Jack Thomas - The Fit Guide

Hey everyone, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews with summaries delivered straight to your inbox. Thanks for listening and on to the show. Hey friends, I couldn't be more proud and excited to announce that today's episode is powered by Workout, the ultimate tool for modern fitness professionals just like you. There is one thing that fires me up: it's elevating the personal training and coaching industry. For that, the Workout app is an absolute game changer. No more promoting top brands without compensation or dealing with confusing social media links. In just a few clicks, Workout's user-friendly app lets top trainers and coaches curate and share the world's most sought-after fitness brands like HyperIce, Vega, and more. Product lines covering everything from fitness equipment to supplements and apparel. Save time and boost your earnings with generous commissions and bonuses every time your client purchases the products you already endorse. Do not wait. Maximize your income and streamline your business with store by workout. Discover more at workout.com. That's w-r-k-o-ut.com. Just one-o. W-r-k-o-t. Go get it. All right, we are live. Jack Thomas. Welcome back to the future of fitness, my friend. It's good to be back. It's good to be back after four years. Yeah, four years, right? Uh that's banana. So 2019, that was when we released uh our first interview together. And of course, uh, you know, we were able to uh do something like we're doing now. You know, for people wondering, like we're we're spending a few hours, my evening, his morning, and we're recording a couple podcasts, which is uh you know, just the way you do it when you're professionals. Uh but you uh you you've got a great thing going from you know what I've seen and what I've talked about, you know, Fitness Business Asia podcast, uh your three locations um over in Asia, the brick and mortar concept that you have, and now the fit guide is really intriguing. I've been following it, and you know, I know a lot of people within the industry are just really uh appreciative and and cheering for this thing. It's it sounds like a really cool project, so I'm excited to highlight that. And uh, you know, maybe let's start with this. If uh just remind people who you are, Jack, in case you know they haven't listened in the last four years.

Yeah, maybe that's a good place to start. So I'm Jack Thomas, I've been in Bangkok for 20 years, and funnily enough, over the last few months, every single person that's asked me how long I've been here for, when I say 20 years, they've just been completely stunned and and shocked really that you could spend so long in a foreign land so far from home. But I came here in 2003 as a backpacker and basically ended up staying. I was traveling for a bit, teaching English for a bit, doing clothing export for a bit, and then got in the fitness industry 12 years ago. So I've really seen the Bangkok fitness industry grow from almost nothing to the thriving market and industry it is today. And so that was as a coach, first of all, then as a manager, then as an operator of three clubs, as you said, called Base. Anyone can check that out at Base Bangkok. And then I started a podcast in 2018. When did you start yours, Eric? It was around about the same time, was it? 2017. A little bit before, maybe?

Yeah, October 2017.

Okay, 2017. So we started our podcast around the same time we first connected in 2019. The podcast has been an awesome journey. And then the Fit Guide is a project I started around about a year ago. So yeah, that's a very brief intro to me and what I've been doing.

Yeah, well, there's uh, you know, if people are interested, just go to Jack's LinkedIn. You can find out all about him and all the stuff that he's doing. He's he's you consistently post, and it's always insightful. Um, so I encourage people to do that. There's a lot of different things I want to cover today with you, Jack. I mean, um you I know you're fresh off the Fit Summit uh over there in in Asia. It's really keen on what that is. I I always look at it kind of uh um with jealousy, and like, God, I've really got to get out to that thing. It looks it looks amazing. Uh and I know it's a long way for you to go. It is. But it'd be nice to have you there. Yeah, it is, but uh you know, it just makes it makes it more of an adventure. Um let's start with this. Uh it's kind of a sore spot, right? But the pandemic, you know, it's been four years since we've connected, and a lot has happened in that four years as as we've talked about ad nauseum. But um it's been some of the most interesting years the fitness industry has ever had. And I think we we tend to be very uh North America focused when we talk about our own stuff here. We don't we don't look outward a whole lot. Uh but I'm curious, you know, about your experience through the pandemic. How was it in Asia? How is it recovering now? Uh, we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but I think a lot of people would be interested to know.

Sure. I just recently had a chat with Mel Tempest that also went out on her podcast. And of course, we have a little podcast group that we're setting up as well. So it was good to have a chat with her about everything that's been going on. I thought she made a great point, which was people are saying, you know, we can't talk about the pandemic, let's not dwell on the past. And I do totally agree with that, right? We've got to be positive moving forwards, but we can't deny it's had an immeasurable impact on our lives and on the industry. So to just not mention it at all, I think is almost a little bit irresponsible. And certainly here in Asia, we are still feeling the hangover of the pandemic. There's no doubt about that. Thailand, especially, is really struggling to recover. There's really not much going on here in the industry at the moment. It's been slow for us since 2021. We're seeing a very slow, gradual step-by-step forwards, but it's it's been really, really tough here. And the rest of Asia has been the same. Singapore kind of exploded into life in 2022, and there's all sorts of things happening there. But now we're seeing concepts close down. There's a lot that we're either too reliant on class pass or rental rates are now going up because there's a lot of expats and um other people coming and moving into the country. And so we're kind of again seeing this these shifts and these trends and these hangovers that are happening from the pandemic, really. There's no denying that it is from that. Thailand, where where I'm based, as I said, is has been struggling, and I don't really know why it's been struggling more than other Asian nations. I just found out at the FIT Summit last week that Philippines Manila has now overtaken Bangkok in terms of class pass bookings. And I was really shocked to hear this because Bangkok's always been, I would say, like second tier. You had Singapore, you had Hong Kong, and then you had Bangkok sitting right underneath. And Philippines and KL and Indonesia were quite far down, I would say. We were a good few steps ahead. So again, it's been interesting to see the shifts and change. And honestly, Eric, I don't really quite know why that's happened. So yeah, it's it's had a massive impact. We're still getting over it for sure, but I'm still massively bullish on the future. I actually think now's a good time to make moves in Thailand, and that's what we're looking at doing at base. You know, there is this low we are struggling to pick up, but it will come back and it will come back strong. And so I actually think there is more opportunity than ever, you could argue, now in the Asian fitness industry. But you know, as I mentioned, you know, rental rates in Singapore are just shooting up massively. I'm speaking to studio owners where their rents have gone up 50%, and that's tough. You know, that can take you from having a decent studio that's making some decent money to break-even or even losing money. It can be the difference. So a lot of shifts, a lot of change, very interesting, but huge amount of opportunity for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, and and what made it so tough? Was it like was it government uh involvement, like dictating specific things? Was it uh you know, actual uh, you know, sickness, like people really getting sick? Was it um you know, lack of of medical access or you know, difficulty with medical access? What were the qualities exactly do you think that made it difficult for for you guys?

