[00:00:00] Hi everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top rated fitness industry podcast for over
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[00:00:51] Hey friends, Eric Malzone here. I've had the honor of interviewing over 750 professionals
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[00:02:20] We are live and we are back. Juliet, Alex, very excited for our quarterly report and
[00:02:29] industry deep dive here. It's really good to see you guys. It's always super fun and as Juliet,
[00:02:33] as you were saying, this is like the one time of the quarter where I feel like I have to do a
[00:02:36] lot of homework in order to prepare for content. I mean, for guests who have
[00:02:41] listening, I always do homework and prepare for my podcast, but this one especially because
[00:02:46] there's just a lot of data pouring in. It's great to see you guys. Maybe we can just get an
[00:02:50] update on what's going on in your guys' lives and then we'll get into the report. Juliet,
[00:02:54] how has 2024 been so far for you? It's been great. We obviously published a book last year,
[00:02:59] which was really fun, but it was also a lot. This year I feel more like a normal person
[00:03:04] trying to run a business and do normal person things. It's been nice to be able to put
[00:03:09] a focus back on the ready state and continue to grow that business. Lots of travel and fun
[00:03:15] things on the horizon in the coming year. Overall, we're doing well. The other subtext is I spent half
[00:03:23] my life spectating water polo as my daughter is a serious competitive water polo player.
[00:03:30] I'm either running the ready state or watching water polo is what my life looks like right now.
[00:03:35] What position does your daughter play? She's a goalie.
[00:03:38] She is. They're a little crazy.
[00:03:41] Yeah. Oh, that's what I've learned. You have to have a very unique personality to be a goalie.
[00:03:46] Yeah.
[00:03:47] And I think it's similar across goalie sport. It doesn't matter whether you're La Crosse,
[00:03:53] soccer or any kind of goalie. It takes a unique person to be a goalie.
[00:03:58] Yeah, completely. And Alex, how about you? What's been going on?
[00:04:03] So winter is back in Jackson after spring was here for a few weeks. And the winter kind of got
[00:04:13] off to a slow start. So I'm not unhappy to have a little more winter time. But on the
[00:04:20] business side, I'm really happy with how my investments are going. And I haven't,
[00:04:27] I've been, I've been slow to commit to any new deals. But I'm looking at a lot of really interesting
[00:04:35] things. And I feel like we're in a bit of a still in a bit of a post COVID transitional period.
[00:04:42] And things are settling down, but not altogether clear where the, where the growth
[00:04:49] factors are. And so that's what I'm, that's what I'm focused on. And it's always fun,
[00:04:56] even if I'm not writing as many checks as I'd like to.
[00:04:59] What about you, Eric? Let's hear it.
[00:05:01] Yeah, it's been a, it's been a fun quarter so far. So I went to two industry events,
[00:05:05] Connected Health and Fitness, both in LA, which anyone who knows me knows,
[00:05:09] it's not my favorite place to visit. But that's where the conference is,
[00:05:12] I'll go. It's fine. So yeah, Connected Health and Fitness, which was excellent,
[00:05:16] Kudos hats off to that. Krua Kasako research for putting that together, very well curated,
[00:05:22] very high level. And Alex, you go to that a lot, but oh yeah, we saw each other there. Yeah,
[00:05:27] we hung out quite a bit. I got to hang out with Alex. It was amazing.
[00:05:31] And then Ursa, now Health and Fitness Association last month in LA as well. And
[00:05:37] I think it was kind of bleeding into our conversation is like,
[00:05:41] overall, I think the optimism in fitness, health and wellness industries is really high.
[00:05:45] I think it's very energetic. I can't say from the trade floor at Ursa that there was anything
[00:05:51] that blew my mind. I think there was a really strong emphasis on recovery, especially recovery
[00:05:58] products and things like that. So that was what I saw. But it seemed like a lot of business
[00:06:03] was getting done, which was really good. And that was pretty exciting. And then other than
[00:06:08] that, Podcast Collective, working on that and working on media and PR strategies for a
[00:06:13] lot of cool brands in the industry. So it's been very busy and looking into what we have to talk
[00:06:20] about today, everything's on topic, everything's on point I think for our conversation. So this is
[00:06:26] what we're going to cover today and then we'll dive into the first section. But quarterly reports,
[00:06:32] Alex will add in his expertise, lifetime, Planet Fitness, exponential, Peloton, we're going to
[00:06:38] cover CrossFit as best we can into the health of that brand and the gyms and our insights having
[00:06:45] been operators there. And then we're going to wrap it up with something that by no means no
[00:06:51] small topic, which is women's health and fitness. And I think it's between FemTech,
[00:06:56] the rise of strength training with women, all the wearable technologies that we have now,
[00:07:01] it's very exciting. And I think that's probably the most probably top three biggest growth
[00:07:06] opportunities within our industry. So that being said, let's kick it off, Alex. We have all these
[00:07:11] four quarterly reports that we're going on. Which one would you like to start with?
[00:07:15] So I'm going to start with exponential. And the story of 2023 was a wild ride.
[00:07:27] The stock hit a high of 34 in 2023 and recently has been as low as eight. So that's a pretty,
[00:07:38] that's a lot of volatility for a fitness company which has performed well, has had growing EBITDA,
[00:07:48] growing revenue and a lot of drama which we covered in a previous episode. It's currently trading
[00:07:57] around 16. So it's making, I'd say a bit of a bounce back. It's up about 24% year to date,
[00:08:06] which is really respectable, better than the S&P. But it is down 45% versus a year ago.
[00:08:14] So that's a lot of movement in the stock. And we'll see, we're kind of waiting on a few things.
[00:08:26] The SEC is investigating franchisee controversies and some, who knows what else they're investigating.
[00:08:36] But there were some Bloomberg reports about franchisee disenchantment.
[00:08:41] And so the SEC is digging into that. We don't know where that's going or if it's going anywhere.
[00:08:48] They grew 30% in 2023 on the top line, added 550 units. I mean, that's spectacular.
[00:08:58] Their 2024 projection is a little less than that, but still about 550 units. So almost the
[00:09:06] same and revenue is supposed to grow healthily again. The other news, they sold their running brand.
[00:09:16] I guess that didn't pan out. And they bought a, I guess, longevity weight loss brand called Lindora.
[00:09:26] So which is, I don't think that's huge news, but it just shows you it's a portfolio of brands.
[00:09:35] They'll buy and sell depending on what is performing and what isn't.
[00:09:41] So you got to give credit to the CEO for bouncing back and staying in the ring. He's gotten hit
[00:09:48] pretty hard on a bunch of fronts. And he seems to be counter punching. So good for him. Any
[00:09:56] questions on that one? Well, I guess it was interesting to me, Stride, I believe, was a
[00:10:03] running brand. The curious thing you guys thought, when you look at boutique, the single
[00:10:09] modality boutiques like a Stride or a row house or things like that's all they do. I think StretchLab
[00:10:16] is an anomaly just because it complements so many other things. But what do you guys,
[00:10:21] do you think there's a future for single modality boutique gyms?
[00:10:25] Yeah. I mean, I thought about this a lot in the CrossFit context in particular.
[00:10:30] I think there was this time where you could just assume people would belong to CrossFit and not
[00:10:35] want anything else. And now, I think with so many options out there and the possibility of things
[00:10:41] like class pass, I think people want to be able to pop around and do different things.
[00:10:48] And I don't know, this is just completely anecdotal, but I've been to two cities where
[00:10:55] next to my hotel was an out of business city row. I think those things are called city row.
[00:11:00] And I had that thought, I just thought is it just too specialized to really be viable? I don't know.
[00:11:07] I guess one question I had is, and I don't know this, if you're a member of one exponential
[00:11:12] boutique brand, can you utilize the others or is it just a drop-in model? Do they have a
[00:11:18] class? I actually don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Well, I know they have,
[00:11:21] and I don't know the details and maybe do Alex, but X pass is something. I'm not too sure if that's
[00:11:26] still at the forefront. And that was kind of like their version of class pass with Vision Network.
