Garrett Marshall - Xponential Fitness & Transitioning From Multichannel to Omnichannel

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. 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 InsightTracker.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. This episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at the Brand X Method. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated in working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and Certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take-it-your-own pace, professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brandxmethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. Please go check out our wonderful sponsors. And if you get value out of this show, I ask you to do three things. Please go subscribe, give us a favorable rating, and share this episode on social media or wherever you like to go chat with friends. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. We are live, Gary Marshall. Welcome to the future of fitness.

Thanks for having me, Eric.

Yeah, it's it's a pleasure to have you, man. I going over your background, going over some of the things you've done. Uh I mean, just looking at you on screen, you look like a relatively young guy, but I would imagine that you would been in your 60s with all of the experience that you've you've had. And it's really exciting to get you and learn more about what you guys are up to at Exponential, um, gain some knowledge from your experience. So I'm very much looking forward to this. And I think one of the best places to generally start is uh give us your your background, man. How'd you get to be uh a president at Exponential Fitness?

More more than happy to. And I I told you before we came on, it's thank you for those humbling words. It's great to be here. I've been a big fan of the podcast and uh had a number of friends join you, so uh it's great to be with you. Um let's see. So, how did I get in the industry? Um my story is probably the opposite of a glamorous one. It was actually a sports industry that was probably the initial ember when you go all the way back that that actually got me in the door to fitness. Fitness is always a big part of my life, grew up playing sports, and uh especially as I got older, you know, being in shape and feeling good and understanding that mind and body connection, you know, that that becomes a bigger part of it. But uh the the short or the medium version is I was playing hockey. Uh, this is after school. Um, I got injured. I went back to Minneapolis, which was where I lived prior. And uh in my mind at the time, I was just looking for an opportunity to, you know, basically you're you know, like you're like ex-college age, you don't have a ton of money. Um, and you know, all all of my energy and focus was in the sport. And I just needed a gym membership so that I could uh rehab and get back to hockey. And don't ask me why, but for some reason I had a Red Cross swim instructor's certificate. I probably got it like in PE or something during during high school. That's the best best memory I can come up with, but I couldn't explain exactly. Um, interestingly enough, that allows you to teach swimming lessons. So I got I got a job teaching swimming lessons to kids in exchange for a free membership at Lifetime Fitness. And uh as I said, you know, my mind was focused on a few months of uh PT and then getting back into the sport, but kind of one thing led to another. And uh I ended up spending six years with Lifetime. I really fell in love with the with the with the product and uh especially the team. And I I sort of worked my way up and did a number of things with uh with Lifetime. Lifetime uh Lifetime Fitness IPO'd in 2004, which was about a year and a half after after I started there. So it's great, obviously, uh learning experience for someone like myself that was young in their career. Um and I did that for five or six years, and then towards the end, um I the role that I had was called regional pre-sales lead. And so I would go around to all the new markets in the country that that didn't have a lifetime's lifetime presence. And basically my job was to generate revenue before the store opened. And so I would I would help in hiring the general manager, and and back in that day, we would have these triple wide preview centers, is what they called them, that would be pre-saling memberships for like nine months before the the club would actually open. And they would have membership targets of like four to five thousand units before the club would even open. And so I was doing that. But around 2007-2008, when the economy started to dry up, instead of like bouncing around from one location to the next for a week or two at a time, I was staying there for two or three months at a time. And that was primarily because his economy started to slow, it was getting harder and harder to open these locations and projects were getting stalled. And so, you know, sort of young and naive in my career, um, as much as I loved lifetime, I thought, you know, I want to get my feet, uh maybe get my hands dirty to be the better expression, with entrepreneurism. And and and I always had that knack and wanted to test that out. And I ended up finding um basically a product. I wouldn't, I don't even know if you could call it a concept or a company. It was probably more of a product. There were a couple guys who I met in Minneapolis who were um Anytime Fitness franchisees, and they had a local audio video um vendor who, you know, basically installed the TVs and the phones and the keycard access systems for their gyms. And they had come up with this product idea to deliver video-based group fitness classes in their studios. And uh that's about the time when I met them. That that eventually became a SaaS-based B2B business called Fitness and Requests. It's now been rebranded as well beats. And so uh I started doing that. Um, that was received by the industry really well. It it took off. I think that product was installed in probably like two to three thousand commercial uh commercial gems within the first uh three years. So it was definitely onto something. But I, you know, I was basically performing the sales function or the biz dev function in that company. And I always had sort of my eyes, or maybe you could say dreams on uh creating more of an enterprise solution of that that product. And so after three years, I ended up uh leaving and joining who uh a guy named Peter Taunton, who was formerly the CEO of Lift Brands, he's now the chairman of Lift Brands, and we started a competitive product called called Fitness on Demand. So I I served there, I'm trying to remember all this here. I served there for uh eight years as the CEO. And uh a couple uh a couple years ago, which would be in 20 uh 2019, I was actually out here meeting with the CEO of Exponential Fitness, a guy named Anthony uh uh Geisler. And uh the opportunity came about. He was very focused on on future-proofing exponential and very interested in in turning the business into more of an omnichannel provider, very focused on growth strategy, wanted to do direct to consumer. Uh, the opportunity came up to to join him. And California was a lot warmer than Minnesota. So two years ago, I I jumped on board here at Exponential.

