Mark Mastrov - The 24 Hour Fitness Acquisition: Mark Mastrov Returns with Long Range Capital

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the Future of Fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now on to the show. One theme keeps coming up the right technology can make or break your business. That's why I'm thrilled to introduce our new presenting sponsor, Perfect Gym. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days. Between two payment runs, no disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feed is.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. The Future of Fitness Podcast is proudly brought to you by eGim. In an industry full of noise, with more features, more screens, more promises, eGim is focused on something far more meaningful. Progress that counts. EGM is a global fitness technology leader building the infrastructure behind real results. The Open Ecosystem connects smart strength equipment, AI-powered software, and data-driven services to turn fitness into measurable, repeatable progress for members, trainers, operators, and communities. Now what really excites me is how EGM brings its ecosystem together with WellFast, the corporate wellness platform. By combining their strength equipment with AI-powered software and their corporate wellness platform WellFast, they're leading the shift to proactive, preventative health. Isn't that what we all want? That's why we're here.com. All right, here we go. Mark Mastroff, welcome to the Future of Fitness.

Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here today.

I couldn't be more excited. You know, this is a big box to check for me on this podcast. I've been doing this for a long time. And, you know, your name is synonymous with a lot of things about how the industry has grown. You've been integral and orchestrative of so many cycles or trends or um business transaction, like you name it. Like I don't know if for you know from the business side, if there's a bigger name in the industry. So it's an honor to have you here, man. And uh especially in the light of current um transactions and things that you're up to now. Uh there's there's so much to talk about. And I I when I have interviews like this, I like to source questions from colleagues of mine too. Like, hey, I'm gonna interview Mark Masterov, what do you got? And I always get some really interesting ones. So it's gonna be a lot of fun, man. I appreciate you being here.

Great. All right, Eric, let's go.

Yeah, let's do it. Um so you founded 24 Hour Fitness in 1983. Uh you did it with a $15,000 loan from your grandma. It was a single location in San Leandro, California, not too far from where I grew up. Uh then in 2005. So what is that, 22 years later, you sold it for $1.7 billion. And that at the time was the largest fitness industry sale in history. Uh there's 420 clubs, 4.5 million members. And you took a short hiatus if you did. Uh hopefully you went on vacation for a little bit. Then you acquired Crunch Fitness in 2009, and then you scaled that up to 550 plus locations. You sold it to Leonard Green and partners in 2025. And you went on to, well, overall, okay, so a bunch of these, you have over a thousand fitness locations globally, and that's across 50 different brands. You introduced 24-hour access, month-to-month membership, electronic billing, multi-club personal training model. You founded UFC Gym, Planet Fitness Russia, Energy Fitness Chile, Mrs. Sporty Germany, California Fitness Asia, SATS Europe, Fitness World, Canada. You're a co-founder of NRG Esports, along with Andy Miller, one of the world's largest esports companies. You were a former co-owner of the Sacramento Kings, I think from 2013 to 2021. You are the founder of New Evolution Ventures, a Las Vegas-based PE firm focused on health fitness industry. And now in January 2026, you have reacquired 24-Hour Fitness with long-range capital, returning as owner executive chair 20 years after selling. Did I miss anything?

There's some stuff in between, but I think you nailed the the highlights and just shows how old I am, how long I've been around. But uh yeah, pretty damn good summary.

Okay. Okay, good. Well, I'll uh I'll take that. So I think the first question, man, is like all this tracker that we just went over. I'm always curious with people like you. I presume you know you could quietly get on a sailboat and just enjoy the rest of your life, right? Why jump back in? Like, why is this timing so noteworthy for you? And what what's what's the overall motivation? What drives you to do something like this?

Yeah, I mean, great question. I mean, I I'm entrepreneurial at to the core. I love building businesses, I really enjoy it. You know, we spent a lot of time developing Crunch and the franchise system and got that up to a point where we finally exited with Leonard Green this summer. And when I came off that exit, you know, I left the board. I sat back and said, you know, what's next? I thought, you know, I have a pretty good relationship with Carl Sant, who's the CEO at 24. He's called me multiple times, like, hey, at some point we're going to come to market. Would you be interested in buying it? And so I reached out to Carl and said, Look, uh, I'm a free agent. I just sold crunch. Although I rolled a bunch of equity in the New Deal, I'm off the board and I can kind of do what I want to do. So he said, let's get after it. So we teed up a conversation with the group that had the equity and uh spent the next couple months negotiating a term sheet. And I went out and raised the capital, got the debt done at the end of the year, and brought long-range capital in with me and were able to acquire the business. I'm excited to work with Carl. I really like what he's done, how he's kind of taken the business and stabilized it, grown it again. And I do think there's a big opportunity there for that company to resurrect. And then part of me was really wanting to finish what I started. When we sold the company in 05, I had no intent to leave, and all the buyers wanted me to stay. But the person who ended up acquiring a company felt like he could run it without me and said, look, you can stay on the board, which I did for three years until 2008, and then I left and and uh acquired Crunch and went down a different path. But make a long story short, I always had a big plan for 24 and I was able to be able to complete it, and now I'm looking forward to having that opportunity.

