Mia Kyricos - The Wellness Renaissance

Everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews and summaries delivered straight to your inbox. You'll also find our free industry report on artificial intelligence. Five industry experts, five different opinions, and tons of valuable insights for free at futurefitness.co. Thanks for listening and on to the show. Hey friends, this episode of the Future of Fitness is proudly brought to you by Team Up. Since launching in 2012, they've consistently had one mission: facilitate the best customer experiences with the most cutting-edge solution for franchises, studios, gyms, and boxes. At its core, TeamUp is a tech solution for businesses looking to unlock their next phase of growth with the most reliable partner in technology on the market. Spanning over 4,000 clients in 40 plus countries, TeamUp has a vast global network with its roots right here in North America. Whether it's AI, new features, new partnerships, and new markets, TeamUp's sites are set on raising the bar of the industry to enable their customers to perform and operate at the highest level locally, nationally, and overseas. Powered by the most reliable APIs on the market, you can deliver premium customer experiences and scale your fitness enterprise with the strongest technological infrastructure our industry has to offer. Empower your staff, engage your members, and unlock your next chapter of growth with software design for you. Learn more at goteemup.com. That is G-O-T-E-A-M-U-P.com. All right, we are live. Mia Kirikos, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thank you for having me, Eric. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you. Uh I think we have to give, is it Brynn Scarborough? Is she the one who introduced us originally? So I always like to give a shout out to people who make connections. And uh so thank you, Bryn. Really appreciate it. Where do I start with you, Mia? There's still so many things I want to talk about. You just got back from the Global Uh Wellness Summit, their 18th year, as you were telling me, and a lot of cool people, Wim Hof, and a lot of interesting numbers and what's going on. Uh, your background, obviously, you you've done the work, you put in the time, uh, you've seen a lot of things evolve within fitness, wellness, hospitality, the convergence of all those things. Um, and I love the way you put it in a previous conversation of there's there's a renaissance going on, yeah. Right. Of the fitness and wellness industry, which I think is super exciting, and I 100% agree. So maybe if we could just kick it off with this.

Yeah.

Uh give us a brief, uh, I know you've done a lot. Maybe give us a brief summation of your background, how you got to where you are, and then we'll take it from there.

Sure. So my day job today, I'm really uh executive management consultant for wellness-driven enterprises. And so I help companies to make wellness a strategic differentiator, whether internally or externally. And sometimes that means working with wellness and fitness entrepreneurs. Sometimes it means working with multi-million dollar, you know, global companies. Um, it really spans the gamut. Um, you know, I think the topic of the renaissance of the wellness industry, which I learned last week, is now a $6.3 trillion global wellness economy, 10 different segments of fitness, yeah.

6.3 trillion. Yes. Like have you ever written out a trillion? Yeah.

It's really hard to do. It's easy to forget the zeros.

Yeah.

And all the support industries, but what I find, you know, so inspiring today is we have data, we have passion, we have information in terms of understanding what the benefits are to extend our lives and the quality in our years. And I think that the way we're manifesting wellness and fitness and all the different partnerships that are coming to life and so forth, I just feel like it's a renaissance time. You know, for years, I think you could probably relate. We spent a lot of a few decades trying to create demand. And now I feel like we have the privilege to cater to demand in a lot of unique ways. And when you put the whole context of the state of the healthcare industry and the fact that we all really need to be our own advocates, um, because that system's broken and we now learn the power of physical activity and and some of these wellness modalities, no matter what your flavor is, we're we're seeing a renaissance because we really are the secret to helping people live longer, richer, healthier lives and staying out of a broken system. So that's really what I'm saying when I when I say renaissance. It's it's huge.

Yeah, it is. And I mean, just because it's recent, as of this recording, you know, we had an election here in the United States. And I I don't trust me, I don't want to talk about politics, but like you have to give it some credit that whether you're not you like the guy or not, RFK Jr. is brand brought some awareness to the state of health in the country and and and how bad it is. And then you start to get the casey and Callie Means, you know, making the circuits on the podcast and getting out and speaking about what their thoughts are on health. And whether you agree or disagree, the the point is that that conversation is becoming more mainstream and more accepted that we do have an effed up system and people are not getting any healthier and people are becoming advocates of their own health. So it's it's really cool. And just from the if you look at how much uh information people are seeking out on their own, like the the Hubermans and the Dr. Gabrielle Lyons and the Dr. Stacey Sims, like all these people are becoming very popular. They're like, they're like celebrities now because they're giving out health knowledge. So I think that's that's really special uh in time. I mean, it doesn't get us out of the situation. We still have to do a lot of work, but uh it is it is a noticeable trend. You you were just let's start with this. You were just at the global wellness summit. Like you break it down. Like, what is that event like? You said uh Wim Hof was there, that's pretty cool. Yeah, give us your takeaways.

