Jane Wang - Your Retention Strategy Is Backwards: Optimity's Lifetime Journey Approach

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[00:01:00] eGym is a global fitness technology leader building the infrastructure behind real results. Their open ecosystem connects smart strength equipment, AI-powered software, and data-driven services to turn fitness into measurable, repeatable progress for members, trainers, operators, and communities. Now what really excites me is how eGym brings this ecosystem together with WellPass, their corporate wellness platform. By combining their strength equipment with

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[00:01:58] To learn more, please visit eGym.com. All right, here we go. Jane Wang, welcome to the Future of Fitness. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be chatting with you. Yeah, there's a lot of value here. You and I were connected through, I believe, Andy Beckman from Garmin at one of the conferences, Connected Health and Fitness Summit. And you have a fresh perspective on things. So to set the table, you're the CEO and founder of Optimity. We're going to talk a lot about that today.

[00:02:25] Okay. You've been in corporate wellness now for 12 years, right? Primarily. We guys have seven, make sure I get the number right, seven million members. It's a lot of people. You have identified a big opportunity within the fitness and wellness industry that you are now tackling head on. And I think if anything to set the table for this is we've been talking about retention as a major issue in the industry for so many years.

[00:02:50] Like basically since I started, retention's been the thing. And we've tried different things. Like, well, maybe if we're interviewing at the right point, we send a text message or a nice note, they'll stay. But that's not really, that's very reactive. We're not being proactive. We're actually looking at the base root cause of what causes retention through a life cycle of a particular member and the individuality of that. So you have a very different view. You have a fresh perspective on it. So let's take it from there. Jane, how would you like to start? What's the opportunity that you see within our industry here?

[00:03:19] Yeah, I see a huge opportunity in this industry, but mostly from my perspective of looking at the data. So maybe if we kind of back up a little bit, even before the 12 years of Optumity, I started, I have a stats background and a biochem background. I worked for clinical trials and research for about 10 years. So I'm a mortality risk specialist.

[00:03:41] What that means is that I calculate risk for death for patients that had like Alzheimer's, MS, ovarian cancer, did really foundational work there for early detection. And I built a lot of really cool tech and was able to connect the dots.

[00:03:58] And then I started my journey within an HIV lab. And what's really interesting about that is like for the patients, they know if they don't take their medication within two years, they're going to full on develop AIDS. Like they know that, but they don't take the medication. So when you talk about retention, like this, this is part where like a 20 year old, right? Like a research student, I just couldn't comprehend that because I'm a logical person. So I don't fully understand it.

[00:04:28] But when I was doing the research and interviewing the patients, you realize, oh, if they take the medication, they look, they look a certain way. So they're more preoccupied with that. Oh, these people, maybe they have an addiction issue. And at the time, this is like, you know, in the early, early 2000s, I think this is like 20, 2002, like there's no smart phones or watches.

[00:04:53] There's no wearables. So like when you have to take your medication, they had timers and some of these people didn't live in like they were homeless. So they didn't have that. So the foundations to keep these people adherent, which is another word for retention in medicine, they weren't able to do that. So it really kind of got me intellectually curious about what really stops people from doing the actions that are logical for them.

[00:05:21] And then fast forward 10 years, I ended up actually, this is not a good story, but like it's a good, it's a good reason, but it's a sad story because I ended up losing my mother to cancer, very similar to my ovarian cancer patients. And then she was not able to get on any of the fantastic tools that I had for early detection and prevention. And I lost her within six months. Thank you so much. But it changed the course of my life.

[00:05:47] So it got me kind of on this path to find other humans like her and to help them live to 100 years, which is what my family wanted to do. Like we, you know, my dad's name is 100 years of life. His name is Wambaisho, which means 100 years of life. So I just like had that seeded in me that we were going to be that as a family. And we have a pretty good, I thought we had good genes because, you know, on my mom's side,

[00:06:17] both for my grandparents are still alive and, you know, so they were healthy. But I couldn't imagine my mother like just being so young and she was so healthy. She looks like the way that I do now. How does she like perish so fast? So that got me onto this thing to build tech for the consumers. And I was very lucky to be in the Valley.