All right on. Have you worked with Carl in the past, or is this the uh the first go-around for you guys?

I had never worked with them, but when he got the CEO position, he made a call to me and he called me up and said, Hey, can I can I have lunch with you? Can we get together? And so we did, and we formed a relationship. And I stayed pretty friendly with everybody in the industry. I'm not one of those guys that views a person as a competitor. I view them as you know, somebody that we're gonna compete with and a foe, but I always like everybody for what they do. So no matter what brand, I mean, I'm happy to take the calls, sit and talk, shop a little bit, and and have an open book for that.

Yeah, and uh that goes along with a lot of what I've heard about you, Mark, is that you're generally just a good dude and you talk to people and you treat people well. Um so that's uh you know, that's definitely a credit to you. When you look at like when you sold 24 and now re-engaging in 2026, obviously times are different, right? Trends come and go, but when you look at 24 back then and 24 back right now, like what are some of the biggest key differences, not only in like how the organization and the business is being run, but also in the marketplace in general?

Yeah, great question. I mean, uh obviously there's been a tremendous amount of innovation the last couple of decades. What 24 we were building was, I think, pretty innovative in the late 90s, early 2000s. We were rolling pretty well, building big boxes with a lot of amenities. But you know, subsequent to that, the market has shifted and changed. And 24 has done some shifting and changing, but probably not as they would like. And so as you look at the current facilities, they have great bones, they have big facilities with great rents, they have a lot of great locations and a multitude of markets. So now we got to kind of go back in and renovate, update, and modernize. And so I just spent last week hidden Texas and the East Coast. Uh this week I'm heading up to Washington, Oregon, or Colorado, and I'll work most of California after that. I'll try and touch everybody I can, see all the boxes I can, help the team kind of start to map out, kind of, you know, I'd be telling everybody it's got here's where we were, here's where we are, where do we want to go? And we've got to map that out. And I think there's a big opportunity for the company, and and I'm pretty, pretty stoked so far from what I've seen. Great people, really dedicated, hardworking, really good facilities. We just need to do some renovations and then bring in some additional amenities.

Yeah, you know, I remember very clearly, I'm old enough to remember like uh the boom of 24. I just remembered I lived in I grew up in San Jose, California.

Okay.

Uh or right outside of it. There was times when there was like a ballet of 24 hour fitness and LA Fitness, all within a block, right? And it was just that that phase of that time that that was particular genre of gyms was just booming. And I we're we're we're kind of seeing it again. Don't you agree in the the high HVLP sector? Like is that does it remind you of those days a little bit, or where how are you feeling about it?

Yeah, I mean, there's some phenomenal operators that are super well capitalized and have kind of got the secret sauce going right now. And so there's a few of the crunch franchisees are doing phenomenal work. I love what Rich is doing at EOS. I think those guys are rolling very aggressively right now. There's some smaller regional players that are starting to open up to get into six, eight, ten locations with a differentiated model. And there's some regional HVLP guys out there that do really good work too. So it's an exciting time, I think, for consumers, you know, to have that alternative of different brands to create more convenience. It helps us, you know, have impact and change people's lives in a positive way.

How do you think the consumer's changed since you started 24-Hour Fitness? I mean, it's it has, especially generationally. There's there's a lot of different needs and demands and on what people are willing to pay for, what they're not going to pay for. So, I mean, is there I know it's a difficult question to answer in a short period of time, but what are some of the high points of how they've changed?

Yeah, it's it's the question I love kind of tackling because pre-pandemic, you know, we kind of were, you know, servicing everybody, all ages, all levels, up and down the ladder. Post-pandemic, a little bit of the older crowd stayed away. They said, look, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, disease and spread, and I'm not comfortable being in classrooms and tight rooms and cycle rooms. So they were basically taking care of themselves. But the young generation came in in droves, you know, the call the 16 to 25 to 30, you know, Gen Z, Gen X, those guys have been coming in like nothing we've ever seen before. It kind of reminded me of like the 90s when a lot of young people were getting into fitness. It's kind of a resurrection. So that's been pretty awesome to watch. And then longevity's kind of kicked in, right? So you've seen the GLP1s come out and affect weight loss for people and help people shed weight. And then, of course, the doctors are telling everybody that they've got to lift, they've got to do some kind of strength training along with that weight loss so it doesn't eat their muscle because eventually it's going to get down to protein as there's no fat left in the body. So people have to come work out, get in shape, and the gyms have started to see the GLP1 crowd come in. It's a little bit of a shift uh right now, and it's still settling in, but I would call it a little bit of medical, a little bit of youth, uh has really driven the industry to a higher level than they've seen.

The medical ones, it's really interesting. And I'm I'm kind of fascinated this year with the integration of medicine and fitness. I've been interviewing a lot of different models, and people are kind of pioneering that. Is that something that you guys are going to look to leverage a little bit in the 24-hour model?

