Josh Bonhotal - Future.co & 1v1 Coaching At Scale

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey friends, if you follow the show, you may have picked up on my passion for heart rate variability when it comes to recovery, performance, and longevity. I track it religiously and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Over the past few months, I've been taking this new supplement called HRV Plus by mode and method. Over that time, I've experienced significant improvement in sleep quality, faster recovery, and an objective uptick in my average HRV. About two to three points on average. That's a big deal. HRV Plus is the world's first expert-curated, carefully sourced blend of all natural micronutrients to optimize recovery, increase performance, and boost heart rate variability. Formulated by some of the world's leading experts, HRV Plus combines their proprietary hemp extract with omega-3 oil, magnesium, and curcumin extract to target inflammation, improve sleep, and supercharge our endocannabinoid systems. I encourage you to give it a shot. Go to modemethod.com and enter discount code ERIC15. That's modemodemethod.com and our code Eric15 for 15% off. Go get it. All right, we're live. Josh Bonatal, welcome to the future of fitness. Thanks.

Thanks for having me. Excited to get into it with you today.

Yeah, I mean, as we were just talking, one of the things I love talking about, probably uh one of my top five favorite subjects is coaching. Right. I I consider myself at heart still a coach. And sometimes it's tough for me not to coach people when they don't want coaching. Like uh I was at a CrossFit event this weekend, uh watching my wife compete, and I was like, oh, don't say anything, Eric. Don't don't say anything. Um, so anyway, uh man, you are you are a VP uh over at future.co. People probably started to hear about the buzz about what you guys are doing in the remote coaching world. I'm excited to get into you know what some of the differentiators are, what you've been experiencing, you know, through a pandemic, after a pandemic, um, where you see the growth for this, and so many different other things. So, but let's before that, let's just set the table, Josh. You know, give us some of your background. Uh, I know you have a vast uh background in sports and performance and coaching as well.

Yeah, sure. Um so I'll go, I'll go quick, um, but you know, if it makes sense to dive into any of this, I'm I'm happy to. But, you know, my really my passion for this world started out of um just loving basketball. I was a diehard Bulls fan, grew up, you know, in the Jordan era. And so that was in my mind, um, what I thought I was gonna do is you couldn't tell me any different. I was gonna play for the Bulls one day. And so, you know, I just and I wasn't that good at basketball. Um, and so I just kind of really poured myself into the process of what could I do to get stronger, get faster, fitter, more athletic, um, become a better basketball player. And, you know, along the path, I never really gave up on that dream as like ignorant as that was, because I didn't even play basketball in college. Um, but you know, along the way, I was at least wise enough of like, okay, if I don't make it, I should at least have a backup plan. And so this is, you know, late 90s, early 2000s when I was graduating high school, going into college. Um, and you know, strength and conditioning wasn't necessarily like as prom near as prominent as it is today, um, but somehow I kind of stumbled onto it and saw that this was a real job. Like this was another way in that I could kind of make my dream come true of, you know, going and being a part of the Bulls organization. And so I was really fortunate because I made that decision pretty early on. And throughout college, you know, I kind of looked at who are the people in positions I would hope to one day get to, you know, obviously being the Bulls, but NBA in general, high major college basketball, and just kind of started to try to study what was their path, what was their philosophy, who did they seek out to learn, where did they intern, how did they come up? Um, and just started to take those steps where I was able to put myself in position through various like volunteer opportunities, internships and that throughout college at the University of Wisconsin, where my last year as an undergrad, I was able to be a student assistant with all the teams, men's basketball, but like hockey, um, golf, tennis, you know, everything and really get exposure. Um and the people that I worked under were very close to um the head strength coach with the Bulls, Eric Helen. So I was able to, right out of college, my first job was an internship with the Bulls. Um so I did that for about a year, um, left, spent a year with Mike Boyle, worked for him out in Boston. Um, and at the end of that year, the assistant position with the Bulls opened up. And just based on how I approached my internship, um, they called me up and asked me to come back uh to take over as the assistant. So I did. I spent the next um three seasons, uh, so four seasons in total with the Bulls um as the assistant strength coach. And at the end of that last season, and it was the year Derek Rhodes won MVP, we had the best record in the NBA. So, you know, really um some successful years there. But at the end of that last season, Mike Boyle called me up and was like, hey, um, I just recommended you to take over the men's basketball program at Purdue. Like if you're interested, follow up. Um, and so I did, and uh ended up uh, you know, going from the Bulls to Purdue. So this at this time I was 27, um, took over the the men's, I was the director of performance for men's basketball at Purdue, ended up spending the next seven years there, um, which really gave me a great platform um to build a program of my own, to experiment, to try some things, to put in into practice a lot of things that I'd learned over the years from from my mentors, and um, you know, had a lot of success there. But I always just had this itch of like something bigger, like what's next, and you know, realized it was it was ultimately I wanted a bigger platform to help many more people, especially like, you know, I had always been fortunate to have a lot of like interns, assistants, you know, through my time with the Bulls in and Purdue. Um, and so not only help the players, but help those people professionally uh to develop in their careers and go chase and reach their own dreams. And um, so I kind of had this crazy idea, I was gonna go to law school and try to be a GM in the NBA. And out of nowhere, I get this email, and it's about some tiny startup called Future. At the time, there's, you know, it's like an eight-person company. You couldn't, like, there's no website. Um, it's out in San Francisco, it's this tech company. And I don't even know if this is real. Like, I'm just thinking this is probably some type of scam because I know nothing about tech, Silicon Valley, you know, startups, any of that. And um, you know, it was halfway through my last season with uh with Purdue. I I already took the LSAT, was getting ready to go to law school. And I was like, I have nothing to lose. I'll I'll talk to them and and see what this is about. And spent a couple months, got to know my co-founders, um, and what my role would be and the larger problem that we're trying to solve, which is, you know, and we'll get into it, but ultimately preventative health care and and how do we manage this solution by pairing you with a coach who's in your life with you every single day, um, who can who gets to know you, who cares about you, and who can ride the highs and lows of your life with you to support you in those areas of, you know, how you move, how you eat, how you sleep, how you manage your stress. And um, it just made sense to me because that's what I'd been doing my whole career with the Bulls at Purdue. And now this was an opportunity to go and do it digitally, take it to the world, take it to, you know, hopefully one day millions of people. But for me, beyond that, to build the team, to build a team of, you know, today hundreds of coaches, but one day thousands of coaches and elevate them and develop them and give them a platform. Um, so I took that leap. It's been about five years now, and uh um, you know, a lot, not not without its fair share of ups and downs, but overall, you know, I would say that's been the the best career decision that I've ever made. Um, just jumping into this world of being an entrepreneur and and building a company.

