Mark Fisher - The "Hub" Model & A Deepened Interest Of 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 futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Kids deserve our best. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids in the youth fitness space for over two decades. Look, 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. A successful and sustainable youth program comes from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve the demographic. Brand X offers unequaled, ongoing support through ever-growing relevant content delivered monthly and mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and Certification, and recognized as the world's leader in youth fitness, Brand X now offers Plug and Play Systems, a fully integrated and personally guided roadmap to start, build, and sustain a flourishing and profitable youth fitness program. This includes mentorship, education, programming, and a huge resource library, all offered at an affordable monthly price. If you are a coach, boutique gym owner, a school district, or anyone interested in paving a better future for our youth, you've got to check this out. For a limited time, Brand X is waiving the setup fee and offering a VIP discount on plug and play solutions. Visit thebrandxmethod.com slash VIP to get your code today. That is thebrandxmethod.com slash VIP. This episode of the Future of Fitness is presented to you by the Fit Tech Club, a business network run by the creators of the FitTech Summit, Europe's leading conference devoted to fitness and health technology. Look, friends, the fitness industry is changing faster than ever. The intersection of technology with fitness and health is growing bigger and more dynamic by the minute. Gyms are exploding figuratively, and their constituent parts are ending up at home, outdoors, on your wrist, or in entirely new places with brilliantly new concepts. Investors are pumping astronomical amounts of money into the market like we've never seen before. The FitTech Club believes that collaboration is the advantage to these times of change. That's why the club aims to bring thought leaders together to inspire them by making the right context at the right time and giving insights to the industry's most relevant and current trends. Here's what Melanie Lauer, CEO of Kettler and TriSports, says about the FitTech Club.

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Thank you. It is great to be back because I remember the last time we met, I believe I was struggling for the throes of, for me, one of the darkest moments of the pandemic, which has had some a number of abs, but that was a really particularly interesting time we chatted last.

Yeah. So maybe we can recap that for listeners. I was just looking at so I released that episode on April 20th of 2020. It was entitled Uh Finding Structure and Chaos. And we did talk about, you know, how to keep your mind, you know, um, I guess, tuned up, right, to kind of make it through when things have gotten quite irregular, for lack of a better term. Um so like what was going on in your life back in March of 2020? Which seems like a decade ago.

It seems like a decade ago. I know at that time very specifically, I can remember when we were chatting, I believe I was really just kind of coming out of the haze because as I'm probably wasn't, I think, aware at that time because I didn't have enough of a vantage point to look back. When the pandemic stuff happened, it really rocked. And I went to like a very dark place for a couple weeks. It wasn't so long, but of course, at that time everything was in slow motion. So a week was like three years, and I just needed a little time to reorient. There was a massive interruption of expectation about what life was, and happily a lot of things we talked about in that last podcast were things that I was able to utilize, which to some extent, the principles I think of creating order out of chaos and managing your day, manage your time, focus on what you control. I think those principles were are always going to be valuable. They just the stakes with that one applies them well was much higher in that moment. And thankfully, at this moment, frankly, for better or for worse, there's probably an opportunity to be sloppier if I wanted. Uh, having said that, while I have many challenges and deficiencies, a lack of rigor and discipline with my personal management habits have not been a struggle for me historically. So, yeah, that was a dark, weird, weird time. A weird, weird time. But as we were chatting before we got onto this call, the gift of it was I think to some extent, because things have been so chaotic, it has found me really re-engaging and really picking up more interest in the business again. Not to say that I was uninterested before, but I can remember at that time, I was spending a lot of my time, even when I look at the things I was focused on in my continuing education, things that I think were still valuable, that I always bifurcate my education between what I call my ongoing liberal arts education, which is history, biography, social philosophy, applied ethics, et cetera, even something speculative tech stuff like studying general AI. And then I have my highly tactical stuff, which can be anything from which I could further bifurcate between principles, studying marketing. So it's ideally I'm looking for actionable things, and then tactics, which is more studying specifically in the fitness industry for facilities that are like mine or facilities that are different. What are the same but differences that I can apply for my business? And when I think about my life or the world ended for a moment, I was really focused on that first half. I was focused on my ongoing liberal arts education. And COVID forced me to snap back and really go deep into okay, what's going on in the fitness industry? And listen, I'm not looking to discount how challenging by time it was in many, many ways, or say that it wasn't very, very challenging because it was, but in a weird, thick, masochistic way, it was almost kind of exciting because, like, all right, gotta figure this out. And it really forced me to find, frankly, a whole new set of resources. This podcast, among them, quite frankly, where most of my auditory learning had been audiobooks at that point. And I have discovered a great fondness for listening to, because there's a finite number of fitness industry podcasts. I think there's like 25, maybe 30. And I just decided I was just gonna listen to every episode of every single one forever. And for about 18 months, I've done that and it has been fruitful. You know, like the applied ethics stuff still matters, but also you're not gonna find a hyper granular tip that after you gate the contact capture on the landing page for the low barrier offer, you can then create a bonus offer you build in. They get some other high value thing if they sign up by the end of the day. With all due respect to Naval Rabakon, who I love and I adore, I'm not getting that hyper-tactical thing from him. And of course, you need both of those things, I think, but it is interesting to see how I had found myself drifting away from the hyper-tactical stuff, and now I find myself really reinterested, reinvigorated, and exciting about beginner's mind.