Yeah, it's a it's something we're focused on. I mean, obviously NADs, GLP1s, peptides, uh IV therapy, these are all things that consumers are looking for. They're finding it, but they want to find it more readily, you know, alongside their workout. So you've seen some of the brands out there, Lifetime Equinox and others start to go after this. I think you're seeing more folks like us and others doing the same in the years ahead. And I think it's going to be a one-stop shop as you get into the facility. You can do your recovery work inside there with great recovery equipment, and then you can kind of head into the medispa if you want to enhance your body, your workouts, learn more. Everybody should be doing a chem panel on a quarterly, at least a semi-annual basis, going and getting their blood work just to make sure their body's functioning well. Everybody should try and get a body scan. They're coming down in price, and it helps you kind of see what's happening on the inside of your engine, and then you can get after it, put programs together to help enhance and improve your circulatory system, your mental health as everything else that we're trying to focus on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Do you think the messaging changes? I mean, I I wrote an article about this. People, it seemed to stir some thought of are we selling, like we we've been a fat loss industry for a long time. I mean, if we're being honest, right? We we sold fat loss for many decades. So and now it's it's changing to health and people want it, and it's awesome. It's a great time to be in the industry. But do you think we need to shift kind of our language and our marketing away from fat loss? Because GLP one's kind of the fat loss option now. It's option number one, right? So, how do you think that changes with how our industry should should message the consumer about their fat loss endeavors?

Yeah, it's it's a delicate line that we have to walk because we're not the trusted source, we're not the medical industry, we're the health and wellness industry, but we have a lot of intrinsic knowledge and we have a lot of people with experience through our member base that have gone through the channel to try to understand how to enhance their body and enhance their system inside, right? I call it the cardiovascular system. So for us, it's just kind of continuing to learn and to educate and hopefully be a trusted source. You know, as we've got our advisory committees and different folks that are kind of guiding us as we go forward. But it's an interesting time because everything's starting to morph and merge a little bit. Recovery, med, medispa, all that's coming together. And I think those that conquer that are going to be in a better position to serve our members and consumers.

Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned um your advisory committee. I haven't seen a whole lot on that. Maybe I missed it somewhere, but can you give us a little bit of insight into who you have sitting at that table?

Yeah, so we we've got a bunch of folks that we talk to, and at 24, I'm starting to meet everybody. Folks from the wellness industry, longevity industry, um, people that can help with health and wellness, even the fitness industry. So we're starting to formulate that and add more bodies to it. Something we've always done. I've always had that with our brands is have some advisory out there to kind of look over our shoulder, kind of keep us in tune with latest trends and point us in the right direction.

Yeah, very cool. The one of the things that I've noticed in my career here is over the last two years is the amount of private equity coming in. It's it I didn't know, Mark, I'll be honest, I didn't know anything about investing, uh investment dollars, like how the different categories between venture and private equity and like what it all means until I this podcast, every I I had to learn it over the last three or four years because it's becoming so just common language. So when you look at like the what does it mean to you to see this much private equity? And when you looked at um long-range capital as a partner, how did you select them?

Yeah, great question. I mean, it's it's really interesting because there's a lot of private equity groups that have doubled down and come into the industry, you know, and they've taken TSG, they did a phenomenal job taking Planet Fitness and growing it, taking it public, selling out, and then they just came back and invested behind the OS. Take a look at Leonard Green. They had a lot of experience in Health and Wellness space, having invested in Lifetime, and they came in behind Crunch. Catterton has invested in so many platforms I can't keep track. Rourke the same. So, you know, a lot of private equity folks that have done well, North Castle, et cetera, who have studied this industry have found, you know, success in it. And I think they've all realized that the key is to back a great founder, somebody that has been in the business that they can stay behind, which I think is super important. And so here at long range, you know, I kind of went out and talked to a bunch of different private equity groups that I knew, and I really just like Bob Berlin and Sonny Patel and the folks there. I think they're phenomenal. They've got a lot of experience in the restaurant industry. They love fitness, they've been around fitness, they know fitness. So I thought they could add a lot of value uh to the company. So I thought they'd be a great partner and fortunate to have them.

One of the uh buzzwords so far for this year is consolidation across the industry. I think maybe I don't I don't know. I don't know if it's true or not, but if people like to talk about it, you know, you can see it from all the headlines, of course. But I also look at it a little bit of maturation. Maybe our industry is really starting to mature into a major industry, hence the private equity and things like that. But when you look at our industry, because you've seen some cycles go through, where do you think we are right now? Are we, you know, if if we're not quite full-grown adults, right? As some of these major industries may be. So where where do you see us right now? How would you describe it?

Yeah, so often, you know, if you take HFA, which is one of the big industry groups, they'll talk around 20 to 22% of the population are in fitness facilities. I think it's even higher than that. I think you've got some markets in the 30s. So the upside's still there uh for us as an industry. We have to do a better job at servicing and maintaining the facilities so that people stay long term. We have to be convenient, we have to have network. And when you join one, you get a couple hundred, not just two or three. So people can travel and and use facilities wherever they go. And then you have to bring innovation in. So if you take a look and do all those things, I think the market is still maturing and has a nice runway ahead of it for the next five to ten years. I know there's a lot of talk around luxury and people want to spend more money and they want to get into higher-end brands, but that's not necessarily the case. That's again the higher population that's gonna spend three or four hundred dollars a month, is not as deep as the population that's gonna spend under 40.