[00:06:40] I got to work with the Stanford Wearable Labs just as the first Apple Watches and, you know, Jawbone. I don't know if that's still around, but like we're not connected to them anymore. But like I'm just saying, like all the first generation, you know, Garmin's and Apple Watches were coming out. So I got to see the wearable trend overall. And retention has been a huge issue in corporate wellness as well. So cut my teeth on the first company that was purely corporate wellness called My Health Sphere.

[00:07:08] And then started Optimity in 2017. But we were able to acquire a company called Carrot Rewards, which is an app that did step counting and rewards. And I saw what the consumer behavior was for retention. And it got me actually, it opened up. So it's not just corporate wellness. We started working with life insurance companies, which had these like long mortality data.

[00:07:34] That really aligned to my view of life and human and risk and how physical activity is a huge part. And movement is life, which brings me to today. And my interest in fitness and movement and getting people into the right movement for them and being very data and stats driven from my perspective. I love that. So thank you for all that background. It sets a really good context for the conversation.

[00:08:04] Like when you look at how we focus on retention, churn prevention, adherence, whatever you want to call it, right? There's a million names for it. What do you think? Like I'm seeing a real evolution now. I mean, last year in 2025, we talked a lot about prediction analytics. Like we can predict when a client's going to churn, right? So the solution was, well, we can just intersect with a nice text message or a phone call from a staff member or whatever when that point is.

[00:08:32] But at that point, it's like it's almost too late, I think. Right. It's like something's not working for them. Maybe you can save a few. But like now I'm starting to see data being used in multiple different ways where it's like, well, no, let's just improve the whole experience of the member from the very beginning to get them into, you know, essentially what they want, which is results, feeling better, looking better, all that stuff from the get go. And it's a lot of really cool solutions. It's a much better mindset.

[00:09:00] So when you look at how this industry is typically approached churn and retention, like from fresh eyes, right? Like what do you see that maybe we're missing here? I think there is two perspectives that I can maybe shine a light on.

[00:09:19] I think the first one is when we look at churn or retention, I feel like from what I saw at the Connected Health and Fitness Summit, but what I also saw at the HFA, people are looking at, you know, are they coming back the next month for a monthly subscription? They're looking at weekly activities. They're looking at, if they have an app or solution, they're looking at DAO, which is daily active users.

[00:09:46] And I think that's really useful for activation. What I mean is like when a person starts with the journey, it's super important to track that because we do a lot of consulting in terms of, you know, product, what is a magic metric? So it's like the things that will predict long-term usage or like buy-in into a program. And I think that's great. And I think the industry fully understands that.

[00:10:09] But what we're really bad at is really looking at the perspective of a user journey in terms of a life, like a lifetime. So you and I were kind of jamming on this before, but I think the one key concept is, for example, for me, I'm a mom of two. I've experienced childbirth. I've experienced, you know, or maybe from the beginning, like I, you know, I played sports in high school. I played on volleyball team and, you know, I was like pursuing tennis.

[00:10:39] So all these things are really like I was an athlete. So, of course, at the beginning, if you trapped everything, like I'm going to be a very high power user of gyms and so on. But then when I got a job, my job was really intense. Right. So in research. So when I did that, I was not very good at going to the gym and I also moved cities. So when that happens, of course, you're going to have a tremendous amount of text message is going to help me. If someone's having a baby, like you can send them all the text messages you want.

[00:11:09] Yeah, yeah. Unless you're giving them a pregnancy app or something else, like or like prenatal yoga class, like they're not going to stay at your power lifting gym. Like, unfortunately, it's not going to happen. So I think there's this disconnect between like life stages and we don't zoom out far enough to really understand the cyclical nature of health and fitness.

[00:11:31] And what people want over time on what they can physically like in a physical space, mental space and financial space to be able to do. So I encourage people to also think about lifetime value, not in just like monthly, but to think about an annual cycle or a five year cycle of that customer.

[00:11:53] Because that mom, maybe pre-pregnancy could be like a great customer up to maybe her like the first three months, the first trimester. But then she's going to for sure turn and she's going to do something else. And maybe you can give her something that's like digital. We're going to probably explore the concept of digital a little bit later, but that connection.

