean, he's remarkably successful and he has a huge following. I wouldn't put someone up on the stage that I didn't personally believe in, but huge draw. But again, it could be Dr. Gabrielle Shepard. You know, companies now are not just making claims, they have science-backed or medically backed claims. So she works for hims and hers, PVOP. Why are these companies having chief science officers, chief medical officers? You know, why does the YMCA, you know, Dr. Gloria, she's people love hearing from her, Tanya Elliott. So, like these are three people that I think are huge draws for people that are interested in that side of the business, that are thinking about how they should engage with the science and the medical community in their and their businesses. If I'm an equipment person, I may be very, very interested in what the hospitality panels have to say, because that's a growth area for me. I think, you know, I saw Josh Walker in the Sports Innovation Lab speak and I saw the whole room take pictures because he, and it's a little, and I say this with all due respect, he probably knows more about your customers than you know. Because when you got 70 or 100 million credit card transactions and he puts up a slide of, okay, the person that wears Whoop is doing this, and the person that does or is doing this, and like you realize it's two very different personas where the person that goes to this type of boutique is eight times more likely to go on Delta than United. If I'm a marketer, I'm like, well, maybe I need a partnership with Delta. And oh wow, why are the fanatics in the major league sporting teams paying millions and millions of dollars for this type of information? They're not careless with their money, is because they want to know exactly what that their customer is doing so they could show up and meet them where that customer is. This industry, their number one pain point is new customers and retention of customers. And we'll have segments on that too. And that doesn't mean send an automated email that says, Eric, I haven't seen you in a week. Yes, those are things you need to do, but that's not the same old conversation we're gonna have. So people like that, maybe you don't know who that is, but I promise you when you hear him talk, okay, what's interesting, like people like to talk about, you know, everyone knows a solid core story. You know, massive success story this year, $600 million exit to Catterton. Great. This is not a how I built it event. There's plenty of podcasts for that. What I want to know from Anne, and she has the the gentleman who who backed her, he's at a different firm now, but he was the one the firm wrote the check, and I don't know the exact size, when she was 10 locations or 20 locations, and she needed that 10 million. That's where I think there's a lot more people in that that seat right now that got 10 or 20 locations. That how do they get to 500 or 1,000? Once you're at 500 or 1,000, there's a lot more people. If you're profitable, they're gonna you're gonna the Leonard Greens and the and the hit and and the and the Blackstones and the Catterton, they'll find you. What do you do when you're like 20 locations? You believe you have a path to 100. Who's writing those checks? How do you get the attention? That's what I want Ann to talk about. We all know the other story. We all know Barriers was sold to Princeton. But we don't really know what happened between Northcastle and Princeton and the negotiations and what it takes and what the valuation was. And I think we're gonna see a lot of radical transparency. I believe you'll see Northcastle and JJ in Princeton be very honest about that deal. And that we could learn from that. Because then if I'm running a business and I'm thinking about raising or selling or partnering, there's something to take away from that. And I want to add for the people that are listening and like, well, I don't need that. I already know everything. I'm like, why does the smartest people in the world go to Davos? Like, does Bill Gates really need to learn anymore? Does he need any more money? But the smartest minds go because they want to not only better themselves, but they want to better their companies, they want to better their industries. There needs to be some pre-competitive collaboration. Maybe the person you're sitting next to, who you thought of yesterday was a competitor, could be a partner. Is there a monetary benefit? Is there a media benefit? Is there an audience benefit? I don't know. But if you don't have that open mind, if you're of the opinion that I'm doing it all right right now, I don't care what industry you're in. It's like I said, only the paranoid survive. That's that's it's a flaw. So I think I'm hoping that when we yeah, June 19th, when people look back at this, they're like, you know, this was a different type of event. I love it. This is something that I need to mark on my calendar every single year because this was not, you know, again, when you see Solid Core speaking and Orange Theory speaking and Sweathouse, this is not why Orange Theory is great or why Solid Core is great or why Sweathouse is great. That's what people may be thinking right now. And maybe I'm doing a bad job marketing it. The reality is those three are gonna argue. The great debate corporate owned versus franchise owned. It's not about contrast therapy being hot. What is the quickest path to scale? What requires more capital? What allows you to be more agile? What makes you more beholden to private equity? I don't know. I already know what a lot of them are gonna say. I've been doing prep calls for two months, you know. But but that is a different conversation than Pilates is hot. We've heard that already. We don't need Brian to talk about that. We need Brian to talk about something else. That's what I think this event's gonna be. And it's not gonna talk about why Solid Core was is worth $600 million. You know what I mean? Catterton is not gonna get up there and say why EGM is great. We already know they're great. So there's other platforms for that. We need to have more honest, transparent conversations around this industry. If we want to move it forward, and at the top of the call, like I said, people keep saying that to me. So I'm responding to what they asked for.