Yeah, that that's a pretty significant segue that you took there, right? From obviously just a you know, a coaching GM track, right? Which is, you know, very much like, you know, from there, I presume, you know, from a university, you can go to pro and, you know, do a it's it's it's a track. It's it's a ladder, right? It's clearly defined for the most part. But then you made this uh right turn to to this world of startup life. And and in industry five years ago, you know, uh, what are we 2020? So that's you know, 2017, the industry was still um the way I look at it, it was it wasn't shaken up as it is now. Like there wasn't it wasn't sexy, right? It wasn't like you know, tons of of capital flowing in and and venture capitalists and everybody getting on board, technologists, right? It was it was just a different time. So that was a big decision, that was a big risk, and it seems to be paying off for you. And you know, I I here here's the question that I've been wanting to to to dive into is that like I probably started um with my first remote like remote coaching's been around a long time, right?

Uh yeah you go back to like many forms, yeah.

You know, I I started with James Fitzgerald, I think in like 2011 was my first remote coach. And you know, we're doing everything off spreadsheets and emails, right? Now the tools have gotten better, right? For sure. Um I don't know how widespread, I I don't know the research on remote coaching or online coaching. But what what makes what you guys are doing different from all the rest that's been around for a little bit?

Yeah. Um I think it it starts with the team. So of course, you know, it starts with kind of the the the founding team and our co-founders, and you know, in particular, obviously our CEO Rishi and kind of the vision he's had from the beginning. And um, you know, just he has such a unique background of, you know, he is someone who has had prior to future a ton of success in the Silicon Valley world. He kind of came up with, you know, the the they call it the PayPal Mafia, but many of those guys that started um PayPal are some of Rishi's biggest mentors. And so he's had success um in in the tech world. He's been surrounded by the very best. At one point, he reported to Sergei at Google and and was running product there. He started his own company recent uh uh, you know, before a future that got acquired uh by by postmates, and then he was in venture capital himself uh for a couple years as as an entrepreneur and resident. So just understands the space. But what's unique with him is he also was a college athlete. He played soccer at Stanford. And, you know, anybody that's familiar with college athletics, you know, Stanford is a program that I believe they still hold, like they've won more national titles across all their various sports than any university in the country. And, you know, I think a big reason for that is the high performance environment that they've created, the structure. And so, you know, Rishi, you know, one starting with the vision and looking at so, you know, what what the problem that we're trying to solve. And I think when you typically, and and even going back, as you said, 2010 or maybe even before, when you think about um remote coaching and and virtual personal training, whatever you want to call it, I think it's largely always really been focused in on the specific niche of just working out and and having a workout plan and maybe it's getting stronger or losing weight or whatever it is. And, you know, so I think one is is where our vision starts from, which is you look at this um really kind of health, ongoing health crisis that we have in in our country, where you look at um, you know, today, right now, 80% of us are not active enough, if at all. And wrapped inside of that, three out of four people are actually obese or overweight. And what it leads to is all these chronic type conditions, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, you know, all this type of stuff that really is largely preventable. But the way the healthcare system has been set up, the hospital industry, you know, all of that, it's reactive. It's not until the point that you are obese or you have diabetes or whatever it is, all these things are left untreated until they're a problem. Um, you know, and so what that's resulted in is 80% of us will one day die of one of these chronic type conditions. And in the meantime, in the years that we have, we'll live, you know, a lesser quality of life. And so, you know, I think starting with the vision and just unpacking that problem on a larger scale, where Rishi looked, is who is the small subset of the population that's already solved this problem? And