[00:12:15] And then maybe she can come back 18 months later, post her postpartum journey to come back to that community and to be connected to a different chapter of her life. It reminds me as you're explaining this. I spent my first 10 years of my career after college in sales, mostly like mostly corporate sales. And I started reading a lot of books on how to be a better salesperson. I had some good coaches and trainers. Right.

[00:12:44] And I think what we're looking at, too, is like a lot of the industry is just very they don't look at the long term of the sale. So what I'm learning when I'm getting as like. When I was in sales, I learned that the great salespeople, when they when they heard new, no, it wasn't it wasn't just not right now. That's what they heard. Right. It wasn't a hard no. And like like a lot of early salespeople like me would go like, no, OK, get rid of them. Like what's next? You know, I keep going for that. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:13:10] But if you really listen to the person there, there's not saying like, well, this isn't a good time or and you can ask follow up questions like little simple things like, well, when would be a good time for to follow up? You know, is it OK if I follow up for you with you in a year or nine months, whatever it may be? I'm getting as like looking at like long term client and not just washing them out because they said no at that moment or they moved or whatever. They have a certain thing like you have to look at this whole thing and look at it as a long term relationship when you may get that client back or may upsell them or downsell them over time.

[00:13:39] And I think that's kind of the approach that I'm hearing from you. Is that is that a good analogy? Yeah, that's a perfect analogy. And I could also draw a pretty close parallel right now because I just spent the last, you know, really eight years in life insurance. Right. Helping retain, keep them healthy and living longer, but also understanding what the X events are, which are the life events.

[00:14:04] So for those type of products is very much based on life events when you had a baby or when you bought a house or when you moved or, you know, changed health plans because you're now 26, 27 and then you're graduating out of your parents plan. So like there's all these interesting life stages and it's really important to market during that time. And I don't think we are right quite there yet with how gyms think about marketing and how to access people through the stages.

[00:14:34] But I do see also when you talk about this, like following up and the nudging, I do think that's very helpful. But many times I find that the nudging for at least the gyms that I've, you know, tried out or or have not stuck with is the nudging is so aggressive that it's negative. So it could be an irritant. Yeah. Yeah. And people like to go to experiences that bring joy.

[00:15:02] And I think that's where there's this community and lightness and gamification really helps. So like really kind of thinking about the experience for the person in terms of like joyful nudges would be a very important kind of user experience design for retention. OK, so I feel like we've outlined the problem pretty well, at least good enough for the rest of the conversation. So what do we do? What do we change? Right. Maybe this is where Fidgetal comes in. I'll let you dictate that.

[00:15:30] But like, you know, what are some of the solutions that you think we could be applying, given your experience, what you bring into this industry now? Yeah, I think I'm still very curious, like very intellectually curious about where different chains or different groups and community. I really kind of think about them as clusters. Communities are in terms of where they're at. So I'm currently I belong to F45. So that has a specific culture, you know. Shout out Tom Dow, Luke Armstrong. Yeah.

[00:16:00] Go ahead. Yeah. It's also very different. So so, yes, I am part of a hot yoga studio as well. I did matcha for a long time. So like that has a different culture of how how. Sophisticated they are, but they have a really good community. So like it's, you know, quite different as well, because I feel like F45 is very tech and it's got the wearables and it's got like, you know, a lot of this really nice pieces that I can work with.

[00:16:27] And and help them, you know, enhance different types of retention. Like I feel like that's kind of talking to people that really already understand the correlation between like, for example, Apple Watch wearers or or ring wearers to different types of gems. And I would probably put OTF in that category, too. But then there's also ones that very like a lot of the yoga studios, they besides a point of sale system, there's no devices. You leave all your devices out like it's a very different experience.

[00:16:56] And then, you know, my kids are in soccer clubs and that's a very different experience as well. And then right. And then I have like a like. A really close friend of mine, he's in basically like a competitive bodybuilding and like he has his own like cluster of people and they can, you know, do that.

[00:17:21] And I just feel like there you find this huge spectrum of tech sophistication and but also different ways of understanding personas and how you target the right group for them to retain to be retained. But also to be, you know, just great customers of the solution, I guess. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm thinking about this in my own gym experience.