[00:11:30] Yeah. So I don't know where that's at now, but I know it at least existed at one point.
[00:11:35] Yeah, because that makes it more, because I think it's, I don't know how just like a rowing,
[00:11:39] for example, rowing specific gym could ever survive because I just don't know that
[00:11:43] that many people just want to row six days a week. But man, if you can row and do yoga
[00:11:48] and get stretched, that seems cool. Yeah, I mean the challenge, I imagine the challenge,
[00:11:55] I don't know, but like considering like they're different franchisees, right? So they're not
[00:12:00] corporately owned. So to pull something off like that, imagine some people are going to be happy,
[00:12:03] some people are going to be upset. So I don't know how you please everyone in a scenario
[00:12:08] like that, but from a high level from the consumer standpoint, it makes a lot of sense.
[00:12:12] Yeah. So I don't know.
[00:12:14] Yeah, I mean even when I owned a CrossFit gym, we hated class pass and we never joined on to
[00:12:18] class pass because it was such a, I mean, we could charge a $30 drop-in and we would make
[00:12:24] $5 per class on a class. I mean, it's such a gouge to let people use class pass,
[00:12:30] but I totally see the truth of it, right? Like you see the truth of it from the consumer
[00:12:34] perspective and from the franchise owner, licensing owner at CrossFit, you're like,
[00:12:39] doesn't really make sense financially. So I don't know how they figure that out.
[00:12:44] Yeah, the, I mean the brilliance of what exponential is done is the portfolio and
[00:12:51] so they're not totally dependent on any one modality. But I agree from the customer user
[00:13:01] point of view, the X pass is if they could make that work, then you get access to 10,
[00:13:10] 11, 12 brands pretty seamlessly. I mean kind of a passport type membership which maximizes results,
[00:13:22] convenience, variety. Yeah, no, that's, I think they're trying to do it. They don't disclose a
[00:13:27] lot of information about that part of the business. So you don't get a sense of what percent of people
[00:13:34] are using X pass, how much cross utilization there is among the brands. They don't disclose that.
[00:13:42] So I don't, yeah, I don't have a lot of hard data on that unfortunately.
[00:13:48] Which reporting one hit up next, Alex? All right, so the next one I want to talk about
[00:13:54] is lifetime. And they, they've also had sort of a bit of a wild ride on their stock price
[00:14:02] from a high of 22 to a low of 11. And again, you know, good growth, good profitability growth,
[00:14:11] good revenue top line growth. And today they're sitting at around 15. So they're pretty much
[00:14:21] flat for the year and, and flat for the last 12 months. So I think, you know, the big picture
[00:14:31] for me with lifetime is they have a lot of cash flow, but their capital expenditures are just,
[00:14:39] you know, eating up all their cash flow basically. They spend so much money building new units
[00:14:45] and maintaining hundreds of units. They have 100, I think 175 units, which are, you know,
[00:14:52] probably a hundred, 120,000 square feet with pools and, you know, tennis courts and, and
[00:14:59] Yeah, like beautiful locker rooms. They're fancy. They're fancy.
[00:15:03] Yeah. And food and beverage. And so, you know, just on the capital expenditure side
[00:15:08] to maintain all of that is, is hundreds of millions of dollars. And then they want to add 10,
[00:15:15] 12 units a year. You know, that's hundreds of millions of dollars as well. So at the end of
[00:15:22] the day, yeah, they make 500, 600 million of cash flow, but they use it all, you know,
[00:15:28] reinvesting it and paying their interest on their debt. And so the, so to me,
[00:15:32] the buzzword for them is it's all about free cash flow. You know, are they going to have free
[00:15:38] cash flow that they can use, you know, to buy back stock, to pay dividends, to do something
[00:15:46] for their shareholders basically because they take, you know, I think I said this last time,
[00:15:51] they take great, great, you know, care of their members. They really do have a luxury,
[00:15:57] you know, incredibly customer centric model. But they're not really taking care of their
[00:16:04] shareholders. So, you know, the second quarter, the first quarter, I don't think they're
[00:16:12] expecting free cash flow, but I think in the second quarter they are. So that'll be a real
[00:16:17] sign if they can generate it, you know, at reasonable levels, not, you know, a million
[00:16:22] dollars, but hopefully, you know, a lot more than that. Then I think the, you know, Wall
[00:16:30] Street will be happier. The analysts will be happier and maybe the stock will,
[00:16:34] you know, perform better. They went public at 18 in 2021 and they're now at 15. So
[00:16:42] it has not been a good, you know, three years. But, you know, they're expecting growth
[00:16:50] around 12% on the top line in 2024, which is down from I think 22% in 23%. And,
[00:17:01] you know, so I guess they're slowing down a little bit on the growth side. And maybe that'll
[00:17:06] translate into, you know, the cash flow I was talking about and a bump to the stock price.
[00:17:12] And the other thing that I was really impressed with from their, this quarter's
[00:17:21] of release was the CEO mentioned the attrition rate is around 29% annually. So that's 2.4%
[00:17:32] average a month of attrition, which is phenomenal. I mean, if phenomenal. Yeah,
[00:17:39] he didn't, he said that in the Q&A. It's not written anywhere. So, you know, that's what I got
[00:17:46] from the transcript of the Q&A. But that is really impressive for a gym to have that level.
[00:17:53] That's membership churn. Yeah, that's churn, right? I mean, that right?
[00:17:57] Per month, yeah. 2.4%. The industry average is probably in the gym business is probably 4%.
[00:18:04] There are some outliers that, yeah, I mean, the traditional global gym world is probably 4%.
[00:18:13] You know, CrossFit looked like it was higher in the data we saw. But anyway, I thought that was
[00:18:20] really impressive. And it just shows that, you know, their customers are engaged, they're happy,
[00:18:24] they're using, they're, you know, they're even in the face of price increases where they're,
[00:18:30] you know, above 200 bucks a month in a lot of markets. People are feeling like they're getting
[00:18:36] value and they're sticking around. Yeah, it's, I mean, my big takeaway was looking at like
[00:18:41] from my minimal understanding of these reports and just reading it was like,
[00:18:45] everything looks really good. Why is the stock flat even down?
[00:18:48] Yeah, I thought that same thing. I, I sometime, I was like, we need to have a side class with
[00:18:52] Alex again about why Wall Street does not look fondly upon these companies because when I
[00:18:58] read the earnings reports as a layperson, I'm like, this looks pretty good.
[00:19:01] Looks good.
[00:19:02] Yeah, like this looks great. Like why do they hate them?
[00:19:05] Well, in that, you know, in a rising interest rate environment where you have a business that
[00:19:11] requires a lot of capital and capital is increasing in costs, Wall Street's like,
[00:19:19] you know, I don't love that.
[00:19:20] That makes sense.
[00:19:21] What, let's see what's next. How about planet fitness?
[00:19:24] Yeah. So there's a scandal. There's a scandal there as well. So that's always fun.
[00:19:29] The what?
[00:19:30] There's a scandal as well.
[00:19:32] Yeah, yeah, you saw that the, they got kind of caught in a culture in the culture wars,
[00:19:41] which I hate to say in our, in our industry or any industry, but when, when, yeah, when
[00:19:48] business and politics and, you know, sort of the blue versus red fight starts in to affect a
[00:19:58] business, you really, I don't know. I'm a business guy. I like business.
[00:20:02] That's a bummer.
[00:20:04] Yeah, I just like them to be evaluated based on their, on their, you know, profit and loss
[00:20:10] and return on equity and investment and how they're doing as businesses rather than,
[00:20:16] you know, whether they are taking positions on socially divisive issues, you know, that,
[00:20:24] but that's the world we live in. So basically they, I mean, the big story with planet in my,
[00:20:30] in my view is they don't have a CEO, right? They're not a permanent CEO. They got rid of
[00:20:37] their, their longtime CEO in September and here we are in, you know, at the end of March,
[00:20:43] April and they don't, they haven't found a replacement yet. So what's, what's up with that?