That's a lot of experience, man. A lot of uh a lot of selling, a lot of tech, a lot of evolution. I mean, over that period of time, I mean, that's you you've seen so much advancement in the fitness industry, right? I mean, if I was thinking like, you know, when I was, you know, let's say like 10, 15 years ago, when you talk about an on-demand thing, you would think of DVDs, right? And then here we are with you know, so many different ways to get your fitness content delivered to you um in so many different ways. I mean, that's one of the questions gonna ask you later in there, but uh so tell me what is it that you're doing now? Because you're you're working on some big projects.

Yeah, yeah. So my my title is president of fitness streaming. Um, and I guess segueing off the back of where I left off uh before is uh here at Exponential, Anthony Um going back to 2018-2019 was very focused on creating this omni-channel uh experience. And so my my role's been centered around that. We've built out when I joined, we had basically zero direct-to-consumer offering or any infrastructure. The the business itself, you know, we we um our franchise concept. I think most people know that, but that's sort of our core competency. So for the last two years, we I've been primarily focused on the direct-to-consumer side of our business. And the biggest component of that right now is our fitness streaming platform, which we call Go.

And what is uh so getting into a little bit of like exactly what is Go? Is it is it how is it delivered to the client? What kind of content is it? Um yeah, give us all the the intricacies of what exactly Go is.

So we uh Go is comprised, taking it from the top down, of both live and on-demand content. Um, within that, we have um a mixture of titles that we've created ourselves, our own broadcasts, as well as uh some content that we license. Um we have audio, we have video, we have short form, we have with equipment, without equipment, so on and so forth. So I'm actually sitting today over at X Studio, which is our um production facility here in Southern California, where we uh broadcast content live every week. So each one of our brands delivers a certain amount of live content every week. When that content airs, it's initially aired live, and then of course it you know it's archived and is added to the library as an on-demand, uh, on-demand asset.

Got it. And what are you seeing now? I mean, I okay, what's today's day? Today is uh September 7th, 2021, and I always bring up a date because things change with COVID and shutdowns and you know all of the interesting and uh unfortunate things have happened over the last 18 months. But you know you look at the trends of uh streaming fitness, right? What are you starting to see? Or is it what are the signs? Is it continuing to grow? Is it as gyms are reopening, people are starting to go back to the gym and not access that content has become a permanent piece of you know their fitness routines? What what insights do you have for for our audience here?