[00:17:50] So the wave here in Whitefish that I go to and, you know, I'll do I can see it because I feel like it's a small town. I know a lot of people here. So when I go to the gym, it's more social than anything. But, you know, I see like there's there's certain cliques. Right. And it's very evident in the spin class that I go to once a week to maintain my my cycling legs for the winter. It's like there's there's a very specific it's like teachers. Right. So it's a group of female teachers that are mostly in there. And then there's some retired women.

[00:18:17] Right. And then I go like I go midday during the weight training floor. It's like guys who are, you know, I don't know what men do in this town, by the way. No men seem to work here. But like you kind of see this group of like somewhat retired guys in their 50s and 60s. Right. So it's like you can see the cliques and how they all interact. And I think what I'm getting at when I hear you speaking about this, there's like a technological solution now that's building that we can actually find and curate these connections and strengthen them in very meaningful ways, which will boost retention.

[00:18:46] Am I am I on to this correctly? Yes. And it actually doesn't have to be technical, but there's a human behavior element of what we what we do. So we are herd animals. We like to sit around the campfire. We like to have friends. And when you were, you know, probably young in kindergarten for you not to get lost on a field trip and for you to come back like you had a buddy system. So yes. So many of that human behavior can be facilitated through technology.

[00:19:17] And that's what I call fidgetal. So for our physical world, so many of these gym experience, like you actually have to lift weights and do things in the physical world. So you must have a location. It can't just exist on our Netflix experience. Like watching physical 100 doesn't actually make you healthier, unfortunately. So so there's a physical world component of it.

[00:19:40] And then the digital aspect is what we can now create tools and use that behavior science and maybe do the matchmaking and do the connections. Like you'll see maybe behind me, like we can create challenges and versions of it where you are with a friend or you're meeting someone new and you're really finding your village. You're finding your people. You're finding your tribe. Yeah, your tribe. So yeah.

[00:20:09] So how does that how does that play out? Maybe give an example of, you know, one of your one of your big clients or I don't know if you're working with health clubs and gyms yet. But I'm just curious, like, how does that like tell me a story of how this all plays out on the consumer retention end? Yeah. So maybe I'll just back up and kind of talk about the the macro view again. So in terms of overall population, we because we have like seven plus million members, we're able to get a pretty good cross section of different types of demographics.

[00:20:39] So we do have the retirees. We have the the mom groups, the teachers. So we you know, we run programs actually for some of the like the employers that are teachers. Right. So like so those things I have stats on. So it's really cool to see. But when we see in health engagement overall, it's leans female. So on our platform, it's 60 40. So 60 percent female, 40 percent male.

[00:21:03] And many of the populations that we're in, even like, for example, life insurance is actually predominantly male policyholders. So it's so the skew is probably like out of 100 people, there is 70 percent male, 30 percent female. But on our digital application is 60 percent male, 40 percent female, 40 percent male. So that's an interesting observation.

[00:21:29] And so also like I kind of that's kind of the data set that I'm working with and looking at behavior for. And then observationally at the gyms, you know, exactly what you said. Most if you have if you're a class based gym. Right. So you have content, you have programming people come in for group experiences. It's 80 percent female, if not 90 percent female. So that's just the physics of of the human behavior.

[00:21:59] But many times and I've listened to some like many episodes of your podcast. These are really amazing male entrepreneurs because in the past, like very much and even now, only two percent of funding goes to female entrepreneurs. So like most people building these businesses are dudes. So you have dudes that are building experiences that are for 80, 90 percent female. And this is why.

[00:22:26] And a large percentage of trainers and instructors are female, too. Right. I don't know. Maybe you know that number, but. Closer to half and half because a lot of athletes end up in in personal training jobs. Right. But what I find in the trainer population is that the female trainers tend to stay in the same location employed. They have longevity in that employer. Got it.

[00:22:52] Where well, yeah, the male trainers may go on their own or they switch gyms. So it's like they don't have the same pole. And there's some really cool data. Actually, I was I was chatting with the head of engineering at F45. We're talking about like the trainer loyalty of the actual member is something that is really worth exploring because like I I know for sure I follow my favorite trainers. And you see this in Peloton data, which is more published.