you look at it, and really it's it's wealthy people, it's billionaires, and it's professional athletes. It's, you know, any one of them who cares at all about managing and optimizing their day-to-day health is overwhelmingly successful. And when you look at their solution, it's the same across all of them. They've outsourced every aspect of it to experts, to other people who build very strong and lasting relationships with them to, again, as we were talking about before, ride those highs and lows. And so it's not just for them, you know, it's not, and going back to Rishi Stanford days, it was like, yes, he had a performance coach, but he also had, you know, a dietitian, a chef, uh, you know, um physical therapist, you have your dot, you know, and you have this constellation of experts. And that solution makes sense. That solution has worked over time. And so, you know, I think for us, we even from the beginning and and in in in you know, coming up with the solution, it was not everyone today can afford or have access to what you know Derek Rose and Joaquim Noah had with not just myself, but like our whole team with the Bulls. But through technology, we can provide that. We can do that digitally. And our bet was if we pair you with a real human who's in your life every single day with you, who builds that relationship with you, that's the missing piece. That's what's going to get people to be more active, to be more thoughtful about even just beyond what they're doing to work out, how they're eating, how they're sleeping, you know, all that sort of stuff. Because what you find is, especially with, say, pro athletes, even though they have this constellation, I, as a performance coach, am really the one that's of that team that's spending the most time with them. So even though I'm not a dietitian, um, you know, I'm not meal planning for them, but I'm taking what our dietitian has said is important for this player. And I'm the one helping them build those habits. I'm the one, you know, they're coming to to ask questions. And so, you know, the other part then out of that vision is then the team that we've built is, you know, and for my role, I went out and really indexed heavily on coaches with that type of um experience and education of coming from these really integrated high-performance structures where they've had to work, you know, as part of this larger team and a much more holistic approach beyond just fitness. Um, but fitness in this case as the vehicle to help you improve, you know, overall in your life and in these other areas. Um, you know, so I think the the second part of it is we've gone and done that, you know, of our team of several hundred coaches, um 70% of them have come from backgrounds where they've trained pro-college and Olympic athletes. Um, 60% of them have their master's degree and beyond. And so, you know, I think that's the critical part of this equation is it's people, and you know, like you did it remote, but how many Erics are there? How do we build a company where there's hundreds of people, you know, just like you or thousands? Um, and then the last piece from the from the technology perspective is, you know, Rishi and starting the company went and got the guy at Apple who invented FaceTime and iMessage and was part of the 20-person team that built the first ever iPhone. And so, from a, you know, from a standpoint of like the engineering horsepower, as you talked about, what what remote personal training or remote coaching always sort of was and has been, was some form of sending like Excel spreadsheets or really choppy through text message or, you know, whatever. And Justin, our CTO, had literally spent his career, 10 years at Apple, um, thinking about how do you connect people in this world digitally without them ever physically being there in person with one another and still build and enhance these really strong one-to-one human relationships. Um, and so, you know, I think it's it's those three things tied together. It's like it's the vision, it's the people driving that vision, and then the and then that engineering horsepower of like literally the guy who's who's by and large paved the way for how we stay connected digitally because that was our bet was, you know, what Derek Rose has or Joachim Noah or any of the, you know, LeBron James, you look at him and the team he has around him, is well, I think you could do that without ever physically having to be there in person. Um, but you need the you need the tools and you need the technology, and then you need the people to then, you know, be able to pair and give access to anybody anywhere. And because of the technology, now it's affordable to be able to do that.