It's so interesting, it's so fascinating to kind of look back over the last three years because there was a moment where it looked like Asia was the best place in the world to be. Everyone was diligently wearing masks and staying at home and numbers were low, and there were many zero COVID countries like Thailand. So 2020 for us was pretty much fine. We had a little spike, and then there was zero COVID for like seven months, and it was basically business as usual, everything back to normal, whilst the rest of the world world burned down. And I remember saying to people, wow, Asia's a great place to be, they've really got on top of this, they're a little bit more obedient here, and that's helping us get it under control. And everything looked rosy and wonderful. Of course, the way that it went, it just ended up ripping through the population. It's probably here to stay now, right? And it just sort of goes through its cycles like the flu does. And so when that started to happen, Asia couldn't ditch the whole thing, we need to take this seriously, we need to wear masks, we need to have restrictions. Whereas the West was accepting it and opening up, and people's mentality was changing, and they just wanted to get back into living their normal lives. Here, we are still feeling that. You walk out in Bangkok now, most Thai's are still wearing masks, even walking along the street outdoors. And I think psychologically, that tells you that there's still something in the air that's dangerous, this is still, you know, something we need to take very seriously, and it does stop people doing things like going to the gym, living their lives as normal. So, really, the thing that helped us in 2020 in Asia ended up massively hurting us. China's another great example. They had zero COVID for a year or so, and they were having massive parties and everything was amazing, and they were showing off to the world. Look how that ended. It did them well in 2020, maybe a bit of 2021, but when COVID finally hit China, I mean we all saw over the last year where everywhere else in the world had opened up, but they still had these crazy lockdowns and they were welding people into their condos because there were outbreaks. So it was almost like the thing that benefited us early hurted us later. And now I'm actually quite jealous of the way the West is and the way they've handled it, and it made me value you know, freedom. I think that's really become a sort of personal value of mine. And really, who knew this, right? Who knew how it would all pan out? And looking back in hindsight, you can say these things, but it's just been interesting to see how that's developed, and I just hope we've kind of learned some lessons. But I don't think Asia really has. I mean, one final word on that. I think the West would not accept lockdowns again. There's so many, I think, positive conversations around was that a good idea? No, it probably wasn't, and the repercussions of that. I don't hear those conversations here in Asia, and I actually think here it's potentially vulnerable in the future to going into a lockdown where I don't think the West would. And so I I think that's personally, I think that's dangerous, and that kind of scares me a little bit. So, yeah, there's there's long-term PTSD and repercussions here, I think, which aren't being talked about in the same way as the West.

Yeah, it's it's it's good to know. And I appreciate sharing all that. It's just good to know, you know, from reference, like, you know, how how different people dealt with it and handled it. And I think we all kind of you know naturally uh kind of look in our own bubble and concern ourselves. We rarely look outward and see what's going on. And you know, you look at like uh the freedom concept of there's a reason why so many people went to states like Texas, Montana, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee, right? It's like people really didn't want to be told what to do. And um, you know, we'll see if if we ever go through that again, which statistically we probably will. Um what'll happen if we'll just forget. I mean, we tend to have as a species amnesia about things. And uh yeah, well, anyway, um, thank you for that. Let's move on to season forward. Thank you so much. Tell us about the Fitz Summit. You just got back from there. Um, you know, it's it's in Singapore, right? And uh tell us what that's all about and maybe some of the takeaways and learnings, your involvement in it. How was that experience for you?

Fit Summit's awesome. I'm just a massive fan of the whole thing. People often ask me if I'm sort of involved. I'm not like a part of the team there or anything else, but I've been involved since the first one as a speaker. You know, we've got Ross who runs the Fitz Summit onto the podcast numerous times. He's just a great guest, like yourself, got loads of good stuff to say, really great insight into the industry. And it's just been so cool to see them grow and develop. I mean, they launched in 2019, that was their first FIT Summit in Singapore, then they had one in Hong Kong, and then they basically went into lockdown with everybody else. And the way that they navigated that I thought was expertly done. They had a very strong online presence during um lockdowns and everything else, and they just sort of come out of that era in such a strong way. Interestingly, I hear a lot of people coming from the US and Europe that they say FIT Summit is their favorite event like this. They say it beats Phibo and Ursa and all the other ones. They say the vibe is better, the quality of the speakers they say is better. I can't say firsthand because I've never been to Ursa or never been to FIBO, but it's just interesting to hear that. They say the vibe of collaboration is a lot stronger, which is um which I can certainly see and feel. Not that it's stronger than the US or the or Europe, but that it's certainly present and it's certainly there. So it's just a great place to connect. The team there are so hospitable, they do an amazing job of connecting people. The Fit Summit was launched with a value of collaboration, which I really love, and that's one of the values of the Fit Guide as well. We want to work with the fitness industry, and I think that's that's worked so well for them and that they've really helped to bring the industry together. And in Asia, I'm not quite sure how it is in the US. I kind of hear differing things, but in Asia, I think before the Fit Summit, and you know, before the Fitness Business Asia podcast as well, which has also tried to do this, I think there weren't really many friends, there wasn't really much collaboration, there wasn't really many great minds coming together. And I think the Fitz Summit's really opened that up a lot, and I think it's had really, really strong benefits for the fitness industry. And so to be in Singapore last week, I I actually had COVID last year, so I went to Singapore and missed the whole thing, so I couldn't actually join the event last year. So to be there this year, it was the biggest one yet, to meet so many great people, so many people I've done podcasts with, so I've only met them virtually online over the last few years, and to actually meet them in person was really awesome. And the last thing that was cool is it people I've never met before come up and say, mate, I listen to your podcast and I really like it and it's really helped. And sometimes I wonder what the podcast like. Well, you can see people are downloading it, so that's nice. But you're like, is this actually helping anyone? Is anyone benefiting from this? There are moments when you think that, and it's really cool to have people come up and say, Look, I listened to the podcast and it's really helped. So that was um, yeah, something that was really nice as well. So look, if anyone's in Asia or looking to come over to Asia for the Fitz Summit, then I would highly, highly recommend it. Um and it's expanding out, so they're gonna be in Riyadh early 2024, Sydney later this year, and what will be really cool, and I'll definitely be coming over for this, is I believe it's confirmed as New York now. It will definitely be in the US, and I I think it's now confirmed as New York, and that's late 2024. So yeah, I couldn't recommend it enough. People should definitely check it out for sure.

Yeah, man, I love myself a good New York trip. You know, when you when you look at the Fitz Summit, and that was uh excellent. I mean, you fired me up, I can't wait to go. What what are some of the is there any trends you pulled away or topics that were impactful for you? Any aha moments that that you could share with the audience?