[00:23:21] Like you'll see the top trainers have they have the draw. They have the people. And you definitely see kind of the following overall. But coming back to kind of the population view, I think it's very interesting where most of the experience is this like.

[00:23:45] You know, dark, you know, aggressive kind of endurance focus or strength focus type of programming of like getting more and more and more. Whereas women are cyclical in nature. Like we have monthly periods. We are out for nine months, maybe 18 months for a baby. Like we are.

[00:24:08] That's why if you're applying regular like the way that you typically would measure things in days, weeks, you know, that type of retention, it doesn't work for 80, 90 percent female population. Yeah, I mean, I. I can't deny that. Like I I'm sure I've never out of all the podcasts that I've done.

[00:24:34] And we've talked a lot about the evolution of women's health and the research. Right. That's now going into it and the shifts in that. But when you put it that way, it's actually never something I don't think it's ever come up in that particular light on this podcast before. So what does that mean? Like where where do we need to change? What's what's what's the outcome that we should. I'm excited because I feel like that's a big unlock. Right.

[00:25:00] It's someone like myself could have a really positive role in and it's actually a relatively low hanging fruit. Right. So I think the first thing that you asked me, which is like, what are some of the solutions that we've been able to put in place? I actually think the female buddy system works exponentially better than the male system. I can see that in the data as well. Women like to have buddies. They have wider spans.

[00:25:24] If we look at our user data, the women would have like eight or nine different buddies that they would do a challenge with, whereas the guy would be like one or two. Like it's it's it's like we're very precious about our connections where I mean, we as in guys. But like I feel like my husband has two really good friends and he's like, you know, if he didn't talk to them, you know, he like no new joiners. So, you know, I think there's a song like no new friends, whatever.

[00:25:53] Like he like completely preaches to that where I feel that in our data, what I can see is that women are looking for new friends and new chapters and they're just innately more social. When I became a mom, there's a lot of like mom groups and different things like that. People like to talk a little bit more.

[00:26:13] So I feel that in many of the gym experiences actually doesn't facilitate space, both physical space, but also digital space for people to intentionally connect. And that's where our software can really help with that. The social connectedness component of it. But I also think women are more like guys are competitive and there are women that are competitive, too, such as myself.

[00:26:38] But most women love joy in terms of light gamification. And I had actually given this talk for Garmin when they released their Venue 4 device, which had these women's health features. And it's kind of fascinating because they're also going from like this people that are hikers and that are like very male. Well, you know, you know, they have these really amazing features for golf and things like that.

[00:27:09] But then they're moving towards what where the wider population is. And I was trying to say that at the beginning, when you look at sports or when you look at games, the e-games people, they're all dudes. The top players are like 95 percent guys. But if you look at the overall gaming, so people think, OK, that's great. You know, like Call of Duty 4, like that's that's like it is a mega game. But you know what else is a mega game? Candy Crush.

[00:27:37] And you want to know how many users are using Candy Crush? It's 100 times more than like Call of Duty. And who are those users? Right. It's majority female. And that's what the unlock is for kind of the overall gym industry. I think if it's more designed for that, you're going to go from like 20 percent penetration in a in a.

[00:28:01] You know, in a neighborhood into this light gamified experience for that's accessible for the average genes of the world. Right. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was looking at my phone because not because I'm checking text messages, but I was listening to a recent podcast on modern wisdom. And it was this guy, Roy. Bomeister.

[00:28:25] So he's been doing research on all this stuff, like, you know, the difference between men and women and in different populations and like how like different roles. And like a lot of it, we was talking about competition and, you know, how men are very. I hate this word. Herical. Herical. Herical. It's like an hierarchy. And, you know, because we like to compete. So we like multiple levers of like, how do we get up one more above the other? And and you see it like these like I think you talked about camera or game it was. But like there's way more women users overall.

[00:28:55] Right. For players in a specific game. But like you look at the bottom and the top, there's more men because they just feel the need to just compete so much harder. And so it's like there's like it's a very strange shift in how the data played out. Like it was kind of unexpected. Right. It's like, yeah, there's a lot more women than men playing. But like men tend to just by nature, like throw themselves off a cliff to be a winner. And it's just why we're wired.