Yeah. Yeah, well, we're all in the beginner's mind now. We're kind of stuck in it, right? I think everything's changing so fast that you know I've just like you've I've personally had to adapt quite a bit um with my clientele and and the type of even guests I get on the show and the type of topics that we're we're doing, what I'm researching, what other industries I'm looking at to pull and glean ideas from. I think that's been a really um that that's been a really interesting noticing for me too, is that it seems like now more than ever, we're starting to kind of look like other industries, right? There's like big tech. And then there's you know the the the franchise model. Like we're starting to look like other industries. It's it happened fairly fast. Um so when we did that interview, uh let's see, it was like back then we were like, well, two weeks to flatten the curve, right? That's what we thought. And then now you know it's two years later, uh, we're just kind of seemingly in this uh forever. It's just while it's just life. It's just life. This is what it is now, right?

It's interesting that of course memory is notoriously imperfect. So whether this is true or not, who can say? I wish I would have journaled the timer. Perhaps I should probably go back to that podcast, perhaps I reference it. My sense after the or not was that I felt pretty strongly after the world that is like, oh, this is gonna be a year and a half to two years. Now, I will concede part of what has been interesting uh at the time of this recording is what happened was that was sort of on track, but what I didn't predict was how fast, of course, the vaccines would be created and rolled out. And then what's interesting is Mark was made this never ending, at least in New York. In July, it was amazing. Everybody lost their minds. It was the roaring 20s. People were drinking and partying and getting after it and doing all sorts of shenanigans. It was incredible. It was it felt like burning that New York City was amazing. And then in August, you just felt everybody being like, no, because the breakthroughs kept kicking up and the rates are going up. And even with the business now, you know, we're getting cancellations, uh, and people, and many of them saying, uh, I know I'm double vaccinated. I know New York City requires vaccinations in your space. I know people in masks, I still don't feel comfortable. And at that point, it's like, geez, Louise. And I don't say that judgmentally, I'm certainly not judging people's comfort level. It was a very traumatic thing in New York. There's all sorts of reasons to go into that. But at that point, that that's tough for me as the business owner, right? It's hard for me to kind of get around that level of concern. Um, because one thing that is interesting about this moment, and again, as of this recording, for Mark Fisher Fitness is on the one hand, our in-person has not nearly ramped up the way we want at all. I thought for sure we'd be seeing much more traction by now, and it's been just a grind. People are still feeling not comfortable going inside in New York City, getting new leads, still feels like an uphill battle. And then on the other hand, the thing that is very strange that I frankly am still looking to unpack because I'm I'm I often learn by modeling, I'm looking for other places that are experiencing this. Our online virtual platform, which I think at that point was maybe a twinkle in the eye of one of our trainers, uh as per our last chat, is still responsible for 65% of our revenue. People doing Zoom classes. And I thought for sure by this point people would be overdoing Zoom classes. I'm thinking there's no way this has legs. And one thing that is exciting or infuriating about this moment, depending on how we choose to frame it, is it means I'm a little uncertain really what lane for us to run now. Quite frankly, it's leads, it's I can't complain because it means our overall profitability and revenue is in place. It's still pretty good. And I'm very, very grateful for that. So to be clear, I don't take it off the granite, I'm not complaining. However, the business does have a lot of complexity now because now we have in-person classes again, we have in-person small group training. We were happily able to rip off some painful band-aids and fix those business models. So those the good news is that now is a container for really strong profitability in a way that is great. And a lot of those changes we were able to make not under the cover of the pandemic, but because it was a wild time, we decided cut ones, cut deep. I know more about the past year and a half as I've studied the numbers of the business and really have a better sense of what the ratio should be. We just ripped off band-aids, certain things weren't working.