Yeah, that's uh, and then that brings me to the next question. I think we'll suss out the technology through this kind of next series of questions for you. But maybe you could just walk me through the well, I want I want to hear two things, and we'll start with the client experience. I want to hear the client experience, I want to hear the coaching experience from both sides. So let's start with the client. What if I sign up for future or I'm interested in future, walk me through that process. What does that look like? How does it feel? Uh, how often is it? You know, how do I get assigned to coach? Tell me all those things.

Yeah. So, you know, we've obviously tried to build a very premium experience. We've rooted, you know, even our product and our experience of like the the tech you experience as well as um the coaching very much in hospitality. We've studied the best in the world in in hospitality to really understand um how do we surprise and delight, how do we create amazing experiences and you know, build a path uh for success that's specific for you. Basically, how do we meet you where you're at, no matter the moment, no matter what's going on? Um, so starting out, you know, we really welcome you in through the website. We take you through a fairly extensive um but quick questionnaire of like, you know, intake, you know, your your past history. Why are you coming to the future? What is, you know, what is your goal? What's the problem you're trying to solve? What have you done in the past? What do you like to do? What do you want to do, you know, all of that sort of stuff? Um, you know, are you training for a marathon? Are you trying to lose weight? Are you a new mom? All those things. And then out of that, you know, we have the the technology and we have the the um you know depth of of team and experience that we're trying to very intelligently suggest some matches for you based on not just your goals, but also your personality. Like what type of person would you vibe with? What type of coach would you want? Communication style. Um, and so because as I mentioned, we have you know hundreds of coaches. If we just threw, hey, choose from any of these several hundred, um, there's a there's a you know decision parameter. So we try to narrow it down to like, here are the you know, four, maybe five coaches that based on what you've shared with us, we think will be great matches for you. Um, typically, people look at um those five matches. I see a picture of the coach, I see their background in terms of their credentials, their experience, where they've been. Um, but I also get a feel for who they are in terms of, you know, we have stuff on there to explain what's their personality, what's their communication style. Um, even like they have a they, you know, for me, I have my dog named Coco, who's a you know, lab mix, whatever. It's funny, like some clients though, because it's all, you know, it's and that's the most important part of um, you know, I think the the why this works is that connection. And so it's it's about forming a tribe early on. And for different people, that's different things. We went to the same school. He likes dogs, so do I. His favorite food's pizza. So it's my, you know, it can be strange things or it can be very specific. I want to um lose weight. This person has a track record of a ton of success with a bunch of clients losing weight. Um, so, anyways, from there, you know, you're going and and picking your coach. Once I pick my coach, um, right away I'll get prompted to schedule a FaceTime call with my coach. Um, just similar as like if you were booking a haircut online, same type of tooling. Um, and then, you know, basically as soon as I do all that, I'll get a video message from my coach right away that's personalized to me. Because on the coach side, they see like I got a new client, Eric, you know, just signed up, and I'm gonna send a message to you, you know, welcoming you in, um, giving you a feel for kind of who I am. There's a video, you know, so you feel my energy. It feels um, it feels real. You know, it's a real person, not just, you know, kind of some robot. Um, and then, you know, from there, right away, I have access to my coach through the app, through, you know, basically text messaging inside of the app. Um, so oftentimes, even before that FaceTime call, because it might be a couple days until you have that FaceTime call, um, you know, your coach is already starting to talk to you and vice versa, because we want to um create that behavior and and uh be intentional about getting you as a client to understand not just I tell you, hey, I'm here for you at all times, but like I show you because I'm proactively reaching out, trying to get to know you and things like that. Then we have that FaceTime call. Um that would be very similar to if I went to work with a personal trainer or a coach in person. Typically, you're sitting down for 30 minutes, they're gonna ask you uh, you know, several very um kind of intentional questions, you know, a little bit of motivational interviewing, things like that to really understand, you know, what you're looking for, how can I, as a coach, best support you? Um, but also to like start to build that rapport. So, you know, if it was only just about working out, now it's very transactional. I also want to get to know you a little bit. Where are you from? Like, what are you what what do you do for work? Where'd you go to school? What hobbies do you have? What do you love doing? Who are the most important people to you? You know, and I'm gonna share a little bit about myself, but start to form kind of that connection, start to build that trust because that's what's going to set up the success for the long-term relationship, you know, um, when we have setbacks or