Yeah, I think for me the biggest one is the one that I've kind of reflected on a little bit. I thought that Thailand was recovering slower than other markets, but to hear the franchise owners and people that are making big moves in the industry here just not mentioned Thailand was really, really interesting for me. I mean, again, I think it's important to say this because you know, maybe if they people heard me talk about the pandemic here, they think that sounds a little bit doom and gloom. I'm massively bullish. There's so many great brands coming into Asia, there's so much investment coming in. And look, you know, Thailand's not going to mean much to your listeners. If we talk about it more on an Asia scale, there's so much going on, so much happening, uh, so many brands coming in. And they're coming in through Singapore, which is really interesting. Singapore is, you know, although it's there's market conditions which are tough, like rental rates going up. I mean, it's absolutely booming. It is insane. One thing I just find mind-blowing coming from Bangkok, if we just take one metric. So in Bangkok, we've got two F-45 locations. In Singapore, there were 50 F-45 locations. That's only a city of 4 million people. That number's starting to dwindle now, obviously, because F-45's just not doing so well as a brand. But now you've got Body Fit Training coming in, and they've got 30 locations opened, 20 locations secured, and they believe by the end of the year they will sell another 20 territories. So that's 70 locations in a city of 4 million people. So when you look at Bangkok, we've got three locations. Honestly, I could probably name you two or three other locations that are considered competitors. It just gives you an ideal of the scale of the market in Singapore and what's going on there. Fit stop are going in, there's an all sorts of Australian franchises are coming in. So that's just really sort of exciting to see. You know, so many companies are betting big on Asia, they're bullish and they're coming in. And whilst I said Thailand's difficult, like I said, it will absolutely improve. And I think the next two or three years are going to be absolutely fantastic. So I think the scale of the opportunity is interesting. Seeing Pilates do so well, and there's so many Pilates brands coming into Asia and doing well in Australia. That was another trend that I'm certainly seeing. And in this region as well, just franchising in general. We've seen a shift over the last 10 years that I've been in the industry from independence over to franchise. And I think now it's becoming harder for independence to thrive. Um, but it's can absolutely still still be done. But I think the franchises are coming in, they're delivering their concepts slickly, they've got strong marketing power behind them, and so they seem to really be leading the way in Singapore. Um, it's more of the independents that I'm speaking to that are really struggling and finding those numbers different. So yeah, that's a few takeaways that are kind of quite Asia specific, I guess.

It's really interesting. You know, I I don't expect you to be an expert in geopolitics or macroeconomics, but what do you think drives the growth in Singapore overall? I mean, is it are they, you know, is it is it just overall? Because I know they have a very balanced uh you know approach to different industries, you know, how it was very intentional with the way Singapore was developed. Um it's just whatever you I've read. I've never been there. But what do you think specifically about that that region that needs to grow? Back for its fifth year, the Connected Health and Fitness Summit is returning February 7th and 8th in 2024 to explore the industry's most lucrative opportunities and hottest trends. Come learn how legendary players and innovative brands are implementing preventative health and longevity-focused initiatives into their businesses. Discover how to successfully tap into Gen Z consumers, meeting demands for holistic and wellness-centered fitness offerings. Stay one step ahead of your competitors and learn how to take your brand to the next level by leveraging artificial intelligence into your frameworks. Secure your next investment by keeping up to date on where investors are prioritizing their spending and realizing white space opportunities. Build relationships and share ideas at the Women in Connected Fitness and CEO Founders Forums. The Connected Health and Fitness Summit is bringing together the strongest brands in fitness and beyond for two days of quality networking and curated content to get you ahead of the game. Go to Connected Health and Fitness.com to download the agenda and find out more. Use code FOF10 for an exclusive 10% discount on your event ticket. That's Connected Health and Fitness.com, code FOF10, and do not wait. Seats are very limited.

Really good question. Yeah, it's um something I've reflected on. I mean, you'd had Singapore and Hong Kong that were running alongside each other, and Hong Kong's just been battered for various reasons. The political stuff, the COVID lockdowns. I mean, again, it just lasted longer than everywhere else. When everywhere else was open and you could fly around, you just couldn't go into Hong Kong. You still had to do like a seven or a ten-day quarantine. And so I think you had Singapore and Hong Kong leading the way, and Hong Kong's just been battered. So Singapore is really thriving now as Asia's sort of fitness capital or just business hub in general. It's very business friendly. So you know, Thailand's quite difficult to set up a business. Singapore's very easy, India's almost impossible, for example. So I think those things do make a difference. And then the the biggest thing I would say is just the total addressable market is so much bigger because everybody can afford to spend 200 US dollars a month, or you know, pretty much everybody can afford to spend 200 US dollars a month. Whereas in Bangkok, it's a very, very small percentage of the population. And I think that's why we only have a few studios very concentrated in central Bangkok that charges these kind of rates. Outside of that, people either don't have the money, or if they do, they don't quite understand why you would spend 200 US dollars on a gym. Whereas in Singapore, people can afford it and they're sort of educated on it. Most of them have started abroad, they went to London, they went to the US, they've done all of these concepts before, they get it, they understand it, they like it, and they want it in their country. So in Singapore, in a way that you don't get anywhere else in Asia, or certainly outside of um, you know, Hong Kong, if you go away from the main city, there's still Body Fit Trainings, there's F-45s, there's Pilates Studios, there's personal training studios, and they're priced not that much differently to the center. So that makes it an especially exciting prospect. You come into Thailand, you can probably open up a couple of branches, and that's pretty much gonna be it. Maybe one in Phuket, arguably, and that's it. Whereas Singapore, it's a tiny little country, small city-state, low tax, very business friendly, and you can open 70 locations where you know you're gonna put your focus there, right? And so, yeah, that's usually the gateway into Asia, and then people kind of branch out from there. And that used to be, I think, Thailand first. Now I think they're looking at Jakarta, Indonesia, often because they're Australian brands coming in and it's a little bit closer to them, I think. So you're seeing Jakarta really develop. Um, Manila's another hot spot. I mean, Bangkok's still there, it's gonna come back, but it's just been a little bit slower. Uh, Kuala Lumpur is another one.

Uh

Yeah, those are part of the and then Vietnam, hearing a lot of interesting things around Vietnam developing and opening up and brands going there as well. So yeah, Singapore is really that gateway and it's just a huge, thriving, you know, gateway of activity and and life.

Yeah, wow. Yeah, I just I really gotta get out to Singapore. It sounds great. Yeah. Uh what about Seoul? What about uh South Korea? I mean, I've heard great things about Seoul as well. I mean, is that is that market seeing any any traction?