17 years I've been in this industry, and this is the most excited I have been for the state of where we're going as a whole, right? I think the opportunities right now are tremendous. And I think if you can't, if people can't feel that, I mean, all the stuff you're talking about is is refreshing and new. Like I've I've done a lot of events over the last four years, right? Obviously, I'm I'm in the thick of trends and stuff like that. I've I've probably heard more about trends in the industry than you know, maybe less than you, but more than most people on average. But the opportunity to hear something refreshing and new, and I think term I use it with a little bit of refrain, is inspiration, right? For like, okay, where are the bigger ideas? How can we be extending, you know, expanding our thought process and our purview of what we can actually do within this industry? And I think it's it's really, really keen. And you know, we we barely talked about the political will of the country at this point, and the people are getting put into major positions within the government. Now, um, I want to shift a little bit because this is a question I've been meaning to ask you for a long time, Eddie. You you get insights into what type of content our industry likes to read, right? The topics and things like that. Like what what are people right now consuming the most of, right? Like what types of articles? Is it trends? Is it interviews? Is it specific topics? And then what surprises you that they're not consuming more of that you wish they did? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it's that's a great question. And you know, look, it gets thrown off a little bit because you never know who's gonna pick up a story. You know, if there's a third party that picks it up and then it it kind of spikes or goes viral over the weekend. You know, we did an interview with with Lauren Cody, the president of Orange Theory, super hot last week. We did an inter we did an article about that the state of HVLP, super hot. We did it on we did it unscripted with Anthony Guys, super hot. Top three stories of the week. I I think what it probably would be less surprising to you. It's it's the biggest brands and the biggest names that drive the most consistent traffic. And and we're we're B2B, you know, and so uh that that that's not that's not surprising. Jim is a clinic. You know, you could put wellness, we joke, you could put wellness in any headline, and that's like you Kim Kardashianize it. Like it's like this somehow it just more clicks if you don't. But also, look, it's a media business, right? Like you could write, and I I look, I don't want to I talk to my editors a lot about this, is that sometimes you could how you create a headline will will determine how well that article does. Now you got to have the content to support that. But I also think this is an industry that doesn't know what they need to read, that doesn't know, and that's part of what I'm saying. Like, you may not think, oh, let me hear what sports innovation lab has to say.

That's the core of my question.

And so that's where you have to constantly refresh it, reserve it. Again, you have a great email and 40% open it. 60% of your audience hasn't seen it. So what are you doing to recirculate that content? That's what people don't think about. And I'm really trying to get my team around is how do we constantly repurpose this content in short form and long form, in audio and video so that you get more out of it? How do you link things together? You see our sometimes articles that are two months old coming to be the top five of the week. And you know, I want to go back just on one thing that I want to add because when we spoke about the summit, and this is like an indirect answer, it's like we're talking about content, right? What is what is popular? I look at our innovation lounge and our wellness lounge as content. I don't look at it as a trade show, I don't look at it as an expo, I don't look at it as a booth, I look at it as content. But what do I mean by that? How many events do you go to that you've seen the escape machine there? The answer is probably zero. How many events have you seen the immortal machine? You know, they're less, but it's super cool. It's it's innovative, it's hot. How many times have you been able to try some new some new techno gym, you know, part of their healthness collection? Or how many times have you been able to get your biological age checked at an event? Have you been able to do brain mapping? This is highly curated. And so what I mean is I think that this is not just I'm going to write another order for the SWAT rack. There's events that exist for that purpose, and they do an exceptional job of this. We are curating and putting together some of the most innovative companies in products and services in an intelligent way where I believe in between certain sessions, okay, I want to see the nine, I want to see the 11, you're going to run down there and say, hey, I want to see what Scalecore is up to. Hey, you know, I want to see what what is this new e-gym product? Or what is this immortal machine? Can I get on there? Oh, I want to meet with Becoming. What type of new contrast therapy is it that's you know, and so how do we bring products to the market that you may not already be aware of or you have a hard time getting in front of? And I think that's gonna be very cool and different. So again, when you see two stages, 75 speakers, 30 exhibitors, it sounds like the same old. But again, what separates a Picasso from a five-year-old putting his hands on a piece of paper? The canvas is the same. It's it's what you create with that canvas. You know, anyone, it just the box is there, it's the white walls. I think we're going to produce something very special. It's gonna feel different.

Awesome. Well, I'm excited, man. I've been talking about it quite a bit. It's you know, June 17th to 18th, right, in New York City. And the like, of course you're doing in New York. Like it's it's very athletech to have a big New York event.

