Michael Ramsey - The Black Sheep of Pilates: How Strong Pilates is Breaking All the Rules

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 futureofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now on to the show. Facilitate the best customer experiences with the most cutting-edge solutions for franchises, studios, fans, and boxes. TMAP has a vast global network of its roots right here in North America. Whether it's AI, new features, new partnerships, and new markets, TMUP sites are set on rating part of the industry to enable their customers to perform and operate at the highest level locally, nationally, and overseas. However, the most reliable APIs in the market, you can deliver premium customer experiences that scale you've been identified at the strongest technological infrastructure our industry has to offer. For a limited time, getting very generous 50% off your first month. To redeem the offers if we contact the TMUP sales team and use the promo code the feature of fitness.com at G O T E O M E P dot com. Hey friends, this is Eric Balzone, and this episode of Feature Fitness is brought to you by the Podcast Collective. Since our inception in 2023, we have emerged as the fitness, health, and wellness industry's premier podcast placement agency. We're honored to work with many of the industry's most prominent technologists, thought leaders, startup founders, and business executives.

Why? Because they recognize that being on podcasts is the most effective way to authentically connect with their specific target audiences and rapidly grow a lucrative professional network.

From podcast placements to speak engagements, go-to-market strategies to investor relations, and media kits to press releases, the podcast collective brings a level of professionalism and deep industry expertise that can only be achieved by spending decades in the trenches. If you are a startup founder, business executive, emerging thought leader, or simply a savvy operator that understands the power of authentic media, learn more at podcastcollective.io and feel free to book a 30-minute strategy session with yours truly. Traditional media is dying on the vine. Podcasts are rising quickly to fill the void. Do not miss the boat. That's podcastcollective.io. All right, we are live. Michael Ramsey, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thanks for having me, Eric.

Yeah, yeah, this is gonna be fun. Uh, I'm already enjoying our conversation uh today. Uh the black sheep of Pilates. Right? Uh I'm I'm gonna learn some things today about Pilates that that I don't really know. I've never, you know, I think I've told you in our previous conversation, I've taken a couple of Pilates class back in the day when I hurt my back, but it's come a long way over the last like 15, 20 years. And you guys uh you guys are crushing it, man. So really excited to have you on and learn about your story and learn a little bit about Pilates and uh and what's going on in the marketplace specifically. So, Michael, if you don't mind, let's let's kick it off as we usually do. Just tell us a little bit about your background, how'd you be one of the uh co-founders of Strong Pilates and we'll we'll go from there.