So you you got right at the heart string, um, Eric, because this is the world that I live in. I get and there's a lot of thoughts that I have around that. I would say um maybe to start by answering that at the macro level, and then we can dig into or distill any elements this that you'd like to focus on. But I would say um consumption of the digital experiences, there's no question that's conclusively and empirically up. Um it's continuing to go up. It was going up before COVID, it can and it continues to go up now. Um so that that would be that would be one answer. I would say that um probably the biggest change, honestly, if you want to look over like a like a 12-month or a 24-month period look back is you know the demand, the consumer demand is up and has been going up, and that hasn't changed. There were periods of time during COVID, obviously, when it when it peaked, because of the fact that um digital was a means to, you know, digital was a means to them when all when all brick and mortar was closed. But largely, if you spread that out of time, it's it's it's up and continuing to go up. But in the background, what's happened is is supply has also increased significantly. So demand is up, but now supply is really, really up. And so I think that's going to be kind of the most interesting thing to see uh what blossoms or what unfolds in the commercial industry is what happens to just this massive spike in supply over the next 12 to 24 months as things stabilize.

Yeah, it's it's uh okay, what was I was on a board and the question was being asked, you know, should gym owners do a, you know, have a digital presence plus the in-person, like should they do it? And the question the answer I always come down to is like, well, yeah, if you can do it well, because there's a lot of companies like yours who are well funded, tons of talent, right? They know how to do this thing right. And I'm guessing you know, when you look forward and uh maybe gives insight into what you guys are betting on, but you know, who do you think the winners will be in the digital fitness area? Like, what are the qualities that will mean success? I mean, even in in your intake form that you filled out, you mentioned like learn the game that you're playing and playing it well, right? That was part of one of the quotes that I think you wrote in there. If you or someone on your team wrote that at least, it's really good. Uh, you know, what what do you think the game is and and how do you play this game well?

Yeah, I I I think it comes back to orienting yourself because honestly, I think that we are really in the early frontier of digital fitness, and there are going to be a lot of interesting business models that unfold in the near term, both coming from inside this industry and also outside in. And uh I you know at the end of the day, I think like it's all about orienting yourself to consumer behavior. And the biggest misconception in our industry, and I speak on behalf of mostly you know the commercial industry um or conventional commercial operators, brick and mortar operators, is we've we've tend to think of the consumer cohorts as mutually exclusive. There are people that go to gyms and there are people that use digital fitness and the two are separate, and that that really couldn't be further from the truth.

Yeah, I mean it's uh I look at my own fitness experience, right? And I think this is you know starting to become more normal, although I have a high training age, but I go into the gym twice a week, right? I do outdoor stuff twice a week. Sometimes I go into the gym just for a fitness on demand experience, right? Just go into the cycling room. I don't want to think, so I want to go spin, right? Listen to some music and have a good time. Um, I will do on-demand yoga and I use Ready State from Kelly Starrette to do mobility at home. So I have all of I have content, I have in-person, I have outdoor experiences, I have it all. And I think that's becoming more normal. But I'm curious to hear your thought. Is that kind of the way that the consumer is going now? Is just they pick a little bit to everything. And is that mean two questions? They pick in a little bit of everything. And then if that's the case, how do you build loyalty?

Yeah, great, great question. I I think the the the short answer is absolutely yes, because when you taught, you know, it's really the the service provider who can offer the prescription and own the customer experience is going to win. I think just like and and that's where there is an imminent threat from some of the digital native startups, right? And the apps that are out there that have hyper-personalized that customer experience and for people like us, and you know, we used to say, like, well, you know, that was a gen, that was that's a Gen Z thing, or that's a millennial thing, or whatever, but really I think at this at this place in time the convenience that can be provided through a digital experience has really been adopted by or accepted by really all ethnicities, all you know, social classes, all income brackets, etc. Um, and I think that that's what is gonna win that that that's what's gonna win um over time. Uh and I I think it's it's also just not that simple because one of the things you hear the commercial side of the industry talk a lot about, and you know, we have a couple thousand locations, so we really believe in brick and mortar. And when we look at our, let's say, customer funnel, we believe that the in-person brick and mortar experience is where we can deliver the absolute best experience possible. Because we control all of the sensory experience, the ambience, all of it, what you see, what you smell, what you taste. We have you there with a world-class instructor. And as a byproduct of that, we can monetize that far better than we can monetize the other experiences that we offer because of the value that's delivered. So I want to preface with that. It's not that it's all doom and gloom for brick and mortar, but I think that a lot of the industry, we talk about community and we talk about these other reasons why people have used digital. And now that COVID's over, they're gonna go back. And I think, again, there's there are a lot of misconceptions around the jobs that brick and mortar outlets have provided to consumers historically. You know, for some people, they just don't have the uh a space in their living room where they can jump around, or they don't have $2,000 or $3,000 of commercial equipment in their home or can't afford that, right? Or, and of course, community is one of those things. That's a big part of our value proposition, is experiential experience and community. But you really have to, I think that the maturity that is going to play out in the next few years in our industry is gonna be a much better realization of the jobs that are being provided to customers because really, you know, providing access to commercial equipment for people that don't have it in their home, that is not a very sustainable or easy to protect um you know, business model. So I think there's gonna there definitely will be an awakening as far as that's concerned.