Look, I also think, look, here's the challenge of this industry. If I said I'm doing a financial services event and did it in New York, I'd have 70% of the industry within a cab ride or a train ride away. If I said a fashion event, I'd have 50, 60%. There is not one city that you and I could pick on the map right now that could get even a third of the industry in one place within within 15 or 30 minutes or an hour. So that becomes a destination. We we've been to a lot of West Coast events this year. I also think New York just has a sense of seriousness to it. It's a sense of hustle, it's a sense of business, it's it's it's fast pace, and and there's that energy that I want to kind of resonate through through the two days. Will it move to another city? Maybe. Maybe it stays in New York, but it's uh certainly not, certainly not for economic reasons doing it in New York. It's it's rather expensive. It's there's something like you know, this New York has a feeling that you can't describe.

Oh man, I love New York. I could never live there, Eddie. You know that I would suffocate. But coming from where I live, out to New York once or twice a year, love it. Huge fan. I think it's fantastic. And it's a lot of fun, man. The food's great, you know, energy's high, there's so much shit to do. And I think this is gonna bring I think you're right now.

We're working on partnerships with the City Pickle and other ships and stuff like that, so that you're gonna have the ability to try these things out. And even if we don't necessarily do an event with them, there's still so many places you can go to make this trip worthwhile. When people come to New York, they don't come for two days, they come for three, four days, they set up meetings, they set up client meetings, they meet friends, they they visit businesses. Like this is a city where you could get a lot of stuff done. And so I think that you got to make the most out of it, though. You got to make the most out of what New York has to offer. You got to make the most out of who's gonna be in the room. You're gonna see probably the largest concentration of PE and VC and family offices than any other event. I can't get them to write the check for you. You know, you're gonna see some of these great vendors. You got to figure out how, if and how it makes sense to incorporate that into your business. You're gonna hear some cool concept. Maybe it's relevant for you, maybe it's not. You're gonna hear the Sports Innovation Lab. What you do with that information, it's up for you to decide. You know, it's it's it's I get inspired by people like that because it makes me think, wow, how do I apply that to my business? How could I do a better job serving my readers? And think about it. I'm in a business where I have data on, to your point, every article they're reading. So it really makes me think about understanding your customer and how to re-engage them. And maybe I got to show up in places that we're always thinking about, oh, do we go to Meta or do we go to Google? Maybe you got to think about targeting our audience in a completely different way.

Last question for you, Eddie. The uh, you know, you got into this industry what five years ago when you were just writing emails to nowhere, essentially. And now uh now you have a pretty substantial platform for the industry. As you've dug deeper and deeper, and now you're about waist deep in in what we do here. What surprised you? Is there anything, one or two things that that caught you by surprise, things that you didn't expect?

The opportunity is the challenge. The fragmentation of this industry allows a lot of people to survive, a lot of people to be successful, but it also is very challenging to bring people together. I think I gotta use my words really carefully here. For a mission-driven industry, there's a lot less collaboration than I would have thought. People are really in their own little world, and I'm surprised there's not more pre-competitive collaboration, helping each other, learn from each other. Again, every industry kind of has it, you know, and it's like, whoa, this person's gonna speak. Why would they not speak? Why would I not well, why would they share? Why would they not share? You know what I mean? It's like there's plenty of places for them to compete. You know, like I keep using this, this, this, this saying, like at the top you collaborate, at the bottom you you you compete. Just because someone says, you know, we have a partnership with XYZ doesn't mean I can pick up the phone and get a partnership tomorrow with them. That's not that's not proprietary information. You know, so yeah, I open up a magazine and I see Rolex advertising in GQ doesn't mean oh my God, now I can start a men's magazine and get Rolex. Like you got a lot of work to do between that. But hearing these stories, you know, you you don't know who you're gonna meet. You know what I mean? You don't know who you're gonna meet. You don't know what's gonna inspire you, you don't know what what little thing you're gonna walk away with that's gonna make you think differently. And sometimes it's affirmation. Sometimes, like, you know, I was questioning myself, but after hearing this, maybe I'm on the right track. And that is also benefit and value, too. You know, sometimes we we second guess ourselves and we To hear from someone else. And so there's a lot of different ways to apply value to something. I think that's what's hard about this industry is that like they think about marketing in a very binary way. Like, I spend a dollar, do I get something? And I'm like, I never like bought a car off a TV show, you know, commercial. And I don't read the Wall Street Journal and be like, hey, you know, I'm on page 32. I like to, I like to purchase what you're selling. I've never done that before. I don't think anyone has. How many touch points do we have to see every single day before we ultimately make a purchase? And hey, my lease is not up for two years. If the auto industry is still targeting me every day, I just bought a new Shrixan driver last year. Callaway didn't say, let me stop advertising for Eddie for five years because I think that's the lifetime value of a driver. You know, that's the thing. It's like, I don't think Coca-Cola has a brand marketing problem. I think everyone knows what Coca-Cola is, yet why do they market so much? Again, like I brought up Rolex. You can't even buy a Rolex. Yet every time you turn on golf and tennis and these sporting events, they were there. Why? And yet, a lot of people in this industry, and this is not this industry's problem, I've done this a couple times across different sectors. They think everyone knows who they are. As much as a lot of people in the industry read us, there's more people in the industry that probably don't know Athletec than do. That is how I wake up every single day and say, there could be another 100,000 or 200,000 or half a million. And you know what? I gotta make sure that if someone else comes on the scene, how do I keep those hundred and find the next hundred and the next hundred? Again, I'm like a paranoid crazy person. But I think that if you do not think like that in your own business, think about it, Eric. You you have this, you you know, you do a lot of work in podcasts. The friction to starting a podcast is zero. We could turn this on today, and it's the Eddie and Eric show. The value that we have is is is almost it's becoming less about the content and more about the distributionist than the audience. So yes, you have to have great content, but a lot of people can create great content today. Some of the best movies ever created or never seen because they can't get a distribution deal. I'm sure there's plenty of hot number one songs that are never gonna make it out of the bedroom. So, what's more important? Having a great idea that you don't no one talks about, sometimes a mediocre idea that everyone talks about is more successful.

