Julian Barnes - The Greatest Opportunities for Boutique Fitness

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated in working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve the youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and Certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take-it-your-own pace, professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brand XMethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. All right, we are live. Julian Barnes, welcome to the future of fitness, my friend. How are you doing? Doing well, Eric. Thank you for having me today. Really excited to be here. I'm thrilled to have you. And once again, I feel like I'm always giving a shout out to Emma Berry. But uh Emma Berry, thanks for uh encouraging me to reach out to Julian and get him on the show. You know, having done a little bit of background on you and just watching some of the videos and content that you have out there, you obviously have depth of knowledge and experience and offer a lot of value to uh the fitness industry. So it's always great to get you on here. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts about um, you know, where the opportunities for the industry lie moving forward. Um, you know, a lot of people are kind of stuck looking in what's going on now or just the past two years, but I think uh, you know, having a long view of where the opportunities are moving forward is is extremely valuable and keeping people, you know, keep people's eyes on the prize, right? That's that's what we're doing here. So uh Julian, uh I'll stop talking now. I'd love to hear uh in the audience would too, just to give us a little bit of your background, how'd you get to be you know one of the founders of Boutique Fitness Solutions?

Happy to do so. Well, I think as probably all of your listeners know, life is not linear, right? It's not a straight line. So um it's been a long, windy road to get here. I identify myself as an athlete, entrepreneur, and educator. Those three words pretty much sum up my entire life. Um, just a little by way of background, I'm based in New York City, uh born and raised in the suburbs of Westchester County. And um my journey into the world of sports and fitness uh began with my mother being a physical education teacher initially and a volunteer at the local YWCA in White Plains, New York. So from like age six to ten, I found myself being the only male on campus at the YWCA. I would be doing homework after school while my mom was volunteering, and I didn't know what she was doing, but fast forward, and uh in my high school year, she became the chairwoman of the board of the YWCA. So that was that was the home that I was raised in, where my mom was teaching my day and volunteering at the local YWCA and volunteering at such a high level, having such a high impact, that she was ultimately elected to serve chairwoman of the board. Meanwhile, I started playing competitive tennis, uh, played junior tournaments throughout the Northeast, and uh ultimately became certified as a tennis instructor when I was in law school. And my father was a finance executive who worked for uh ABC um broadcasting company back in the early 80s when they acquired ESPN and um Lifetime AE and a competitor to CNN called Satellite News Channel. So I basically grew up in a media family and a an education. My mom was a teacher for 35 years, so I grew up with an educator, with a media exec, with a community volunteer, and lo and behold, what am I doing all these years later? We are a media company providing business education to fitness uh business owners. So the fall the apple doesn't fall far from far from the trees. Uh in between there, uh got a degree at Tufts University and a graduate degree from University of Chapel Hill School of Law. Practiced law for a few years on Wall Street. Um, but my passion has always been movement and sports and fitness. So my the vast majority of my career has been spent either competing or advising business owners who are fitness providers and educating. So I created New York University's first ever institute in entrepreneurship and small business management almost 20 years ago. Uh I taught the fitness marketing management class at the Swedish College of Institute in New York City using Stephen Tharrett's textbook fitness management, uh advised executives at uh the U.S. Tennis Association, where I served on their investment committee, um sold sponsorship sales for both the U.S. Open and Madison Square Garden, and was the director of marketing for Velocity Sports Performance in New York City. So I've basically held every job other than sweeping up the floors and cleaning toilets in the sports and fitness world. And that's uh that brought me to uh to BFS in 2017 when my business partner NT Etuck and I recognized that there was a huge opportunity, there was a huge void in the business education marketplace because some of the legacy trade organizations like IDEA focus on personal trainers and group fitness instructors, and Ursa and Club Industry focus on big box facility owners, but nobody was providing business education solely to boutique fitness business owners, and that's what we started to do in uh spring of 2018.