Yeah, it's been a 10, 11 year journey in the sort of boutique fitness space. I actually started out as a personal trainer when I was 17. Standard big box kind of run-of-the-mill type stuff, writing programs, personal training, and very quickly sort of fell out of love with it. Felt more of a like a psychologist than a personal trainer at times, and ended up yeah, ended up going into marketing and did a master's of commerce and and worked in marketing in the oil and gas industry, believe it or not. And then um I uh I met my business partner, Mark, who you know we s we sort of started early days working together in the hospitality industry, and he told me about this concept called F-45. And this is about 11 years ago. And he said, I think this is great, it's new, it's up and coming. You've got a you know PT background, you've got a marketing background, I think you'd be great. Let's let's go in together. So we actually launched the 10th F-45 studio in the world. So think about it now. I'm not sure how many there are 1200, 1300, maybe something like that. We were number 10. And very quickly, we you know, we we ended up winning uh best studio globally based off revenue. And then we did that three years running, and we scaled that to six boutique locations and then sold out at sort of the end of um kind of around mid-2019, sort of right before that the COVID hit and and and everything went down. So yeah, it it was a it was a super uh it I I always refer to the F45 experience as probably one of the best apprenticeships um in boutique fitness. You know, when they started, there weren't there wasn't a whole lot of infrastructure, it was just scale, go, go, go for them. And so we had to figure a lot of this stuff out ourselves. And then yeah, myself and Mark, we were, you know, we were always thinking there's things that we we know that we can do well and that we can maybe do better, and there's things we like to explore. And ironically, I was I was sort of I was working with Adidas, I was an added ass athlete, I was doing a lot of plymetric work at the time, and I was running in an Adidas commercial for a new runner, and the brief was uh it was like on the streets of Sydney, you know, jump over shopping trolleys and do all this sort of stuff, and I broke my ankle. And this is sort of towards our exit with F-45, and you know, so all the stuff that I was accustomed to doing, and my body was pretty beaten up after sort of, you know, five years straight of that type of training. I I rehabbed on a reformer, and everything that was sort of all my deficiencies within my body dissipated very, very quickly. Everything I had a quads tendonopathy in my right knee. I had a obviously broken ankle with tendon problems, lower back pain. Everything dissipated quite quickly. I was I was doing one-on-one clinical Pilates training. And I fell in love with it and I thought this is this is amazing, but I still feel like I need more. I need to go for a run or lift some heavy weights or do something more because I wasn't getting those endorphins and that satisfaction kind of post Pilates workout. And then a friend of mine showed me this Roforma machine, which was actually created in the US in sort of Newport Beach, Orange County. I jumped on a flight, Mark as well, jumped on a flight. We went over there, we tried this roformer in a class. I think there was like maybe 10 or 12 rowformers in there, and it was everything that I felt like I was missing from a reformer perspective. It had a rower attached to the reformer, it was high in intensity but completely low impact. And myself and Mark we looked at each other and were like, we need to get this back to Australia. So, long story short, the the machine ended up getting a patent granted, uh, you know, which I believe is now global. And we negotiated the exclusive rights for the road former and ended up building a franchise model around the road former. And then Strong was born kind of towards the end of 2019. We opened our first our first studio.

Yeah. Wow, man. And look at you now. So it's 2025, you're coming up on your 100th opening, right?

Yeah, uh very exciting milestone. Next month we open our 100th studio. We've got uh we've got around 95 studios in 14 countries now. We have almost it's I think it's over 150 locations sold now in the US. So I've just moved over. I'm living in Austin now, and we're embarking on this huge sort of US expansion. There's six studios in pre-sale. Our our second one launches next week, third one the week after. Yeah, Houston, New York, and then Austin will ironically be number 100 where I am right now. So very, very exciting. And it it's all, yeah, it's all happened quite quickly because when you think about it, like we launched in 2019 and and we're actually in Melbourne, Australia, and it was one of the most locked down, or the most locked down city uh in the world. So really, we've only had like a three and a half year run at this. So we're at 100 now. Who knows where we'll land.

That's uh that's an exceptional clip that you guys are working at. It's uh that's fast, man.

Yeah, yeah. It's and the interesting thing is like we don't do a whole lot of B2B marketing, like from a franchise perspective, we don't run a whole lot of ads. The way we've expanded so quickly, every time we go into a new market, we launch studios with thriving communities that are super busy, we've got a great pre-sale average. So the studio's opening profitable, they're busy. The format is so unique and different. Like we're strength, Pilates, cardio in one. And then when we open, generally we get a lot of interest within those areas, those states, those cities for people to buy more franchises. So it's been really, really organic and very purposeful. Like it's not like we just got lucky and and whatever else. We've taken a lot of the experience we had from 45 and then launching our first couple of strongs. Like, it's very purposeful the way we've gone about this, but it has been an incredible sort of organic lift, particularly in like the last two years. It's kind of you know, the network's doubled year on year. And uh yeah, actually in June, when we launch this next studio, we'll have already matched our biggest year. So then we've got another six months to sort of ramp again. So it's it's pretty um, it's pretty crazy.

Yeah, man. Well, let's talk about let's talk about the modality itself. I mean, you mentioned uh, you know, it's strength plus Pilates plus cardio training. Uh that's a lot of things to pack into one session, right? So maybe come at it from the point of like the member experience. Like what what is that like orchestrate?