It's really well, first of all, it had about 500 senior leaders from 43 countries. I mean, you can really think of it as the UN of wellness, and it's where people come and sort of put their business cards in their back pockets. Everyone has the common personal and commercial mission to advance the business of wellness and all that shapes and forms around the globe. And so it's really where you go to get the latest research and data on a global level, understand trends from wellness, travel, and tourism to personalized medicine to anything that's really on the preventative side of the equation. And the focus is really talking about what's happening in workplace wellness, what's happening in wellness tourism, what's happening in fitness and physical activity, what's happening in meditation and mindfulness. So you had folks, everyone's spanning the founder from Calm to uh Wim Hof, but also Dr. Gemma King, who just conducted a huge research study on the benefit of the Wim Hof method when it comes to mental health and well-being, cognitive stress. We saw Greg O'Hara, who's the chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council, talking about trends and wellness travel. And so it really is a place where, unlike a lot of trade shows that we find ourselves at, it's really where strategies discussed, the features discussed, what emerging trends are. And it's a it's about a three and a half day event. And it feels like at this point, like visiting family and it and it changes venues every year so that we can celebrate the traditions, indigenous wellness traditions of a certain area. So it's been in India, Scotland, and lots of different places. And so it's it's a it's one of my favorite event to attend the year because I feel like I get smarter and I reconnect to so many like minds that makes me feel like I'm not just this road warrior out there on my own, that everyone's sort of fighting the fight together.

Yeah. Yeah. And are you involved in that summit personally? Yes.

So the summit I helped to uh launch back in 2006 and was on the board uh for several years. And around year seven, it became so much more than an annual event. They started, you know, launching initiatives and doing incredible groundbreaking research, like with researchers former formerly from the Stanford Research Institute that now exclusively worked for the summit. And so then we ended up launching, creating the Global Wellness Institute, which I'm the brand architect of, which was wonderful. And now I'm on that board as a founding member. We launched that in 2014 in Morocco at that summit, and that's where all the research is housed. And I think the aha for us is that once we started quantifying these different segments of the wellness industry, investors, developers, companies started to really listen that this wasn't just about, you know, holding hands and seeing kumbaya, but really a place where where we could empower wellness worldwide by providing leaders with the data they need to make the business case to support this incredible um economy that's now huge.

Yeah, it's humongous. It was in Scotland, right? Yes. So you mentioned indigenous wellness. Uh what what's particular to Scotland? I don't think about Scotland and think about wellness. I'll be honest with you, I think about golf.

Well, they've made the most noise recently wild swimming, you know, when it came to actual cold plunging. There was actually uh the founder, Dr. Jonathan Leary, uh remedy place, and he set up cold plunges outside. So we had morning activities, you could do numb multiple things from yoga and so forth, but many people were going down to the shores. I mean, everyone knows St. Andrews is like the famous golf course and whatever. So that's a big one. But people went and jumped into 37 degree water, and that was a regular part of it. So wild swimming, as it's known, is something that there was a book actually written on wild swimming by two amazing women that were there sharing it. And so a lot of cold water plunging was a huge part of it. But they've also put in the Country of Scotland has a well-being minister. They're part of a founding group of company of countries that are trying to bring wellness and well-being to life in the public sector. So that was huge. So that backdrop combined with golf and wild swimming and cold plunging really was sort of the indigenous aspect of that venue.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. And you have a very wide breadth of knowledge when it comes to wellness. Is there anything that you you pulled out of it where you're like, this is something new to me that I would add to my wellness routine, or something, yeah, just like kind of a surprise?

Honestly, the biggest surprise for me, and this is gonna sound hand gentle, but bear with me. There was this 17-year-old kid, his name's Lewis Squire, and he showed up on stage and gave like a TEDx style keynote. And his passion as founder of this entity called Real It In is to end social media addiction among teens. And he talked about the real ramification to mental health and wellness for teenagers, what's happening with their social media consumption, how it's driving higher suicide rates, hospitalizations, that these kids are spending six hours a day or 91 days a year on social media. And I was so gobsmacked to use a Scottish term by this kid, his passion, the data, his connection to mental health and wellness, that it made me examine sort of my social media activities, but also to be much more conscious about the fact that that's part of a mental health epidemic that we have and what that's doing to teenagers. So, not to take this conversation into a serious note, but I was astonished at the data he shared. I was astonished at the professionalism. He also advocated for um companies to have youth advisory groups because as a way to help kids have more purpose in life beyond sports and so forth. So that one I'm gonna take a lot away from personally and professionally. It really um blew my mind.

Did you say 91 days per year?

So he basically out uh prorated how much time kids were spending a day and what that translated to in days of a year. It was it was a it was so it was uncomfortable the stuff he put up there. He said his my favorite quote, uh, social media is a weapon of mass consumption. Social media is a weapon of mass consumption for these kids who are it's the lost generation of their potential because of of you know the the way they've the the way they're consuming it today. And the it was really a cry for help to business leaders and the wellness industry around the globe to not lose sight of all the kinds of people we can help because teens aren't typically on our radar screens. We're dealing with adults, and often, unfortunately, well, this is a critique of all of us, we're on the higher end of the food chain when it comes to demographics and psychographics and all those things, and um they stand to get lost. And so it was a real like aha moment for me that I won't forget, and uh I'm gonna try to put into my soapbox.