Wow man, that is uh that's many lifetimes of experience you got there. And it's funny, I was listening to you talk, I'm like, you know, I was a boutique gym owner and I actually did clean toilets and mop floors for a good few years. Smart man. Uh so I think I I did I did some of that some of that work myself. Uh man, you know, it occurs to me that maybe I don't really know the definition of of what of this, and I don't think it's even come up in this show on you know 250 episodes. But and you're a person to ask, but how would you define boutique fitness? Like what is that what is that definition to you? Like what c what categorizes something as boutique fitness so it's a great question.

In my opinion, boutique fitness is instructor-led programming delivered in a communal format. Now there's an exception there because private training, it's a one-on-one training, specifically in personal training, and in the um in the Pilates world, there's a significant component of private training. So instructoral ed is the first component, and then delivered in a communal environment, so group fitness is the second but not required component. That's that means that you're not walking into a facility and in doing your own thing, you're not walking into a facility and um just jumping in and hopping on the weights or hopping on the treadmill or or following your own program. I think the instructor-led component is the most significant component. And that means that um to my knowledge, the earliest boutique fitness studios were probably the martial arts studios, the dojos. You don't you don't walk into a martial arts studio and tell the Sensei, no, I got it. You I'm just gonna do my my own thing over here on the side. That's not how the dojos operate. And then the yoga community picked up on that, and then the Pilates community, and then Barry's in '99 opened, and Soul Cycle in 06. So my answer to your question is instructor-led and for the vast majority of the industry, instructor-led and delivered in a group communal format.

Yeah. Great. I I really like that definition. And you kind of you naturally did what my next question was going to be well, what was kind of what was kind of the evolution of it? Like where did it start? Where did boutique fitness start? And you, you know, being in martial arts, that makes a ton of sense. And then kind of evolving through to what we have now. And um, I mean, the boutique fitness sector is tremendously large. I mean, I know you do the surveys, I know you're tracking all this stuff.

You know, how how big is it was the fastest growing segment? Yeah.

Yeah.

Pre-COVID, it was the fastest growing segment of the fitness industry. Um still hard to quantify how big it is. Estimates are that there were 100,000 uh facilities in the United States of America alone pre-COVID. Uh Ursa has said that somewhere between 17 and 22 percent of all facilities closed during COVID. So that number is still very much in flux. But one of the reasons it was able to grow so quickly is that it doesn't need a huge footprint. So the average studio is probably two to three thousand square feet, which means it's a lot easier to open that than it is to open a 40,000 square feet mega club with swimming pools and basketball courts. There just aren't that many of those spaces available in every community, but you can find a 2,000 square foot space almost anywhere in every community. So it's growing rapidly. Uh, it was the largest, uh, fastest growing segment of the fitness industry. And uh there's no reason to believe that that won't continue once we get out of the pandemic.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And with your experience when you when you and you look at it um as the market total, and you don't have to pick one or two because I know you work with a lot of them, but maybe give us some examples of who you consider like the gold standards of boutique fitness, like who's doing it really well?

We could have a whole discussion on the definition of doing it really doing it really well. Um so the industry leaders. Well, let me let's step back and let's break this down. Boutique fitness is delivered in four or five different formats. So there's corporate-owned boutique fitness, so that's Barry's boot camp, that's SoulCycle. These are large entities that are owned by a privately held company, and they need to be evaluated compared to themselves, and then you have the large franchise ours. So that's Orange Theory, F-45, uh Bar 3, um, the Bar method, etc. And they need to be evaluated compared to themselves, and then believe it or not, those are the most prominent brands, but they're not the most um, and I forgot exponential, of course, just went public as a large franchise or so. Exponential includes Rumble, Club Pilates, Cycle Bar, Pure Bar, etc. You need to compare the franchisors to each other, and even with that, the vast majority of the industry, 75 to 80 percent of the industry, are individually owned, one or two locations by the owner, instructor, operator. So while we may think of Orange Theory, F45, Nine Rounds, I Love Kickboxing, Exponential, they're not the majority of boutique fitness studio locations in the country. The majority of locations are owned by one person or two people who own one or two locations in their community. And so it's really difficult to compare what the single operator is doing versus what Soul Psycho Barries or Franchisor is doing. So we work primarily with the individually owned studio, the individually owned studios run by one or two people who own three or fewer. So in that category, there are a ton of great brands. SOT in New York City, Fitting Room in New York City, Box Union in Los Angeles, uh Bar and Soul in in Boston, Mile High Run Club in New York, uh Citizen Pilates in Houston, um I know I'm gonna forget someone, uh Evolution Power Yoga uh in the Philadelphia area, uh Shred 415 in Chicago. So these are entrepreneurs who who've been in the space, physique 57 out of New York. These entrepreneurs have been in the space for typically five to ten years. They have um great experience um before they entered the industry. They didn't just join the industry in 2018, 2019, which is why they were able to uh pivot and adapt quickly to survive uh the pandemic. But so there are a lot of them, and I just scratched the surface with that list.