I guess on a contrarian point of view, when we look at private equity coming in in droves into the industry, is there any uh anything we need to be cautious of when that happens?

Yeah, as far as an industry or as an individual company Both. As an industry, both. As an industry, you know, you you kind of want to sit out there and make sure that the private equity folks coming in are are willing to get behind the teams that they invest behind and help them develop and be patient with them. It's not our three or five year term, you know, it's a kind of stick in this thing for six, eight, ten years and let it grow and mature, and then hand it off to another group if you care to that can take it to the next level. The private equity guys that are in this industry now are pretty damn sharp. They generally have young people on who get fitness, who have been around fitness, who have invested around fitness, and so they know it a little bit. So that's super helpful too. Uh the folks I've talked to are pretty experienced everywhere you look, and most people are very, very patient. Um, we're gonna help them not lever the companies up too highly. It's not like you make an acquisition and put a bunch of debt on it. You're gonna try and equitize it so it's got low, low debt ratios, and then have the ability to use cash flow to grow from. That's that's always the model that we've deployed and really enjoyed. I think most are heading in that direction. So I I feel the industry's pretty healthy right now.

Yeah, interesting. You know, I had a I'm sure you know Pete Moore uh from Halo Talks podcast, and he he gave a warning on this podcast about six months ago. out to independent operators, like the time of private equity and these large franchise groups are coming in. And basically his thing was like if you're a local independently owned gym and someone comes knocking on your door and says, hey, we want to buy you. We want to turn you into a crunch or any else or something, it's like you should sell. How do you feel like the market is for those, like the independents, the single operated, the family-owned gyms?

Yeah, and it's a it's a great question. It's all about the real estate. It's all about the competitive landscape of the market. If you're in a town that's only got one strip center and you're the anchor, you're probably fine. If you're sitting in Plano, Texas, where three crunches have opened, three EOS is open, you've got two 24-hour finises nearby, a bunch of other brands, it's going to be a little bit tougher. So it depends where you sit. If you go back to like one of the legends in this industry, Ray Wilson, back in the 50s and 60s, he used to say that he would pull up to a club and say, look, I want to buy you. But if you don't want to buy you, I'm opening up across the street right there, you're going to have to compete with me. And he would try to drive price down and acquire through that kind of method. I don't think that works anymore. You know, for Mama Pops it's a nice chance to potentially realize an exit, which isn't easy when you have one, two or three locations. And if you can get a couple people bidding on it, your multiple might come up and you might might earn more. But I love the Mama Pops. I think that's what I call them with folks that have you know call it under five that have been around for 10, 20, 30 years, have great product, they have great member bases that they lean on. As long as they're investing and and innovating they should be fine. But never hurts to talk if someone knocks on your door have the conversations. That's always my advice never hurts.

I think of so locally I live in Whitefish Montana here and uh we have the Whitefish Wave which I always give them like to give them a shout out uh nonprofit status but they're you know community based thing and I just I met with the um I was talking to the general manager art and I asked him how many members you guys like we have 9600 members. Now here's the thing whitefish has 9,000 people living in the town.

So that's a pretty healthy operation I'd say that's everybody in town and every vacationer and they're the only in town probably so that model works really well. We've seen that over and over again small towns with limited strip centers populations of 10 to 25,000 can perform super well. It's when you get into the bigger markets and there's a lot of empty boxes like in Texas and California where they've got a lot of businesses closed, people can pick up a 30 or 40,000 square foot box and be right across the street from you. You know shiny new is hard to compete against there's there's ways to do it but it's difficult. And so you really have to strategize to think like okay do I want to gut it out and can I hang on or am I better served by finding the potential acquirer one of the things I want I want to definitely get your insights on is like the different sectors of the industries.

Boutique I mean you you've seen many cycles right these things seem to come like I was talking about when I was young it was like the boom of what we would call now HVLP. There was a 24, there's an LA there's a Bally's everywhere and I feel like boutique has really had a moment over the last decade and a half especially you know if you look at the evolution of spin and now Pilates and like all these different things. So when you compare or look at the boutique sector is there anything that comes to mind as far as like how are they doing I've heard and I've heard mixed messages. Some people say there's strong headwinds other people say no we're doing great. But is the Pilates carrying it? So when you look at that particular sector of the industry what are some of the thoughts that come to mind?

Yeah for me it's rent. I mean the the boutique industry taking down 2500 to 6,000 square feet is just all about the rent factor and then competitive landscape after that. So if you're doing Pilates and there's six Pilates studios in two miles, you're really gonna have to excel with your your instructors. I call it Google in the house I mean who are the people that are really driving the program for you and maintaining keeping those people long term. There's a lot of great boutiques out there a lot of great small boxes. I really love Solid core they're on fire right now doing phenomenal work. Really really hard workout which seems to hit the nerve for the younger audience they want to be competing against each other in a room so they've been lighting it up obviously um you've got some of the older brands out there that you have to kind of take a look at decide if they're going to have a long term ability to stay. But obviously as I step back I think stretching has been big Pilates has been big's kind of softening a little bit and I think that those brands are all going to hang on. But you know for time being to me I always look at the rent what's your rent in that box that you have that you're going to try and get 300 members to pay you $150 a month or more. If the rent factor is good and you can keep your labor down then you got a good shot to to do well.