And do you mind sharing like what labor from those band-aides?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, for instance, um, the unit economics of the in-person MFF just weren't great. So, without boring listeners going into the massive granularity, for our small group model, we were running a semi-private model, which was up to three people at a time with a coach, doing individualized programming, and the coaches were paid out as a per-head split based on attendance. We have since moved to uh what is often called small group personal training, which is perhaps a little bit synonymous, but is generally thought to be anywhere the four to six, sometimes a little more, number of people in the room. And essentially what it allowed us to do is instead of one coach now working with three people at time, one coach is now working with six people at time. And it allowed us to essentially just massively increase our the profitability of the service. Because when you look at it, cost of goods sold is a very important number, which is how much does it cost you to deliver the session? So by reducing the cost of goods sold, even though we were able to offer slight reduction to the ninjas, which is what we call our finance, so the ninjas are paying a little bit less per session. So I do it's a little bit more sustainable, but our payroll essentially was able to be kept around constant. And additionally, for the coaches, it turned out they liked it too because now they have a guaranteed flat rate instead of the per head model, which has pros and cons to it, but on the aggregate, most of our coaches I think would prefer a little bit less potential return in exchange for having no risk. So that's what that looks like in that model. And then in our class model, one of the numbers I think to a lot is just the number of bodies you need to be able to service per hour. And we had a constraint in the space. So we historically had 15 people per class, and that is okay, but in a vacuum, semi-arbitrarily, I think 20 is better, but I don't have more room. I couldn't get more people in there. And what we decided to do was move from 60-minute classes to 45-minute classes. Voila! So, gentle listener, based on your situations, you're thinking through this, because the coaches are still paid hourly. In fact, I'm essentially able to do four sets of 15 people for three hours of coach pay instead of three sets of 15 people for three hours of coach pay. And frankly, the reality is it's 45 minutes, it's faster. Now, of course, we did have to make some changes with program design. Of course, when you rip off the band-aid, there were certain ninjas that I don't think are ever going to quite like this because they like the laborious, longer monologue about the serratus anterior. And uh, while I do miss some of that, I'm a meat and potatoes, I'm a general pop gym. I want getting in, moving, and get you out. And you might make a case that we should be charging more money for this product because I'm getting you in and out in 45 minutes now. It should be more expensive. Um, as it happens, we didn't six minute apps. Yeah. Uh and and frankly, we did raise the rates a little bit on some of those, on some of those memberships because we did alter our memberships across the board. But overall, those are the two changes that we made. And because uh again, when you think about the math, it sounds so silly. We've reduced the cost of goods sold, it makes the business infinitely better, right? Because here's if I can if you'll indulge me to allow me to explain this, I think you know this, Eric. But for listeners that are listening that aren't quite sure why this is so important, it took me a long time to understand this. Because your cost of goods sold comes off the top, and we're gonna keep these numbers real, real simple. If you're making $100 in the hour, and let's say it cost you, we'll say $45 to service that session, that means you have $55 to pay all the other things. And let's say hypothetically, it costs you $40 when you average out all the other expenses for the business. So that means it's $85 total, right? So you're doing $15, which is a 15% profit margin. Well, if you can get that $45 cost down to $35, you've reduced that by $10, which might not seem like a big deal, but here's the thing when you do the math of it, you still have that other set cost of $40. So you've now gone from $85 cost to $75 cost. So you've gone from 15% profit to 25% profit, which is the 66% increase in your bottom line gross, your bottom line take home, your net profit. Now, I feel compelled to clarify for people, this is the first they're hearing of me. Uh, number one, I apologize for getting so mad through the outside the gate. And number two, let me assure you, I'm not Mr. Moneybags over here. And it's not the most salient part of what I do is not making money. Frankly, I would do different things if it was. However, just as I think, I hope I'm known in a lot of circles as being the mission, culture, values, soft skills person, we also need to make the numbers work, right? Because we can't do what we do if we're not having a business that is sufficiently profitable, that we're able to pay the people what we want, that the business is safe and can absorb disruptions. And yes, that as the stakeholders, the uh my and my business partner are properly compensated for the risks and stresses of running a business. So I'll pull up there as I'm sure you'll have many other questions you want to dig in on.

Yeah, I just, you know, I I want to address that, you know, when I I think when I when I think of Mark Fisher and Mark Fisher fitness, I think about an amazing community, probably one of the idealistic communities you can look at, right? I think of someone who's a brilliant marketer. Um, and those two things will take you an extremely long way. You know, if you can keep a solid community, you can market people and bring them in, you it's easy to forgive a lot of mistakes on the back end of the business. And um, you know, as as someone who's on the early day of CrossFit, you know, dude, we just the phone rang. Yeah like right around 2011, the phone just rang and it didn't stop ringing for four years, right? And then it stopped. And uh, you know, it's so easy for us to focus on um what I call the vanity metrics, top end revenue. How big is your gym? How many members do you have, right? All these things, how many new members are you getting in? Like all this stuff that was really cool made you feel good. But then when the number, when things started to get a little bit more challenging, you had to really look at, well, what actually how do I calculate my profit? What is what is a PL, right? And then you have to start looking at it, and I'm sure you already knew all this stuff, but it makes it you can know it, but then you can kind of ignore it because it's not really fun, because it's not really what I like to do, and then all of a sudden you got to do it, and you uncover some really sometimes horrifying things. And uh yeah, noise. I think I've probably just like you. I mean, you you Have a great gym, and I know a lot of people who have world-class gyms, some of them shut down for good. This the Kelly and Juliet Starret are one of my you know, one of those examples of you know, one of the premier gyms in San Francisco, and they just got shut down for nine months. How do you do that? What do you do with that? Right. Um, so yeah, I think there's a lot of great stuff in there, and I I'd be curious too, is like, um, you know, I know you've also, you know, with the business for unicorns side of things, which is your consulting and coaching side of it, um, that must have shifted as well. So what what have you guys changed on that end?