So interestingly, Seoul and South Korea and Japan are very detached in terms of the fitness industry, as is China. You know, ever everyone in Southeast Asia is connected, like so many people in Vietnam and a whole ton of people in Singapore and Malaysia. But South Korea and Japan are really quite detached, and trends that do well in Southeast Asia don't necessarily make their way there at all. So it's hard for me to speak directly of it. I know CrossFit did very well for a long time. I believe F-45 has gone into there as well, so a few franchises are going in, but nowhere near as developed as Singapore. Nowhere near. And then you have some random brands doing well, like Curves did very well in Japan for a while. I think they had like hundreds of locations. Orange Theory has started to develop a presence in Japan as well, but they haven't really done much in Southeast Asia at all. They opened two locations in Singapore which closed, and I don't think they have a presence anywhere else in Southeast Asia, I believe, but they're doing okay in Japan. So it's it's very disconnected. You know, when when I say brands come into Asia through Singapore, they then go into Southeast Asia. Whether they go into Japan or South Korea seems totally separate and totally different. China, I'm hearing that things are really picking up and they're quite lively, and there's a lot of local brands. I think like you have a local Twitter and you have a local sort of Facebook, right, Weeber, whatever it's called. You also have kind of local versions of US brands as well. Like India, it's just such a difficult place to go and do business. You need, from what I've heard, a very, very strong local partner that it's just people usually just stay away from it. You know, so many brands have gone in and tried to do things, whether it's fitness or whether it's other areas, and just found it so hard. So again, China's quite disconnected. I had brought on a few guests over the years from those regions, and it's like they're talking about a whole new new world to me. So yeah, interesting how it's how it's kind of almost segmented, really, the fitness industry in in this region.

Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I pull out of there is never sleep on curves, right? That brand uh just seems to like it's like yeah, yeah. It's like the industry, like it'll survive anything, it'll survive a nuclear holocaust, uh, you know, part will still be around. Um let's uh let's shift to the fit guide. It's super exciting. I I've been following it. Uh, you know, I'm not even sure I totally uh understand the concept. I mean, I understand the concept, but I don't understand you know the granular level about it. But I've been sharing it, you know. It sounds really cool. Uh I think it sounds really interesting. So let's let's uh dive into let's start with maybe like what what was the impetus? What was the moment you're like, okay, bing, I have an idea, let's let's let's try this out.

Yeah, one of our biggest challenges is really communicating what what we do, why we do it. And it takes a little while for people to sort of really get a grasp and understand it. But I think a good place to start would be where we first had the idea, which was myself and a really good friend of mine who has a very strong background in hospitality. And this was just over a year ago in Bangkok. The skies had just opened up, so we'd flown in. And I knew him from being a fellow Bangkok expat 12 years ago. That's how we met. And so he worked for a company here that reviewed hotels, and it always sounded like the best job in the world. I say review evaluates probably a better word. So he would go to five-star hotels around the world, but mostly in Asia, and for this company, he would evaluate them and every single part of the process. We get to stay in these amazing places, but he always assured me that Jack it is actually a job, and sometimes it's not that fun, but it does look very desirable. And so he left that company in Asia in 2016 and started working for Forbes Travel Guide. Now they are kind of the leader in hospitality or in hotel evaluations, and so he became the global director of evaluations for that company. So he was training up the evaluator team to go to hotels, he was reviewing the standards and the process that they went for every year. So he knew that process inside out, probably better than pretty much anyone in the world. And we were talking a year ago about what he was doing at Forbes Travel Guide and what I do in the fitness industry. And I just realized there, or we realized there was nothing like this in the fitness industry. Hotels have the Forbes Travel Guide, restaurants, of course, have the Michelin guide, private hospitals have their own sort of independent anonymous guide and industry standard, golf courses do, private airlines, all these industries. And I was just thinking, why not the fitness industry? We are ready for this, especially the experience sort of boutique side of the fitness industry, which is kind of our backgrounds, right? You were in CrossFit, I was in base. I knew it needed something like this, I knew it was ready for something like this. So we kind of jokingly said we would develop an industry standard, kind of bring in elements of hospitality into the fitness industry, and we'll go 50-50 on it. But over the kind of a bit of a joke, we were having some beers at the time, didn't think that much of it at the time. But afterwards, in the next few days, it was just running through my head, and Matt as well, my business partner, just thinking, this is a fucking great idea. The fitness industry is ready for this. And so we just started developing it based on our standards at base, everything he does in hospitality. And it took us a good six months to really sign off our phase one. We did over a hundred test evaluations throughout Asia and Singapore and Bangkok. Friends went to the US, so they went to the top studios there and did evaluations, and we were just tweaking and refining the process to really build a um set of standards that really fairly and accurately represented how high quality the experience was. A lot of the time we would run it by the studio owners afterwards if I knew them. So we'd do the evaluation, we'd run it by them. Do you think this is fair? Is this weighted correctly? Are there any standards that should be included that aren't? And so, over these over a hundred evaluations, these tests, we just tweaked and refine until we got it to a stage where we thought it really well represented an experience. And when we got to that stage and signed it off, as an operator myself, as a coach myself, I was really excited by it because I could just see that the value it brought or would bring to the club owner and the studio owner. So we developed this great process and we've tweaked and refined it since then a little bit. We've already started working on our phase two, which we'll bring in next year. But we thought the best way to get this out there and have a big impact on the industry would be, just like the Michelin guide, to go into the world's biggest cities and independently, anonymously evaluate the leading clubs and the leading experiences. So we decided on New York, London, Singapore to start. And so we went there, we hired people, we trained them up, which was more my business partner's responsibility. And we went in and anonymously went through the whole client experience. So that starts off with making a telephone call. We have standards around that, the arrival process, the actual group class itself, which is the most heavily weighted part of the um you know, the process. That's 50% of the whole mark. And then the departure process. We also look at online presence, whether they use technology in their workout, even their social media online presence and the things they do around that to bring a score. You know, this this club, this experience, you know, scores this much. And so we again we tweaked and refined, we we made sure that um again it was a fair representation and that you really had to be very, very good to get our five-star rating. It has to be over 90% of our 250 standards, and then we had a four-star recommended, and we we set the bar very high. So if you don't get 70% through our process, you don't get listed. And so quite a few of the clubs that we've gone to, we paid for classes, we trained people up, we paid the evaluators, they haven't scored our minimum requirement, and so we just haven't listed them. So now, Eric, we've launched New York, we've launched London. Singapore will actually be launching next week, Tuesday. By the time this goes out, it will be launched. We already have a team in Sydney and Dubai, and will, I think, next year be really rolling out through the US. We've had such a lot a lot of positive conversations with brand owners, club owners in the US that we feel that the US is really the best market to really roll this out. So look, that's a brief overview of it. Let's dig in. If you have any questions, is probably the best next step.