[00:20:51] It's, you know, I've always thought that or I sort of recognize that our industry doesn't have
[00:20:58] a deep pool of executive talent. I mean, that's just, it's a smallish industry,
[00:21:04] you know, it's pretty niche and, and pretty unique in terms of how, you know, how clubs,
[00:21:12] the, you know, the ecosystem of a club is just different. I mean, you can look at other service
[00:21:18] type businesses and, you know, restaurants and, and hotels and, you know, and say, oh, well,
[00:21:25] that's a service business. Maybe, you know, you could, you could get people there or,
[00:21:31] you know, hire from within the industry, but it's a small industry. So anyway,
[00:21:35] so no, no permanent CEO. I think that's a challenge because I think the company is, you know,
[00:21:42] they've really milked the model that they have now for 30 years and it's worked great.
[00:21:51] But, you know, you look around at other high, high, high, high volume low price models like
[00:21:58] Crunch, like EOs and you say, okay, well that they seem to be, you know, really
[00:22:06] grown nicely, you know, and they're doing things a little differently, right? They have a little
[00:22:10] more group acts. It's, it's, it's a little bit more of a, of a full service model.
[00:22:18] But anyway, they're trading at around $61 a share. They're down 17% year-to-date
[00:22:25] and 20% over the last 12 months. So they're, you know, they're coming back up a bit, but,
[00:22:33] but they're slowing down a new club growth in 24. They're looking at about 120 to 130 new clubs,
[00:22:43] which is down from 165. So, you know, not, not that significantly down, but,
[00:22:50] but I think they're, they're, they're, they're on a bit of a transition, but they can't really
[00:22:57] transition the model until they get a new CEO. So, so I think that's the, that's the headline.
[00:23:04] Alex, do you think in order for them to survive, they have to evolve and start adding group
[00:23:10] acts and trying to be a little more current? Because I do think when I see, I mean,
[00:23:16] you know, when we've talked about this before, I'm always like shocked and a fan of Planet
[00:23:20] Fitness and I want them to succeed. Even though it's not necessarily my vibe, but do you think,
[00:23:26] but it also doesn't always feel very current to me as a, as a place to go. Do you think
[00:23:33] that that's going to only become more stark as time passes? And if they don't evolve,
[00:23:37] they're going to be in trouble? You know, I think it's a really strong company. So I don't
[00:23:44] know that they're facing an existential challenge, but if they want to continue to grow, I do think
[00:23:52] that the model needs to evolve and to evolve the model. A model is not, that's as well established
[00:24:00] as that one is not easy at all. Right? I mean, it's, it's a very low employee payroll model.
[00:24:07] And, you know, just a low operating, you know, challenge. I mean, just a really simple model
[00:24:17] to operate. So as soon as you start adding things that gets more complicated, it changes.
[00:24:22] Would they be better off doing a different brand? You know, adding another brand?
[00:24:27] I don't, you know, I don't know. Interesting. Yeah. So, well, how about Peloton?
[00:24:33] The bell of the ball.
[00:24:39] Yeah, there's more interesting stuff. Good to not so good. So yeah, I hate to end on a sour note, but
[00:24:50] so Peloton is stuck, you know, kind of stuck in the mud. They're, they're stuck,
[00:24:56] they closed today at $4.40. It's down 28% year to day, down 55% over the last 12 months. Revenue
[00:25:05] was down in the last quarter. And so, you know, the other three companies we talked about are
[00:25:16] growing Peloton is not. And, you know, we talked last time about this sort of identity crisis
[00:25:23] around the company. Like is it, it wants to be a growth company, but it isn't a growth company
[00:25:29] anymore. It doesn't mean it couldn't be a growth company again. But it just, that's not what it
[00:25:34] is today. And I don't know that they've figured out how to turn the engine back on, the growth
[00:25:40] engine back on. You know, they introduced the rowing machine. They introduced the guide.
[00:25:46] They reintroduced the treadmill. They tried to kind of transition from hardware to, you know,
[00:25:55] to mainly digital and de-emphasize hardware, but that doesn't seem to have generated any growth.
[00:26:06] You know, I think the CEO continues to emphasize growth. And when you look at his
[00:26:14] letter to the shareholders, the word growth is all over the place. You know, it's 20, 30 times,
[00:26:23] you know, use that many times. So the mindset is we want to be a growth company. But the numbers
[00:26:30] are saying you're not a growth company right now. And so I think that's what Wall Street
[00:26:38] is saying to themselves. Like we're not buying that Peloton is going to get back on the growth
[00:26:44] trajectory anytime soon. You know, is a CEO change in the offing? I have no inside information. But
[00:26:56] I think the CEO has done a great job sort of fixing all the issues that the previous CEO
[00:27:05] and, you know, had created. So they've really stabilized the business. You know, he's done a
[00:27:12] great job doing that. But, you know, when he started this stock was at $39 a share. And now
[00:27:19] it's at $4.40 cents, you know, two years later. I mean, that's a pretty tough record to be
[00:27:28] standing on. But, you know, to me, if the board and the CEO just said, okay, you know, we're gonna
[00:27:40] stop emphasizing growth, we're going to focus on the strengths of the business,
[00:27:45] the loyalty of the members, the bike, the content that we're delivering, you know,
[00:27:51] the churn rate is 1.2%. The loyalty is just off the charts. And so, you know, if I think if they
[00:28:01] did that, stop spending money on chasing growth and chasing innovation, like there aren't deep
[00:28:08] budgets or $80 million a quarter, what are they spending that money on? Like that's just nuts.
[00:28:16] And they have no, you know, there's no evidence that their innovation is actually
[00:28:22] leading to growth. Right? If you look at the products that they've introduced.
[00:28:27] So anyway, so that's I think the CEO could if the strategy changed, I think he could execute
[00:28:36] it really well. And I think it could be a very profitable business, albeit not a growth
[00:28:44] business pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean, I don't what I noticed from just having, you know, it's only
[00:28:50] been the past half year a little longer that I've been reading these and we talked about this last
[00:28:55] time. But like every time I read these reports, I feel like their strategy is like a bit whack-a-mole.
[00:29:00] Like let's try these partnerships. And now we've got this treadmill and now we're going to be
[00:29:03] doing this thing. And it's really just from an outsider's perspective, having my first look
[00:29:07] into the business at this particular time, I just don't see a clear strategy. There's not this,
[00:29:13] it still feels like they've got the treadmill and they're working on this and, you know, they
[00:29:16] jettisoned their university plan. And, you know, so it just seems like they're sort of like trying
[00:29:20] this plug-and-play model, like let's see what works versus just doubling down on what they
[00:29:25] know works, which is the bike and the digital content. Like it just seems like that's what
[00:29:29] the brand should be. So, you know, that's my very layperson perspective from just diving
[00:29:35] into these reports over the last six or eight months. Yeah. And I noticed to kind of back up
[00:29:39] what you said, like just given they did little synopsis of all their efforts between this and
[00:29:44] ones that didn't go so well like the University of Michigan and the college initiative, right?
[00:29:48] Like not so much. But the ones that seemed to look promising were like the retail channels,
[00:29:53] right? The rental program and the TikTok, which is essentially content, right? They're
[00:29:59] talking about this, you know, TikTok channel. It's like, of course you should have TikTok,
[00:30:04] not that I see you have a company ever. But, you know, like these things that were
[00:30:08] focused on, you know, their core bike and content, like those two things that evolved around those,
[00:30:13] they seem to do well, which, you know, as we sit here, you know, from our 30,000 foot view,
[00:30:18] like not shocking, right? But yeah, there's always seems to be a lack of,
[00:30:22] from the outside, a clarity of strategy for sure. Yeah. And that TikTok thing is funny.
[00:30:26] I agree too, because when I read that, I was like, man, they are like, if they're good at one
[00:30:29] thing, it's making content. Like they've gotten really good at that. It's flashy. It's cool.