Yeah, yeah, well it's it's a solid list. Uh so one of the the the big topic that you and I were chatting about pre-recording is uh where the opportunity lies. I think we have, as an industry, we have a tendency or a habit to uh miss the forest through the trees sometimes, uh if you know what I mean. I think that um having a long view of of where the opportunities are and and I and I want to say this with all kinds of you know uh empathy and sympathy for the last two years, that it's been it industry's had no choice but to be reactive, right? And uh when you're reactive, you start to lose uh sight of what the long-term view and the long-term strategy is for it. And so tell us about where you see the opportunities you know moving forward for the industry R and why maybe sometimes people are missing the mark or not seeing the opportunities for what they are.

Great question, and one of my passion topics. So it's understandable why people aren't seeing the opportunities because again, we just talked about 80% of the industry is uh run by individual owner operators of small studios who are who have been focused on keeping their studio open and dealing with a myriad of of challenges on a day-to-day basis, it's tough to look for the forest when you're literally putting out a fire all day, every day, and it's a different type of fire every day. So totally understand why studio owners have been focused on survival. There's no future if you can't survive. And those who have been able to survive, which again is 80% of the industry, those who have been able to survive uh are starting to think about where the opportunities lie. And it it in my opinion, it really comes down to a couple things. So let me cite some some statistics from uh some of our industry partners. According to URSA, approximately 20% of Americans have a health club membership, and that number has been static for almost 40 years. 20%, one out of five people. Uh, according to our federal government, only five percent of Americans are getting the recommended three uh 30 minutes a day of moderate activity five days a week. So 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week is recommended, and only five percent of Americans are getting that. And then you have Stephen Tharrett talked about the psychology of the fitness consumer, and most fitness uh enthusiasts fall into the category of um I forget the term. He didn't call it um weekend warrior, but 17% of people who love going to the gym, who can't imagine a living life without going to the gym, that's only 17% of the population. By far the largest segment of the population, according to Thared, is the uninitiated believers. 67% of the population knows that they should be exercising more, but they just haven't found something that they love enough to incorporate it into their daily lifestyles. So let's just summarize. One out of five Americans have a health club membership, only five percent of Americans are getting 150 minutes of exercise a day, and two-thirds of Americans know they should be doing something, but they haven't found something they love. And we're in a global pandemic that afflicted people with heart disease, diabetes, and and uh obesity more than people who didn't have those those conditions. So, to me, the opportunity for any fitness provider is to essentially become a fitness-wellness evangelist in your community because two-thirds of every person you pass on the street wants to do something, they're looking for a program they can fall in love with. 19 out of every 20 people that walk by your studio are not getting 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, and four out of five people that walk by your studio don't have a gym membership. So the debate that I've been reading about in the media for the last year of is Peloton gonna kill the gyms? Will connective fitness and home equipment destroy uh the gym community? That's the wrong question. It's not connective fitness, so Peloton, City Row, the mirror, tonal, etc. It's not connective fitness versus the gym. It's not Apple Fitness and Daily Burn and uh Nike Run Club versus the physical facility, it's all of it together. There's 95% of our population isn't moving. Many people have talked about a sedentary lifestyle being the new uh sitting being the new sugar, sugar being the new smoking. It's we have it we have another pandemic of people not moving, and so, in my opinion, the tremendous opportunity that exists for any fitness business for any fitness provider, fitness programming provider, is to recognize that 19 out of 20 people you pass on your street, in your neighborhood, on the highway in your community, 19 out of 20 people aren't moving enough. And two thirds of those people know that they should be moving more, but they're looking for something they can fall in love with. So if someone falls in Peloton, falls in love with Peloton and gets them to start moving, God bless them. And if someone falls in love with uh Plan of fitness, uh, no judgments, and they start moving more. God bless them. It's not a zero-sum game. The pie is huge. It's there's a there are enough clients for every fitness provider to have a uh successful business as long as you're in evangelical mode, constantly preaching the benefits of moving, living a healthy lifestyle, different types of movements. I go to the gym and I lift weights and I run and I take spin classes and occasionally yoga and Pilates. Someone else might like playing basketball, someone else might fall in love with Tai Chi. It doesn't matter what it is as long as someone is moving consistently. So, in my opinion, the big opportunity for our entire industry is to stop focusing on digital versus brick and mortar and instead get all of us committed to to taking an evangelical approach to enrolling the 95% of the population that's not moving, enrolling them into programs that will help them move more. And we need a variety of programs because people are different. So somebody might want a cardio dance class. That's not for me, but it works for her. Doesn't matter. Create compelling innovative programs and let the members of your community know that your programs exist and charge a fair price that allows you to make a living and acknowledges that your client may be at different stages, and just focus on enrolling those clients into your programs. There's enough clients around the country for all of us.