things like that. Um, and then from there, off of that initial call, I as a coach will go through, I'll build out a custom workout plan for you week by week, based on, you know, what we talked about. So we every Sunday, your workouts for the week drop into the app. So you can, you know, check them out, see and preview what you have coming up for the next week. It's all based on kind of that conversation. Um and then, you know, I go through and let's say I have a workout on Monday, I open up the app, I my schedule is right there. I click on Monday's workout, and now it's a fully guided experience that was personalized for me by my coach based on my goals, based on what equipment I have, based on you know, likes, dislikes, all of that sort of stuff. It's fully guided with video of exercise every exercise as you're doing it, um, audio cues of technique, how to do that exercise, as well as my coach will um custom record voice cues throughout the whole experience to motivate me, to you know, maybe give me some more instruction, um, but very much to how can we mimic that experience of being right there in person with you, even though we are um digital. So it's another kind of relationship touch point. Um, and then as I go through that workout, I'm able, you know, I'm able to adjust my weights, I'm able to like give feedback on different exercises, all of that. When I finish, my coach gets a notification right away that says, not only, hey, Eric just finished his workout, but here's his heart rate gap graph, some activity data, here's exercises maybe he skipped, here's weights he changed, all this sort of stuff. And then you're gonna get a message from your coach pretty quickly, you know, on average, typically within like 30 minutes, um, from your coach acknowledging that you just finished this workout, probably celebrating, you know, that you got it done, but also like very uh specific about what you just did, or maybe based on what you just did, hey, like that was way tougher for you than what I anticipated. So given that I think tomorrow you're gonna be really sore, I threw in a little, we didn't have anything on the schedule, but I threw a 10-minute stretch on there. If you have time, I think it'll really help. Like it's gonna help, you know, the recovery process and things like that. Um, and from there, it just it really becomes a very dynamic, ongoing experience, sort of like the the choose your own adventure almost, because now, based on how you're responding to these different workouts, based on any feedback you're giving to your coach, in real time, they're changing things up along the way. So even though your workouts are planned out for the week, life get life is crazy. Life is hectic, you know, and and so your coach has the ability to adapt and adjust those things based on maybe you only slept three hours last night. Maybe you you were up because your kid was was sick, or you know, maybe you can't get to the gym today, but you still want to do something, your coach gives you that, you know, that kind of solution. And they become really the front door to your personal health. On average, um, all of our across all of our clients, they're trading nearly five text messages every single day, seven days a week with their coach. So if you think and you put that in context of like most of us, if we're lucky, we see our doctor twice a year, you know, and and um how it is now, your doctor pops in for 30 seconds and then they're out. You see them for like a minute. And we've actually broken it down over the course of a year, on average. Um, the if you look at like character count and that is the equivalent of like Romeo and Juliet, the novel that a client is trading back and forth with their coach. And so, as you'd imagine, you build this, like they're not just a coach, it's not just transactional, it's a friend. It's someone who knows me. They're in my corner, it's someone who on a day I'm not even working out. They're just checking in on me because they know, like I told them I had this huge presentation for work that I'm super stressed about and nervous. They know I had that presentation that day. They're just checking in. Hey, how'd the presentation go? You know, and like if you look at it, and that's what we tried to build from the beginning. Why say, like, someone like me, when I was with the Bulls when I was at Purdue, was able to be so successful helping, you know, the players that I coached was not necessarily the X's and O's of, you know, sets and reps of, you know, actually like lifting and conditioning that we're doing. It was that underlying care and you know, relationship and and connection that you have with this other person uh to be able to understand, again, when we when we back up and think about the problem, is we're trying to get you to build healthier habits and be consistent and stick with it. Um, it's not all just straight up. It's you know, there's a lot of setbacks, there's a lot of low moments. We got to be able to have those types of relationships with you so that in those moments, I understand when to put an arm around you, or maybe I need to give you tough love. But to give you tough love, I have to earn that right. Um, and so that's it within the client experience, we've we've built the the tools and the functionality for every experience to take on a life of its own. Because then, you know, also um clients often will have many like follow-up uh FaceTime calls with their coach just to touch base or hey, I'm really struggling with something. Um, you know, let's let's get on a call and figure out how I can best help you. But it's like my, you know, as a client, my coach is literally in my pocket at all times. I can reach out at any time and they're gonna be able to support me and help me best move forward.