[00:30:34] It's fun. It's there's something for everybody. Like they crush content. So the fact that TikTok
[00:30:40] was their strategy, I was like, wait, that wasn't their strategy like three years ago?
[00:30:44] That's also the TikTok thing that surprised me too. I was like, wait, what? It's perfect
[00:30:48] for TikTok. Everything they do is perfect. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. Well, Alex,
[00:30:54] you know, the CEO is a 70 year old guy, right? Is that I mean, tremendous CFO at Spotify and Netflix?
[00:31:10] But is that the right profile for a person to figure out how to connect with, you know, the
[00:31:18] new social media, new generations? I mean, look, that's my demographic. So, you know, I don't want to
[00:31:28] underline it. But I think that's a, it goes to the same, you know, the same issue that
[00:31:39] I was saying with Planet Fitness. We just, we need more executive talent in the industry.
[00:31:44] Like we just, we just do. And I don't, you know, I hope, I hope we're...
[00:31:49] What's the way, what's, what's the path to that, Alex? I mean, do you have a, you know,
[00:31:53] is, do we just only continue plucking from other like industries? Like how, how do we develop that?
[00:32:00] Like, how do we change that to have people who have both industry expertise and CEO expertise
[00:32:06] to plug into these roles? I mean, what's the, how do we do that?
[00:32:09] You know, it's a really, really great question. And I don't have an easy answer.
[00:32:14] You know, talk to your kids about getting into the business and, you know, it's a generational
[00:32:20] thing. And we got to attract... We have a lot of, you know, there are a lot of talented people
[00:32:25] when, when, you know, when I'm walking around the LA Connected Summit. You know,
[00:32:31] there are a lot of smart young people in the industry. And we just got to keep,
[00:32:37] you know, encouraging them and developing them and mentoring them. And, and then, you know,
[00:32:44] I think it'll, it'll resolve itself if people, you know, if they see real opportunity,
[00:32:51] the industry has to have, you know, success stories for to attract, you know, kids out of,
[00:32:58] out of the best schools, out of, you know, the most ambitious kids. And, you know, we've, we've,
[00:33:06] we've had a lot of success. We had a lot of success a few years ago and now we're
[00:33:10] a little bit kind of on our, on our heels a bit. But I'm optimistic. I mean, there's a lot,
[00:33:16] there's a lot of talent out there. We just have to, you know, keep bringing it in and
[00:33:20] keep mentoring it. Awesome. Well, Alex said thank you as always for the quarterly insights
[00:33:25] on the, on these companies. It's really interesting and it's, you know, it's hard to find anywhere else
[00:33:29] really within our industry people going, going that deep on it. So the next topic we have slated here is
[00:33:35] CrossFit. So obviously, you know, well, not obviously people don't know, but, you know,
[00:33:42] both Julianette and I own CrossFit affiliates for a long time. And I think, you know,
[00:33:47] CrossFit in general is one of the biggest brands globally in fitness. And there's very
[00:33:52] little transparency for numerous reasons about how the health of the brand and the affiliates.
[00:33:58] And I think something that I'll start with this, that most people, a lot of people don't know,
[00:34:02] not most people, a lot of people knows the affiliate model, what that means.
[00:34:05] You know, so for, what is it? I think $3750 or $4,000 a year now, something give or take.
[00:34:11] I think that's about right. Yeah, you can essentially license the brand name.
[00:34:15] You can put it on your door, you know, list it on Google. And then, you know,
[00:34:18] you kind of have to stay within a little bit of parameters, but it's kind of, you know,
[00:34:21] Greg Glassman's original vision was to have it be very libertarian in view. Like,
[00:34:30] you know, we're just going to open this up. We're going to let people use it. We'll
[00:34:32] give them methodology. They can take it or leave it. And we'll just see who rises to the top.
[00:34:37] And, you know, it's worked in certain ways and other ways. It definitely hasn't worked.
[00:34:41] But, you know, we did our best in getting some information from, you know,
[00:34:44] the two brain business report, Dan LaMurra team at PushPras gave us some data. So we're kind of a
[00:34:50] little, we have some, but we're kind of data blind. But I guess let's start with Julia,
[00:34:54] your opinion like from what we've gathered so far, how is CrossFit doing as a brand? And
[00:34:59] we'll go from there. Yeah, well, I'll start by saying that I continue to be a fan of CrossFit
[00:35:04] and above all these brands we've talked about today, I hope for its success.
[00:35:10] And I think it still stands as the most innovative thing that's happened in fitness
[00:35:14] in my lifetime anyway. And I don't know whether we'll see anything else more innovative, but
[00:35:18] it was so innovative and changed, you know, changed fitness. And it's why we see boutique
[00:35:22] fitness on every corner, at least where I live. So I'm just such a fan of the brand.
[00:35:28] And I agree with you. I think the licensee model of affiliates is, you know, has many
[00:35:34] pros and probably also some cons. But I thought there were some reasons for optimism because
[00:35:38] I think sometimes in the CrossFit, you know, somehow the chatter that I hear often about CrossFit is
[00:35:44] that, you know, people think, oh my God, Don falls job is impossible. How's he ever going to
[00:35:49] make it work? You know, the fact that they had to raise affiliate fees must be a sign of imminent
[00:35:55] demise. You know, there's I hear a lot of negative talk around the health of CrossFit.
[00:36:00] But in reading the two brain report, a couple of things stood out to me. I mean,
[00:36:06] the first was that of affiliate owners that they're surveying, there was something like
[00:36:11] almost 90% confidence that the brand was solid and going to do well and continue on. And I thought
[00:36:16] that was really great because I mean, these are the real ultimate super users of the brand.
[00:36:21] And if they have that much confidence on an affiliate level, that shows me that, you know,
[00:36:27] yeah, there was some initial fear about the change in affiliate fees. But
[00:36:31] I suspected that would be short lived and it would blow over and everyone would just accept the new
[00:36:36] reality, which it seems like that's happening. And so I thought for me that was exciting. I thought
[00:36:42] I felt very optimistic that that affiliate owners felt that good about the brand. I will say for
[00:36:48] my part, I've only met Don fall once. But I like him. And I think he's really smart
[00:36:55] and really capable. And I don't envy his job. I don't even know how he,
[00:37:02] I don't know where to start. I think there's probably a lot of work to be done, but I really
[00:37:06] think he's very capable and a super nice guy and actually really does understand the CrossFit
[00:37:11] community. So I think he's so far in my view been a net positive for the company.
[00:37:18] And then there are a couple of things that I took away. I mean, you know the
[00:37:21] Sarac from owning an affiliate, I mean, even, you know, we closed our affiliate in 2020, but
[00:37:26] up until that point, I mean, we basically didn't do any marketing and didn't have to do any marketing.
[00:37:32] And I do think that's one thing that's a change landscape. I think,
[00:37:36] you know, in part because of the commoditization of boutique fitness and fitness generally,
[00:37:40] I think you can't, you can no longer own an affiliate, a successful affiliate just based
[00:37:45] on word of mouth. I think you actually really need to run it like a real business with
[00:37:48] a serious marketing plan. So I think that's, you know, shockingly, I think we were able to run
[00:37:54] these affiliates for years without having to do much in the way of marketing. And then the other,
[00:37:59] the only thing that I thought was a bummer was the data about how just the overall revenue
[00:38:05] of most of the CrossFit gyms and particularly for the owners. You know, it's just, it's
[00:38:12] a hard business to make a living. And you know, one of the things I always used to advise
[00:38:17] potential CrossFit gym owners is like under no circumstances should you take on a partner,
[00:38:21] because at the most, a CrossFit gym can support a single person. Definitely not a partnership.