Yeah, so when the member checks in, they actually get to choose whether they ride or road. So you pick your weapon of choice. It's either a a bike or a or a rower. And we have call it two-thirds of the studio are row formers, and then uh one-third is bike formers, and that's sort of made up of anywhere from 15 to 22 beds in in the space. So the client walks in, they get to pick their weapon of choice. They have guided tech. So one really cool thing that we built out was the tech screens. Now, it's not like F45 or or some of those brands where you just can just click play and it it just sort of repeats the exercises. The instructor can click through as they go. So it's like a guided visual. So you've got the tech there, which was incredible when we brought that in in sort of it was about a year after we launched, our conversion from mail to uh male trials to members just went through the roof. And and what we discovered was men actually really want to try Pilates, but sometimes they're intimidated they've never done it before. So having that visual guide is incredible. And then the client, depending on the class, like it might be a strength-based class, it might be a Pilates-focused class with no rowing. Our hero class is called Strong Body, where it's you'll go from Pilates, say 10 minutes of Pilates to three minutes of rowing to 10 minutes of Pilates to four minutes of rowing to 10 minutes of Pilates to five minutes of rowing. Like whatever it is, it's that back and forth type modality. And the good thing with the rower is you can spike your heart rate, and then you can go back to the reformer and hold a plank under tension, and you're still so gassed from rowing that your heart rate stays elevated through the entire concept. So you're burning a whole lot more calories because we have the rower on the bike, we we don't need to do things like plyometrics or or these jump boxes with a lot of Pilates modalities as well. We use the rower and the bike to increase heart rate, and then we can just work on those slow controlled movements. So it is effectively a strength and conditioning workout, and then the other thing that we do is it's super, super unique is we go up to, I'll just do the conversion, but roughly 70-pound dumbbells as well. So you're you're lifting, you know, there's progressive overload blocks where you you're working at aerobically. So you stop, rest, and you go again and you lift heavier, which is super important. I've I've you know, I love Pilates, but I think me personally, like it's very hard to build muscle when you're working aerobically doing a Pilates flow for 45 minutes. You need that progressive overload, and you need to work in those different energy systems to get those sort of results and actually build low muscle. So we've incorporated that into the training as well. So it is a full solution. I know it sounds like a lot, but it's pretty seamless. Like the the row seat is actually one of the carriages, so it's all attached and it all it's all this sort of fluid front to back sort of workout where yeah, you you're experiencing everything in one.

So it reminds me a little bit of like early days of CrossFit, right? Where uh this modality came on, and people are like, dude, you can't do that. Like that there's rules. Like you that's you can't do that. You can't combine high-intensity, you know, high repetition weight training in into a workout. You shouldn't do that, right? It was like this big, you know, shitstorm uh around it. And but you know what? Like people kept doing it and people really liked it, and people got a lot of great results. I mean, we can look back at CrossFit and judge it, it's in its own way now, but I'm sure you're hearing that a lot. Like, hey man, you're breaking rules, you can't do that. So, what's been the feedback from like maybe the fitness industry or people who are a little bit more old school who are, or maybe just you know, they're like looking at it like, oh that I don't like it.

Yeah, look, I think everyone's got a valid opinion, but you know, Pilates started as very controlled, very almost one-on-one. So from a from a clinical perspective, and there's always a big divide now in the Pilates space where it's sort of clinical versus fitness Pilates. And so the clinical or traditionalists, they they hate us. And and like we we get the the comments on social media, we get the we get the messages, we get we get everything. And you know, for us, it's sometimes you know, at the start, I was I was a little bit concerned about it, and then when we look at our our audience and our members, and I think we've got almost 28,000 members today, as long as we're doing what the consumer wants and values, and we're adhering to their wants, needs, values, like we're fine. And it's it's so interesting. Uh we just did a survey to all of our members. Um, we had a huge response rate. And the number one reason, it was like you can pick like six or seven multiple choice questions, or answer, sorry, the number one reason people train at strong, uh, 83% said because of the unique workout style of strength, Pilates, cardio. And interestingly, the middle answer, 70% train because they want more than Pilates. So every time I sort of get this like negative feedback or or cop some hate from from the traditionalists within the Pilates space, I just look back on on the members and and if we didn't have members and we didn't have a huge following and this sort of crazy cult following, we wouldn't be at 100 locations. So I I don't know. I think you need to break some rules sometimes to create something special and uh super confident that what we're doing is is is very much needed in in this space. Particularly, mate, like if you're paying, if you're paying $200, $300 a month for a membership, you want to do more than just parties. You you you know, you want your strength and conditioning, you want your cardiovascular training for heart health, you want that full solution, and you want to do it in a space where you know it's very low risk of injury. You can train five, six, seven days a week, and that's all we're providing. So yeah, it's uh it's a super interesting time and space to be in right now, that's for sure.