I 100% agree. I think on this uh podcast we I've talked quite a bit about, and that number differs, right? I just call it the 80%. The the people who aren't actively engaged in any kind of fitness or health program and who aren't just, you know, and we can depending on who takes the stats and um what countries or what areas of the globe are involved, that the number differs. But the point is it's an overwhelming percentage, right? And I guess, you know, what like you said, it it hasn't really changed in 40 years. And that to me is a sign that um as the fitness industry, and I had uh Juliet Starrett and Kelly on here as well, and you know, we we talked about this separately about you know, we're we're most fitness establishments are making fit people fitter, right? But we're not getting to the core problem, which is the obesity and the massive health epidemic that we have. So I guess looking forward, Julie, when you see like all the tools we have at disposal, and I agree. I think if someone wants to do a couple days of Peloton, if someone wants to do some strength training, and then then they want to walk the dog or they want to go walk a trail or you know, do a whatever it may be if they're active and they're doing things and we have this whole collective ecosystem now of fitness and health. But when you look at specifically like the boutique um market and those gym owners, what tools or what ways, and what tools do we have that are new that we can get to this this 80%? And then how do we have to change our approach and our strategy to get more of these people enrolled in a great health program?

So two questions. You said tools and how do we change our approach? The first question: everyone's always looking for something new. There's there's nothing new in selling and in enrolling. So there are no new tools. It's the same tools that we've used since the beginning of time. It's it's grassroots marketing, community marketing, um, ask and offer, enrolling people, presenting your programming in a compelling way, um, and ask telling people what you're doing, inviting them to visit your your studio and creating a welcoming environment, demonstrate that you can deliver an experience that that people find welcoming and and replicate that experience. You have to deliver great programming and you have to deliver a great experience together. And I'm sure Emma talked about um delivering a great experience, and you have to tell people what you're doing. So if you're delivering a great program and you're delivering a great experience and no one knows about it, proverbial tree falling in the forest. So one of the challenges that our industry has, because it's fairly new, so the modern fitness industry began in 1950, and the boutique fitness industry began with Barry's in 1999, so and Soul Cycle in 06. So we are barely a generational the boutique fitness industry, and the vast majority of people who are working in the industry uh have are probably 35 and under, so it's a very young industry with a lot of young people working in the industry, and so we have to remember that we have to invite people into the industry, and we have to create an environment that people find compelling, and we have to ask for the sale. And what happened pre-COVID was that the economy was doing so well for the haves. Let's be very clear. The have nots have been struggling for 40 years, but for the haves, the economy was doing very well 2018, 2019. And if you were a studio owner, you didn't have to sell, and your front desk didn't have to sell. You just had to put out a sandwich board on the street. People walked in, pulled out the credit card, and your front desk staff were really order takers, they weren't selling. So the approach, question number two you asked, how do we need to change our approach? I'm using this word evangelical very specifically. The the um the priest, the rabbi, the um the corner, and I'm in New York City, so we get this on the subway all the time. The person who's saying the world is ending, Jesus will save you, X, Y, Z, some of us roll our eyes at that, but we know evangelical an evangelical approach works. You have to reach out and tell people what you're doing. You can't just sit back behind the walls of your studio and expect people are gonna come in and find you. And pre-COVID, yeah, we had Peloton and we had Nike Run Club, and we had um some online fitness programs like Daily Burn, etc. But now during COVID, we have Peloton, Tonal, Mirror, City Row, um I'm I know there's others I'm forgetting, uh Echelon. So there's a ton more competition. So you can't just sit back and say, well, I'm a programmer, I like creating fitness programs, I like choreographing the class, I don't really like selling. If you don't like selling, you're not going to be in business. Selling is a fundamental part of business. And I don't mean selling like you're a used car salesman, I mean selling like enrolling somebody, saying, Hey, we are really good at delivering fitness programs, and we do it in a way that people enjoy. Our clients and community have fun doing this and they feel better. You might would you like to consider being a guest at one of our programs? That's what I mean by selling, not the stereotypical used car salesman selling something on a discount or the cold calling out of a phone book, selling insurance. I say selling, I don't mean that. I mean enrolling people because we know two-thirds of people are looking for something they can fall in love with. We, as an industry, just have to invite the average person in our community to come experience what we're delivering. I and that's a different approach.

I think it's great, and I you're you're making me reflect pretty hard on uh my span as a boutique gym owner, and when uh when things are going really well uh early on, especially, and they went well the whole time through, but when they're going especially well, uh I was doing all those things out in the community, right? Um seeking PR opportunities, physically being out and inviting people, walking into buildings and businesses and saying, hey, we're down the corner, this is what we're doing, this is why it's important, please come join us, try it. Right? What happened uh right around 2012 to 2013, and especially I think the CrossFit community will recognize this because that's what I was within was that uh we started to rely too heavily on digital marketing and lead generation. It was so easy, Julian. So easy. It was like I could get a hundred.