[00:29:21] But like the interesting thing about relationships, too, is like how men form, especially in as as men advance into their 30s and 40s and 50s. Like the relationships that we have tend to be fewer and farther in between. But and we're just not that good at making new friends. I've talked about this on podcast before. It's like you get into your 40s, like I moved to a new town in my 40s and it's like, hey, man, do you want to do you want to do you want to like hang out sometime? Like, can I get your number? It's just a really weird thing for us to do. We haven't we find it difficult, but it shouldn't be. So there's like I think there's a lot of that, too.

[00:29:51] Like I think there's also what I'm saying is I think there's also opportunities in the male demographic because we're not too good at making friends. And, you know, if we if we could use a little help, I think that would boost boost retention as well. We're just as scared and as intimidated as everyone else. We just we're trained not to say it. Hey, friends, I've had hundreds, if not thousands of conversations with gym owners and industry entrepreneurs. One theme keeps coming up. The right technology can make or break your business.

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[00:32:11] And that's part of the magic metric for many companies. And I think the best example of magic metric would be kind of the early Facebook example. Like, what would be a really good indicator of someone that would stay on Facebook for a long time? And people thought it was like number of pictures posted or number of posts or different things like that. It ended up actually being number of friends and the velocity for which they added friends onto the social network.

[00:32:40] So, that's a really important part of retention that I think gyms for, like, the first thing that I will work with them on is helping them make connections within their member groups. And we have a, that's kind of the optimity way, which is coming and observing what's going on with the population. Whatever data you have, whatever level of sophistication you have, it doesn't matter.

[00:33:04] Because all of these are, like, when we add the layers of gamification or social connectedness to it, they're all low-hanging fruit. So, when you implement these tried and true human behaviors since the dawn of time, you're going to be able to see improvements in your metrics. Even if you're not, like, assessing them to, like, the computer version level of everything. That's totally not a requirement for success.

[00:33:30] So, when you look at, like, if you're going to implement these types of initiatives within gyms, what data are you going to use? Are you going to use, like, there's membership data, obviously, right? If you can get into their CRM or their membership to gym management software. I'm sure there's wearable data that you have. There's, I don't know, are you using, like, de-identified third-party data? Like, yeah. So, how do you pull all this together? Yes. Okay. I'll answer that in kind of a problematic way.

[00:33:58] And then I'll add on AI components of why I think it's exciting to now be able to do that. Naturally. Outside of a seven-digit consulting project, which is what we get from the insurers, right? What we're able to do for real, well-funded projects. But now we're able to do that within, like, a five-digit project, which is so exciting, right? The data, okay. So, there's, like, the Maslow's, Hedworth, Jairo.

[00:34:23] So, the most important base layer is purchasing data. So, any sort of subscription, like, when they're actually coming in, what does that look like? You know, or is it, how do they pay? Right? Those type of information. That's kind of the bottom layer. The second layer would be usage data. So, check-ins, you know, which parts are they using? Which classes are they booking? Anything like that. So, any sort of that type of information.

[00:34:51] It's not always the same as the subscription, the monetary component of it. And then if you do have wearable information, if you have trainer information, that's what I'm saying. Like, we can do really cool correlations there to, like, help with that. So, those are kind of on the gym side. But the gym side, it's non-negotiable. You must have the bottom layer of the Maslow's. But the insights actually come from other sources.

[00:35:19] So, similar to what you alluded to, the insight comes partially from us because we have data from behavior and patterns and, you know, tools that we can do to connect that. And by just running a simple challenge with us onto your group, we're going to be able to augment that data and get some information. Yeah. Within a month. So, we can, like, layer in and be like, oh, you didn't have wearable data before.

[00:35:44] Now I can tell you out of your members said how many of them would have, like, Apple, Fitbit, OOP, you know, whatever devices. It helps us kind of segment that. And then the third patch of it is other sorts of data. So, it could be purchasing behavior, shopping behavior, you know, zip codes, other things like that. So, we actually verify zip code for every user of ours because we send out rewards for them.

[00:36:12] So, verify zip codes, verify phone numbers and phone, like, emails. So, that's good. So, we kind of use that to kind of correlate the like type of users, even if it's not a one-to-one match with the actual member themselves. But that gives you additional insights. So, it's kind of like a prism, right? So, you're kind of triangulating these different types of information to see whether or not you can form a clear thesis about this, like, who are you serving?