Yeah, great answer, man. You know, I another thought comes to mind as you've been uh talking about all this stuff is you know, traditionally, at least since I've been in the fitness industry, we've always kind. Of fought over the same percentage of people, right? People who go to the gym or actively engage in some kind of fitness regime, which is actually, you know, the percentage is all over the place. Let's let's call it 20% of North America. Um, so that leaves 80% that really don't do a whole lot, don't have any guidance, aren't really engaged in anything, nonetheless a community of anything. Have you noticed or have you size seen signs that since the kind of digital uh advancement, I mean it's it's been coming for a long time, but obviously over the last two years we've just seen a drastic acceleration of it. Um have you noticed that it's starting to get to people who may not have traditionally uh participated in a fitness program?

Yeah, yeah. I a couple interesting um or relevant statistics come to mind. Um I saw a Forbes article within the last 12 months, and the statistic, if I'm not mistaken, was that um 73% of Americans use at least one digital fitness app, which I thought, you know, I've sort of tried to track that to the best of my ability over my career, and I thought that was a staggering number. I mean, if you compare that as an example to pre-COVID levels of um consumers who belong to commercial fitness facilities, that's about 60 million. So you're talking about four times the number of people using digital fitness than belong to commercial facilities. And, you know, the first, I think the first rebuttal that that statistic typically gets from an audience is like, hey, you know, but these are people walking their dog in the park. That's not the same as my customer, right? But there's another, another great statistic which ha which has been tracked for, I think, if I'm not mistaken, 10 or 15 years. And that is um, it's not Nielsen, uh, it's Gallup. I believe it's Gallup, but it's they they they issue a weekly frequent exerciser survey, and uh roughly, don't quote me on this, but roughly the survey goes out to 10,000 Americans every week and it asks them one question in the last whatever seven days, how many times have you exercised? And there's criteria around what constitutes exercise. So it's got to be more than just like, you know, put taking your shopping cart back to the shopping cart stall. Um and then they abstract that number as a as a proxy for the percentage of Americans who are frequent exercisers. And uh even going back to pre-COVID, I think 2018 that that percentage of Americans who were frequent exercisers peaked at 56%. So you're talking about, you know, if there's 330 million Americans, you're talking about whatever that is, 160, 170, 180, maybe 190 million Americans who are frequent exercisers, again, compared to the population that belonged to gyms. And we have some data on the level of frequent exercises. It's normally about half in the commercial fitness space. So 30 million or so, you could say for rough, rough math. Um, frequent exercisers in the US who belong to gym. If you subtract that off the top, I mean, you're talking about a population of roughly 150, 160 who are frequent exercisers outside of the gym compared to maybe 30, possibly 40. Um, I'm not sure what that number looks like inside of the gym cohort when it when it's peaked, but it's a significant difference. So these are not people who have just got off the couch and are just discovering exercise. They're there's a significant population of Americans who who are engaged in fitness and do not belong to a commercial facility.

Yeah, that's interesting, man. Those numbers are actually very surprising to me. I didn't think that we would have that many active exercisers. I mean, you just I don't know, just look around, right? I mean, you just don't think you'd see that many active exercisers. And then just let's be frank, United States, it just doesn't seem like it. So, but you know, humble numbers are uh are hard to argue with. You know, I I want to get into to make sure we have enough time for this topic because it's the one I'm really curious to get your thoughts on. Because I mentioned, you know, that uh one of the challenges you have is moving from, I believe, and if I reverse this, let me know, multi-channel to omni-channel, right? And uh I was like, you know, man, I feel like I should know the differences between the two, but I'm not sure I'm clear on that. And so I'm curious for if you can kind of help educate our audience on like what is it, what does it mean to be multi-channel? What does it mean to be omnichannel? And then what is it like for you going in one direction and kind of you know learning to adapt to to that specific one of the journey you're on?