Well, ultimately, what matters is are are you getting the results that your clients want? So are you guys getting the results your clients want?

Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think we our satisfactory rating for programming was 8.8 out of 10 from that survey. You know, and I I have the absolute pleasure of traveling all over the world, you know, four or ten countries and visiting these studios and meeting the members, and like, yeah, I mean, they're fitter, stronger, leaner, they're building muscle. It's it's something like you can kind of sit back and and criticize, but until you're actually in there and you're meeting the members and understanding the results that they're getting and it's it's changing lives, like it's it's it's very hard to argue. And and this is probably like the thing I I don't love about the fitness industry is everyone's so critical of everything that's happening. It it's not just parties, it's it's almost every modality, but people are moving and and they're getting healthier and they're feeling better. Like, what what is the big problem? I I don't understand it. As long as it's done safely, and yeah, it's mate, it's it's it's something I've sort of battled with for a little bit, but now just having the confidence and and having undeniable proof of what we're doing is has been just so helpful.

Yeah, I I don't know why the industry is like that. It's been like that for a very long time. I mean, it's about as like fragment fragmented and disjointed as you could see in many times. And I I think I'm gonna look at it favorly and say that I think it's because people come to it with a lot of passion, right? They they go down a route, they they specifically educate themselves. Like, you know, I can go back to my experience of like when Olympic lifting and CrossFit combined, right? It was like, well, now all of a sudden a lot more people are introduced to snatches and cleans and jerks, right? Way more. Like it was a dying sport, and then it resurged. But then a lot of people in the Olympic weightlifting community are like, well, no, you can't do it that way. Like you shouldn't do it that way. Like, you gotta listen to us. This is an abomination, right? And it's like at the end of the day, you have to step back, be like, Well, yeah, but look how many people are coming into the gym now. And look at the communities we're building, look at like all the benefits. Like, why can't we just step back as a as a you know, kind of a general fitness community and forget about the specific modalities, like what's the big issues? And as you're probably learning here in the United States, we have a significant health crisis. Like 70% of our population is overweight and obese. That's not cool, right? That's not good. So, like, what are we doing? We're just fighting and wasting energy amongst us about which modality is better, especially like in Pilates. I'm sure it's like even more fragmented within your little sector of like, no, you can't do that. You have to do it the traditional way that you know, Mr. Pilates said you have to do it. So it's I don't know what it is, but um, that's my guess. What what do you what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's a great, it's a great example, the the Olympic lifting example, because it is in now probably every functional training and uh strength and conditioning concept out there right now. It's I mean, same could be said for even even when boxing started to emerge in in like the group space, and you know, there were the traditionalists that were kicking up a fuss because what it's not in a ring, it's not done with a proper coach, all that sort of stuff. The the evolution of of of these modalities and and and the industry just continues. And I think I think we're gonna see so many more hybrid concepts coming to market. And I I think it is a it is a great space because there's a lot of good training out there. There's like there's a lot of different great types of trading. So yeah, look, I I just hope that it continues to be, you know, a positive place and you know, and we don't all sort of bring each other down in the process.

Well, the way I look at it is like once you put an idea out there, like you put a concept or a modality, whatever it is, it's not really yours anymore. Like you you gotta accept that like people are gonna take it, they're gonna roll with it, and almost you know, use it as a point of pride. Like, you know, if you came up with a specific modality and now people are Making it their own, improving on it, you know, changing it, tweaking it, trying new things. I think that's pretty flattering, right? If anybody ever did that to, I don't have any ideas worth that, but like if that happened to me, I'd be stoked. So yeah, man. Well, let's let's talk about the the business itself. So uh give us the the baseline. Like what does a strong qualities franchise need to get started? I mean, the footprint, the equipment, like yeah, give us give us the high level.