[00:38:27] And, but yeah, just to see that, you know, the average CrossFit gym owner is making less than
[00:38:32] $4,000 a month. And in many cases, probably quite a bit less than that. That was a little
[00:38:38] bit of a bummer. I thought, man, you know, we're still at the place where
[00:38:42] probably a lot of CrossFit gym owners need to have a side job to be able to make it, you know, and,
[00:38:48] and especially in the more expensive markets. So, so overall, I was excited by what I saw from
[00:38:54] the limited data we can get. And anecdotally, I talked to four or five gym owner friends of mine
[00:38:59] who felt like, you know, optimistic as well, they felt like they had waded through the
[00:39:04] horror of the pandemic and that their gyms were, you know, growing at not huge rates,
[00:39:09] but they were back to growing and they were excited about the future. So I think overall,
[00:39:13] it's positive. And I hope that we can get to a place where this episode of the future of fitness
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[00:40:29] future of fitness. Now on to the show. You know, gym owners can make a living doing it.
[00:40:38] Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when you look at the CrossFit community and I'll list off some insights
[00:40:43] from Pushgres here in a second just to give some data to people. But if you've never been to a CrossFit
[00:40:49] event, then you don't know yet what passion about the industry means. We are talking about people
[00:40:56] who are die hard fitness and health. I can't even describe it until you go to the CrossFit games.
[00:41:03] Oh my God. These are some of the fittest, craziest about fitness people you will ever meet.
[00:41:09] If you go to like my wife still CrossFits religiously three, four times a week. She goes to the 515 AM
[00:41:15] class and it's the same group of people she sees all the time. That's commitment. And the gym owner
[00:41:21] I know that she goes to talk to him periodically at different events and things like that.
[00:41:28] She's not making a ton of money. Luckily he has a physical therapy clinic. I've never seen
[00:41:32] his P&L but he runs a physical therapy clinic on site and I think that tends to be the model
[00:41:37] that works the best. And for good or bad, for trade-offs when you look at the models,
[00:41:41] the good is the barrier entry is super low. You could have theoretically $15,000, $20,000
[00:41:50] and you can license the CrossFit name. You could start a gym. You could be in business
[00:41:53] in two months. Where else can you do that? And have a brand that's recognized. So the value
[00:41:59] there downside of that is like there's no structure set up for marketing, best practices,
[00:42:06] business, membership pricing. Like all the things you would get from a corporately owned or a franchise.
[00:42:13] Here's some stuff that I thought was interesting. So PushPress, to give people an idea, PushPress
[00:42:18] mostly is a CRM that mostly works with independent gym owners. So they don't do a lot of franchises.
[00:42:24] They cover a lot of CrossFit, a lot of martial arts, a lot of just kind of like those ones
[00:42:28] you drive by all the time like the personal training. Yeah, strength and conditioning
[00:42:31] gyms, those kind of places. So they said in general CrossFit gyms have more members than
[00:42:38] non-CrossFit gyms like of their platform. CrossFit gyms on PushPress generate more revenue than
[00:42:44] non-CrossFit gyms. The top 20% revenue generating gyms are majority CrossFit,
[00:42:50] but this number is declining over time. The top 5% revenue generating gyms are split 5050,
[00:42:57] CrossFit, non-CrossFit. We don't know what non-CrossFit is specifically, but this number again
[00:43:02] is declining. Looking at smaller gyms that the bottom 80% CrossFit is handily better than
[00:43:08] non-CrossFit. So I don't know what that means in handily, but we can go back and look at the
[00:43:13] graphs and we can share this stuff too. But it's just some general insights and I think
[00:43:17] something that was really encouraging too from the two brain report was that average number
[00:43:22] of members has increased so 3.2% year over year. So 159 members in 2023 on average compared to 152
[00:43:32] in 2022. Now, even to me that number seems kind of high to be honest with you from the gyms that I
[00:43:38] have met with, kind of worked with in the past. So yeah, it's interesting. It seems that here is
[00:43:43] a funny thing. I don't know if you guys caught this one, but the biggest growth sector and
[00:43:46] the system to brain was in the EU, but the worst was in UK. So maybe Brexit didn't work
[00:43:54] yet for CrossFit. I don't know. Yeah, and I mean, I said this a little bit, but I have to just say it
[00:44:00] again, like 87% of respondents are confident about the future of the brand. That's from the
[00:44:04] two brain report. And that was such a standout for me. The other piece of anecdotal
[00:44:10] information I got from a couple of gym owner friends, and then this was reflected,
[00:44:13] I think also in the two brain report is the commoditization piece. And especially when it
[00:44:18] comes to pricing, I actually just talked to a friend of mine who was a gym in Minnesota.
[00:44:22] And he is in a wealthier suburb and I think charges $200 a month for his membership, but he
[00:44:29] has found that to be a struggle because now there's an F45 and there's some other
[00:44:36] berries and some other gyms that are something like 99 a month. And so I do think that,
[00:44:41] you know, I mean, when we closed San Francisco CrossFit, it was $300 a month.
[00:44:47] And granted that's a different, you know, that's a specific market. But I wonder if we were still
[00:44:54] open today, whether we would also be feeling some push to lower those prices to be competitive
[00:45:00] with the berries and the F45s that are around us. I don't know. I thought that was interesting.
[00:45:04] So if you two were advising the new CEO on what strategy to pursue over the next few years,
[00:45:19] what would your advice be? Well, I shouldn't say this because I'm probably going to get
[00:45:22] heat on this, but actually I met with Don Foll a couple of years ago and I was a fan of raising
[00:45:28] affiliate fees and suggested as much back then. You know, I will say that we were
[00:45:33] one of the first CrossFit gyms open. We had been grandfathered in for all these years at $500
[00:45:37] a month. And I certainly think the brand needs to provide value and make the affiliates feel like
[00:45:45] they are getting value for that affiliate fee. But what really made me think about it is over
[00:45:53] the years, I have joined a variety of different like business masterminds, mentorship groups,
[00:46:01] and you name it. And I mean, the floor of pricing for those groups is $15,000 a year. That's the floor.
[00:46:09] And I thought to myself, man, like all, I'll toss down 15,000 bucks to join this who knows what
[00:46:15] mentor group to hopefully get mentoring or business advice. And yet I'm squawking about
[00:46:22] having to pay $3,000 or $4,000 to put the CrossFit name on my gym. So, you know, I think that
[00:46:30] it's well worth the $3,000 or $4,000 people are paying for it. I think it obviously there's some
[00:46:36] challenges with the brand name, you know, and that's, I think sometimes they're, you know,
[00:46:39] people have strong feelings and they're often positive or negative about the brand,
[00:46:42] but it's still, they have a feeling about it. And I think that has value. So, I was a fan of
[00:46:49] that change. I think they had to do that. And I, yeah, so I think that's one area.
[00:46:55] And I do think they need to continue to create value and support affiliates,
[00:47:01] you know, in exchange for that price. Yeah, I 100% agree. And I was totally on board with the price
[00:47:09] or the increase in the affiliate fees. I mean, it's so like if you look at how big the brand
[00:47:14] is, it's still a drop in the bucket of what it is. But I think what gets lost a lot is
[00:47:20] in the mix of what the world of CrossFit is, is the affiliate owner. You know, like just even,
[00:47:27] and I'm not complaining, but it was tough, like running the CrossFit open, which was this global
[00:47:32] thing and how many hours I put into like gamifying it within my gym and like extra hours being
[00:47:38] there at night, running all weekend, like the 60s. Right in that light. Heated it. I hated it.
[00:47:43] I loved it and I hated it, you know, everything about that. So I think the affiliate owner
[00:47:47] gets lost in the mix. And I think they could do a better job of at least creating roadmaps
[00:47:51] because I could tell you this, like people will spend and CrossFit a ton of money on certifications
[00:47:56] for coaching, right? Like, you know, powerlifting gymnastics, right? Nutrition, like you name
[00:48:01] it, they will spend thousands and thousands of dollars. But when it comes to business,
[00:48:04] everybody's like, I don't want to do that. That's not fun. Right. So I think, and that's
[00:48:10] just generalizing, but I think having a better roadmap for like, how do we monetize the brand
[00:48:15] at the affiliate level? Similar to what you're saying, Julia, would be really good. And I don't
[00:48:18] know what that looks like, but having someone dedicated at a senior level within CrossFit to
[00:48:24] just do that, I think would be really beneficial. So that's my tip.