So yeah. Well, I think anybody who's listening to this is not gonna forget that number that's staggering, right? Uh and it's it's always gotten me. I've always thought about social media as like, yeah, there's some benefits. Sure. You know, you can stay in touch with people.

Marketing and PR for businesses, I mean it costs so much less. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Those those things. Uh but I that doesn't really concern me. I don't know how much benefit that really is to me, you know, to society. But right it but most of it's not good. You know, the majority of of what social media is is not good. It's it's a serious FOMO, it's just fake, it's narcissism, it's a lot of different things. And I I just wonder at some point if it gets shut down, you know. Or I've heard I talked to another person who said that they're probably gonna go to a paid model where you have to pay a subscription to be on social media within the next 10 years for numerous reasons. So I mean, I think that would be not a bad thing, but who knows? Me.

The other thing I was really happy to see was the research that Dr. Gemma King did with regards to studying the Wim Hof method.

Okay.

You know, a lot of times, speaking of social media, you see what's happening and you're like thinking, okay, these guys are crazy. But that was really interesting to see sort of the methodology and also the positive correlation to, you know, being exposed to cold water immersion and your cognitive benefits, uh, your feelings of psychological safety. She compared that method to say meditation and other modalities. And so I really encourage people to look up that study because it's a validated study that was surprised me. You know, sometimes I think the Womhoff method is more marketing than not. But when you look at and really study the advances of, you know, cold water immersion, which is not necessarily for everyone, but it was really refreshing to see the level of research. In fact, he was an he he and Dr. Wimhof and Gemma King were uh uh received an award for science and wellness given the sort of magnitude and efficacy of the research and the and the findings. So that was that was kind of nice to see, you know, digging in beyond sort of the you know, all the reels you see on social media of of people getting uh cold and plunging all over the place.

Yeah, yeah. It's it's so funny. It's uh you know, it's it's just the joke that you can apply this joke to anything, right? But it was primarily CrossFit when I first heard it of like, you know, how do you know if someone crossfits? Don't worry, they'll tell you. Same thing with cold plunge now.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. Same thing. Yeah, I was at um we were at a hot springs and had a cold plunge. It wasn't that cold, it's like 54 degrees, but cold for a lot of people.

Yeah.

And uh every time I got into the cold plunge, there was someone, you know, who obviously listened to Rogan or Huberman or something like that, who was telling everybody in the pool all the benefits of offering. I was like, this is hysterical. I love it. I think it's great that people are doing this. Uh it's it's really funny. And that that uh particular report, if people were gonna search for it, what would you how would they find it?

You could literally just say Wim Hof study and you could Google it. And Dr. Gemma King, J E M M A, she's from Australia, she's a researcher. She came in and it was her study. So peer-reviewed, medically backed study. So good to look at.

One of the things you said uh in this conversation earlier was you you're quantifying components of wellness, right? Can you expand on that? What is that, what does that mean exactly?

I just think years ago, we did not have the availability of two things. One, understanding the economics of wellness, right? Like, sure, you could have a health club, you could talk about memberships and engagement and those kinds of things. But some of the more far-reaching things, I'm gonna say infrared sauna, I'll say, you know, whatever these things. A lot of it seemed like woo-woo until two things happened. One, people could actually talk about the business model associated with it. And two, the efficacy or the benefit, health benefits you could easily find, you know, online earth information. So to me, I look I look at it as information, the health information, and also the business data. And I kind of feel like though that information is is increasingly, you know, ubiquitous and available. We can find it, we can make the cases for it. And because of that, I think we can innovate in a way that we haven't been able to before from both a guest experience standpoint, but also as business owners, as leaders, as we think about partnerships, you know. It was a few short years ago where the healthcare industries thought thought the wellness industry was a bunch of, you know, kumbaya handholding, you know, folks. And so now what I find really interesting is that has completely shifted. And now you have the Cleveland clinics, the Mayo clinics, you know, others really trying to partner in unique ways with wellness businesses, wellness leaders. The same is true in fitness, you know, when you think of the future of fitness, you know, we're, I'm hearing, I'm sure you are too. What was that?

Great name, by the way.

Yeah, exactly. It really is. I think people are starting to think about like, hey, how do we better partner with healthcare providers? How can people look to us to provide solutions outside of the four walls of a hospital, but instead in an environment that also drives social connection, deals with the loneliness epidemic, all these things. So I'm just excited because I think the numbers and data are there in a way that can't be an excuse anymore. And now it's just how do we innovate and how do we just do it better?