Yeah well said I probably make the case for investing in the mid-tier you know uh because you and I talked about this right before recording as opposed to HVLP or luxury uh the middle of the gym market has been somewhat shrinking for about the last 10 to 15 years and this is uh I want to credit Alex and Alanistiano for for this question too. He was he chimed in uh in helping me prepare for this so yeah tell us about the the mid-tier what what's your what's your observations there?

Yeah I mean it's it's you got to define mid-tiers if you take a look at HVLP and you say okay let's just take the the two uh big boys uh crunch and planet they they sell memberships into the low 30s they're probably averaging in the mid to high 20s per member they're not selling $10 memberships everybody because that just gets them basic fitness from what I see and what I hear everybody's you know collecting a lot higher number per month so they're let's call them mid-20s and then if you look at the middle is the middle 30 to 50 probably that would be the middle I would guess and there's a handful of groups playing in there that are performing well and then now you've got the the new box which is bigger aimed at the bodybuilder aimed at the Gen Z Gen X crowd a lot of varieties of equipment cool lighting and they're charging high 70s and getting it all day long. So I think the middle is going to start to come back I think that people are going to be willing to pay $35 to $45 to get really strong recovery centers, ball courts, swimming pools, you know, a variety of amenities, long hours that 24 is example offers, you know, that round the clock service and then network. So if you're in an HVLP or box that's got 12,000 members that's great but you may get tired of waiting in line so you may say look I want to bump up to something that's got six to eight thousand members that's not super busy that's in a bigger location bigger box and then go there. Flip side is you know you've got some of the HVLP guys building these big boxes 40 and 50 60 7000 square feet and still charging that $10 to $30 range and pounding in a ton of people so you're gonna have to make sure that you can compete with that but so far you're not seeing the HVLP folks build courts and pools and wet areas or staying out of that. So it does give you an opportunity to service another crowd and I think there's a big market there.

How about longevity? So we've it's it's ubiquitous as a term right I feel like it the definition is still a little I guess ambiguous at best. But what what I've noticed after a lot of different interviews is like the the business model of longevity hasn't quite no one's quite got it yet, right? Like especially and it's it's notoriously difficult to scale I mean I mean I'm sure you know a lot of like the the operators, you know the Human Health or you know multiple ones where it's like you get medical Miora um from lifetime, you get this medical integration and it just becomes more challenging and more complex to scale. So when you look at the longevity um movement and what it means for our industry is like I guess maybe who are some operators that you're looking at and you're like, okay, keep an eye on them. They seem to know what they're doing. They may be pushing us forward on this and then what are some of the challenges that you've noticed and do you think it's real do you think it's a real opportunity for us as an industry to leverage I mean everybody's focused on longevity.

I mean if you take the baby boomers which is that older crowd now call it uh mid-60s to mid-80s that that group is trying to stick around and stay longer. You know I I go in the gyms all the time I run into people like hey how old do you think I am like I don't you look like you're 70. I'm 85 and they're just vibrant training hard working out hard and they're focused on longevity rights the GLP1s, GLP3s have played a role there. Peptides, NADs are starting to kick in a little bit, doctors are starting to get more flexible with prescribing that as it goes forward. Hopefully FDA approval on the horizon. So from that standpoint I think longevity has a lot of opportunity especially now that the industry's starting to focus on recovery whether it's red light, hyperbaric, coal plunge, all the different varieties of things that are really cool that people are interested in or you know on the flip side, you know, the med side which we talked about a little bit. As far as who's doing well there, there's nobody on a national scale or even a big regional scale that's really focused on it. A lot of it's social media you know you sit there and once you hit your feed and they see the algorithms that you stop for a few seconds to listen to somebody talk about longevity, they start sending you more and more so you start to learn there's a lot of folks out there with a lot of opinions but nobody's really settled in. And as I mentioned earlier there's not a trusted source out there. Who do you go to what do you really want to find out about it and can even prescribe to what they're recommending. But we all know the food in the United States is not as healthy as it should be you know we we listen to what uh JFK's sitting there and and Robert's been saying around health and compared to Europe, you know, where we might have 200 ingredients allowed for our bread and they might only have 30. I know that if I'm in Europe and I eat bread I don't ever feel like I feel like I'm in the United States. We also have to book at the food pyramid and talk a little bit about what we're gonna do to improve that you know as we look at longevity too.

Yeah. I want to get back to 24 hour fitness here. So as you look at this thing obviously you don't get into anything unless you're looking to scale right and when you look at the revenue growth opportunities within this model I feel like there's a lot. Like it's it's a great it's a great brand it needs a little shining up right of of the brand but there's so much already in there that you can pull as far as levers. So when you look at major revenue growth opportunities, I mean what are you looking at? Membership growth price increases U.S. unit growth international expansion ancillary services like what are some of the things you're eyeballing early?