Oh, yeah. You know, I got questions, Jack. So uh what does it sit on? I guess is it is it an app? Is it a website? Is it a you know a web app? Like how how are you guys organizing it all?

Yeah, at the moment it's it's a website, or you know, you call it a web app, but we will definitely have an app. Um, we're in the the process of working on that. So it's it's again it the Michelin guide is probably a good one that helps people understand it because if you want to find a great restaurant in Tokyo and you really like fine dining and great dining experiences, you know, you type in Michelin guide to Tokyo and it's gonna come up, and then you can kind of sift through and look through the top restaurants. So it's it's like that. So it's no charge for consumers. If they want to find the best yoga studio in New York, they can just go onto the guide, hit New York. You can filter through Pilates Bar, Cycling, Hidden Strength, Yoga. Um, and one of the the parts of our research process that kind of really got us more excited about this and showed us the need is that when we were having that initial chat, we thought, well, you know, if we want to find a yoga studio in New York, okay, so yoga class, yoga studio, best yoga studio in New York, something like that. And it was just a whole random mishmash of Yelp reviews, trip advisor reviews, old blog posts from like, you know, Cosmopolitan in 2019, best bar classes in New York, most of the studios had closed down. And we were like, this is not very helpful for a start, and none of it's objective. You know, TripAdvisor can be manipulated, Yelp, you sometimes get disgruntled clients leaving you bad reviews, things like that. But there was nothing that was reliable and objective, and so that's where we really saw the need. So, yeah, for consumers, they can go on and find you know the best bar experience in New York at the moment, and later down the line, Montana and everywhere else, hopefully. And then for clubs, we offer services to help them improve and to help them get better. Every single club and every single brand we visited, we've fought as hard as we can to jump on a call, just like we're doing now, and go through what we've seen, the areas that they need to improve in based on our particular standards and our process. And by and large, Eric, people have been really open to that, which has been quite surprising. I was expecting a lot more pushback. Not everyone's been 100% happy with what we've told them, but that's been one of the most encouraging things to me is that people want to know this stuff. And we've had studios that didn't score very well, they have loved it and been all over it and want to work with us, they want to improve, they want to get re-evaluated so that they can sort of see how they're doing. So the way the industry has accepted this has been um pleasantly surprising, I guess. And for me, is yeah, it made me feel good, not just about what we're doing, but that yeah, the best brand owners, the best business owners, they want to know this stuff and they do want to improve, and that's been cool to see.

Yeah, yeah, it's like that uh, you know, we all we all have like this compulsion to be judged in a weird way. Like, do me next, right? Um, yeah, yeah. It's an interesting thing that we do have as as humans. Uh I guess the big question you probably asked yourself this and you've probably been asked a few times, but where where do you stand against like Google reviews, right? That that would probably I imagine be the big elephant in the room for you guys is you know, people tend to lean into Google reviews quite a bit. Um, and it's mostly it's not Yelp, uh Yelp is is notorious for you know, just I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't like Yelp. It's things they do sometimes, I just it blows my mind and how they can maintain influence over consumers. But you know, Google Review seems like it's pretty much driven by you know an algorithm that seems pretty fairly unbiased. But you know, are fitness consumers using that? And you know, like so where where do you when you thought about this whole plan, how did you look at Google reviews versus what you guys are doing?

See, it's it's a little bit different what we're doing because we're trying to create an industry, an objective industry standard. So Google reviews, let's say for restaurants, there's another interest, you know, you can sort of compare it to that, right? So a restaurant might get like 4.5 out of five, so it might be seen as quite a good restaurant. But one thing is that could be related to the price. So people could feel like, oh, well, it's good value, so I'll give it a higher mark. It's the same as TripAdvisor. You sometimes get kind of like old hotels that are kind of a little bit run down, but maybe the service is wonderful and the family that run it are just brilliant, right? And so they kind of score higher. But actually, if you're looking for excellence, which is one of the things that the Fit Guide is about, and also the Michelin guide, you might go there and you might be a little bit disappointed. Maybe the Ritz-Carton down the road scored 8.5 instead of nine, but it's more sort of what you're looking for. So it's kind of talking to a little bit of a different market. Also, it does have I know in the US there's a lot more Google reviews, so I think this gets averaged out a lot better. But for Asia where it's not really used as much, one sort of bad client review, which could be a competitor, that definitely happens, or where we get a lot at base. Every single one-star review we've had is because people have arrived late and we don't let them into the class. And we've got a great process. The front desk team have been very well trained to deal with this, but people aren't happy. And we have people turn up 15 minutes late, they haven't been let in, they're dealt with respectfully, but out of revenge, they've gone onto Google and left us a one-star review. So that's kind of dragged us down a little bit. And then you kind of had to ask your friends, hey, would you mind leaving some reviews to kind of average this out? Now I know in America I think there's there's more reviews, but it still is open to disgruntled customers, or um, you know, your biggest fans perhaps, or um, you know, your your family and your friends and stuff like that. Also, what you get with Google reviews is it gets disproportionately higher because people in the middle don't tend to review as much. So the only people that really review are the ones that um are really, really happy or your fans and friends and family, and then the ones that are really unhappy. So actually, if you kind of manage to avoid some of the unhappy people, you can score incredibly highly because the three-star people can't be bothered. I only want to leave a review if it was amazing or if it was absolutely terrible, right? And so that can pull the average up somewhat. There was an article that I shared a couple of days ago where F-45 was ranked as the world's, I don't know if they said the world's best gym, but the highest ranked gym, because they got 4.94 out of five. And the next one down was like 4.5. So they were above all the other brands by like a significant measure. I would argue that's because they probably not pissed too many people off. All of their raving fans have left uh left a review. I don't know if that was their 45 overall or like one specific club, but to argue that's 4.94 out of five, I would say that's probably not not particularly reliable. And some of the brands that got less than that, you know, I think were were delivering just as good um a service. So yeah, that gives you a little idea on some of some of the differences. What we're looking at is really an objective look at the brand. Um and yeah, just a bit more, a bit more, a bit more reliable, let's say.

Well, I would imagine too that it's more useful to the business owner what you guys are doing. And what I mean by is like, you know, Google reviews from outside of like a marketing perspective, like if you if you do well, it's great, right? People will will consider it before they go to your establishment. But you guys seem to make it more um useful to the operator as far as like here's some critical feedback, right? And and designed by fitness people for this specific niche to help them be evaluated and then use that information to improve. I mean, I haven't seen it, but just from hearing you talk about what I've seen online, that seems to be uh you know a significant uh difference between typical reviews.