Yeah. Yeah, it's like if for anything, whether it's a person or a movement or a category that wants to be taken seriously, all you you you just be undeniable, right? And that's I feel like that's becoming that's becoming a thing. And you know, I think to echo what you said, like 10, 15 years ago, if someone said wellness, I would put into the same category as holistic, where I'm like, oh, it's it's patchouli oil and incense and you know stuff that's just kind of you know sounds expensive and probably doesn't work. But now it's like we'll no, we're it's we're redefining the category. And I'm as I was telling you uh before this, I'm really starting to see that uh our industry, the fitness industry, is undergoing a collective rebrand that I'm not too sure everyone's aware of. You know, it's being worked into this wellness, this preventative health, this precision wellness, like categories, right? Longevity, whatever you want to call it. And it's bringing a lot of science and it's creating a lot of new opportunities. And it's great because I think it's open it does open up the market. We've been talking about the same 20% or the 80% that we don't get for ever. And uh, you know, this is this is really access to that. So when you see this renaissance, like what do you think as we look into the the near time horizon, you know, a couple of years, two, three years from now, what do you think are the biggest opportunities for, you know, specifically fitness, but also wellness operators to to start grasping?

I think one of the greatest opportunities is just going more mainstream than upstream. I think like we're at that place where we can find the business models, the economics where it makes sense, where this doesn't have to feel like it's some luxury endeavor, but an incentive essential part of everyone's lives. And so it to me, that really excites me. You know, if I was gonna shoot the moon, and so like now I'm gonna go like really big, and this is part of the reason why I'm so passionate about the work of the Global Wellness Institute, you know, their moonshot is a world free of preventable lifestyle disease. And nice I like throwing this out there that 80% of all doctors' visits are for preventable lifestyle disease. So, if we can get people to take a little more ownership for their own self-care and we make it accessible and approachable for them to do that, we can reduce the burden on the healthcare system, keep that for people that really need it. And we can take more ownership and watch that number come down in terms of the reason for the visits in the first place. Like to me, that's the moon we need to shoot. And I feel like that we have we have the ability to do that now. And it's not just about, you know, I did this for the first 10, 15 years of my career, catering to the four-star, five-star luxury traveler or consumer, high net worth individual. And that's what the experiences and the Uber club memberships are going for and whatever. No, like I think Planet Fitness stands to save the world. I think Edge Fitness stands to change the world. Like these are the entities that have millions and millions of eyeballs. And it's getting them in there and just moving and socializing and feeling like you belong someplace. And oh, by the way, changing your biometrics, like awesome. You know, that's what I get excited about.

Yeah. Uh me too. And if you're going to say, let's just use an example because we brought it up, Plain of Fitness, right? If they are going to go from a fitness brand and service provider to a wellness health, like what does that transition have to look like? What are the things that need to change?

I mean, listen, in their cost model, they're going to be somewhat limited. They're not going to be able to do high-service one-on-one models because it costs what $10, $20 a month to be there. But they could have some of their equipment instead of replacing the latest treadmill and free weights, they could throw in an infrared sauna and a cold plunge, you know, and that could be part of it. They could uh have on their TVs, they could wheel videos of, I mean, Mark Hyman. I love him. I've worked with him. I think he's a great guy. But anyone that's talking about sort of health and nutrition, watching a cooking demonstration, which I like to do when I'm on a machine, right? There are ways that they could use sort of it within their structure, their cost structure, and start offering things beyond movement that's more restorative, more addressing, you know, cardiovascular health or any of those other things. So I think everyone, and that was a great example, no matter where you are in the food chain, you have something that you can do where you can increase the wellness value proposition to your fitness club members, right? Yeah. So that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's others.

Oh, I'm sure there's a ton. And uh I always think that fitness, maybe we position it a little too hard into like it's gotta be hard work, it's gotta be painful, no pain, no gain, where it becomes like it's you know, to get healthier, you don't have to train, you don't have to do CrossFit. If you want to, yeah, that's great. Right. Go for it. But we also don't have to go to a gym, right? Yeah, exactly.

You know, take a walk, take a hike, literally, take a hike.

Take a hike, or or like you said, like cook more meals. Right. That's like the fundamental thing. I I you know, I I did a lot of uh when I went gym, we did a lot of stuff like this where we would host cooking classes and they were packed, right? They're packed with people. We would do them at corporate wellness. We would uh you know have a series of events that we'd hold it, and one of them was cooking. And by far the cooking class out of all the events we held, from meditation to whatever you name it, uh mobility to you know, actual exercise, it five X the amount of attendees. And uh it was so amazing to me because I've I guess I I kind of got lucky in some ways because my mom didn't really like to cook when I was young. So I cooked a lot. And uh I just kept that with me. But a lot of people just don't know the fundamentals of how to like how do you cook broccoli, right? Right. How do you cook chicken? How do you how do you make pasta? Right. And that to me is is was astonishing. So I think little things like that, you're right. We we seem to take this stuff for granted as a as a vertical, and we forget that like, well, let's just get back to the basic and fundamentals of what health and wellness is.