Yeah so if you talk about 24, I mean what's the plan? And you kind of mentioned earlier we kind of know where we were where we are and we've got to kind of map out with the team where we want to go and we're still in process on that. Only been in there about a month now but we're we're slowly getting there. I think then the next piece to your question is okay, you know, what's what are the opportunities? So I think uh remodeling and and reinvesting our facilities is priority number one, which we put a ton of capital on the balance sheet to do that. So we're already starting that process of of walking through all the facilities talking about what we need to do to renovate, remodel and modernize, bring in new equipment, new amenities, more recovery equipment, et cetera and then the next piece is probably pricing to take a little bit of a look at the way that we price and the way we represent our memberships and move towards the modern style and update, clean up and make it simple for our teams and then put in a great reward system. That's always what I've been about pay people extremely well, motivate them, keep them happy and hopefully retain them long term. That's a big component as well.

Yeah yeah it's gonna be interesting to see what you with that you know what kind of here's a it's this is actually kind of a personal question for me too. When you look at people in the industry who are maybe love it, right, passionate about it, great operators, maybe they have a single location, but they see stuff like this going on, right? Private equity involved, major scale of a category and they're like, I want to up myself to the next level of of business. I want to start you know working um you know towards private equity and start understanding that becoming more of a rounded industry. And I think what I'm getting at here is that um we pull a lot of leadership from our industry from outside. And we rarely kind of grow within right we don't kind of move people up to a point where they could be you know a CEO of one of these major companies at 24 or anything like that.

So when you look at how talent and management and entrepreneurship is being developed within our industry where do you think we could be doing better and how would you encourage people to to level up yeah so it's it's a really interesting question that I kind of my answer is pretty straightforward probably had have heard it before but my philosophy always has been to replace myself with better people to do what I'm doing have someone do it better. It's a no-brainer to just constantly do that. I kind of grew up in an HR household my father was an HR in the early days never made a lot of money doing it but he was passionate about it so people skills were important. So I've always felt like I'm gonna develop people up and out. Jim Rowley came in as a you know salesperson worked his way through the whole system eventually became president to half the company at 24 hour after he left 24 hour I kind of picked him up on free agents we partnered together and then we went and acquired Crunch and then after a period of time Jim stepped in full time as a CEO and he's run that business. Chris Smith was with us at 24 regional personal training development position where he ran the training and and the performance for personal trainers in in the Pacific Northwest. And when he left I picked him up and put him up into Canada so he's a CEO up there, chairman of HFA, phenomenal operator doing extremely well Adam Sedlack, again another person mentored through the 24 hour system he grew all the way up, finally left, picked him up he's CEO at UFC Gym and I can go on and on and on. My goal in life has been to help people become great at what they do. And I can point to leaders all over the world. Nicholas Bornstrom was working with me at SATS and when we sold SATS he says look I want to partner with you. So he came and lived with me for about a year and he went back and decided to build a business called Mrs. Sporty with Steffi Graff and he grew that to almost 600 locations. So I think that's kind of the give back and I've always been very focused on that I could give you 20 names from Frank Alighari to Kim Funk to Selena Short and Luciano Alfrique. Just so many, so many great people other folks in the industry don't look at it that way. They don't want to develop somebody to become what they might consider to be their competitor. And so they just haven't looked to do it. Where since the beginning of time that's all I've ever focused on is to help people live to their dreams. And I'm not focused on the money I'm focused on kicking ass and winning. That's what I focus on.

Hell yeah I love that answer. That was fantastic. Yeah you're like uh our industry's version of the Bill Walsh coaching tree right you uh kind of start and develop people along the way and sure they're gonna go and coach somewhere else and maybe play in the Super Bowl someday but uh it's it's just good for for the industry. It's it's that's great.

It's very refreshing to hear it'll make you laugh but Bill Walsh was on my board of directors for many years. I used to sit around with him for hours picking his brains. How was that? Things I learned about helping develop and getting people launched so that they could have success you know Bill played a role in that you know I love Bill. He was awesome.

He had a he had a great book that I when I was really into my coaching literature that I read I can't remember the name of it but it was right up there with Bill Walton and a lot of other ones it was just so good. Just the the the philosophy you realize how core philosophy is to not just business and coaching but life and everything and having a a clearly distinguished philosophy on what you do is is so um it's so critical.

I mean it sounds like you have that have you ever like written down on paper like what your philosophy your personal philosophy and business is yeah I I I have a philosophy and I have notes and I keep a journal and I kind of watch the way I think you know as I change as I evolve you know I I feel like I have to reinvent myself at all all the time. I I've got four kids between the ages of 17 and 24 so it's kind of cool to listen to them what they think is going on out there. My daughter's a you know big time Pilates person. You know she'll take a solid core class every day if she can she gets after it my boy I have three boys they're all big lifters most that play collegiate athletics my daughter was a D1 athlete my sons are D1 athletes and so I get to see the sports side of the world. So it's been fun to kind of get a feel for what's really out there and allows me to keep my finger on the pulse which is what keeps me motivated excited.