[00:48:27] Yeah. And I have one other thought too. You reminded me about this by mentioning the
[00:48:31] certifications though. We actually had a great talk with a guy on our podcast about how
[00:48:36] the era of certifications really ended. It seemed and in-person certifications kind
[00:48:42] of ended in 2015 when CrossFit ended their SME program, of which my husband Kelly was a part.
[00:48:48] He was the mobility SME for many, many years and traveled all over the world.
[00:48:54] And I think that that part of their business is a big loss. I mean, we know when we
[00:49:02] were paying a percentage of our door fees to CrossFit during that time,
[00:49:06] and I remember when they ended the program, we did a loose calculation and just our SME
[00:49:11] program was bringing in like half a million dollars a year to CrossFit in revenue from,
[00:49:17] you know, because we had a whole team. We had Kelly and like nine other coaches cruising
[00:49:20] all over the country teaching CrossFit certification courses. And all that was really
[00:49:26] driven by this robust SME program they did. And I think it gave a lot of credibility as well
[00:49:32] to CrossFit. And I think did some good towards counteracting some of the negative
[00:49:36] feelings towards CrossFit because they had the best of the best out there underneath
[00:49:39] their brand out there teaching courses. And I know that was a huge revenue stream for CrossFit.
[00:49:44] And they just ended it in, I don't know, 2016, 2017. And I think they should bring that back.
[00:49:49] I mean, not necessarily with us, but with whoever's the latest and greatest SME on subjects and
[00:49:55] start trotting those people back out in the world because I think post pandemic
[00:49:59] people are ready to in person learn and be with people again. So I don't know, you know,
[00:50:05] again, because we have any insight. But I think that SME program was a big revenue stream for them
[00:50:11] for a lot of years. And I don't think they're really, you know, they have their own level ones
[00:50:16] level two programs. I'm sure they make some money off of those. But I, they really,
[00:50:20] I think they've made a lot of money off those SME programs. I would say they should bring
[00:50:24] them back. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, maybe one of the last things on is like,
[00:50:29] and for the purest of CrossFit, this may be offensive at worst. But like,
[00:50:34] here's the thing is CrossFit in its current form for most gyms, is an advanced training protocol.
[00:50:42] Like it is we're talking Olympic weightlifting gymnastics like this isn't off the couch type
[00:50:48] stuff. And there was always this thing like we can take anyone right and put them into CrossFit
[00:50:53] classes. And they'll be fine. And it's I could tell you right now, like people get hurt. It
[00:50:59] happens. You know, it does happen. And that's something that I think needs to be kind of more
[00:51:04] openly discussed within the community about like, well, how do we maybe start people at a different
[00:51:08] level? Do we want like either be 100% this is advanced training, like this is where you go and
[00:51:14] you kind of graduated out of orange theory or stop saying that's for everybody because it's
[00:51:18] kind of not. And I've heard Kelly say this, you know, numerous times, your husband is like,
[00:51:22] CrossFit's not for everybody. We just need to be honest about it. Like it's not. So
[00:51:26] I think they need some messaging. And maybe that's where it comes down from the, you know,
[00:51:29] the the executive suite across fit HQ is like, how do we communicate better? Who is our target
[00:51:35] audience really? And if we want to be open to beginners and people off the couch, and how
[00:51:39] do we maybe come up a specialty programs for them to welcome them into the community in a safe
[00:51:44] and effective way. So that would be my only other suggestion. So
[00:51:48] so we actually for the Oh, go ahead, Alex. Yeah, yeah, no, um, you know,
[00:51:53] from the outside looking in, the, the, the affiliate doesn't have a territory. Is that
[00:52:02] is that correct? They just they could be competing with somebody who's three three blocks away.
[00:52:10] So I had one a hundred feet away. Could that change? I mean, could they could they
[00:52:15] get go towards a more traditional geographic, you know, licensing or franchising type
[00:52:22] arrangement? Would that be I think that is, that couldn't be a greater suggestion. You know,
[00:52:28] I think every, I think every CrossFit affiliate, and I don't know if they're doing that now,
[00:52:34] but every CrossFit affiliate in the whole time I was involved in CrossFit was just shy of 20
[00:52:38] years, you live in sort of a constant state of fear because, you know, coaches leave and you
[00:52:45] spend a ton of time training them and, you know, they all of course, I always think
[00:52:49] they can do a better job and it's natural for them to want to own their own gyms and move around,
[00:52:53] but you live in this like constant state of fear as an affiliate owner that, you know,
[00:52:58] you're going to spend five years training up a coach and they're going to go two blocks away
[00:53:03] and open a CrossFit and that happens all the time. And it's just, I mean, so in just in terms
[00:53:09] of like creating goodwill amongst affiliate owners and like helping them bring their blood
[00:53:14] pressure down a little bit as business owners, that would be like the greatest thing they could do
[00:53:19] because it's caused so much stress, so many broken relationships, so much unnecessary pain.
[00:53:28] And it just, and I think it wasn't great for the brand ultimately, you know, I don't think,
[00:53:34] you know, the cream rises to the top concept really worked that well in that model because
[00:53:38] no matter what, you know, it was just going to, it was going to dilute, it diluted.
[00:53:43] You know, from a sort of cynical business perspective, if, you know, CrossFit headquarters is making money
[00:53:50] based on how many new units are opening, then they don't want any exclusive geography,
[00:53:56] exclusive territory. Right. They have no economic incentive. So now if they're in a world
[00:54:04] where there aren't a lot of people trying to open new CrossFit boxes, then they could go back
[00:54:11] to the existing healthy operators and say, you know, we're going to now give you a territory,
[00:54:16] but the affiliate fees are going to go up a bit. Yep. And I think that's a good trade-off. I mean,
[00:54:22] after living in that constant fear for years of like who's going to open next door, man,
[00:54:29] I would have paid like 20 grand a year to just take that off my plate and know that I had
[00:54:33] this territory and I could own it. Man, that would be worth it. So worth it. I don't know
[00:54:38] about, do you feel the same way, Eric? I mean, you had one. You actually had it happen to you.
[00:54:41] So yeah, yeah. I mean, it was constant fear. I mean, there was, you know, I would have
[00:54:47] ones people who are my trainees, like, you know, I coached them and next to you know,
[00:54:51] I hear whispers that they're opening a gym three blocks away and they're offering my
[00:54:55] members buy one, get two. So for memberships, like bring one CrossFit Pacific Coast person
[00:55:02] over and get another person for free. That was literally their marketing to get their gym
[00:55:05] off the ground. And that was just what are you going to do? Like besides walk over there and
[00:55:09] have a stern conversation about like, please stop what you're doing. Yeah, right. There was no,
[00:55:15] there was nothing you could do. And that happened over and over and over again. You coach someone
[00:55:18] out there, you know, and bring them up within your business and then they go and open it up.
[00:55:23] I just, I just admitted, eventually I was just like, well, this is, I expect that to
[00:55:27] happen after two years. So I'm just continually filling the funnel with coaches or GM type people
[00:55:33] to help. So what are you going to do? Yeah, that's just the model. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, let's
[00:55:39] move over to the last and certainly not least biggest topic of women's health. I think there's
[00:55:45] a lot to talk about. We probably have about 15 minutes to get it done, but gosh,
[00:55:52] I mean, here's what I, the research I started looking at was, you know, we talked to,
[00:55:55] I want to give some credit to Halein at wild.ai, the team at Aura got some good information
[00:56:01] over to us. But, you know, you look at like a FemTech and a wearable side of things where I like
[00:56:06] health and some of the innovation that's going on there. You look at the boom of women in strength
[00:56:11] training, which is super exciting for everybody involved, I think. So yeah, I have a bunch of
[00:56:18] stuff to read off and stats and all that good stuff. Let's start with, you know, Julia,
[00:56:22] give us your opinion on the state of women's health and fitness and we'll take it from there.