I gotta say, the thing that's been interesting, business for unicorns, of course, is unexpectedly, in some ways, that business has been continuing to grow pretty effortlessly in the sense that we're just not putting a lot of effort into growing it, other than just doing the content. Now, I think there's two pieces to that. I think number one, we recently brought on Pete Depuis, who some listeners may know, is the business partner of Eric Cressy, who's a very well-known storied individual in the sports performance world. He's the strength coach for the New York Yankees and is widely, and I would say correctly considered the world's premier baseball sports performance strength coach. Bringing Pete on, of course, has allowed us to have a much bigger bandwidth and a much larger marketing funnel, frankly, because he just has a different audience than us. But there are a certain type of training gym super nerd that are very intrigued by getting access to the business brains of both Mark Fisher Fitness and Cressy Sports Performance. Now, having said that, the full disclosure is we didn't bring Pete in because we were hoping he was going to grow the biz. I think certainly he's contributed to that. We were getting busy. We needed more help. And we knew that Pete was a top-notch coach coming in. He's someone that Mike and I are very close with personally as pals, and we knew there was a real values alignment there. As far as why Biz for Unicorns has seen some growth, I suspect part of it is we also finally took our own medicine in that it really wasn't until the fall, not that about a year ago, not even, that we decided to go all in on fitness. And I really appreciate Michael. He is a wonderful partner in me. And I wouldn't say that I dragged him around sometimes, but two, you know, Michael is very, very intelligent. He'd be a great guest for this sometimes too, because Michael is literally like a genius. And his tastes are very diverse, right? So he's currently, as we speak, is finishing up getting his master's in organizational psychology from Columbia University. Like crushingly intelligent, right? Very hard school to get to be like very bright guy. And he and I, for the years of Business for Unicorns, had kind of this ongoing debate because always 70% of our business was fitness and training gyms. And we were just heartbroken about walking away from these 30% of other people that love what we do. And many of them we knew from my social circles, many of them we knew from being an entrepreneur's organization, many of them we knew from being in New York City, having ninjas that were very, very successful. For a while, we had this very wonderful, strange niche of real estate brokers that were very into our time management stuff. So, as happens with any business, is at a certain point you kind of have to make a decision about who you help, how you help them, and exactly what you do next. And of course, it was not the easiest decision to make because we knew we were walking away from not only revenue, but individuals we really, really cared about. But for me, I was at the point where I realized this is my lane, this is what I love, this is all I think about every second, all day long. I want to talk about this kind of business and this kind of person because this is what I know best. So I think the other thing that's happened there, which again could be potential takeaway for a lister, depending on where you're at in your business, is of course, once we got so specific and decided we are all in on, and specifically training gym owners. If you're a personal trainer and I can get value from my work, I'm excited and I'd I'd love to help you, but I don't really know what that was like because I was a personal trainer briefly and then I opened up a gym. If you are, you know, a different type of business model, no doubt the principles of marketing and sales and onboarding and development team, many of them are going to be broadly applicable. But I decided I really wanted to focus on what I knew best, which was other gyms just like MarkFisher Fitness. And that included, interestingly enough, even with our coaching group, which is the main way we work with people, creating a bunch of parameters as far as we can't work with you unless you have a lease on a space. We can't work with you unless you have one employee, you need at least X many clients. This needs to be your full-time job. This can't be a side hustle. And of course, then everything gets infinitely easier, right? Because you're working with the same type of people, the same types of problems. And then the other piece of that is, of course, amongst the community, people are able to add more value for each other. And that's sort of what's happened with that business, which is, you know, and the third thing that perhaps the factor, and of course, it's hard to unpack what's actually going on, perhaps because the world was on fire, maybe that's where we grew, in spite of our industry taking a massive thing, particularly the brick and mortar training gym space. The numbers you hear are 30%. Where those numbers come from, I don't know. And as I love to joke, 73% of facts are made up on the spot by the individual quoting them. So who knows? That sounds about right. Maybe a lot of people closed, I guess. And maybe what happened was those that survived were a little bit more resilient and were also more looking for help. But again, it's hard to, I think, pull that apart from the other two factors. So that's that's what's going on with that business.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I've seen just through, you know, some of the people I work with and Joel Jameson with Morpheus and Eight Weeks Out, you know, a lot of people taught education, uh, Jason Apean and NAS and people like there was a huge influx of money in education, like right out of the gates. I don't know if it was stimulus checks where people are like, oh, it's only gonna be a few months. I might as well stay home and take the certification. And then then and then it was just got into a long-term piece of just uncertainty. And now I feel like we're at the point where the gyms at and facilities that are gonna be around are still around. Um and it's hard. Like you're right, I I hear numbers all the time. And you know, like we'll talk, I'll talk to someone at Glowfox and like, no, we have the numbers, right? And then I'll talk to somebody else. No, we have the numbers. And um, I'm not, I don't doubt that they do, uh, but it's just a hard thing to to say. And uh yeah. So anyway, I guess the point being is you know, what with your journey and the gym owners, what what have you seen as far as like what are your expectations moving forward for for gyms and how how those conversations have been going?