That's a good way to put it. I think for the gym owner, I think what we do is far more useful. We have had a couple of clubs that we reached out to who said, Well, how can you say we're four star because we're 4.9 on Google reviews, and they just haven't really been very open to that. So I would say they would really benefit a lot more from what we could have told them about what we experienced when we, you know, independently and anonymously have visited them. But for a customer, I would say look at both. Look at both. You know, there's we've had some clubs that haven't scored very well, and I know people love the workout, right? It means that there's definitely areas they need to improve in terms of creating an experience. A lot of the standards we look at is how the first-time client gets welcomed. Like most of our evaluators will be going in there for the first time. So what you can get, and this is where I think it would be different between Google reviews and say what we do, the community love it, they get treated well, everyone knows their name. Maybe it's a little bit of a clique there, but they are diehard facts. This is like this is five out of five every day of the week. This is five stars, this is incredible. But when I go in as a brand new person, I'm not being delivered a very good experience. So that means that it wouldn't score well on our process, but it would probably score well on Google Reviews. Because once you get into the community, once you sort of make friends with them and they welcome you in, everything's wonderful and everything is great. So look, if you're there and you love it or you love that particular workout, then you should definitely go there. So maybe you'd look at both ours and also Google Reviews and you could make your own mind up. But for the business owner, for the club operator, the information week of them, I think would be far, far more useful.

Yeah, absolutely. And and so far, I if if you had a couple big takeaways that you've learned from this process as far as like, you know, you being an operator, you being um, you know, someone who likes to through your podcast and your speaking, you know, inform and help the industry overall move forward. Like, what are some of the big value points you've sucked out of this thing?

Man, there's so many that I just don't really know where to start. And as part of this process, my business partner evaluated base, and it was really interesting to go through that on the club owner side. And I was just hoping we'd get at least four stars, and and we did. Uh, we got four stars through our process. Um, obviously, I was hoping for five, but it was really, really good feedback. And what it showed me is there were things that I thought were happening that clearly weren't, especially around the orientation, which we have standards around that and how you welcome clients, and also the sales process at the end was a little bit weak. I thought we were stronger at that, and it just showed me that I thought these things were being done every time, they're clearly not. And so we really focused on training with the staff. We went through our standards again in the team meeting that we had the the following week, really did a lot of work on that in the background. And then when he came back a month later, he did it again and we scored much, much better. And so it was really useful for me to go through that process and say, well, I thought these things were being done. Maybe when I was there in the club, these things were being done, but obviously they're not being done every time. So that was interesting for me to see personally. In terms of the data, which has been one of the most interesting parts of this, because we've done now over 50 evaluations in New York, Singapore, uh, London, of course, Sydney and Dubai. So we're getting up to about 300 evaluations now, is you get to see which regions are excelling in which areas and where we're just not doing well as a fitness industry overall. You know, we talk a lot about learning from the best restaurants, the best hotels. I've heard this a lot over the last decade that we need to do better, basically, and offer better service. And we're charging uh an amount of money where I've always thought we needed to do better. When I first went to New York, it was 2018. Loved going to all the top gyms there, you know, $35, $40 for a drop-in class. And I think we need to get in the mindset that if we charge $40 for a drop-in, we need to deliver a $40 experience. I think we sometimes forget that. That's quite a lot of money. I think you can expect a five-star experience for that. So little things like, you know, welcoming you in the right way, using your name, smiling, making eye contact, starting the class on time, the coach getting there early and connecting with you before you've done the class, having a chat with you, understanding about your goals, understanding if there's any injuries. All of this for me should be the bare minimum. It should be like the minimum requirement that we do as coaches and as sort of boutique premium brands. I knew we weren't doing this, but now we have the data to show that. So we talked before we we hit uh record, Eric, that names just aren't really being used very often. Less than 50%, I don't know the exact stats now, but less than 50% of gym's coaches and also front desk staff are using names. And it's just such an easy win to develop some connection with the client. We have the software, it has Eric on my screen. You know, Eric, do you live around here? You know, it's such an easy thing to do. You know, do you live in the city? You know, what kind of training do you do normally? One of our qu one of our standards is around showing genuine interest by asking questions. Again, it's just the very basics of human interaction, really, or hospitality, certainly, is just ask a question. At the end of the workout, we have a standard at the front desk and the coach checks in with the client. Oh, how did you enjoy the session? How was it? And it's just so rare that these things are being done, and it's just such an easy win. And to have the data around that has been interesting, but also to have conversations with club owners around that has been interesting. Some are like, we need to do better, this is great, this is golden information, we're going to improve, but some are like, oh, you know, it's hard to get the staff nowadays. And often you find that the the conversation you have with the club owner kind of matches up to how they've scored. I think once you start telling yourselves these stories, or you just can't get the staff nowadays, oh you know, Gen Z just don't want to do any of this stuff. You know, you tell yourself that, and it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that's just one example, you know, that the name usage that we've seen isn't really being done very often. I mean, another interesting one in New York, there's um it's the lowest in the world by a considerable margin for doing some kind of injury check at the beginning. And that can be done either at the beginning of the class, it can be done, our evaluators always get there early, so they have to get there at least 15, 20 minutes early before the class to give an opportunity to do all of these things. And I believe it was about 25, 26% of New York studios are doing some kind of like injury check at some point in that process. It could even be the front desk asking, like, oh Jack, is there anything the coach should know? It's your first time doing this cycling Pilates class, whatever it might be. And so, again, to see that so low in New York compared to London and Singapore, again was quite interesting. So, Eric, one of the most exciting things about this is to get this out, to get these stores out, this data, and to start conversations like we're having now. You know, should we be doing this? How can we get better at this? Um, so that's one of the most exciting things for me about what we're doing at the Fit Guide.

Yeah, I I can feel your excitement, man. It's great. I love it. Yeah, well what's the plan for you, like as a is as a business? Business. Like, is there a uh did you are you bootstrapping this? Did you guys take a little bit of investment? Like, I imagine it's not super capital intensive to start, right? I don't know. You'd have to tell me. But do you have a monetization plan? Like, what's the okay? Let me put it this way. Five years from now, you and I are uh having a beer in Singapore or wherever. And we're like, dude, I can't believe it's been this successful, right? Like, what does that look like to you? What would have to have happened? I love it. That's a great question.