Well, and when you and I love that you said that because there was this awesome study done by McCain Central back in 2013. And I swear, if you did, if you repeated it today, the results would be the same. They went to seven established count countries United States, Japan, Germany, um, and several others. And they basically just asked them how do you define wellness in your part of the world? And everyone, everyone across the board came back with three things, basically. They might have prioritized them differently, but same three things how you move, how you fuel, and how you manage your mindset or your stress, those three things. So, as far as I'm concerned, that is the trifecta of any fitness, wellness, offering that's out there. If you're doing that, no matter what part of the world you're in, by and large, you're gonna like address 80% of the opportunity to help people live longer, healthier, richer lives. That's it. So I I it's I sometimes dummy it down because we all get so like in a precision medicine and all the people that are out there, and like, should I partner and do like labs? And it just no, those three things. How are you addressing those three things? That's it. And if you're doing one of those things really, really well, good for you. That's it. Like, that's how how like we get to dummy it down around the globe. People are looking for support on how they move, how they fuel, and how they manage their mindset. There you go.

But there's no money in that.

I don't believe that for a hot second. I think there's absolute money in it. I do. I think it's uh, I think it's, you know, I think subscription models and membership models and all those kinds of things. I really feel like consumers, like we haven't talked about consumers, like where their heads at. I think they are trying to find a new, a new place to belong. And I think we've all talked about the third place, used to be Starbucks, but that third place is now like what yoga studio you're part of, what club you're a member of. Like, I think if you look younger down, these guys, that's something that came out of the summit, are drinking so much less. So the bar is not going to be their third place, right? I think people really wait when you look at the loneliness epidemic, when you look at sort of people's schedules and stuff, they're trying to find a place where they can connect with like minds and belong. And to me, that could be a spa, it could be a gym, it could be a local park, it could be there's so many different manifestations of that. So to me, there's that just comes a ton of opportunity.

Yeah. It is uh, I mean, even as a 48-year-old guy who doesn't like to drink as much as I did, maybe in my 20s and 30s, like I find that third place is not easy to locate.

No, especially at our age. And by the way, 48. I just turned 50, so I don't like that I'm older than you. But I will say it's hard at our age too. Like, do you I don't I don't have kids. I have seven nieces and nephews that I spoil and give back. Do you have kids?

No, no kids. Same thing.

Right. So I feel like at our age, especially when we move, I've moved a lot in my work and life, and have an amazing husband, married to my high school sweetheart. Go, James. I love you. I think that it's really hard to connect with people at our age, especially if you don't live where you grew up, right? And so finding people of like my your friend circle that starts out really big, I think it just gets smaller over time, right? And so we can all talk about the benefits of socialization, the need for socialization, how loneliness is like worse than smoking. There's all these things. How do you find a place to connect with people, right? That is not just it used to be when we were growing up, when I was in college, it was like you're going to the local watering hole. It's just that's where you went.

Yeah.

And so now, like, how does that shift, you know? And how do we get away from our screens, you know, to be able to connect with each other, right?

Yeah.

Because right now we're on a screen, but this is the best, this is awesome. This is a good use of it, right? It is. But we're connecting. And so I do think there's there's something to that. People are so wanting to be seen and feel like they belong somewhere.

Hey friends, Eric Malzone here. I've had the honor of interviewing over 750 professionals across the fitness, health, and wellness industries. There's one thing I know for sure. Without a doubt, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage a highly valuable and relatively untapped network of independent podcasters and content creators. Traditional advertising isn't what it used to be. Costs are high. Consumer trust is low. In results firsthand industry, there's a much better way to connect with your target audience and emerge as a thought leader in our industry. That's exactly why I've watched the podcast collective. Ultimate solution designed to empower executives, founders, and thought leaders in the fitness health and wellness sector. Our mission? To help you leverage the extraordinary opportunities within our hand-picked network of independent podcasts. We don't just place your own podcast, we make you unforgettable. 101 Coaching ensures that you show up the right message for the right audience with confidence in Squagger. We create high-popping digital assets and social media overhauls to ensure that you are optimizing each and every appearance. Introductions to strategic partners and potential enterprise clients provide unparalleled value that only a professional network like ours can offer. We work with a very limited number of clients to ensure the highest level of service, so please don't hesitate to reach out and learn more. Go to podcastcollective.io to learn more and contact me directly. That's podcastcollective.io. Yeah, it's uh it is an interesting time. And, you know, having I moved around a lot, we we've been here in Whitefish for uh this is eight years now, and it's taken a lot of effort. Like it's not passive to build friendship networks and you know, do new activities to meet new people. I joined a rotary club. I never thought I'd join a rotary club. I love it. I love it.

That is not something your grandfather would do. Like that's not the thing you would do, right? It's true. Like that, but it's but they're awesome, right? They're awesome. It's a great way to connect.

And and I would even say a step further just to, you know, uh no one really advocates, but I think for for middle-aged men, we're really bad at it. We're really bad at it. We're really bad at, you know, because we'll very superficially talk about sports and go to the bar and have a beer. And but do we ever really connect uh with each other about things that matter, our our marriages, our fears, what happens after we die, like things like we just don't get there, you know?