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So we've we've built it as a career. Um, and so every single one of our coaches is a full-time employee with us. They're salaried, they have, you know, they have full benefits. Um nearly all of them have equity in our company. So they're, you know, they're literal, literal owners in our company, um, which I think is is is an important point because in having that, you know, the it's it's just like a a team, say, pursuing a championship. It's like ultimately the best thing for all of us individually is the success of us collectively, and the success, you know, in this case, the success of future. And, you know, I think also what's obviously very unique as a startup is we're we're all building this together. Like it's not, it's not established. Nobody has ever done this before. And in fact, like that's why we exist, because a lot of people have tried to do this, a lot of really smart people, and nobody has quite figured it out. Um, so there's a lot of people.

Why do you think that is, Josh? Like, why haven't people figured this out?

Man, it's it's hard. You know, it's you know, I think I I I think ultimately when you look at it historically, even over like hundreds of years, whether it's whether it's fitness, like anything that I want to get better at and manage, historically, you've seen it's it's having a coach. Um it just it just works. It all, you know, it always does across across whether it's fitness, whether it's public speaking, whether it's being a great CEO or executive. Um, you know, there's there's just something about um the the you know having this other person who's an expert who understands you and is able to take this n equals one approach because ultimately it's a moving target. And that's where you know there's a lot of other kind of um solutions out there that and don't get me wrong, I I think they're great, but they're more they're they're a piece. They're not like the solution. So I think, you know, when you look at um connected fitness products, for instance, it's a it's a piece of the solution, but it's not the solution because ultimately it's it's one dimension, and and in that case, it's like very um, it's very one-dimensional. You know, it's like Peltown is amazing, but at the end of the day, like I need to do more to manage my health than just ride a bike or run on a on a treadmill. Like there's a lot more to it, or you know, tonal is amazing, but there's more to it than just you know, strength movements using um a very high-tech cable machine. Now, that probably is a part of your solution. And in fact, like, and we see it many, you know, I think like a third of our clients have a Peloton bike. And we actually encourage them hey, you ride Peloton twice a week. Why don't we up that to three? Because it's something that you enjoy doing. It's something you found success with. Um, you know, it's something that gets you more active. And then let's complement it with this, you know, strength work or mobility or or whatever it might be. Um, but there's so much, our lives are so dynamic. There's there's so much change day to day in our emotional state, in just what's going around on around us, um, you know, how we feel, how even just tactfully, man, like that workout yesterday crushed me. I'm so, you know, and so um, you know, I think it's as you look at it, and especially as like the concept of of seeking out like health span, even beyond lifespan, like you know, quality of those years, like uh, you know, as we as we age, we still stay young physically, emotionally. Um, there is no one size fits all approach to that that's optimal. And it's so it's like, you know, I think it's like you have to have that n equals one approach. And to scale that, I mean, look at look across any industry, nobody's really done that yet, effectively at like a scale of like millions of people scaling one-to-one relationships in a way that's um effective, you know, accessible, affordable. Um, so it's it's just it's it's a really hard problem to solve. Um and, you know, but a lot of it just in general, as I touched on these other pieces, um, you know, I think in order to solve it, and we're playing a role within it, I think in order to solve it, it's it's really having a positive sum mindset as well and figuring out who are the other like incredible brands. So I mentioned them already. Peloton is amazing, tonal is amazing, Aura Ring is incredible, you know, like there are amazing builders out there, amazing companies. And so to me, when we look at this larger um issue of extending the lifespans and health spans of all of us, um that is a it's a loaded problem. And so I don't think like any one kind of company is gonna do it on their own. It's gonna take us sort of coming together um and and and and complementing one another to build, you know, this this uh bigger thing.

It it yes, and I think one of the big things that the one-on-one coaching experience has above all else, and you've you've noted on it several times, is is empathy, right? Like a Peloton just doesn't have empathy. It doesn't understand when you had a stressful day at work, you know, like you mentioned when to put your arm around or when to give someone you know a gentle nudge in the right direction. Like that's something that really a coach takes time to build as a skill. And you know, it's I I was look, I think you were we were talking previously. I don't know if it was in the recording or not. Sometimes I forget, but like uh coaching is kind of like a base skill that you can build multiple uh careers on, right? Like if you can understand how to ask questions, right, how to empathize with someone's situation, being able to see the big picture. That's a big thing. That's what coaches really bring in, is like they use those tools to be able to see the big picture and direct someone ahead and knowing that, okay, well, Peloton is just one of the steps that we're gonna take to get to that path, right? That's great. Um, nutrition is just another part that we can we can play in this. And really, when I look at like, and I think this is something that maybe has brought criticism to the Penelotons and the Tonals, is you know, their advertising always has some beautiful like two million dollar home like overlooking the ocean, and someone's doing Peloton in it, and it's like, well, that's not for the masses, right? Like, come on. Right. Uh but but uh you know, it it it can be, and I think that's something that um when you guys look at solve. So well, give me some insights too, as far as like the numbers, like what does it cost for someone to sign up for uh your service at this point? And is that are you guys looking to you know decrease that over time? What is that that plan?