Yeah, yeah. Um, I so to me, uh uh maybe the the difference in layman's terms, because that's the way the that's the way I speak, is you know, multi-channel would be a a provider of a product or service who can distribute that product or service in different ways across different channels. So it'd be you know, I'm trying to think of a good example. It would be maybe the difference uh someone who sells a service or a product and they sell it on one across one payment process processor, and then they sell it over here through a marketplace. But those those distribution channels more or less operate exclusively. Um, Omnichannel is when they all work together to roll up into really one brand experience. And that was an important part for me of joining Exponential was when we think about this future digital experience, is is it an extension to the brand where you have this separate app over here and you go download that and it it is what it is. It could be really good, it could be really bad, but it's over there. Or is the is our is our digital offering really part of our brand identity? And that's the difference between uh the two. Everybody's had that experience. You know, I don't know why I think of Blockbuster. Maybe it's just that like Blockbuster is all the be is become the hate child of like, you know, discussing business case business cases in the last five to ten years. But it seems to me like this would happen at Blockbuster where like you'd rent a movie, you know, or maybe you do the mail order or something, and they're like, you've got a late fee, and then you had to call somebody different, and you would think that the store was different from the 800 number you had to call to resolve that late fee. Um, and but from a customer's perspective, I think most of the time, like, and we talk about this a lot internally, the customer doesn't know the difference from a studio versus our digital app. It should be one and the same. And so we've really worked hard to create synergy between those various product experiences. And we're we're the fortunate beneficiary that that's the case because over the last 12 to 18 months, it's really fragmented. We've, you know, we've had the massive introduction of what we call internally local live streaming, which is our own studios um broadcasting their experiences over Facebook Live or or Zoom or what have you. We have our global offering, which we've, you know, we talked about we we broadcast content out of Southern California and out of New York. At the at the global level, um, we have four packs, eight packs, unlimited memberships. We have one-on-one training in certain brands. And so um, you know, what one of the big, you know, one of the biggest challenges that we've had, and it it's probably true for everyone in the industry, is figuring out how those all fit in the funnel together, the type of customer that they serve, and the right way to monetize them.

Yeah, there's a lot to that, man. It's it feels like too, is you know, I think this is natural for most industries as they grow because in the fitness industry is super young. It really is. I think we have to accept that compared to many other industries, we're we're still kind of playing in the sandbox, right? And I think as things build, especially we get accelerations like we did during the pandemic, of speed of growth and different, you know, all of a sudden there's all these different offerings coming out, it's kind of pieced together haphazardly just because that's the way things grow. It's like, well, I'm gonna okay, add this chunk on, and it just doesn't look as smooth as you want. I guess when you look at the vision of where all of this is going across exponential brands, right? And looking at an alumni channel solution, can't say that word right. Uh what what does your vision look like? How does it become streamlined? Like from the consumer angle, you know, when their experience comes in, they have all these different offerings, but it's one brand, it's one, you know, kind of singular experience. What what what is your vision for that? How do you want to see that look?