Yeah, I would say investment overall, you know, you you're looking at kind of four to five hundred K for literally everything. So a franchisee will come in and and purchase a territory, you know. We try and we try and keep our territories pretty big. So, you know, population anywhere from 30 to 80,000 people. And someone will come in by the location, that price will include all of the their fit out in there, that uh their row formers, everything like that. And also like the probably the the biggest component, it's a loss leader for us, but it's it's super important. One is the uh the education, the academy. So we have almost a thousand instructors now around the world, and they go through our course and they learn to become a strong trainer or a strong instructor. So that's a really big one for us. So that the franchisee will open a studio, go through our processes, and then try and hire like five to seven incredible instructors. We generally look at, I would say like 90%, maybe 95%, are Pilates instructors that have a players qualification. We do sometimes try and teach personal trainers how to do pillows, which is a little more difficult. And and the course is quite, you know, it's quite a difficult one. They quite often they'll fail and things like that. But yeah, generally the franchisee will get a great team in. We train them up, we teach them our methodology, we teach them our sales process, every everything like that. And then yeah, we have a 16-week presale. So we get a really, really good run at it. Last year, our pre-sale average was 258 members on direct debit from day one. That's across the board. And you think about like profitability for a studio, it might be 100 to 150 members, maybe 180 if you're in a really high, dense and expensive sort of area in the US. But you know, we've got a lot of these locations breaking even from day one, but it's all about systems and processes. As boring as it sounds, it's it's just about following the playbook. And yeah, it's working, mate. I I think over 70% of our franchisees now own more than one studio. Um, and up to up to up to five really is sort of the biggest I've seen in this short period. So it's it's it's it's really working. The models are the models holding its own, which is super important, I think, when starting any sort of sort of franchise or business.

Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about the education. Is that how intensive is it? Is it online? Is it in-person? That's that's a bit unique.

Yeah, yeah. It's a so it's a hybrid. So there's an online component, then an in-person component. You know, we can generally it goes for three weeks, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but yeah, we we get them in the studio for a very intensive uh couple of sessions. Like they're literally by the end, uh they're instructing classes, they're training every single day. And yeah, there's just so many nuances. Like, we're not just doing one thing where we're teaching people how to do players, we're teaching plays people how to be strength and conditioning coaches, and then we're we're teaching strength and conditioning people how to be players coaches. So there's a lot there. We like people with existing qualifications because we don't want to teach them physiology and those type of things. We want them to know the fundamentals, but yeah, it's a it's a pretty great process. But you know, we've we've got it, we've got such a good team from a movement perspective. You know, we've got even from a programming perspective, we've got uh Pilates experts, exercise physiologists, strength and conditioning coaches that all collaborate together to create these programs that go out on the screens every day. And the fact that we curate that programming is very helpful, particularly in the Pilates space, because most Pilates classes you can go to and you'll do the same thing three days in a row because the instructor will will teach the same thing, or you have different instructors and don't know what you've done the day before. So that variety and and having a really balanced program is is super important.

Yeah, awesome. What about the uh the demographics? Like who who tends to be walking in your doors?

Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's the everyone likes to go after these people, but it's like the 25 to 50 year old female that is really the hero of our of our product. We're seeing a lot of growth in Gen Z, actually, which is very interesting, particularly in the last year. And the cool thing is like with the brand, we're so gender neutral, like we're we're we're we're black, white, splash of light blue, and we get it. We started with like 9% male or something, we've grown that to now over 20%. So that's really cool to see men coming in and doing it, particularly like a lot of ex-athletes, a lot of people that have been training for a long time, a lot of guys that have got the sore lower backs or sore knees, they come in and it just really That's me. We'll have to get you emote. But yeah, they come in and they love it, and and now they can train with intensity again, with with little to no risk of injury. So it's it's a little bit of everyone. And from like a marketing consumer perspective, we not only do we get people who are regular parties goers, but we get people who do functional training, we get people who do spin classes, we get literally everybody coming in, and like it's not like we're we're kind of pigeonholed to this sort of smaller genre within the fitness space. We are getting everybody. So it's mate, it's really exciting to be to be honest.