You are hitting the nail on the head. This is actually one of I think the Global Wellness Summit that does a trend report every year. And this was the one that they put, I think it was this year, yeah, was all about men's emotional well-being and how men's retreats are gonna increasingly be a thing because they want to talk about those things. They don't necessarily want to do it locally, but they love to connect with a bunch of strangers to like get real, like the girls have been doing for years, right? And so it's true, like being in a place where you could be comfortable in your community, in your environment with that smaller friend group or outside of that group, that's hugely important. I mean, it's hugely important now for men's health. And I just I get inspired by that because it has been the crossfitters, the runners, the adventure enthusiasts. That's what they're talking about, you know, and maybe their favorite sports teams, but they're really talking from the neck down, and now we get to go from the neck up.

Well said, Yeah, well said. And there's a lot of stuff. Like I uh I start listening a little bit to the art of manliness as a podcast, and before anyone starts clutching the pearls, it's not what you think about. Just just listen to it, right? And uh, and they have, you know, they're talking about a guy who has this thing called man camp where it's literally teaching men how to socialize over a campfire and how to do that, how to build these little networks locally. I'm like, this is really freaking cool. And I I hope it I hope it it gets traction because there's definitely like you said earlier in this, it's like we're not we don't have to create demand there, right? It's the it exists. So how do we service it? And you know, maybe we can get really creative as an industry around that. I I would be uh remiss not to talk a little bit about technology when it comes to wellness because we cover that a lot on this top on this podcast. And I feel like there's a lot of promise in uh technology data that will help scale and democratize, you know, what we're talking about, access to more wellness. So at this summit, or from your research and your your experience, like how do you think technology is gonna play a role in in increased wellness?

It's the enabler, without question. I think it's it's gonna enable more connectivity with our with our health professionals or people that are tracking us, or we'd like to have know more about us. I mean, how exhausting is it to like change doctors or whatever, and you have to like fill out the forms again and you know, all these things. I think that it's the enabler. And, you know, it can be something, it doesn't have to be front of house, right? But it's what's it's the magic that's gonna enable us to deliver better experiences and to deliver better programs to help people reach their goals and to track their goals. And so it's also how we make it affordable, it's how we we make it, we reach people, meet people where they're at. And so I think the AI question, like this is actually an area, and I know this is so funny, it's the yin and the yang, it's the double-edged sword, but you can't replace the human touch. I don't think you'll ever be able to fully eliminate that. But I do get inspired by the fact that AI can get to know you over time like a person and generate more meaningful content. And as long as that's being evaluated and policed by a professional, you know, that's you know, being looked at, you know, we're not there yet. We're in an uncomfortable transition time, there's all the social issues, whatever. But I really do believe we need that to be able to enable the kind of revolution or shoot the moon that I keep, you know, talking about. We're gonna need the tech side of it. And so the question that came up, for instance, last last week was all about, you know, AI, its role and sort of the double-edged sword. But I think by and large, people are more excited about the potential. They know we're not there yet, but they see it coming and they can they feel like it's tangible, that that will only help us to go more mainstream and not stay up in the upstream where we're catering to people that actually are resourced to able to help themselves in in ways that other parts of the market are not.

So what do you explain that a little bit more? The double-edged sword.

The double-edged sword is that people are uncomfortable that there's gonna be ultimately, if you think about it, some computer that's gonna know you better than maybe your doctor, right? So that is uncomfortable. It's kind of like, by the way, that's my health information, and that's freaking me out, and that's that's scary.

Yeah.

The other side of that sword is what if AI could go through all your medical records, it's hundreds and hundreds of pages, and quickly identify something that that uh that a human would not be able to process that quickly and get up to that speed, and it saves your life. I want option B, please, right? So to me, like it is double-edged, it is a little uncomfortable, you know, that we're at that pace of technology and we have to find the right checks and balances. I think we'll get there because I think the promise of it to really help us in a way that society needs is significant. And I don't think it's gonna ever replace the human touch, it's just gonna extend our arms and legs in a way that you know we we currently have not been able to do.

So I was listening to uh camera which who is the guy from Ways to Well. Are you familiar with him? Yeah. What's his name? Brigham.

I don't remember. I know the the top the name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think it was a Rogan podcast. And but he really painted this beautiful picture of how AI, and he's like, how it's it can be done now. Like, you know, we can we can take and it can done very inexpensively, how we can take someone's well, you know, health data from even just wearable data or blood work, and maybe a simple genetic test, like taking those kind of factors and then monitoring it, you know, quarterly, whatever it may be. And it's it can highly personalize your medical. And that information gets fed to a doctor so that they're getting better information. Your visits are more you know direct, besides just, hey, well, how have things been? Good, great, here's your script, right? Like that it could be much better and much more in depth at a very low cost. And I think that's what everyone's hoping for. You know, on the flip side, there's like this AI thing is just, I don't think a lot of people realize where we're at with it. You know, uh at example, the Rotary Club yesterday, uh, this is small, but you know, someone came in, they're all they're writing coaches in Montana, so they help kids write. And I asked at the end, of course, I'm you know, my mind, I'm like, how are you guys addressing generative AI in the world of writing? And they're like, Well, we're not really there yet. I'm like, I guarantee the kids are there. Yeah, like I guarantee it, you know. So like it just seems like some people were just maybe not uh aware of how fast it's it's moving along. You know, and there's some things that scare me, like I don't I don't know if I like autonomous driving, right? But it's gonna come with it. Like, so we're gonna get the good and the bad, and I guess we just have to wait to see how this thing shakes out.