I I guess our our the um the the driving force for us or our mission would be a different way to say it, uh, is creating accessibility, which has been historically a real challenge for the boutique, uh, the boutique market. If you look, you know, at boutique, it's been geographically constrained, it's been constrained to high disposable, really urban areas, and those kind of things. So, you know, when we look across the suite of product experiences that we can offer, the driving um goal is to create as much accessibility um for the boutique experience as we possibly can. And uh I think we've been fortunate that through all the ways that we can deliver the experience, they sort of start to organically price themselves out and and fit into the funnel. Um, so if you think about the think about a traditional funnel, which you know it's very wide at the at the top, what's interesting about so like in our in our model, we think of like what all the free things that we do on social media, things that are ungated, uh, freemium content, there are different ways that we can deliver experience there. And most of the time, that's for lead generation and prospecting. But naturally, when we leverage social platforms, we can re reach a much wider audience. But the expectation on behalf of the consumer is that typically those things are free. And in order to really get the benefit of reaching a wider audience, then you need to make those type of things free or very, very low cost. And then you kind of go down a rung and you have um something like live and on demand. You look at our platform or any other digital platform out there, they're typically they're ranging in price from probably five to twenty dollars a month is sort of fair market value for that. And for the most part, they're one-directional experiences. Even if you take Peloton or Beachbody, you know, some of the big boys in the space, besides high fiving and the occasional call out of a handle, which you may or may not know among the other 1,000 riders whether or not that person's even real. Uh, and it's probably three or four minutes delayed, right? Like it's for the most part, it's a one-way experience, five to twenty dollars a month. You get a little bit lower in the funnel, and you in our in our world, you'd have local live streaming where you have streams coming from specific instructors at a specific location. Um, we don't lead with that because if you're a net new prospect to our business, the best first impression we can make and the way, not just in terms of the content, but in terms of the user experience, what you see in app, how we serve in-app notifications to you, to engage you, to help point, hopefully point out the things that are personalized or we think are going to streamline your user experience and push you, you know, I guess remove barriers from your fitness journey and fitness goals. Um, we with our global product and the content that we create live and on-demand, that's the best first impression that we can make. But if you're a member and your predominant preference is to uh belong to a studio and and be part of that community and support your your studio, then there's a high affinity for the people that teach and the people that you have relationships with. But guess what? Even for those people too, life circumstances come up and there are times when they can't make it in the studio. And that that's where local live would fit in. So we we charge a little bit more for that our via our franchise uh partners, but it is a two-way experience and it's higher value, especially for someone who has a pre-existing relationship. And then probably the very bottom of the funnel is that live in-person experience where I mentioned before, uh, we control the the entire experience end-to-end and and therefore can monetize that accordingly.

Yeah. Ah, that's great vision, man. I really thanks for explaining that so clearly. I I'm curious, you know, I've always found, and maybe it's just anecdotal, that if you don't charge for things, people just generally don't value them. And, you know, I think that's something I've always uh, you know, I was a gym operator or something. Occasionally I would catch heat for maybe, you know, or running some kind of eight-week challenge or something like that. And then I'd be like, okay, it's you know, 220 bucks if you want to. They're like, well, I pay for a membership. Like, yep, you do. And this is outside of that. And, you know, I catch a little bit of heat, but most that I found is the people who did do it engaged in it, they valued it, and they had better results. And eventually I just tell people, like, hey, you know, this is the way the human creature works, is like if you pay for it, you value it, means you're actually gonna do the thing, right? Um, and I'm curious when you're looking at like the overall like digital experiences, there's a lot of people just doing an add-on for free to their current membership, right? Or whatever it may be. Um do you think how important do you think it is that uh the digital experience is valued correctly in the market?

Oh, that's a really good question. That's a really good question. Um, I think it's important. Yeah, I I mean I can I can I can tell you right now that um we charge the same for our digital experience uh if you're a member versus if you're a non-member. Um and so we haven't ventured into doing value add or bundle discounting or anything like that quite yet. Partially, I guess you could say we we could say strategically and partially because we've been so busy getting this thing launched that that's been more of a luxury. But um, but I no, I think it's I think it's I think it's really important, and I think ultimately the market is going to in you know sort of enforce that. I think it would be hard over time to charge a premium for something if you're not providing that value. But if you can deliver the convenience and the user experience, then then it can be um uh billed properly.

Yeah. Good good answer, man. So uh I don't know why this question popped in my mind, but you'd mentioned that you, you know, you've been doing business development for a very long time, right? Uh I think oftentimes when people talk about, and I say I'm a business development specialist or do business development work, but uh when I sit back, I'm like, what does that actually mean? Right? Like, what is that term? So when you think of the term business development as a role or a function within a uh organization, what how do you define that? And then as you think about that, part two of that question, how is it different than sales?