But that world that world was different. That world was different. You didn't have Peloton pumping several millions of dollars into um into digital ads. Um now you have all these private equity and VC-backed connected fitness companies. It's essentially taking money from the private equity firm, running it through the VC-backed fitness company and sending it straight to Zuckerberg and Google. So that's just changed the playing field. So remember, 80% of boutique fitness business owners are individually owned. They don't have, first of all, they don't have digital marketing expertise in-house, generally speaking. Second of all, they don't have a big budget. A couple thousand dollars is a big budget for paid ads. And a couple thousand dollars on Facebook is like throwing a throwing a pup throwing a pebble into the Atlantic Ocean. Really hard to generate consistent success. Not impossible, but really hard to generate consistent ROI off of a couple thousand dollar paid ad budget when there's no in-house expertise on how to do that. So, what's your advantage if you're a brick and mortar facility over Peloton, Apple Fitness, etc.? Your advantage is your neighborhood, your schools, your churches, your businesses, your nonprofits, and think broadly. Think about the restaurant workers who are on their feet all day. You think they might like some recovery? Are there exercise before or after? Think, in fact, you talked, you asked me about the approach that's different. I'm gonna reflect back on what I learned from the YWCA via osmosis via my mom. Pre-COVID, most boutique fitness businesses were delivering movement programs. Total wellness includes movement, nutrition, mindfulness, recovery. There may be something else, but at least those four things. Pre-COVID, most boutique fitness businesses were delivering one of those four, movement. We know, though, and COVID has created enhanced understanding of the relationship between all four elements of wellness. It's movement, plus what we consume for nutrition, plus how we recover sleep and all the sleep trackers from aura to whoop um and others, plus recovery, everything from CBD to cryotherapy to uh self-recovery tools like the melt method and uh Theragun and Percussion and and um what do you call the Dessay Cryotherapy Chamber? All of that works together. So you asked me earlier about opportunities in our industry. I think a massive opportunity for the boutique fitness industry is to start serving your clients' total wellness needs, not solely their movement needs. And that doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. It creates a great opportunity for partnering with the cryotherapy company in your neighborhood, partnering with the meal delivery service or nutritionist, partnering with a physical therapist, partnering with a meditation provider, doesn't mean you have to deliver everything, but the thing that the YMCA and the YWCA and the JCCs do really well is they provide programming, they provide programming for the whole family, and they provide and they provide programming from cradle to grave, and they provide programming for all aspects of wellness. And pre-COVID, we had too many singular modality businesses that were only delivering their classes, and there's not a single modality that I'm aware of that by itself is gonna keep us completely healthy and check the box of movement, recovery, nutrition, mindfulness. It's not either or, it's and and maybe that's the the uh the topic of this conversation. It's not connective fitness and uh brick and mortar, it's connective fitness and brick and mortar, it's not movement or recovery or nutrition or uh or uh mindfulness, it's movement and nutrition and recovery and mindfulness. So if you want to grow your business, figure out how to become more evangelical in your community, create partnerships with other providers, and collectively be evangelical and invite prospective clients into your community to experience the wonderful community that you've created for your tribe. And read Seth Godin's book, Tribe. Perhaps the best book for what we're talking about here. Every studio owner is a de facto leader of her tribe. She should probably understand what that means and just do what Seth says.

Yeah. I like it. And you touch on something that I think is critically important uh for I really any business owner, the ability to develop a professional network and partnerships and things like that. It is um doesn't cost money, right? It's uh it's a great way to produce um awareness and you know new members and clients for your business. And when you're helping um, you know, the boutique uh gym owner and business owner develop that professional network and partnerships, what what kind of um actionable items or mindset do you bestow upon them to do that uh effectively?