A great perspective to look at it through. We have bootstrapped it. It has, I mean, it's not a crazy amount of money, but it's been quite a lot because we pay our evaluators very well. So a lot of our evaluators came from hospitality. We don't really look for fitness necessarily as a background because coaches can have their own sort of biases. And I think it's important to say we don't actually evaluate like the program. We don't say all those exercises shouldn't have really gone together. I don't think you can do that because 10 coaches are going to say 10 different things. So we evaluate the average person's experience. We evaluate, you know, my mum going to do a workout rather than sort of me as a coach with my coach's hat on. So we do pay our evaluators well. So that has made it, you know, a bit of money to sort of get up and running. Um so uh we want to be be known as the industry standard for boutique fitness experiences. We will be going into other areas as well, such as big box. People have asked us about personal training as well. We do genuinely want to help the industry improve. So, you know, as I said, we go in, we pay for everything that's for the visit, the evaluator, the class, and everything else. And then we get on a call with the club to let them know where they can improve. And that's certainly been very, very helpful to the clubs. So hopefully that helps us to be recognized as an industry standard. Had a uh a great conversation with Brandon Cullen from Matabolic, who I know you're connected with as well. So he scored, or his Brooklyn location scored very well. They purchased our full report, which has all of their standards. And what he said, which I absolutely loved, is he shared the report with all of his franchisees and said, Look, this is a great industry standard. Have a good read through, make sure you're doing these things. He's worked some of those standards into his processes. And some people said to me before we started, Are you worried about that happening, about it being shared amongst brands of all the franchisees? And I was like, honestly, that's what we want because that helps us take one step towards being accepted as an industry standard. If Matabolic are using that and it's helping them improve their service and their processes and everything else, I mean, A, there's the whole like, well, it's helping people have a better experience and helping them get further and stronger. And that's kind of cool. That's obviously part of our mission, but also it's helping, yeah, businesses get better. It's helping us become more recognized as an industry standard. We will be looking for investment, Eric. So if anyone's listening and they're interested, do reach out. We want to roll out in the US next year, and we'll definitely need a bit of a cash injection to do that. But one reason we want to do US is because it has been accepted so well. I think Americans kind of get the hospitality side a little bit more, I think, than say the UK, for example. Singapore has accepted it very, very well, but the US just seems to really get it in a way that the rest of the world doesn't. And a lot of people have said, when are you coming to this state? When are you coming to this city? Uh, there's a lot of a lot of demand for it. We're speaking to a lot of um like big you know franchises that have locations all through the US, and they're saying, look, when you have the infrastructure here, we'd we'd love to work with you. So um, yeah, get some money in, expand next year, probably the US, but we certainly won't neglect the other sort of main cities in um you know fitness capitals around the world. One thing that's been interesting in the US is to see these kind of second and third tier cities, some of which I've hardly heard of, have actually got a whole ton of studios. You know, you look at the UK and London's thriving. Outside of that, there's not really much going on. But the US fitness market is certainly thriving. In terms of revenue model, we work with clubs to help them improve. So we have online training that we do, video courses, or we work with the clubs individually, or regular evaluations. So the hospitality's been doing this for well, for decades. You know, they don't typically do this internally, like no top hotel would do it. They outsource it to other companies. So we can go in, like you know, Forbes Travel Guide does, for example. They work privately with companies. We can use our brand standards that we've developed and also their, or sorry, our standards, but their brand standards as well. So a lot of brands have certain things that need to be said at certain times or certain ways that the class is warmed up, or maybe the technology has to be welcomed in a certain way. So we can build their standards into ours and do private evaluations for them. So we've been working with some brands, we've got some, as I said, some conversations with some really big brands in the US to yeah, make sure quality is maintained. You know, if you're a franchise and you want to make sure that your franchisees are doing the right things and they're doing it consistently, or you want to just help them improve their service, what we offer will be invaluable to them. So look, in five years, Eric, to sort of come to the the way you wrapped it up, is I hope that when we're having that beer in Singapore, that we've been we've we've rolled through the the world, we've been to the main fitness capitals and the main cities in the US and evaluated the top fitnesses' experiences there. I hope the consumers are using us all around the world to find the best yoga classes, bar classes, cycling classes. Um, and you know, if we do that, you know, the the financial side will come come along with it, right? But yeah, we we we want to have that impact on the industry, and we've seen in the first sort of six months since launch that we've certainly been able to do that.

Yeah, yeah, amazing, man. And you know, I think typically you can say that if you create value, the money will come. You'll figure it out. Uh and you know, metabolic, of course, uh huge fan of Brandon and and Kirk and everything they've done there. And Metabolic, they don't speak average. That's the uh the typical thing. Uh love those guys. What other brands? I mean, is there any other ones that you'd like to highlight that seem to be doing exceptionally well, like Metabolic?

Yeah, there's one that's I think most people in the industry really understand uh and can see, and that's Orange Theory. So they have just consistently create a great experience. They do a lot of the things that other clubs and other gyms aren't aren't doing. And I think what we've seen a little bit is like younger people that are really into their training and love doing CrossFit and stuff like that, they have a certain sort of perception of Orange Theory. And they're like, oh, you know, what do you mean that's a five-star gym? You know, they don't they're not doing the kind of training that I personally like. So, well, that's fine, but Orange Theory is great for a certain type of person, and they're really speaking to that person and they're serving them really well. And we've looked at our three um evaluations that we did in New York. We evaluated three Orange Theory locations, and I went to do a quality control check in one of them as well, and they're they're they're developing a great experience. They do everything in the right way. They ask you to come early, they ask you about your goals, they introduce themselves in the right way, they introduce you to the next person in the process who kind of shows you around, they introduce you to the coach, they make sure you get a great workout, they explain all of the technology, they just do it so well that you walk out and you feel warm, you feel like you've got a good workout, you feel like you understand the concepts really well, you understand what it means to continue your training there. And then some of the sort of, I don't know, quote unquote cooler new concepts, you go in, and yeah, for me personally as a coach, I kind of enjoy the workout, but they're not doing any of these things, you know. It's like if you don't know, then you know, get out. There's kind of a bit of a feeling of that. And so Orange 2 is a good example of like, you know, whether you like the workout or not is up to you, right? And if it's not for you, then don't go there. But for many people, they are really doing things well and they're really creating a great experience. Another thing we've seen, Eric, which has been interesting, is that the inconsistency of some brands, whether that be country to country or even within a country. And one of our evaluators who's also doing a bit of other work for us as well, kind of editing reports and the like, he says, I don't understand. How can this one be 72%, but this one be 91%? For me, it wasn't very surprising because I know that some franchises they just might not have the systems, they might not have the support, maybe they've grown too quickly and the franchisees sort of you know can't keep up, or they can't keep up with the franchisees that are coming in and which ones are doing well and which ones aren't. So I wasn't surprised at that at all, but some people really have been. And for some, they don't quite understand what we do. They even sort of question well, like how can this be five-star in London, but this is three-star in New York? And it's like, well, yeah, we are um evaluating this individual club. This individual club is doing a fantastic job. This individual club in a different city isn't. So that's been something else which has been quite interesting to see.