That's a good question too. Put me on the spot. Um Yeah. So with with with business development, I think it's it's driving results. And the results can are probably specific to the business that you work in. Um and it's move it's moving moving the needle forward, equal part strategy and execution. Um that that's may and that would probably be the answer. I hate to be like too abstract, so tell me if I am, and I I'll try to not mince words, but um, I I think that's to me probably the difference between business development. You can get really fancy with you know, some a lot of larger businesses have corporate development and business development and sales and accounting, right? And so, but but to me, the difference between biz dev and sales is sales is more of a transactional discipline where business development bears both responsibilities, moving the strategic needle forward as well as the actual execution of what maybe you could call sales.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's spot on, man. I think it was a really good definition. I actually don't think I would have changed a thing. So yeah, uh, it is a tough question because a lot of people actually sit back and think about it, but this is what I think about, you know, at 6 30 in the evening with a uh a bourbon in my so like what am I actually doing here? Like, what do I do on a day-to-day basis? And it's uh it's pretty funny thing to think about.

Well, now yeah, now you now you've triggered a light bulb because I've never been asked that question before, and I can already see myself uh probably a beer, not a bourbon, but although I you wouldn't have to twist my arm for the bourbon, I I may be thinking about that one of these uh uh week nights this week.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, man. Um so as you know, as the show is aptly named the future of fitness, uh when you're when you're looking forward and you're seeing you know the technological technology technological developments, the trends in the market, the changes in consumer behavior needs, and things like that. I guess let's start with technology. Is there any particular piece of technology that has you really excited um about where the fitness industry is going and the role that it will play?

Yes. Yeah, there are a few. And I should preface by saying, like, I have never been um a classic early adopter. I think that surprises a lot of people, but I had never slept outside of Apple for the new iPhone or anything like that. I I really what what what I really enjoy about technology is putting it to use to solve real problems. And you know, it's like that famous maximum. I'm not sure where this came from. It might have been like um crossing the chasm or innovators dilemma or something, but you know, it's like you know, 95% of innovation doesn't involve new technology, right? Uh it's putting together, putting pieces together in a way that solves real problems using what's already available. But I I so that's a long uh monologue before I answer your question, but my answer probably voice. I'm really excited about voice. I'm not seeing it used. The best of the best way that I'm aware of right now that's voice is being used uh in fitness is um like at home I can speak to Alexa and she can log my meals on NutritionX. I don't even know if my my fitness pal does that yet, but like it's it's very sparsely used in fitness right now. And I think like in our world, when you think around scheduling and you think about you know search engines, there's there's a lot of things that can be done with voice, that that would be probably the one I'm the most excited about. And then this one is a less exciting topic to talk about, at least in the uh at the macro level. But but obviously machine learning, um, predictive analytics, AI, like people talk a lot about AI, AI today, and they don't really mean AI, but naturally when you think about how uh uh scientific and quantified fitness endeavors or wellness endeavors actually are, and the explosion of smart sensors and wearable devices and all of those things, there's there's a huge just sea of potential for those technologies in our industry.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree, man. I uh the data to me is it's not sexy, but it's gonna define the next few, uh at least the next decade of what we're doing here. Um, I mean it's all set up now. Data's flowing in from everywhere. Now it's a matter of what do we do with it? How do we make it actionable?

We uh like you and I, we could probably nerd out over a bourbon or a beer and talk about the data, but for the sake of the audience, it's true because I I remember going back to um I'm at a loss for the book right now, but reading about the way that Target was using, it's the I don't know, you've probably heard this story, but there's a there's a book, it's a pretty well-known book, where they talk about the way that Target was using big data to uh target consumers, even back in the late 90s. And people think like when you get a mailer from Target in your mailbox, that everybody on your street has the same mailer, but in fact they're all printed personally. And so what you see on the front page of your Target mailer, and now it's probably an email, not a mailer, but is different than what I would have seen. And there's a famous story about this dad who had a teenage daughter. Have you heard this story?

No.