So uh in the interest of in the sake of uh transparency and self-interest, we conduct, we offer networking programs that are fee-based. Your statement is correct that you don't have to pay a fee uh for, but I just wanted to make sure make it clear for your listeners that one of our core services is conducting mastermind groups that are peer-to-peer networking programs. Um and your question, though, is interesting because the people who are attracted to our peer networking programs are people who already recognize two things. Number one, and I think this is extremely important, you can't do it alone. And I'll say it again, you can't do it alone. And we're talking about in this environment where regulations change from your local municipality or your state or the government or uh the availability of vaccines change or COVID test, things have changed so fast, so quickly, that remember, I'm talking about the 80% of the industry that's individually where the the owner is teaching 20 hours a week herself and running a business. That's 80% of the of the industry. The way things are changing so fast, it's impossible for that individual owner operator to keep track of everything that's happening. And strengthen numbers uh is an age-old adage that's been around for a reason because you can't no one has all the answers to every question, and when the question keeps changing every day, then you really need to have be able to rely on a network of other people with whom who are like-minded, who are assembly situated, and who you trust, so you can say, hey, I missed that. What was that thing about the PPP? Now, how do I make how do I get the PPP waived? Now, what's the difference in the PPP and the EIDL? Now, what's happening with the New York City mask mandate? Okay, but I'm in Chicago, what's what's their mask mandate? Are you requiring your employees to get vaccinated? What's your mask policy? Like, there are so many questions you could be asking yourself, and if you don't have anyone to ask, you're gonna drive yourself crazy. And you're gonna you're gonna get to your wits in. And that's why the stress level has just gone through the roof. And let's not forget that we're talking about an industry that's overwhelmingly woman-led, and women are still the overwhelming uh caregivers of their family. So while we've been talking about the pandemic in the last 18 months in the vacuum of what they need to do to run their business, let's remember that a significant percentage, if not majority, of studio owners are moms who were homeschooling their kids last year while dealing with the myriad of challenges facing their business. So, even more to the point, the value of a peer network, whether it's the BFS mastermind program, um Mark Fisher has a great mastermind program, Business of Unicorns, uh Club Solutions has a mastermind program, uh Pat Rigsby has a mastermind program. So I'm not talking about the BFS mastermind program, but the value of a mastermind program is the recognition that as intelligent and capable and accomplished as you are, no one person has the answers to every possible challenge, especially when the challenges that our industry and society have been facing for the last year and a half are the equivalent of drinking out of a fire hose. Wouldn't you like to have someone who you trust who has similar experiences as yours to help you figure out how to drink from the fire hose? Because the fire hose isn't going away anytime soon. The pace of change isn't going away anytime soon. So what you can do is fortify yourself, gather resources, surround yourself with like-minded people so together you can um problem solve and find solutions for these just unprecedented challenges. You know, Jamie Diamond, CEO, chairman of the board of Chase, said it best a year ago, and I'm paraphrasing, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. How do I know it's gonna happen tomorrow? And this is the guy who you would think has access to all the forecasts, all of his economists, and he essentially said, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Federal Reserve Chairman uh Powell recently, three weeks ago, said we're not going back to the 2019 economy. That economy is gone. This is the new normal, and the new normal is is unclear. We're in the process of determining what that new normal looks like, but what we know for a fact is we're not going back to 2019. That's gone, or I should say we're not going back to March 15th of 2020. That era is gone. Close the book. We're in a new era. It requires new resources, new mindset, new tactics, new strategies.