Yeah, it's I mean, the first thing I want to do is is offer the obvious qualification that of course I don't know and nobody really knows. But I do think, and I so best as I can tell, this is not based on my personal bias, but this is why I'm putting my eggs in this basket. I I don't think brick and mortar is going anywhere. I think it's changing, but I think frankly, there are potentially opportunity, right? Now, I don't know when the gravity of the pandemic is going to lift. As I've said, in New York, in New York City, it is very much still there. On the flip side, I'll tell you, some of my clients are having banner months of banner year, are seeing incredible demand for their services. So I think because there is frankly less competition, I think because hopefully the society at large ideally sees this as a some motivation to make sure they're on top of their health and fitness. I think there's a lot of opportunity right now. And it's interesting too, because as far as exactly what a training gym owner should do to leverage that, the fact of the matter is again, it's just kind of the same stuff. I don't think the principles have drastically changed. And certainly we can nerd out a little bit about maybe the way technology and the hybrid models want to continue to impact claims because I think that's probably true. But, you know, for the most part, my expectation is when, depending on the market, the gravity is either already lifted or will lift at some point, six months, maybe 12 months at most, but people are coming back. People are going to want the in-person thing. It's a unique thing. I am a believer that the online only thing is not going anywhere, not going anywhere. But for the most part, that's often a different avatar, a different kind of person that is drawn to working out and they just want to work out at home, versus the person that wants to go somewhere and have that experience. And of course, there's people that want to do both. And again, for me, abundance. I'm all about it. Let's everybody, that's everybody working out. I think there's enough for everybody. I think we there's everybody should be working with physics of some kind. So as far as I'm concerned, there's never enough great organizations, great modalities, great ways of meeting different people where they're at. So I feel optimistic about the future of the industry in general, and I feel optimistic about the training gym kind of micro niche, if you will, to corn that particular corner of the industry.

I do too. I do. I I agree with all that, man. And I think uh, you know, ultimately we still, as an industry, we still haven't hit the large majority of our population. I mean, the numbers vary. People say, you know, 20% of people are active and I'll I I just use 20 because I think it's a good, easy number to talk about. But I at least 80%. And if there's one thing we've seen, and I think a lot of people have talked on about it on this show, is that you know, if if something doesn't hold a light to the importance of someone's health as much as this pandemic has, then I don't think we're getting through to anybody.

Yeah.

I think and I and I'm I think it has. I think people are realizing, I mean, that go ahead.

I was gonna say, and I think there's still most of the people we will not get through to, right? Because in the essential evolutionary environment, there was no need for this, and I think it's always gonna be an uphill ask for a lot of the people, and I'm okay. I'm not uh a perfectionist in that way. I I I can accept I'm not gonna win them all. And uh yeah, to the best of my skill set to inspire more people to work out, the more stoked I am. And certainly if you look at Mark Fisher Fitness, that's kind of our whole bag, right? It's always been about the quote-unquote promotion of people that are not already working out. So yeah, I'm I'm optimistic and I I hope we'll at least nudge those numbers up a little bit. So more people getting into it, because it just leads that kind of health impact, that kind of not just avoiding long-term disease, but I think even the cognitive benefit, I believe, is powerful, compound impact on the whole society, right? The more, even if a modest percentage of the society is just functioning in a modest percentage higher on a daily basis, and they're a little kinder, a little more patient, a little less reactive, they have a little more energy, they can be better at everything that they are, which is part of why I love this field. It's so inspiring because we have a vehicle that's so deeply taps into something that is an unqualified good for the world.

Yeah. Well said, man. And you know, one of the things I've I kind of came to uh an obvious conclusion that I probably should have come to 14 years ago or within the last 14 years of being in the industry. But here in Northwest Montana, um, I think the gym that I go to, which is a community-oriented um it's uh it's it's a uh 501c3, so it's supported by the community and it's also privately supported by our dues. But it only closed, you know, for a few weeks. And people were probably like, what? But I'm I'm in northwest Montana. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of factors why that might happen, right? Um but when I was like, you know, sometimes maybe I should spend some more time outdoors and I'll do more things outdoor, which I do. I do a lot of outdoor activities, but I'm like, why do I love just going to the gym? Why is that? And that was you know, kind of and I figured out it's a place for self-improvement. No one is there to not be better, right? If that makes sense. Like that's why they're there. And it's just kind of what it's a cool atmosphere, and I think that's something that like um I in its purest form, that's why I love the gym. Like, yeah, there's other days. Well, maybe it's a nice day. Maybe I should go out running instead. I'm like, no, I think I'll go to the gym because I want to be around people who are there to to improve themselves. Um, so it's interesting. I want to go back to a comment you made earlier about, you know, some of the people, some of the gyms and facility owners you're working with are having banner months. What uh have you noticed any correlation or you know, things across the board between those people, why that's happening? Is it location dependent? Is there business practices? Is it you know the adoption of a hybrid model? What what do you what do you think?