[00:56:27] Yeah, I mean, I am stoked. You know, I was just speaking at LinkedIn the other day and
[00:56:33] on a panel and someone said, what are you excited about? And my answer was women's sports.
[00:56:38] You know, and I mean, at the top of that list is Caitlin Clark from University of Iowa,
[00:56:42] who has just been like a total joy and everything about her and what's happened with her trajectory
[00:56:48] has been so fun to watch, you know, and then there's the, you know, pro stadium in Kansas
[00:56:53] City. So I just feel like we're just at the very tip of like some very cool stuff happening
[00:57:00] in women's sports. So that I'm really excited about and I just think that, you know, it's
[00:57:05] happening and that's very cool to see. Super curious to see whether the NIL stuff makes
[00:57:13] a splash in women's sports like it is in men's sports and college. I'm interested to see
[00:57:17] what happens there. I love that more women are getting into strength training. I still
[00:57:22] think there's a lot of work to be done there because I use my own community as like an N of 1
[00:57:26] non-science anecdotal evidence. And I think I still see a lot of women struggling with that.
[00:57:33] And I still see a lot of like, you know, mediocre advice online, like, hey, put your treadmill up
[00:57:39] to a hill and that strength training. And I get a little like, oh, okay, well, I mean, sort of,
[00:57:43] but not really. But I'm very excited about all these trends in women. And then the other
[00:57:49] one too, I think you shared a little bit of data about this, Eric, in one of the things we shared
[00:57:54] in advance. And I don't know if it's because this is my demographic, a perimenopausal, menopausal 50
[00:58:01] year old woman. But it is very cool to see there seems to be a gigantic push towards better women's
[00:58:11] health care, you know, specifically in perimenopause and menopause care. I think there's
[00:58:16] a big acknowledgement that that subset of women has been totally ignored left behind, gas lit by the
[00:58:23] traditional medical community. There seems to be a lot of voices in the mix. Stacey Sims and Dr. Mary
[00:58:29] Claire and others, there's obviously these FemTech businesses like Alloy and there's just some really
[00:58:36] cool stuff happening. And the thing that makes me so excited about is that, you know, A, I think
[00:58:41] it's really going to help those of us that are currently in these age demographics. But I
[00:58:45] have two daughters. And I think men, like this is going to be so awesome for them, like they're
[00:58:50] going to grow up in a world where like women's strength train, they can go watch women's professional
[00:58:55] sports, maybe my waterplow playing daughter can get some NIL money as a college athlete. And like,
[00:59:01] you know, maybe they will just ultimately have better access to health care in many ways
[00:59:07] because of this, you know, new found, you know, focus on it. And I will say sometimes I
[00:59:12] hate social media and I think it's the demise of our society. But man, on this women's health thing,
[00:59:18] I think social media has been a huge, huge positive. I see so many women sharing stories about
[00:59:26] getting gas lit by their physicians and finding supportive communities online on social media.
[00:59:33] And you know, there's just a lot going on there that is I'm just pumped about it.
[00:59:38] Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I'll give some information on a second, but Alex, give your take on that.
[00:59:43] Yeah, so no, I agree on the women's sports front. The progress that's being made is just
[00:59:53] leaps and bounds. And I was, you know, there's still a long way to go. But yeah,
[01:00:00] you know, when you look at what the women did, you know, on the soccer federation,
[01:00:05] what, you know, the value of the soccer franchises, the women's soccer franchises,
[01:00:16] the increase in attendance, the increase in TV money. I'm just, you know, focused on soccer
[01:00:22] because I just happen to have looked at that. I'm sure it's happening elsewhere.
[01:00:27] You know, maybe in basketball, maybe in hockey, maybe. But when I look at the fitness industry,
[01:00:39] you know, I think back, I've been in the industry 40 years now, which is crazy, but
[01:00:46] we were always pretty much around 50-50 in terms of our membership because we were,
[01:00:52] you know, kind of a multi-purpose gym with a lot of crew backs and, you know, in the traditional
[01:01:00] strength training and cardio. And, you know, and then I think about boutique studios,
[01:01:07] which are primarily female. There may be some boxing, maybe not or,
[01:01:13] but a lot of them are certainly, you know, I'd say 70, 80 percent, probably female
[01:01:21] customers, members. So I feel like the industry has been pretty good at being balanced gender-wise,
[01:01:33] but not so much in leadership, in the executive, you know, suites. And, you know, you look at,
[01:01:43] we talked about Peloton, right? We talked about Planet Fitness. The guy running Planet Fitness
[01:01:49] now, you know, is, well, I'm not going to talk about age, but, you know, male running Planet Fitness,
[01:01:58] male running Lifetime, male running Peloton, male running Equinox. So we were kind of,
[01:02:09] I think we're serving the genders pretty well. I don't think we're under-serving
[01:02:17] the women's population. But we've got to do better, I think, in the executive suites.
[01:02:26] And I, you know, hold myself responsible for that too, because when I was CEO, I, you know,
[01:02:31] my wife would constantly remind me like, where are all the women? What's going on?
[01:02:37] Yeah. And women on those boards, right? Even if they're not in the CEO position,
[01:02:42] like, did those, I've never looked, but like, did those companies, I mean,
[01:02:45] I know Peloton does because actually I happen to know a female board member of Peloton personally,
[01:02:48] but I don't know about the other companies, right? Like who do they have on their boards?
[01:02:52] Yeah. They're sitting on their boards.
[01:02:53] Yeah. I think their boards are probably,
[01:02:56] they probably do have a little bit more diversity.
[01:03:00] Yeah. That's great.
[01:03:01] But the CEO jobs allow me to, yeah, allow me to throw some,
[01:03:06] some, some one-liners out there on women's health and fitness, because I thought
[01:03:09] those was pretty interesting. And so while that AI is slain, she brought some really
[01:03:14] interesting, this is stuff I've seen, you know, in many conversations I've had on this podcast too,
[01:03:18] is 80% of medical research, and this is still today is focused on that.
[01:03:24] When it comes to sports, it's worse. Only 6% of budgets go to women's research.
[01:03:29] So that's kind of like the state of things, right?
[01:03:32] Minimum 50% of female athletes self-report performance being impacted by their menstrual
[01:03:36] cycle. But many of them don't know how to navigate that. 76% of women report side effects due to
[01:03:43] hormonal contraceptives, lower libido, depressive symptoms, mood swings, etc.
[01:03:48] 85% of women experience physical and psychological menopausal symptoms for seven plus years.
[01:03:55] So stuff like weight gain, lower libido, memory loss, issues following asleep,
[01:03:59] joint pain, things like that. But here's where things are starting to swing up, right?
[01:04:05] More investment, right? Things like we were talking about the Kansas City current,
[01:04:08] their stadium being built specifically for women's sports. Pretty cool, right?
[01:04:12] So cool.
[01:04:13] That's the first woman's kind. Women's life stages seem to be not really a complete
[01:04:19] locker in performance for sports anymore. So Megan Rapinot 38, Kitty Ledecky,
[01:04:26] Allison Felix, Intrack and Field, Shelly Ann Fraser Price, you know,
[01:04:31] pregnant seated in her career. So things are really starting to open up in the conversation
[01:04:35] becoming very mainstream. And I think that's where you really start to get some traction on it.
[01:04:40] And so there's a lot of stuff. And I thought there was an interesting
[01:04:44] study going on right now and report will be released, I think in a month or two with
[01:04:47] ORA and UCSF. Yeah, that was really interesting.
[01:04:50] Yeah. So specifically on polycystic ovarian syndrome, like using wearable data to predict
[01:04:58] things like that or, you know, how to navigate their menstrual cycles for numerous reasons,
[01:05:03] metapause, perimetapause, all this stuff, all these tools and researchers trying to come in to
[01:05:07] help people help women specifically kind of navigate these phases or challenges within their
[01:05:13] specific health issues. Right? So it's really, really cool to see all this research being
[01:05:19] dumped in and this new focus. So I thought that was pretty cool. I mean, any thoughts on
[01:05:23] that in those particular...