[00:36:41] Who should you be trying to retain? And what are kind of the most basic things that you could put in place to get people to come back and renew and grow? Jane, you mentioned a challenge. You initiate a challenge. What does the challenge look like? They're very simple. So, they're gamified live leaderboard things. So, for many games yoga classes, they do 30-day challenges, which are like just stamps that people can do for that. Again, as I said, it's not designed for the female.

[00:37:11] So, like, very few people would be able to do 30-day challenges. Like, I would not be able to do certain classes during certain times of the month. So, I don't think those things are really well designed. But what we do is that we usually run events that's anywhere between a single day to two weeks.

[00:37:32] We have people connect in their phone, their devices, and then we're able to, based on what users share permission with us, get all our different sources of information. So, it's kind of a singular on that person. Get kind of the multimodal information about their demographics, their psychographics, which is what they like, who they are. We also look at personality, which is Myers-Briggs type of information because it also helps us, like, figure out, oh, okay. Like, you're a really competitive person.

[00:38:01] Like, we should move into competitive challenges. And if you really like to win, we're going to put you in challenges that are, like, under 25 people. So, you have a higher chance of winning. If I put you in a global challenge with 100,000 people, I'm going to have a lot of disappointed men out there. I want to win. Yeah. Yes. You'll be the winner, right, within the world of people. That's great. But that's how the challenges work. We do challenges as a service. So, we kind of help put that in place.

[00:38:31] There's no tech lift, pretty much, for our partner. And then just a way for us to help gather some information, put things together in terms of insights. And then we also do some consulting for trying to understand, like, what are the user loops that you're already using? Like, are you, do you have a referral program? How is that working for you? Do you have loyalty? Like, do you actually have a points system? Do you reward the person to be a customer for a long time? Many gyms don't have that, actually. No. Yeah.

[00:39:00] So, that's, again, we'll pay you through. I'm really excited about this industry. And then many of the gyms, even if they have that, it's actually a cost, like, it's a cost center for them. So, for them to, like, give out free sessions or for them to give gift cards or, like, give away a Garmin watch, it's expensive for them. But we have a way for them to actually use that to generate some revenue or at least be cost neutral for that.

[00:39:29] So, that is also very helpful for gyms that are looking for a sustainable recurring revenue and thinking about a digital experience, right? So, like, you have the in-gym experience, but maybe I still want to keep you as a customer even though you're four months pregnant. But what can I give you digitally that you can do at home?

[00:39:47] And maybe from this, like, hardcore training experience, I can actually give you prenatal things delivered to your phone that are, you know, that are more stretching and, like, conditioning focused. So, that's so that when you come back, because you want to get back into your pre-pregnancy body, but you can get back at three months after the baby versus nine months or a year after the baby.

[00:40:13] Like, that is very meaningful for gyms retention. We were going to talk about digital. Did we cover that? Or is that kind of what we've been talking about? Yeah, explain digital to me because that was new. Yeah, yeah. Digital, it's actually a marketing term. I got it from a friend of mine who is in that. And it talks about, you know, there's digital marketing, there's physical, like, billboards and things like that.

[00:40:40] So, digital is this, for things to be engaging throughout for, like, as I said, 100 years of life, you need to have a physical presence and also have maybe leverage digital tools to help have that presence in a more distributed way so that you can increase your total addressable market. So, digital is how we build our business because many times you can build an app business that's completely digital, right?

[00:41:08] And there's a lot of big companies, tech companies that are completely digital. But think about it. Apple is a digital company. You have a physical device. Like, I have a Apple device. So, that's physical. But it's a software-driven company. And those type of companies are actually, they stay with you for a long time. You know, you're very loyal to that because they have a physical component.

[00:41:33] So, that's one of the reasons I was also very excited about this industry because it's not just digital therapeutics, which I really, I do believe in as well. But many times, digital therapeutics don't produce the health outcomes that they produce in a clinical trial or something that's controlled. Because what's magic about the clinical trial is that you actually have a physical presence. You go to a clinic. There's a human that talks to you.