Uh you mentioned, Michael, that uh you're looking for markets about 30 to 80,000. So is that right? Is that what you said?

Yeah, give or take, like it just changed like the and you you would obviously know a lot better than me, but with the US, there's there's so many different uh high populated markets. Like you look at the density of New York City comparatively to like some of the locations we have here in Texas, like it really it's generally a formula of of um of population where where we will work with the franchisee to create that territory. And for us, it's it's really important we don't cannibalize either. Like we don't want to open two studios next door. I've seen brands in the past get into trouble with that and and open too many in too quickly. So we try to give a lot of space and we actually reserve areas ourselves. We we put them in the blue zone, we call it, where studios just can't open. So they can the franchisee will look at the map, and there's you know, there's all the different suburbs everywhere around the US, but we also reserve spots just to ensure that our growth and our trajectory isn't gonna cannibalize, and we can do it sustainably as well. It's uh I think responsible franchising's gonna be at a much bigger topic in the next few years. And you you know, you would have read a mate has to be, yeah. Yeah. We we don't want to be we don't want to be in any of those articles talking about you know the demise of a franchise. So and more importantly, like we want people who invest in our brand to make money and and and not not feel like they're uh they've got competition down the road that's the same brand. It's just uh yeah. This responsible franchising piece is something myself and Mark talk about probably weekly. And and how do we do this sustainably but still do it quick enough? I think speed to market is also super important because I I know the fitness industry moves quickly, it's volatile. So yeah, again, really, really interesting sort of topic as well, mate.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's topics two years ago that I was sick of talking about, and I haven't even mentioned them once. That's how like the trends go, right? Like, uh although artificial intelligence, that's not going anywhere. It's everywhere. Yeah, it's everywhere. Uh well, like the market specifically, I would imagine for you guys it's like smaller urban markets, right? Like New York City, everybody wants a piece of that, but you know, I don't know. Well, like Austin is well, Austin's probably fairly big now too. I don't even know what the population of it's grown exponentially, but like I don't know, like uh uh Boise, just because it's in my backyard, right? Or like something like that, like kind of smaller B and C urban markets. Is that is that the target or is that where you see a lot of traction?

It's we we actually have a uh a group uh Momentic that have bought 96 locations and and they are going into tier one markets, so there's probably 30 or 40 LOIs in now in you know your West Hollywood's your New York City's your tier one markets. I think Austin's a tier one market, but interestingly, our first studio was in Stone Oak in San Antonio, and I actually just looked at their account yesterday, and they have over 200 people trialing their they've just hit the like million dollar a year mark in terms of their their recurring revenue, and now they're getting their second studio. And I would say Stone Oak in San Antonio is is not a tier one marker, like it's it's it's very sort of residential, and there's you know, there's some nice shops and things like that, but it's not um it's it doesn't have the density of a of a New York City. So I'm excited that it can work everywhere, you know. For us, it's just about the real estate piece and and getting that right. And I think it's almost more important here than than than it is around the rest of the world. So that's just been a massive focus for us. And yeah, got some great partners sort of helping us out there.

What's the footprint again? How big are these things that you guys are are building out?

Yeah, like I'd say minimum is like 3,000 square. Okay. Yeah.

And and the type of people that you're looking to franchise, franchisees. Like, is there a specific mold that you're looking for? Obviously, if someone comes and say you want to buy 98 and they're a professional, you know, organization that has great operations and things like that, you're gonna say yes, right? But as I say often on this, like it's very different than you know, opening a fitness franchise than like a Taco Bell, right? You know, you have to market it a little bit differently. You have to have a little bit more uh excitement and passion. It's hard to be just completely hands-off and let this thing operate. I mean, maybe you can if you have just tight, tight systems, but yeah, so who who tends to be the best franchisees for for you guys?