Um yeah, so it's $149 a month. Um, and in fact, that's the only price point we've ever had historically. Um, you know, we will run some different promotions here and there of like the the starting price, or in fact, our most effective distribution channel, which is I think a really encouraging sign, is referrals. Our members absolutely love their experience on future, that they can't shut up about it. They tell their friends, they tell their family. Um, and so we try to make it pretty frictionless that they can help get, you know, people that they care about started on future. So we um have what we call guest passes, which gives our members the ability to give a free first month um to someone that they know that, you know, might be interested or that this could help. Um and then, you know, what I think is interesting about what we do is we bill you monthly. We don't lock you into any type of like, you know, it's not a 12-month plan and you're stuck. It's you know, we if we're not delivering value to you, if we're not helping you, um, you shouldn't be paying for this. And so there's um a high, you know, responsibility that we feel to deliver on kind of the promises that that we have. Um, you know, the the thing that we've done over time is um, you know, work with, say, like corporate partners and things like that to make it more affordable to the actual end consumer, to the member. And, you know, as you might imagine, several employers see this um as a great benefit to provide, you know, either fully subsidized or partially subsidized for their employees. So I think we've had we've had a good bit of success there as one avenue to um start to bring the cost down to the to the end um consumer. And you know, I think for us in in building the company, we we're ultimately creating a category. Like people understand personal training, um, but personal training. Personal training, as most people think about it, is very transactional in nature. It's I pay you for one hour of your time or 30 minutes of your time. We have to agree on, you know, Friday at 3 p.m., but then all of a sudden I have a meeting that, you know, runs late or whatever. So we have to reschedule, you know, but whatever. It's it's you know, we spend that hour together, but as soon as we're done, I go on about my life, you go on about um your life. And so, you know, I think a lot of people don't really understand like what's the difference between having a coach and having a personal trainer. And so, you know, we've we've had to do a lot of that education over the year, and and you know, I think in doing that education, we've needed to be very singularly focused and and not try to do too many things, because then all we're gonna do is is really just confuse people. And so, you know, I think that's also why we've we've it's always just been one tier of service. It's 149. You, and with that, you have unlimited workouts, all personalized from your coach and you know, more or less unlimited access to your like obviously if you message them at midnight, they're not gonna get back to you till the next morning, but like, you know, normal hours. Um, but I do think we're at a point now where you know we've started to do a lot of that education. We've we've started to build some traction, we've started to approve the product. The longer term, bigger vision always has been, once we do that, and as we do that, now we earn the right to ladder up into other areas of your health. So now we can start to think about tackling, tackling much more formally nutrition and you know, mental health, mental performance, and you know, like physical therapy, um, sleep recovery, stress, those types of things. So that's always kind of been part of the vision as you think from a from a business perspective, you know, and that's something we would ultimately figure out is like now there's probably different types of tiers in terms of like what are you focusing on, things like that. Um, you know, and I think there's probably opportunities um longer term as well, as we've learned all the many different personas of our members and what they come to us for and what they want. Um, that changes over time. Sometimes I want and I need very high touch, very um personal, you know, support. Um, that's a lot more intensive. That's probably a higher price point. Other times, maybe I'm in a really good spot because like my coach has educated me and helped me to become um, you know, independent in many ways on thinking about my training. I've built the habit. And so maybe I get to a point where it's like, hey, I don't necessarily need the daily communication. I still want guidance on programming, but maybe we can check in once a week. And so, you know, those are some of the things as as we become now a mature company that I think you earn the right to start to explore and look at and think about, where it's like, hey, maybe that makes sense. And now you have two or three different price points. Because if you could imagine a member's journey, you know, you could imagine members who are with us for many years for periods, it's very high touch and they're paying like the the top-tier service. And then other periods, maybe they're paying the you know, the basic service, and then they and then they go back to it. Um, so you know, I definitely I think there's an opportunity there for us to kind of go into that. But like I said, we've had to earn that right. Like if we started out with that, it would be it would be too confusing on what ultimately we are. And for us, it's like we need future needs to be synonymous with coaching and and being the best in the world at that before we can expand into these other areas.

So I I I know we're button up on time, but I do have one question because I think this is really interesting to to think about. But the who are the members? Like, is it, you know, I have I have a couple um, you know, I guess, uh just avatars that I think about. I have I think about like Susie from accounting, right? Completely mostly disengaged, right, from fitness health, doesn't really know about nutrition. Um, you get kind of like, you know, people like me who maybe have been athletic and fitness has been part of their life most of their life. And then you get kind of different things in between, right? You get you know, high-end athletes or looking for performance. So who who are you getting to? Who are the majority of the members right now?