[00:42:00] You're assigned a buddy, by the way, of a case manager or someone that's actually helping you who do that. So, it's a physical experience. So, that's what I mean by physical. And I think the gym is actually really cool because you already have the physical element of it. It just needs to be intentional about making it a physical experience. Yeah, it's cool. Like, it's happening now in our industry.

[00:42:26] And, you know, I think probably the most best example I could think of is eGym. And they're also, you know, a sponsor of this podcast. But they have their eGym Genius AI. So, eGym has, you know, very high-end gym equipment. You got a little wrist thing, fog, whatever it is, and you scan it. Then, you know, each particular piece of equipment, it knows you. It starts your way. It starts running you through your workout. You don't have to think about it. You sit and go. But then it's also got this AI layer that's kind of a coach that's with you the other 23 hours of the day, right? So, providing nutrition or, you know, checking wearables.

[00:42:54] Like, all this stuff is just one thing that's with you constantly. But it also integrates really seamlessly with the member experience as soon as they walk in the door. And I think there's a lot of different solutions like that popping up. Like, I think you and I were talking about prior to recordings. Like, the member experience is really critical right now. And it seems to be one of the biggest focuses we have as an industry. So, your timing is excellent. I think people are more open-minded to this than they've ever been within our industry, which is great news. Yeah, timing's a lot. Yeah.

[00:43:24] Success. And I love EGM. Actually, that was one of the podcasts. That was one of the first ones that I listened to of your podcast. So, I think it's so really interesting, you know. And that's what they did, too. Like, you know, kind of bringing the physical world through. I mean, it's a different company before. But, like, the recording of the physical world into a digital experience. And that's what people want.

[00:43:47] They want natural extensions of it and not just a kind of truncated version of themselves, you know. I mean, like a severance type of thing. That's great. That show weirds me out. What do you need right now? And this is, you know, kind of the last question I always ask. But when you look at our industry, you know, what is the most critical thing for you? Obviously, you know, I'm sure you'd love to have some health clubs or GM chains to start working with. Do you need, you know, specific partners on the data side? You know, are you looking for team members?

[00:44:16] Or is, like, what's critical to your advance team right now? Well, I need all three. You know, it's like you need all 20 amino acids to make proteins. So, like, so I need all that. But there are ones that I don't make, right? There's one, like, essential amino acids. So, like, I think also there are certain things that are bottlenecks for what we're trying to do. So, maybe I'll say it this way. Our goal is to find people like my mother, be in every single family, and help them achieve longevity, create blue zones anywhere.

[00:44:46] So, our goal is to go from 7 million people to 10 million people to 100 million people within the next five to seven years, right? So, what we want to do is partner with people with a footprint. So, I would say what a footprint would be is over 100,000 members. And that's where we can be the amazing optimizer that we are to help them with retention.

[00:45:10] And so, I'm looking for partners that have, that bring the audience, and then we can help them retain, grow, you know, become this digital world that the consumers are actually expecting. You know? So, I think that's the biggest unlock right now. Awesome. And then, what's best for you? Yeah, I'm strangely accessible, I would say.

[00:45:36] So, I would, yeah, I think LinkedIn would be a really good place to reach out to me. And then, I will share my email with you as well. But I don't woman my email myself. So, I do have my admins that do that. So, but, you know, I think for any sort of projects, just, yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn or through email. We'll definitely make sure no walls are dropped from that communication. Okay. Awesome. Well, Jane, you know, thank you so much for doing this. It's really, it's interesting.

[00:46:06] It's, it's, I love how now more than ever, industries bring in fresh perspectives from different industries. And, you know, really smart, enlightened people. And I think it's great. I mean, it's how we mature. And it's how we kind of hit to the next level. And we always have these, you know, huge aspirations of breaking through the 20% barrier of market penetration that we've been talking about for so long. And, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic. This could be after 17 years, you know, the time that we really push forward.

[00:46:33] So, anyway, that was a long-winded way of saying thank you for joining me. Really appreciate all the insights. And, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Jane Wang. Thank you for having me. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness. If you did, I'm going to 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.

[00:47:02] 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. And 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 thefutureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there.

[00:47:31] 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.