I think it's largely due to the location. Now that's not to say that the individuals are not good practitioners because the ones I'm thinking of specifically are good operators. They know what they're doing. And as it's trite, but true that you know, in in business broadly, uh the given environment is unfortunately going to be oftentimes more impactful than the operator. And it's interesting, particularly with training gyms, which I obviously spent a lot of time thinking about. It's one of the things that is so fascinating is it's actually quite tricky to pull apart people. And I mean this like with so much love. I don't mean this to snark as it sounds. It's kind of difficult to pull apart who actually knows what they're doing, because you can have somebody that is just in a weird location in a weird market that's really good and they're just scraping by because they're just got a lot of headwinds. And you can have someone that is in a weird, that is in a just amazing market that is kind of lucked into and they don't really know what they're doing, and who thinks that they're an incredible operator. And, you know, I I guess maybe they're okay. Uh, and in fact, one of my most counterintuitive beliefs, I don't I don't know this to be true, and I'm constantly looking for data for this pet hypothesis, is it one thing I've noticed in the years, so I do a lot of speaking, right? And I go to a lot of events, and I feel often in time the thing that happens is you will find Billy and you'll say, There's Billy. Billy is in a coal miner town, everyone is impoverished there, and Billy's successful. If Billy can do it, you can do it. And it seems to me that there are lots of Billy's. And my pet theory is we've actually got it backwards that you might think that being in an impoverished town is a recipe for disaster and it's very hard. And conversely, you might think that it's also gonna be very difficult in an aggressive, competitive urban market, but maybe not as much. And you might think it's the easiest if you're in a suburb of Cleveland because people have got money and it's not quite as competitive as the city, so maybe that's the best way to go. And purely anecdotal, I have literally no doubt on this. My suspicion is billies tend to do almost the best, particularly with a slightly premium priced training gym. And there are a number of factors that go into that. Number one, you're unlikely to get any competition from any major national brand. Number two, you're you're likely to be the only person in town doing uh a training gym. And for listeners not familiar with that term, I guess I should uh just briefly unpack. A training gym I would define as a training focused fitness studio that offers usually some version of small group personal training andor uh classes slash team slash large group personal training, depending on what verbiage you want to use. So these are not often open access, so they can be part of it, but these are individuals that are paying for coaching. It tends to be a premium product because you're paying to show up for more coaching, more accountability than you would get if you just joined the local health club or the big box gym. So going back to this hypothesis, which could be wrong, dear listener, if you think you have things that to share, please ping me at marketbusmedunicorns.com. I want your data. But it seems that Billy has no competition from the big brands. Billy is not in a place where he's gonna have some sophisticated other independent competition. What Billy's doing is very unique. Billy's clients don't have a lot of opportunity to consider anything else like it because there's not a lot of other things happening in that neighborhood, unless in the event that Billy pisses off a former employee and he opens up a similar version in a close geographic area. Then when you even look at the sustainability and ease of running the business, how much it costs to pay for staff is cheaper, the rent is gonna be cheaper. Sure, the oh it's all relative, right? You're usually doing a lower average revenue per member, but you also don't have a lot of the staff oftentimes always looking over their shoulder. Because in this kind of market, if you're paying somebody pretty well, they're kind of good, you know, they're good to go. Now, there are other downsides of that, of course. It's gonna be you don't have as many opportunities when you're looking for staff. So, again, to be clear, I'm not suggesting this is an easy slam dunk or that everybody should fold up their current facility and go find an impoverished coal miner town. If they do that, they'll be burying themselves in treasure. But I just find this interesting. And in fact, uh also say briefly that I think a suburb of Cleveland strikes me as maybe one of the harder environments to be in because yes, people have more discretionary income. And I'm I again I don't know enough about the demographics. Maybe that's uh not the correct, the correct, exact correct demographic to offer. But I think a more mid-sized metropolitan area, you're gonna have the national brands, you're gonna have the franchises, you're gonna have a higher cost of living, you're gonna have to pay more money for your rent, you're gonna have to pay more for your staff. You need to make more money to have a comparable cost quality of life. And your clients are gonna have these kind of other opportunities to consider. So if they get bored or disgruntled, there are easier other places that they can go. And then the mid-road, I actually think is the more uh commonly considered to be hyper-competitive urban markets. Now, listen, New York is an ugly place to run a business right now. My friends tell me a lot of California is also like not doing so great right now. But on the balance, I can't really complain. There's still, even if like New York empties out, there's still mil literally millions of people that could come to my gym. I feel like, well, geez, like a million people. Yes, there's lots of competition, but uh surely I can get a couple thousand people to come and frequent my facility or my offerings. So anyway, that's a pet theory I share. And uh, I don't know, Eric, if you have any thoughts or if anybody else wants to pop in, it's something I've thought about.

I don't know if that's it's it's fascinating. And I I think if you've ever been an operator, you're always gonna think about this, or if you've ever coached gym owners and been part of that community too. It's like everyone wants to think they have it better or hard or worse than everybody. Most people want to think they have it harder than everybody else, right? Because that way it, you know, there's a reason for way me, maybe you're not hitting your targets or you're not hitting the you know the revenues of a Mark Fisher fitness, right? And I can I'm just reflecting as you're talking, I think it is really fascinating because I'm looking at myself, I'm like, well, I remember working with Chris Cooper, he was my uh business coach for a while when I was running my gym. And he was talking about, well, Eric, here's the and he's he comes, you know, he's got what he's a bill, he had a Billy gym, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. Up in like Northeast Canada, yeah, right. And he's like, Well, you know what you do is, and then you know, if you really want independent wealth, you know, and I was in Santa Barbara, California, like, can you say two different markets? You know, those are yeah, completely different. And he's like, you know, well, you know, maybe you should look at, you know, making these contractors employees, and then you know, look at purchasing your building. I was like, dude, yeah, there's no way with with what I'm making right now that I'm ever gonna buy this building. This is a seven million dollar building. And uh, you know, so and that so you see that those steps to wealth, even though I think about Stu Brouwer who recently announced that he retired and sort of path towards it. I was like, wow, that was it was a really good way to do it. So I think there are there is a lot of different ways to look at it, and it's it's an interesting thing, man, because the location does depend. And, you know, I I think you can be in a fantastic operator, and like you said, you just have some headwinds that maybe you didn't expect and you don't realize they're there because you don't have the um a point of contradiction that you can compare with somebody else.