Yeah, well said, man. Well said. And I I want to respect the time as we're kind of coming up on it, but I I you know, given that uh, you know, this show is future of fitness and we do have a slight technological slant to what we do here, I'm just curious. Um you know, from your point of view, when you look at uh, you know, the evolutions of of fitness technology and health technologies and things like that, is there anything that has you really excited?

So two things. I mean, you've interviewed a lot of the innovators in the space. Um so everything from all the different trackers. Um I guess I'll say in my personal experience, I got an Apple Watch at the beginning of the summer at the strong suggestion of my coach. And I thought beforehand, well, why do I need a why do I need an Apple Watch? I don't care about tracking steps. I don't I don't need to get uh text messages on my wrist, my phone is always with me, but I didn't understand it. Now I understand. And now not only do I have an Apple Watch, I'm using nine different apps at least over the course of a month to track different aspects of my of my lip of my of my health. So I know we're not far, I don't believe we're far from these tracking devices being um diagnostic preventatively, right? So I imagine sometime in the next three to ten years my watch or some device that I wear is going to alert me ahead of time that my magnesium is low, that my sodium is low, that my you know, pick whatever metric from my my uh my CBC blood panel that's that's off kilter, as opposed to going to the doctor once a year, taking a test to find out what's wrong, or taking the test to find out where I am, I can foresee a time because of the real-time tracking capabilities where I'm being notified. It's almost like the check oil light in your car tells you that you need to go take your car to get it fixed before the car breaks down. I think we're headed in that way with with wearables, and I think that'll be amazing that people will be able to get a heads up that their oil light is is running low, and that's what the sleep trackers are doing. So that stuff is fascinating to me, and it's been it's been eye-opening for my experience over the summer to see how all this stuff works uh together. Awesome.

Julian, I uh really enjoy this. Great positive outlook, and you know, you I think you have a really nice uh mix of optimism and realism, uh, which is uh yeah, I guess probably what makes you a great coach and uh and mentor. So um great insights, really appreciate it. Where where do uh where do people get a hold of if you where do you where do you send them online?

They can find us at boutique fitness solutions.com. Instagram is boutique fit fit solutions, and I'm on LinkedIn, Julian A. Barnes, and um and email support at boutique fitness solutions to reach me by email. So awesome. Awesome. Eric, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for the opportunity today.

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