Yeah, I mean, it it's interesting because as you mentioned, it's like we we see that whole range, uh, as you just um kind of alluded to. I mean, we have we actually have multiple members who competed in the um Tokyo Olympics, and they trained with a future coach, all leading up and actually through the Olympics and you know, are still training for their various competitions to this day. And then we have, you know, um, I think of like one of our members um who had a, I forget her exact um condition, um, but a very kind of like degenerative uh disease who's in like her 70s and worked with one of our coaches, and and um there's this like there's this big hill in her town. She hadn't been able to walk this hill from her house to the to the town in like 15 years or something. She'd basically just accepted the fact she was never gonna walk this hill again. And within, you know, several months of working with her coach, all of a sudden she's able to walk this hill again and she's walking it every day. And so it's like you have these ranges where it's like on the one end, it's it's people competing to be the best in the world at some type of athletic endeavor. And at the other end, it's people just, you know, getting um function of normal life back. And I, you know, I think that's it's one of the things that's made us successful is because of the caliber of coaches that that we've brought in and also the diversity of the coaching team that we've built in terms of where their expertise lies, and then internally the culture that we've built, where everyone very much is a giver and um is kind of creating resources for one another. They're being available to one another, everyone's open to learn from each other. So it allows our coaches to be much more dynamic and really meet the needs of whoever it is in front of me because it's not just me. I have this resource of all these other experts who are my teammates who can who can help me. Um and I think that's also been probably one of our challenges as we grow is like, how do we how do we speak the language when truly we can and we have helped everyone across any type of persona who's come to us, someone who literally has never worked out before, to someone, as you mentioned, that's like at the at the top of their game that's just looking to be a little bit better. Um, you know, broadly it's 26 to to maybe like 4550 is where you see, you know, most of most of our members in in that base. Um, you know, anything from um, you know, moms and dads um to really busy executives, working professionals that are, you know, they're working 60 hours a week. They don't have time, you know. But and that's I think that's a consistency theme that we see is like it's it's people who, you know, they have kids or they have um uh you know, wife, husband, whatever, they have all these other things that are competing for their time. Um, and so we become that solution of like starting to manage that time for them and like fit fitness, you know, into their life. But I think as we expand and grow, we're thinking about how we can break apart and be more specific and be more targeted to each of these different personas. Um, so whether it's a new mom, whether it's someone who is trying to lose weight, whether it's a, you know, it's a weekend warrior, um, you know, how can we kind of go out in the wild with our messaging and start to be a little bit more targeted, speaking to them specifically instead of speaking broadly like, hey, like we have a coach for anyone, but no, like, hey, if you're a new mom, um, like we have coaches with that experience, we're able to use that language and you know, talk about it and bring you into our experience where it's even like, you know, with the tooling and all that, it's it's that much more um precise to exactly, you know, what what you're looking for.

Awesome, man. Well, Josh, it's it's exciting. I I probably have a lot more questions I could ask you, but uh maybe we'll we'll touch base in about a year, see how things are going. It's it's been um, you know, it's cool. I like I say, you know, anything that that really advances the coaching industry, provides a career in that space and allows that for scale because it is important and it's a it's a missing piece for a lot of people. It's you know, having that personal relationship is is the difference between people being successful in their goals or not, just flat out, right? So uh I love the work you guys are doing. I really appreciate it. People want to get a hold of you or or if you want to send them in place someplace specific online, where would you like them to go?

Yeah, um, so uh I try to be pretty active on my Twitter at J Bonnets Hall, um just sharing a lot of different threads, stuff that I'm learning as I go, you know, a lot about coaching and leadership, things like that. And um, and then, you know, anybody who might be interested in trying out what we're building, finding a coach of your own, you can go to um future.co slash josh, and that'll give you uh your first month for free to to try it out. And uh, you know, if you if you don't like it at the end of that month, you can cancel, you never never pay anything. Um, but we've found that you know it's um overwhelmingly it's it's been something that's made a huge impact on people's lives. So um, if I can help get anyone started, that's a great way uh to get started.

That's a great offer, man. Appreciate it. And uh also just I was looking at your LinkedIn, you recently read uh the psychology of money, which is oh yeah, excellent. Excellent. So people pick that one up. It's not what you think it is, it's much, much more, and it's uh it's really good. So, Josh, thank you so much for joining me. It's it's been a pleasure, and I'm excited to see what you guys are up to in uh in 2023. Keep it up.

Uh no, likewise, I appreciate it. It was fun. Thanks for having me.

Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Bonnetal. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it 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, 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.