I agree, and that's funny. That is an example that wigs me out too. I have to say, like the car's gonna come pick me up, and I'm gonna just trust. But the funny thing is, my husband said to me, Yeah, but when you type in your directions to Waze, you just trust him to you follow what he's doing. Yeah, you know, and I was like, Oh yeah, that's interesting.

But but it's all the jobs, like where are those jobs?

It's the jobs, it's the jobs. At the same time, though, Eric, like part of me, I I wonder if you can relate to this. You live in Montana, I live in Maine, right? We live in a very global world, you know, talking about health and wellness, and I travel a lot. I think nature and living outside of a city grounds us. And I think the health benefits associated with that, as someone who has lived in Manhattan twice, I've lived in Washington, DC, Chicago, Scottsdale, Brussels, Belgium, I've lived in cities. I do my best work and I am a calmer, happier person in a place that moves slower. So one of the things I like about automated driving and all that is that I see it also as an enabler of us being able to get out of cities and you know, enjoy a somewhat slower paced life. Like I want to have the best of both worlds. And I think to some degree, this technology advancements can enable that, where you know, maybe I maybe the restaurants aren't open 24-7 like they are in the city, but I can still get a really damn good meal delivered from maybe a little further away, you know? Yeah, so I am a perpetual glass half-full person. You'll hear that from me all the time. And there are things that scare me, but there was this fresh off again, a man I I met last week, his name's Martin Palmer. He's a theolog theologian, and he came in, he's like a spiritual advisor to Prince Philip and the royal family for like 35 years. And he said something to me that stopped me in the tracks, and to all of us. He said, Um, fear never solved anything. He said, Do you know why we haven't solved the climate crisis? Because we keep talking about it like it's a crisis. If it's not worth celebrating, it's not worth bothering with. We need to change the story. And when he was talking about, I just was like, boom, oh my god. He's like, we gotta go from doom to hope. He's like, that's what it comes down to. It's doom to hope. And this was on the eve of the election, by the way. We were all freaking out about the election results.

Yeah.

And I think it was the summit's organizers' ways of providing us some peace because people look at that as a global election, not just ours. And he talked about that. He just and he's like, my biggest advice to everyone is to be not afraid. He's like, whether it's in business, whether it's in life personal, because fear has never solved anything. And I that's probably one of the top three takeaways I'm gonna walk away with. I believe it when it comes to technology, I believe it when it comes to healthcare crisis, mental health crisis, all these kinds of things that we're all trying so hard to solve. Okay, but be not afraid. That's what I keep telling myself now. That's that's my mantra. I just literally have a sticky on my computer now, my other screen that you're not see. Be not afraid.

That's fantastic. Fantastic. The one of the things I want to make sure we we got to because uh you went you and I connected a couple months ago. You mentioned a case for chief wellness officers in the twenty first century.

Yeah.

Talk to me. What do you what do you what do you think?

It is time, man. We have arrived. You know, I think we I look at so I've talked a lot about this. I wrote an article about it. If anyone wants to look on LinkedIn, and I talk about the difference between a chief wellness officer and a well-being officer. And so super, super synthesized. Wellness is, you know, someone who's really overlooking wellness related programming, touching all those sectors, whether it's meditation, mindfulness, nutrition for a certain population, great. Well-being is often those things plus culture, like focusing on culture of an environment, whatever. We've flirted with this with mixed success. I've held that position for, you know, Fortune 1000 company in the private sector. But now I think it's not just the private sector. We're perfect, we're perfecting it. We now need to also go into the public sector. I think there we're going to go from companies to zip codes. Like we have zip codes that need to have help in figuring out how to raise the overall health of a certain population. And so I feel like that can happen kind of like someone who's worked in a matrix organization. They figured out how to deliver wellness programming to thousands of people around the globe. Now you have an opportunity to look at a city and be like, okay, what are the members of the private sector? What does the healthcare industry look like? Who is the municipality and city planner planning parks or, you know, roads and housing and so forth? How do we put someone in charge to care for the health and wellness of our citizens as we progress a society? I think we have a huge opportunity. And I think it blows the doors and the ceiling off of career paths for, you know, wellness-driven business leaders and other ways that they can sort of continue to live their mission outside of companies, but now in actual, you know, cities. I think there's a huge opportunity to do that. But I also think there's industries out there, healthcare, universities, they're hiring chief wellness and well-being officers left and right, whether it's for patients, for faculty, for students, or whatever. And I think we're just gonna see more of it that we now's the time. We really do need to do that.