[01:05:25] I mean, I think that's super cool. And I would add to the life stages of women, the more and more
[01:05:30] very public women who are having kids during their athletic career. I mean, there's some
[01:05:35] super notable crossfit people like Karis Saunders and Tia Toomey and Annie Torres-Daughter.
[01:05:40] I know that that is across many other sports too. And you can see that there's still a level
[01:05:46] of discomfort on Instagram. You know, as people watch those women continue to train
[01:05:51] through pregnancy, you can see that 50% of the people are like, yes, this is amazing. And
[01:05:55] 50% of the people still find it uncomfortable and awkward to watch a pregnant woman exercise.
[01:06:02] But I still think that's really interesting. And again, another prop to crossfit,
[01:06:08] that community has definitely been really open. And I'm sure it's not without challenge,
[01:06:13] of course. And I don't know what it's like for those women with their sponsors and so forth.
[01:06:16] But it seems like generally speaking, they've had a positive experience being able to
[01:06:20] pop out for a year and have a kid and come back into training and be seriously competitive with
[01:06:26] support of their sponsors and major organizations. And I think that's really also another positive
[01:06:31] change. And again, long way to go, like Alex said, still long ways to go. But it just does,
[01:06:37] it feels like we're sort of at the beginning of a cascade of really positive things
[01:06:42] that are happening for women in sport and women in fitness. And yeah, Alex, let's try to plop
[01:06:47] some female CEO into one of those four companies. Wouldn't that be great if we could talk about that
[01:06:52] in one of our upcoming sessions? Yeah, how do you feel about women's only boutiques or gyms?
[01:07:03] Or is that something you endorse or you think it's not really necessary?
[01:07:09] Man, I struggle with that one because I have been in gyms my whole life and feel comfortable
[01:07:15] in gyms, even like iron pit bro gyms. I've spent time in some of those as well.
[01:07:23] But I do know that gyms still are intimidating for a lot of women. And so I wonder if there
[01:07:28] isn't, if there still isn't a sliver of the population that would never go to any kind of gym
[01:07:34] or boutique fitness club thing without there being only women there. I don't know. I don't
[01:07:40] know because my own experience is so different. What do you think? Do you think there's a market for
[01:07:46] that? I have been skeptical of it in my career, in the industry. There's one group out of Boston
[01:07:58] called HealthWorks that's been really successful on a small scale, but they're still around.
[01:08:06] There's, as far as I know, they're doing really well. I don't know how many units they have.
[01:08:11] It's a multi-purpose gym. I've talked to some entrepreneurs who are thinking about boutiques
[01:08:21] that are really designed to address women's health issues in sort of middle age and older.
[01:08:32] I see p-volve that is, I don't know if they're exclusively female, but it certainly seems like
[01:08:44] that's the marketing image or the positioning. So I'm on the fence about it, but I do think that
[01:08:56] if you really want to program specifically for women's issues on a very personalized,
[01:09:06] sort of targeted basis, it's got to be female run. I mean, that sounds long, but or female
[01:09:16] directive. You got to have expertise. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And I think maybe the better model
[01:09:22] there is just private coaching, private training is the model. To me, that's the model, especially
[01:09:28] for people who really want that kind of specific training. I also sometimes, and you know,
[01:09:35] That's very expensive. It's expensive. And I'm super pro women, but I will, for some reason,
[01:09:40] it made me think about the massive number of people who come up to me over the years
[01:09:44] who want sport-specific training specifically for their kids. And to that, Kelly and I,
[01:09:49] we say everybody's weak and sucks at everything. What are you talking about? Like your 15 year old son
[01:09:57] can't squat, press, deadlift isn't fast, not agile, isn't mobile. Like what are we even talking
[01:10:03] about? Like your kid doesn't need some weightlifting move that's for baseball. And I think generally
[01:10:09] speaking, that's most humans, right? Like we all have sort of a lot of 20 basic things we should
[01:10:14] be doing with our bodies. But yeah, I agree. It's not accessible in a private training model.
[01:10:20] I think my bias too is like, I'm of the curves generation, right? You remember curves? And
[01:10:25] I definitely was not a curves kind of person. So when you say female only gym, unfortunately,
[01:10:30] what I think like that immediately brings curves to mind, which I think, no, not into curves.
[01:10:38] Yeah. Yeah, I can't see I'm on board with the full brick and mortar holy
[01:10:45] women or only men or only whatever, right? I think that's counterproductive in some cultural ways.
[01:10:52] But I do believe like, I think I would like to see, you know, women focused classes, right? Or
[01:10:59] specific segments just like you would, you know, you would have a class specific to football
[01:11:04] players, you could have one specific to an age group of women who are dealing with the same
[01:11:08] challenges, right? Or parts of their, you know, time of their life. So or whatever it may be,
[01:11:12] I think that's that's a good way to do it. You can still do the group and I mean, well,
[01:11:16] in all, I think small group training is is the best out there for numerous reasons.
[01:11:22] But that's not always affordable and accessible for everybody. So yeah, that's that's kind of my
[01:11:28] two cents. Well, you guys, we probably I could talk forever with you guys, but we should
[01:11:33] probably wrap this one up. I want to throw one more statistic out there because I thought
[01:11:36] it was interesting, okay, on women's strength. And, you know, like you said before, Juliet,
[01:11:41] like, you know, social media is not always a big favor. But this case, it was it's pretty clear.
[01:11:47] The hashtag girls who lift has garnered over 10 billion views, probably more now because the
[01:11:53] skin report came out in 2020 videos of weightlifting women have racked over 60 million views and
[01:11:58] lifting girl videos have accumulated over 13 million views. So social media as much as we
[01:12:03] hate to say at the social media influencer in the fitness industry is actually making a positive
[01:12:08] difference. And you got to give a little bit of a cute dose. Yeah, I agree. That's really that's
[01:12:12] very cool. I love hearing that. Yeah, any closing thoughts on everything that we covered today?
[01:12:19] Alex, how about you? I am going to predict that we're going to have some more IPOs and I don't
[01:12:26] have any specific information. But but I'm sort of feeling like there are some companies that
[01:12:33] are positioning for IPOs over the next, I don't know, say 18 months. And I, and I'm, you know, it
[01:12:42] could be the orange theory anytime group, it could be equinox, it could be. Yeah, so those are
[01:12:52] those are a couple that that I think I think and I think it'd be great for the industry to have
[01:12:57] have those that level of quality company get out and onto the public market.
[01:13:04] Awesome. And Juliet, final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I just I did all of my homework for this
[01:13:10] and felt a very cool sense of optimism. You know, even for the public companies, which
[01:13:16] Wall Street doesn't like as much, maybe not Peloton as much, but the other ones
[01:13:22] for sort of the future of CrossFit affiliates and the brand generally. And then, I mean,
[01:13:27] obviously, I am could not be more excited about what's happening with women's, you know, women's
[01:13:32] sports and women's fitness. And, you know, obviously, there's work to do in all of those
[01:13:37] areas. But I think we have a lot of reason for optimism and feeling like, you know,
[01:13:41] we're we're starting to do good work and are doing good work. So I'm excited.
[01:13:45] Awesome. Well, you guys, thank you. It's always a pleasure. I can't wait already for
[01:13:49] our next one. We'll, for the next few weeks, we'll start deriving our next plan of attack
[01:13:54] on what topics we want to do. But yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks everybody for
[01:13:58] listening. You can find us all on LinkedIn or social media, and it's not hard to find. So
[01:14:04] Juliet, Alex, thank you very much. That is a wrap. Thank you, Eric.
[01:14:10] Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And I hope you enjoyed this
[01:14:15] episode of Future of Feminist. If you did, I'm going to ask you to do three simple things. It takes
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