Yeah, well said. Well said. Eddie, it's always a pleasure, man. I always pull a lot out of these. Where do you want people to go? Athletechnews.com obviously has a lot of information about the summit. People want to reach you.

I mean, it's it's there's a lot of takeaways. Like I said, there's more people we don't know than we do know. You know, a lot of people, but if you're listening and you got a great concept, you're a franchisee or you got a great product, we want to keep learning. You're managing a hospitality chain, we constantly need to keep reinventing ourselves. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me an email. If you're not already signed up, sign up. It doesn't cost you anything. If anything, it's costing me to serve you content every day. So sign up. Uh, you know, if you if if you if if you like what you heard and you want to be a better version of yourself, if you want to take your business to the next level, send your CMO, send your CTO, send your head of procurement, send your COO. I think five or six or seven hundred of the top industry executives are gonna be there. I imagine that they they already are seeing the the value that, or they're they perceive the value they're gonna get out of that. So, you know, you'll be in very good company. You know, go to Athletechnews.com, you'll see a tab for the the Innovation Summit. You know, love to have you. Price is the friction, send me an email, you know, figure it out. You got an idea, you want it to email Eric and I and put you on the show. You know, there's it's unfortunately in this business, every day you got to go back to zero and hit the press. There's there's no set menu.

It's a grind, but it's fun. I uh round this out. I think in the B2B media space, and you and I have talked about this a lot, it's it's so much about relationships, right? And I mean it's it's fundamentally about relationships in in the business that we do. It's not just the content. That that's a driver to get people more connected and get us more connected with the people we want to talk to. And it's a really good time. It's a very challenging time. We didn't even get into this, but the the media overall as an industry is is changing so rapidly. But I think if you continue to look at the value from not just the surface layer of the content, but the relationships and the connections and the things you can do for people, really truly understand your value in B2B media, then then you can still be very successful and you can be very agile as as things shift.

Yeah, and I think I think to that point, I think of of when I think of the media landscape, right? This has nothing to do with Athletic. B2B will be the most resilient. Caveat is B2B is probably small, like compared to cable TV or compared to you know consumer media, AI can't replace two people getting together and meeting in person. Or I said this to my team recently. What AI is gonna do in some weird enigma way, it's gonna make while it's replacing journalists, it's actually making the better journalists more relevant. Because now, if you actually could get sources on the phone, you actually have a point of view, you actually could create something and not regurgitate a press release. That's gonna be really, really valuable. Anyone could take a press release, throw it into AI and say I'm the Eddie's fitness blog. Very little value in that. So now the better have to get even better. What everyone's a publisher, everyone's a music creator, everyone's a content creator. How do you create audience? Not easy to create audience. You and I know that really, really well. Uh, I think all too well, how hard it is to build an audience. You know, it's uh I don't know if I love the business, but it's the life I chose.

Well, we'll end it at that. Eddie, I'm looking forward to it. Uh the event's less than a month away. Hopefully the weather's beautiful in New York and it's it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm really excited to some of the things.

It's inside. So that's a no excuse. The roof is quite stable. Bring an umbrella, you know, wipe your feet off in the front door.

Thanks for joining me, Eddie. Looking forward to it. Ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Hertzman. Thanks. 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 futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.