So there's a this happened in Minneapolis, which is where Target uh is headquartered, and I think this is in a Malcolm Gladwell book, but basically the story goes like this: like, there's a uh uh dad who has like a 17-year-old daughter, and she continues to get these mailers from Target and plaster all over the front page. It's continually diapers and strollers and bottles and lotion, which is another thing that a lot of pregnant women they found out at Target will buy. And he got he got so upset with, and it was addressed to her that he finally went into a location and spoke to uh the store manager and said, Hey, are you trying to suggest that my daughter get pregnant? She's in high school, leave her alone, stop sending her these mailers. And lo and behold, she was like three or four months pregnant. He found out later and went back and apologized. So the the uh the data team at Target had figured that out before the family actually had that story.

And that is messed up. And like it's it's fascinating and it's also uh horrifying in so many different ways.

It is, you know, and but but the application for real change and creating value in our space is probably greater than than many others. And so um it's exactly like you said, it's there's so much data. Now it's a question of what do you do with it. I was at the collision conference like a couple years back, and the CEO of Workday, who was the keynote speaker, and this the topic for the for this year's conference, I think it was 2018, was big data. And the first thing he said when he got on stage is he goes, it's not about big data. He goes, You need to forget that idea. And so everybody kind of like woke up. The audience is like really paying attention now. He goes, It's actually about small data because everybody has the data, but very few organizations can actually take it and use it in a meaningful and a practical way.

Yeah, yeah. Man, this has been fascinating. I guess uh, you know, one last thing is you know, you're on your own uh eight-week fitness journey, right? That you just started. So I'm gonna use this uh this venue as a way to hold you accountable to your eight weeks. Tell us what you're uh what you're doing for your own fitness right now.

Oh my gosh, now it's a public provocation. I just did that. We thank you for that because it'll probably help. We were joking before we got on. I I uh after a lot of crowbarring, got my wife to agree to do it with me. And I'm an early riser, she is too, but not quite as early. And we agreed to like start uh start the program together. It's equal parts, you know, sort of mental, spiritual, nutrition, health, everything. And uh so we we found a really simple app called Fitness Plans that lays it all out for you. And one of the nice things about that, that app is it's relatively flat. So there's not like a you know a lot of scrolling and clicking and things. If you know what you're doing, it's just really simple to navigate and it includes the nutrition and uh uh the the exercise aspects. So today was uh today was day one, and conveniently I believe that the last day is Halloween. So it created us, it was like the perfect the stars had aligned, and you know, I told you earlier she's kind of rolling her eyes because I've done this many times, and uh she has no issue with the commitment, and so it's always me that's you know cutting corners early. So it takes a lot of convincing nowadays to get her get her all ramped up, but we're in it together, and I think that's an important piece of it. You gotta structure, uh it's like meal meal planning, kind of gotta structure all of the um elements to work in your favor if you want the highest chance of success.

Yeah, I'd love it, man. Well, now it's out there. So uh I think I'm also a little bit shocked that we're eight weeks away from Halloween. I think that got me too. Uh so one the last, very last question is you know, I always ask this just for you know people listening and networking opportunities or um whatever it may be. But what what is it that you need? What is a need that you have in your role uh in your business right now?

You know, we probably like a lot of businesses want to stay keep make sure that we're keeping our uh finger on the pulse of consumer interests. So um I love talking with people, other, you know, industry peers who have ideas, just shooting the breeze, and you know, trying to learn and understand where consumer attention is and what they value. So I'd I'd welcome any conversations or ideas um with regard to that.

Awesome. And then where do people get a hold of you, Garrett?

Um you can email me, Garrett at exponential.com or go to GarrettMarshall.com.

Right on. Well, hey man, this was uh I appreciate your openness to answer all of my random questions. Uh I know it's uh, you know, we didn't give you any prep work for this stuff, so it was uh it was a lot of fun. Really appreciate it. Really interesting conversation. I learned a lot. And uh yeah, man, thanks for thanks for coming on. It's been uh it's been fantastic.

It's been all my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity, and um I'll let you know if I come up with a better answer on the difference between biz dev and sales. I'm gonna ponder that.

Yeah, right, do it. Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Garrett Marshall. Thank you. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. 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.