Yeah, we we try and avoid anyone that talks about passive income. You know, it's you are running a business and more importantly, you're building a community. So we love people that are right in their community that have an understanding of business. Some of our top-performing franchisees actually have sales backgrounds, which is very interesting to me. Um, and then so there's probably that sort of single-unit operator type of franchisee that we love that are in their community, they understand fitness, they're passionate, they understand business. And then the you know, the other side would be the investor model, you know, the 96 locations, or like even in Jersey, I I think we've sold 10 to one party and and and they they are an existing fitness franchise owner. And so generally, if they've come from fitness franchising or you know, that that sort of nuance around investment franchising, they're fantastic. But you know, some of our best operators are those single unit operators that that just know their community and they hustle as well. But yeah, anyone who's who's not really willing to put the work in, we're trying to avoid which is hard because we we do reject a lot of of franchise inquiries coming through, which is hard sometimes when you're you're scaling a business freshly in the US. But yeah.

Yeah, awesome, man. Well, give me some uh let's look into the future here a little bit. So it's 2025. Uh if we're having uh a beer in 2020 2030, let's say, right? You're like, dude, we're we crushed it. Like we're super happy. We've we we couldn't everything nothing could have gone better, right? What would that look like? What would have happened?

I I would say we would have executed correctly on building the brand equity in these markets. So you you can't as a as a sort of a a business, you know, yes, we have a hundred CEOs, but we're still quite small in the US. We need to start local. So we need to build local communities, and then we sort of expand to cities and then we expand to states. And if if we're sitting back in five years saying we crushed it, well, we executed that strategy properly. We didn't try and go too big too quickly, be a national brand. We rolled out with great communities, profitable studios, and we're able to slowly build a national presence. So yeah, I I think it I think for us it's about not being too big too quickly or trying to be too big too quickly, and just doing this sustainably with the right partners. So if we execute on that, um we've hopefully done our job.

Yeah. You know, uh, you use the term brand equity, which comes up every once in a while in conversations on this podcast, but uh it's always when we talk about branding and things like that, it's everyone kind of has a different thought that comes to mind. And it for a lot of people, it's very hard to define itself. You just can't know what it is. So when you think of brand equity, what is that what does that mean specifically? Like expand on on what that that concept means to you, cut to Michael.

Yeah, it's it's probably that sort of consumer brand awareness where they know the brand, they trust the brand. And not only that, the brand has value. So, you know, going into a brand new market, your brand equity is very, very low. No one knows who you are. You have a very small footprint. I think brand equity is made up of all those things within caller marketing and branding. And to build that out, you need people seeing your brand three, four, five, six, seven times, you know, before they purchase. You need people to have that cohesive awareness of they see they see your copy or they see your colour palette, or and they they recognize that that's strong Pilates. Like all those little things all come under that that umbrella of brand equity. So it's a very, very hard thing to do in in a market with such a big population, and it it's it's not something I like. I I don't believe really that many brands will go viral anymore. Like, you know, I I think five, ten years ago, some brands would get lucky and they would just explode. But I think it's much harder to do and it's a it's a sort of slow, sustainable process now.

What's uh when when when you think about a brand that's exploded, like I'm trying to think of one in a viral way. Like, has anything come to mind specifically?

In the health space, I mean Aura doing an amazing job, I I think. Even even like 8Sleep, I think are doing a great job, and and they've they've exploded very quickly. David bars, you know, the protein bars. Oh yeah. Yeah, I'm I mean, they're sort of three off the top of my head, but you know, Aura took took a bit of time, but you know, the they're selling millions of units. I I just think some of these things hit and and and some things don't. And yeah, I mean, have you gotten examples?

No, no. I mean, I've I I love the teachers, but I have an Aura and I have an Aid Sleep, and I'm a huge fan of both of them. When you think about even ones that have been around for a while, like I think of Garmin now, like they've been around for a very long time, but now like their brand is really get catching fire within the fitness and health world, which is which is pretty incredible. It's almost like a resurgence of a brand in particular niche, right? And I don't know if that was an intentional or if they just make a great product and people loved it or love it. But uh yeah, that was that's one that kind of comes to mind.