Yeah right on that's great. I think you've done everything in this industry Mark besides run a public company. Is there any personal ambition to do something like that?

Yeah I mean great question. It's I've taken companies public but I've never really run one. Our industry is somewhat punitive unless you're a franchise model like Crunch or Planet or a real estate model like Lifetime is somewhat punitive because of the the accounting methodology around gap accounting. So when a person enrolls and pays enrollment fees or joint fees et cetera you have to amortize that over the life of the average member if a member sticks around with you for five, six seven years, you've got amortized over that period of time which ends up pounding your your gap in your net income number so you're not as quite as attractive. And that came many years ago out of the software industry and we're a service industry and why we fall in that category who knows and we've tried to get it to change but the IRS has just basically said no freaking way so it's hard to get to become a public company. You can do it if you've got an asset light model like a franchise business where you just bring in royalties you don't own a lot of your product you know at the same time you can't sell a lot of prepaid business and a lot of clubs do. You have to focus on monthly only it's a round of philosophy it can be done there's folks that have done it but it's not easy not easy at all.

I had um Anthony Geisler on here just a few weeks ago and I think it'll probably go publish one or two episodes before this when I asked him what he would do over again with exponentially it's like I wanted to he jokes like I want to take it public number one.

That was it was it was it was Yeah yeah I know Anthony I bought a company from him once he worked with me for a while so I know him pretty well he's done quite well yeah half joking dead serious I think was the how he said it okay so what about you brought up RFK Jr earlier so I'll poke on that one a little bit.

How are you feeling about Maha? Like are are they how are they doing are they are they living up to expectations for industry or do you think there's things they could be doing better from that movement. So say again who am I thinking about which who is it again? RFK Jr and the the make America healthy again and yeah the political side of things here.

I mean I try not to play politics I just try to look at it from face value. I think he's done some really good things getting fluoride out of the water I think is really important. I think changing the way that we look at food I'm not an expert on shots whether measles shots are shots, you know, are the white ones I know that if you have my wife on here that she's an anti-shot person, she doesn't think the kids need to take quite as many as they have and as young as they were taking them. So she's always kind of stretched out and tried to wait for them to mature a little bit more before they took anything if they did. So everybody's got a different philosophy but shaking up that whole area I think has been good. I don't think he's caused enough noise where anybody's really saying hey he's done a bad job. I think he's done a really good job. From what I can see so far I like a lot of things that he's done. None of us are ever going to agree 100% with somebody else says but I think I think from what I can see I I think he's done pretty well so far.

Okay. Right on. I mean is there anything that comes you mentioned the fluoride uh is there anything that comes to mind that you've really liked what they've done you know that that that's coming down the pike? Yeah.

I think there's a lot of folks out there trying to do what Anthony Geisler's doing trying to amalgamate a bunch of brands and and operate and run those I don't think that's very easy. I think there's folks out there like Fitlab, you know, with Mike Melby and those guys who have gone out to acquire companies and bring them in but then have not paid the people the money that they're owed. And so I think that you know some folks are trying to stretch a little bit and are undercapitalized. I think that causes harm to the industry. I think that when you go and buy something and you owe somebody you know the payment for that business and you're supposed to pay them over time and then you don't and they end up in disputes and litigation and it hits the press it's not good for any of us. So I I worry about some of those guys out there. But overall super healthy industry a lot of really great operators what we learned at 24 in round one was don't grow too fast. And there are some folks growing very fast right now. And why I say that is it's not about building and operating it's about your team can you stretch and double your organization from two to four or from 100 to 200 and still have processes in place and training in place and high quality people in place that have experience or you just throw in anybody you can hire somebody out of T-Mobile say come on in this is your gym that it's not an easy business and it's a consumer facing business. That's the one thing I always tell people is take your time when you grow grow warehouse ahead have people you can grow all day long. But if you don't you know you could you could end up getting you know bite in the rear end.

Yeah interesting so I don't get off a podcast recording without talking about artificial intelligence. So I'm sure it's on your mind it has to be you probably use it already three times today. What are the you know there there's trepidation across multiple industries. You know I look at even what my wife does uh she's a VP of operations And we're like, well, I've probably got a couple more years before that that changes completely. I guess a couple points of of the AI conversation is um where do you think the biggest opportunities are immediately for operators within the scope of AI? And then, you know, maybe it's it's it's an impossible question to answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. It's like, you know, in the next three to five years, what do you think are some of the more predictable impacts that artificial intelligence will have on our industry?