Yeah, fascinating, man. I mean, it's gonna be, if nothing else, you're gonna walk out of this with this just mountain of knowledge and insight across the industry that's gonna just gonna be uh it's gonna be extremely valuable. Um I want to share it as well, Eric.

I want to get that out there as well. That's why I'm doing podcasts like this, because you know, it isn't we can share some of what we've learned. And it's the learning curve has just been huge, you know. And and even now we're analyzing a lot of the data, we're going through it, we're having a look at it. And this is where this is for me is where it gets super interesting because we've done the third city now, and so now we can really compare region to region, city to city. You know, some countries, some it's interesting. Some countries are doing very well, some brands sorry, are doing very well in one country but not in another. And this is where it gets really super interesting. If we want to go really deep, we'll go off the podcast and I'll tell you exactly what's going on with it.

Uh I love it. Yeah, I'm a I'm a huge I love data. Um as we kind of wrap this up, Jack. What what's uh you know, in the spirit of collaboration and you know, moving the industry forward? Like what do you need right now if you want to hear from people? How can they help you?

How can they help me? Um I think they can help me by just understanding more about what we do really and why we're doing it. So you know, go to thefitguide.com, see what we're doing, understand our process a little bit more. I mean, it um we're definitely more on the vibe of how we can help the industry really. I think if anyone, if anyone just wants to jump on a call and they're a club owner, I'm happy to do so. They can connect with me through LinkedIn. Um, I guess you know, by let us help you will kind of help us, I think. Um, you know, whether you have 20 franchises, 100 franchises, whether you're a single unit location, we're definitely happy to talk to you. Whether that's just sort of any help that we might be able to offer, we do have free resources, um, so there's a lot that we can do, you know, for free. Or if you want a deeper level of help and a deeper level of service, we can discuss what training looks like, regular evaluations. If the idea of infusing hospitality and human connection into your experience appeals to you, we can certainly help with that um and help you sort of do that at scale as well. So, yeah, rather than how to help us, I think that's that's probably a better way to approach it, really. Uh, and we have a newsletter where we share some of this data, you know, the the um the stats and the data we send one bi-weekly at the moment. We're looking to ramp that up soon to weekly. But yeah, thefitsguide.com slash subscribe, um, it's free. And you can start to benefit from you know some of the work that we've been doing and see how it can help your business and help you start to think about things. That's really what we want to do. Just as a quick example of that, Eric. So yesterday's new newsletter that we sent out is that um uh 80% of studios are offering like an orientation unprompted when you arrive at the studio. That was a little bit of data that we picked up on yesterday. And then Singapore was the lowest at 74, New York was 82%, so a little bit better, London 85. But how can that not be 100%? If I arrive at a studio for the first time, how can they not be like, okay, Jack, so lockers are down here, studios here, wait here, the class starts in 20 minutes. You know, it can be brief, but it needs to be unprompted. So we hope that by sending out this data, people get thinking and they're like, Yeah, God, do we do that every time? I think we do. Didn't we talk about that in a meeting a year ago? We need to revisit that. We need to make sure it's in our processes, we need to make sure it's in our training, and we need to make sure that's being done.

Yeah, awesome. And these are all, you know, here's the thing is like these are all low-cost, no-cost ways to improve. Right? And that's that's like if you're an operator and you're you're you know in that critical phase of you know trying to get uh escape velocity with your business, right? Like this is the stuff that really makes a difference. And it's really easy to once you've been operating for three, four, or five years, to get very complacent, you know, um, super easy. It's it's like the frog in the boiling water, it just happens so quickly um but slowly at the same time. So it's it's great stuff, man. And if if people want to reach you personally, um, besides thefitguy.com, is there any other place you'd like them to go?

Yeah, I just want to just elaborate on that a little bit because like you said, it's such such a good point that it's free. These things don't cost anything. It's not this massive new technology you have to purchase. It's not heart rate monitors or a new software or anything like that. These things are free, and it's more just a mindset shift of yeah, let's connect with people, let's give them a great time, let's make sure it's the best hour of their day and really make sure your whole team are in on that. One other one that's just sprung to mind. I don't have the stats, sorry, Eric, next time I'll make sure I've got the actual data, but it's uh uh a disappointingly low percentage, I think around about half, that during the class are offering individual words of encouragement. So what that means is rather than floating around the room and saying, Okay, good job team, what done, guys? You're smashing it, it's actually going up to Eric and saying, Okay, try and go a little bit low on the score, Eric. Yes, you've got it, good work. Or like, oh, looking good at the back there, Eric, whatever it might be, right? Individual words of encouragement. Because that kind of really means something to you. Yeah, great work team. You know, it's no one really feels much from that. And so to see it so low was you know quite disappointing. It's free. It's free. Get your coaches to do it. It's such an easy win. It will help them get busier classes, it will help everyone do better, help them become a better coach, a more industry leading coach. So it's just such a good point, Eric. It's it's free, right? So let's do these things. Uh, how's contact me? Like yourself, LinkedIn I think is is the best place. So if you just type in Jack Thomas or I'm LinkedIn slash IN, is it L-I-N-L-N slash fitness business Asia? So pretty, pretty easy to find. That's where I get most of my content out. That's definitely the best place to connect. If you do connect with me, please leave a little note to say that you heard me on the Future of Fitness podcast, and it'd be great to connect there for sure. Nice. I like that.

Jack, man, it's always a pleasure. Um let's not make it four years. Let's try to do this a little more often. I think once a year is a really good cadence for us to catch up and discuss all things. And uh I appreciate you again up early and meet me for my time and recording. It's uh it's it's always great. And man, just keep up what you're doing. Um, you know, obviously you have the passion and excitement behind this to make this really drive forward. So uh I think it's really cool. And um I'm I'm rooting for you, man. Keep it up. Yeah, likewise.

Let's make sure it's not four years, and also let's make sure the next one's in person. How about that? Yeah, I much prefer the in-person podcast, actually, to Zoom. You can have a much more natural conversation. So maybe Fit Summit next year in New York, possibly, or if you can make it out to Singapore, that'd be awesome. But yeah, keep doing what you're doing, man. I love the fit future of fitness podcasts. Uh, been a regular listener since we first connected in 2019. So, yeah, I guess thank you for everything you do for the industry and the good messages you put out. And uh yeah, look forward to doing this again soon.

Right on. I appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Thomas. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Mittis. 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 or 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.