Can you get on that to help us conceptualize it? Like maybe a little bit more granular on maybe an example of a chief wellness officer you know, or somebody, you know, in a specific industry. Yeah.

Sure, I'll I'll give you an example of mine. So I was the global head of well-being and my responsibility for a hotel company. And my job was to contemplate the health and wellness programming and facilities that were available at our hotels when you traveled. So you can think of spa, fitness, pool, nutrition programming, so forth, right? But also uh we had 150,000 colleagues worldwide. And so caring for their health and well-being so they could turn around and better care for the health and wellness of our guests. And, you know, what's actually driving their health and wellness at work and really understanding what that looks like. And so my job was to work with members of the C-suite to either um get their help to bring things to life commercially or internally or a combination of both. So at a city level, I could see a chief uh wellness officer working with the city on how they design um developments of parks. I could see them um figuring out how to bring uh street football or more uh working with parks and recs um to bring to life programming in a way that's meaningful for citizens. I could think about um how do you uh care for the elderly? How do you care for students, all the different stakeholders? Is future development really going to help raise the health profile or hinder the health profile of the citizens who live in that community? So there's so many different manifestations of it. And quite honestly, it can start and could be a city that just wants to provide more fitness offerings, you know, in their cities. There's always going to be a starting point, right? A problem they're trying to solve. But at the end of the day, it's to raise the health and wellness of those stakeholders instead of being like company owners, employees, and all that of the people who live there. So was are those good examples? Does that answer your question? Those are great. Yeah, those are great.

I mean, it got my wheels spinning, of course, like I'm thinking about locally, like, you know, what would that look like? And, you know, we have a town here, it's I'm sure it's you know unique, but not super unique in that, you know, we're trying not to be the next uh park city, we're trying not to be the next aspen where it's like we just get overrun and you know, uh, and and so there's a lot of intentional planning right now. We're trying to walk off the precipice of of what you know, of keeping the character to this town, but also the health of citizens and making it still affordable. So there's a lot of intentional, but I don't hear, because I joined these Citadel Counseling meetings and I I talk to people about it, and I'm like, but I don't hear wellness as as a part of the conversation. We hear environment, right? We hear affordable housing, we hear the economics of it, we hear all these things, but nothing necessarily wellness. But if you get wellness integrated, then I feel like it it kind of takes care of a lot of the other things intuitively.

There's two things I would reference for resources for your for your listeners. Uh there was an amazing report that I was part of. I was part of a group of people around the globe that that defined what a wellness community is, and a community that's purpose-built or renovated for the with the health of its residents, its guests, its visitors, and local environment in mind. Anyways, uh, we produced a report, the the Build Well to Live Well report. It's like a 700-page report. It was crazy, that the Global Wellness Institute created, and they're actually updating it next year. I bring this up because they're also creating wellness policy toolkits for intended for people in the public and private sector to help activate wellness more meaningfully at a city level level. So if people go to global wellness institute.org, they will see these resources available and pay attention because a lot of them will be updated next year as a starting point for discussion to start bringing that kind of vocabulary into the meetings that you're that you're talking about. Because, you know, it's it's not totally black and white, it's gray, but there again, there's a lot more data and information out there to help us, you know, impact society more meaningfully.

Yeah, yeah. Well said, Me. Uh so I this is the last question I always ask, but what do you need help with? And what I mean by that is, you know, if people are gonna reach out to you, what would you like to hear from them about? And then how would you like them to get in touch?

I think look my mission is to help people live well and love more. It's actually, I have a lot of research about that I could talk about. But if people are looking to better make impact in their companies, their cities, their homes to bring wellness to life more meaningfully and do a lot of the work that we just talked about, they can find me on LinkedIn and I'd love to help. You know, my I'm a really, you know, my functional expertise is brand strategy and communications. And so I've had to get really good at storytelling. I've got the data and information to back me up, but to help people really make impact, maybe show up at those meetings to talk about the power of this amazing uh wellness economy. And so I'm happy to to help people do that to make impact in their in their own neighborhoods.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, uh we covered a lot today, right? In a short period of time. Like, holy cow. Uh that was uh yeah, short of solving world peace and feeding the hungry.

I feel like we did a lot.

I'm just still I you know, I'm still just blown away by the 91 days per year of social media use. And that that's gonna, that's gonna haunt me for a while. But it's it's good that people are aware of of how what what the problem is, right? So yeah, we we cover a lot. Mia, thank you so much for for doing this. I'd love to get you on again next year if you have time and get an update. Uh, but uh yeah, it's been it's been an absolute pleasure.

It's been a pleasure, and thank you for what you're doing with this podcast because I find it to be really inspirational. I've heard a few uh episodes as I'm just getting ready for this, and I think it's an awesome place to have an authentic conversation. So I'm honored to have been invited. Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, Mia Kirakos.

Thank you.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. 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. 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 futurofitness.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.