Well, I mean, there is talk that it could be 30% of the workforce out of jobs because of artificial intelligence. I don't think that's anytime soon, but there definitely is an impact from that. And maybe it will emerge and create more jobs, hard to say. If you look at our industry, I think we're fairly protected because, you know, unless people have decided to do hologram training at home, which they might, you know, unless they want to do VR training at home, they're still going to get to the gym and it's gonna be community and motivation and great music and phenomenal equipment, classes, all the things that kind of have fun to get you out of the house. It's kind of like in a pandemic, I I wanted to get out of my house, and the gym is a place I wanted to go. So I think we're in a pretty good position. On the flip side, from a business standpoint, so look, you you're looking at a real estate site, you can ask, you know, whoever you like, ChatGPT, what do they think about the location, it's gonna give you an answer. You can get a lease from a landlord and throw it in the chat, it's gonna give you an answer. Brock, chat, whoever you like. Um if you're talking about how you want to sell memberships, market memberships, AI is playing a role there already. So it's touching every component of what we do. It answers your phones, it schedules appointments for you, it makes you more efficient. Um, from an HR standpoint, everything that you're trying to do. So you still have to have smart people operate it and run it and make sure they siphon through it. You still have to double check the work because it's not 100% accurate. But I think each day you're finding little nuances of ways to leverage AI to make your business operate better. And I think that in the next two or three years it's gonna enhance and and make all industries, especially ours, a lot tighter. But the stepback for me is that I think we're in a really great space. I think that that's why private equity is starting to invest more and more around health and wellness, is that you know, we're not going away. We're gonna be here long term. And provided we're doing good work for our members and our in our consumer communities, we've got nothing but blue sky.

Yeah, right on. Is there any what about you personally with with AI? Is there any specific use cases that you find valuable? Do you do you prefer a grok over a Cloud or a Chat GPT? Or how do you use it on your day-to-day?

Yeah, I mean, everything. There's great AI on the media side too, right? So you can pick up platforms and do editing. I mean, I got friends that take pictures and they throw all kinds of crap and they're to make you laugh that they can pull off the web and and drop into the AI mechanisms. We use a lot of chat, you know, then there's a bunch of people using new software that's come out. But I'm agnostic to everybody. Whatever looks interesting, I kind of play with a little bit when I have time. And then I lean on my kids, I ask my kids, what are you using? How are you using it to study in school? You know, I've got a uh one college and one high school kid, and I've got two out of college. How are you using it out of college at all? They're using it for booking travel as an example. My daughter's like, I just go on and book travel. It does it before me more efficiently than a travel agent. It's cheaper and easier, and everything's done very quickly. So they keep finding ways to improve. They learn from each other, they sit in rooms and talk. My daughter goes to the uh Alo Yoga facility in in LA when she's down there, and they come in and have meetings with people and educate and talk about the latest trends, and so she's picking stuff up from them. So overall, I just think we're all moving forward trying to learn what AI can be and which platform is the best today. But like I said, I'm somewhat agnostic, I'll use them all and continue to see what evolves.

Yeah. I I'm always kind of playing little experiments, doing one, putting the same query into one and then into another and seeing how they differ. I think it's it's uh, you know, maybe not the best use of time, but it is quite interesting, that's for sure. Uh, you know, we went, my wife and I went to Japan last year, and it was a three-week trip between ChatGPT for planning, Google Translate while we were there, and Google Maps for getting around. Uh, it was so ridiculously easy that I it felt like cheating. I'm so used to having to do all this preparation and reading the right books and looking through guides and all this stuff. I'm like, it can't be this. But it was. It was it was ridiculous. It's crazy. Yeah, it is wild. Crazy times live in. So, Mark, last question I always ask people on this show is in the spirit of collaboration, right? What do you need help with right now? If people are gonna listen to this podcast and are like, you know, they want to get in touch with Mark. Um, is there anything specifically you would like to hear from people about?

I'm always looking for great people in all positions. And so the beauty of 24 is that they've spent a lot of time kind of layering out costs and now we're adding back in. So we've got a lot of opportunity there for every position you could think of. So that's always great. I think help-wise, it's really taking a look at what what's coming down the road, trying to be innovative and stay ahead. So if you've got something really interesting, something in the innovation space, whether it's a piece of equipment or a class you think would be really interesting, whether it's a new recovery item that you want to have. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the shift wave chairs. Yeah, very cool. Something that's innovative and new, you know, bring it to us because we want to play with it, experiment with it. You've got, you know, frame Pilates out there who's building these really awesome kind of Peloton Pilates systems now where you can take them at home with screens that give you 100 classes. You know, every day there's something cool that you'll run across, like, wow, that's awesome. Uh uh, I gotta try it. So if you come to my house, I got so much stuff here. My wife's constantly yelling at me to clear the room out. But I like to try new things, experiment. So anything anybody's got, I'm wide open to having that conversation.

Right on. Right on, Mark. Well, um, and where should people go? You know, is there a website or do you want them to follow you somewhere? Or yeah, where would you like people to go?

You can get me anybody the email is the easiest. It's m-a-r-k-s- at nev.com. So pretty straightforward. I I'll get back to you.

Right on. Awesome. Well, I hope you get a flood of those emails. Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure, man. Really appreciate it. It's an honor to have you here, and um, I'm sure we'll uh hopefully get to do this again.

Well, Eric, thanks for having me. It was on my bucket list, it's off now. I'm glad to have made it to your show. And uh look forward to doing it again one day down the road.

Right on. Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Mastroff. Thank you.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, 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 I put a lot of work into it and 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 feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I'd love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Falzone, and this is the feature of fitness. Have a great day.