Yeah, and of course you can't it's it's it's a fascinating thing, man. Yeah, and you can't split test that kind of thing, right? So there's no way really ever to know. So I I can offer a little bit of maybe virtual coaching to listeners. The last thing I want to do is give you permission to be like, oh, it's not gonna work for me. The reality is the principles are still the principles. You may get worse or better results practically because of the circumstance of your environment. And I think it's disingenuous to discount the environment. So the environment doesn't matter at all. It's all your mindsets, the secret, believe in the bike, buy the bike, and you can afford the bike. However, the fact of the matter is the only thing you can ever focus on is what you're gonna do. And and you can concede, can you can compete and still succeed in very difficult markets because somebody's got to win, right? Number one. And then number two, these different markets, they just have different advantages. So for instance, being in New York City, yes, I think it's gonna be unlikely I will ever buy my building. But because of the revenues we're able to do, the amount of just sheer cash flow and assets I'm able to build and then funnel into other wealth-building opportunities, I'm I'm not unhappy about it. Yeah, you know, like I look at, I agree with Stu, uh, Pal Bars. Yeah, I think overall, most people, most markets probably should look into buying it, right? And uh Stu's smart guy, and I think he definitely got in at the right time in the right market, and that was a great play. And I think if you can buy, you should buy. But the reality is, even in New York, uh, like so I might not be able to buy my own building, but the reality is I'm in New York. I most of my friends have lots and lots of means, lots and lots of means. So, for instance, it's very easy for me to get lots of deal flow. So I get a lot of deal flow. I get to look at a lot of different uh real estate investments where I can go in as a limited partner and I just write a big check, and now I'm you know one ex-owner of this $50 million massive multi-unit apartment building in Birmingham, Alabama. So, you know, it's like anything else in life, really. You ideally look to leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. And I think the same thing goes for navigating the challenges of your given environment.

Yeah, well said, man. And it's uh, man, this is really interesting. I feel like I could talk about this for a very long time, but I I do want to uh uh because you teased it a little bit, and I would love to talk about what you're seeing as far as technology, hybrid models, things like that, how you're um maybe you're incorporating them or what you're looking to leverage moving forward. Oh gosh, I'm I'm trying to figure it out, man.

It's a weird, we're gonna it's a weird thing. So as I mentioned, my assumption was That our online virtual platform right now would be toast. By this point, surely 18 months 10, people are not paying $200 a month to do a 35-person Zoom class. And they are. Like hundreds, hundreds of them are, which is great. And it's great for our business. So I'm not sure I can extrapolate that to the world at large. I can only say that my current operating hypothesis about our situation specifically, and then I'll zoom out more broadly for the industry at large, is that New York is just delayed. Just as the ramp up is very, very delayed, that the Zoom thing is going to be here longer. I actually don't think that's going to go away. And my hope is that remains legit revenue stream for us. And that we keep a few hundred people in that and it becomes essentially a virtual clubhouse. And it's obviously a very high margin product. And I think it's good. I think it helps people. And the reality is a lot of people that want to work out at MFF either don't live there or they really like they they value being able to roll out of bed, take class right there in their one-bedroom apartment, and be done for the day. So our plan is to keep that forever. I don't know that that scales. It's not my intention to really try to play in a uh on a national scale with that or try to go in and with a uh very expensive campaign. Because I don't I don't think, frankly, that works outside our community or like one or maybe two degrees from our community. So it certainly allows to capture a lot of people, I think, that have been interested in MFF for a long time or had workers previously. So I'm I'm very happy about that. Um, and I don't mean it's long term. Now, the industry at large, as far as the way tech is going to impact things, my impulse or where I certainly certainly I could say where I want to steward the ship of MFF is the the hub model, right? And this is something that uh a number of people have been talking about. And it's interesting, it it John Bardi several years ago started talking about the health and fitness professional, something like a caseworker. That would be the go-to point, but would also be liberally doing some referring out. And I think that model makes a lot of sense to me. Uh, frankly, we haven't really figured out how to integrate that at MFF because for the most part, people are still paying for access to classes and sessions, which we crush are doing an amazing job of. And I'm working to drive more and more of them into our Unicorn Accountability Coaching Program, which is a more premium price program that allows the coach to really give the more individualized coaching, more accountability, and then help integrate in some cases other things, which could be everything from integrating how we interpret the data, if they if they are using trackers, to help them understand if and how they integrate something like Peloton alongside their other activities. So that I think coach as something of a consultant and something as of an integrator of all the pieces of one's health and wellness is something I'm very interested in. And I expect tech will continue to play an enormous piece of this. And I think we all know the case, even on the most what one might consider. I'm gonna say the word quotidian. I hope that's okay. We're listening. I hope you don't turn me off. Like, I'm not talking about this guy. Please. Oh God. I think we think about even quotidian ways that we leverage tech, right? Of more and more sophisticated CRM platforms. The reality is we're already emailing our clients. A lot of us are already texting our clients. Some of you might have software platforms that allow you to do that. Many of us are already using Google Sheets, we're already using all sorts of, we're using digital software platforms and building platforms. So tech is already integrated and it's likely just going to be more and more pieces of what we're doing. I think the challenge right now, of course, is we've just got all these different softwares out there. And we are now figuring out, and some of the more progressive businesses I know are doing this, they're starting to knit together all these different tools and find ways how to create some algorithms, some if-thens, so the coaching, the suggestions, the recommendations can be informed by these other data points. You know, and we'll see that stuff is stuff is interesting. You know, I would say uh very briefly, as uh interesting anecdote and data point. I used the Oura Ring for a while. And what I'll tell you is I found I found it interesting. I don't think it really taught me often a lot of things I didn't know already. I think it can be a very valuable thing for a lot of individuals. And I think, frankly, as will surprise exactly no one, I am probably a little too type A. It's not a good scene for me because by dint of it being on my finger, it would make me anxiety. I'd get nervous like, what if I can't fall asleep? I'm gonna get a bad sleep score, or what if I get a bad sleep score? So for me, it's not a good fit. I'm I'm probably too driven to achievement, which you know I'll continue to unpack with the help of a licensed therapist. But for I think for many people that don't have similar afflictions, I think it actually would be quite valuable because that type of information can just bring more awareness behaviors that are aren't working for them. And I think, you know, this next scenario should fit as professionals. I think that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna fair ways to knit together the sleep and the nutrition and the heart rate training information and heart rate variability and uh even how much we're lifting, you know, there's just a lot of interesting things going on there right now. I I'm I'm also a little self-conscious. I feel like there's a not zero chance a lot of stuff is gonna pass me by in the next like five to ten years. But I am gonna do my best to keep surfing and keep up with it. But tech is coming, coming fast and hard and interesting things, interesting things because it's not gonna slow down, right? It's not gonna, we're not gonna see a slowing of this tsunami of disruption and new technologies because you're just they're just gonna keep getting better and better year over year. Um and the thing, of course, I'm uh think a lot about lately. My rabbit hole has been this. This is again another little sneak inside my neurotic mind is uh I have just been spending a lot of time reading and researching general and super AI. Uh, and I am gripped by this semi, yeah, maybe like gentle anxiety about the fact that in if super AI is possible, we do not know. But if there are no upper bounds of the creation of inorganic sentient life, invariably it will pass through a level where it's conscious and is vulnerable to humans doing the things that humans have historically done, which is not always be so compassionate about things. So late, I've been like, oh God, I don't want us to torture the AI. So anyway, that was a delightful little jump in my brain bomb listeners.

Yeah, that was great. Have you read uh Ray Kurzweil stuff yet?

Uh yeah, you know, I I I don't think I've actually read any of his books, but I'm very familiar with his stuff. Um of late, I have been checking out. There have been a series of interviews about AI that anybody who's like, wait, what? I would I would direct you to um Ezra Klein, who's a podcast from New York Times, has been interviewing a few people. Uh in particular, there was one he interviewed Sam Altman recently, who runs OpenAI, and it was just deeply deeply fascinating. Deeply, deeply, deeply fascinating. It's one of those things where uh you know, essentially the the real very fast gist of his Ezra Klein, I feel like it's generally questioning this person, being like, but this is a bad idea. Look what we do to animals, look what we do to each other. This is a bad idea. Should we even do this? And it's and then basically everyone else is like, yeah, it's not gonna not happen. It's not gonna not happen. There's no way for it not to happen unless we find a technical bound. There might be a technological bound we find, but yeah, it's out of the bag, it's gonna happen. So it's really just like, how do we hopefully again, how do we leverage strength and mitigate the downsides? Um, and as the saying goes, when they're gods, I hope they're nice gods.

We hope they're nice gods. Well, we'll wrap it up right there, man. I think it was uh such an insightful uh interview. I love these conversations so much. I really look forward to them. Um, Mark, just give us the goods, man. Where do you want people to go online nowadays to check out?

Yes, best place to find me is if you go to businessfunicorns.com or you can go to markfisherfitness.com. I do maintain a presence on Instagram at MarkfisherHumanBing. I am there mostly to respond to direct messages and the occasional resharing of a story, an occasional post of my dog. Uh, and if anyone wants to reach out to me directly, they can they can DM me or email it's great for me. Uh I always love a few bullet pointed questions. You can hit me up at mark at business for unicorns.com.

Right on. Mark Fisher, thank you so much for coming on. Let's uh let's make sure it's not another 18-month span. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minist. 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.