I I think it's like it's super important, and and this is for us, our innovation button is always on. Like Garmin, I'm not I'm not sure of the case study, but you know, you've got brands like Woop and similar coming in and probably going a bit harder from an innovation perspective. And and you know, uh I was I was lucky enough to sort of study marketing and learnt a lot about longevity in brands. And the big thing is if if you are not innovating, you will recess and you will die. There's not a lot of brands or products or businesses out there that have stayed the same for five, ten, twenty years. You have to innovate always. So, you know, for us, like the innovation button is is always on the the the tech investments we're we're making now, the machine investments, like we just put in a reverse spring system where you can do a hundred-pound deadlift, you know, on the machine. So, and again, that's like strength training on a reformer, which is very uh controversial. But yeah, look, it's I I think you just have to innovate always. Like it's it it's you you cannot just have a product or a service and just say this is it and keep it the same for for too long. It just needs to be this constant evolution.

Yeah. I mean, even you look at like brands, uh F-45, I think is a really good brand that you could say absolutely exploded, you know, within a short period of time. And they're still innovating. I mean, you and I talked about Luke Armstrong, the you know, quote unquote goat of franchise sales, right? Luke, if you're listening, what's up, man? Uh you know, like how even like or when I went and visited their LA headquarters early before the pandemic, like there was constant, like little like functions of innovation that they were working on, whether it was like their cruise ships or you know, college campuses or you know, uh a unique, like I I don't want to get into their tech, but it was like it was you could tell there was innovation was at the the cornerstone of what they did. And even today, right? They've kind of gone through their rough patch and the pandemic and everything, and they're still innovating in the Pilates space and the offering areas. So I think kudos to those guys, and I don't think they get enough credit nowadays for what they've done.

May I I agree. I I think I also think their marketing has improved. You know, when when when we actually left um, you know, sort of around the 2019 period, we felt the innovation wasn't enough. And, you know, getting Olympic barbells in there, getting skiods in there, those kind of things, they weren't even in the conversation. So now they've actually done that, they've brought it in, they're following strength. There's such a movement for strength training now, and to have proper strength training equipment in there, and you know, but we we saw that movement happening, and and you know, kudos to them for for doing it now and and getting it right now. I think with their 45, they've repositioned themselves because in in Australia they're look cool, new, hot brand, you know. They to me they feel like the every the everyday man's workout now. Like I I went and trained the other day in in uh around Himosa Beach in California, and it was just like you know, it was your mum and dad's, it was the workout wasn't excruciatingly tough, but it was friendly enough to get people in at the entry level. And I think where they position themselves now is very smart and and it they're on a really good path. So it's good to see because we went through a period in Australia where I've, you know, they closed hundreds of locations and and we thought the brand was dead. So no, I I agree, mate. They're doing a great job and and and and they're on the right path now.

Uh last question for you, man. What do you need help with? So as an industry, if uh inevitably people reach out to you after listening, like what would you what would you like to hear from people about what's important right now? From what perspective? Like, you know, do you need are you growing your team? Do you need marketing? Obviously, do you want people reaching out about buying franchises? Like what's what's critical to your to your growth?

Right now, it's probably uh infrastructure and that is in the way of instructors. So getting good instructors in because you know, we can open busy, but we can't open up enough stock, like have enough classes running unless we have the instructors facilitating the classes. So that's really the big one. It's building a network of instructors. So for us, that's that's awesome. If if we can get more people interested and involved and wanting to go through our academy, that's that's a big one. We just started working with Saver, who'll fantastic. They've been doing a lot of great work in the background. So we're we're great from a property perspective. Marketing always happy to take any advice or or hand there. It's you know, from a PR perspective, it just just getting the word out. Like we're such a unique brand and and quite a controversial one, I think, in this space. So aligning with you know the right publications and just getting the word out of who we are, what we do, and why we're unique is is very important as well. So mate, I'm sure there's a million other things, but yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot. Uh awesome man. If people want to get a hold of you or get in touch, is there any uh specific way to do that? Where would you send them?

Strongpilates.co, so.co, that's the website. Or if they want to just check out what we do, our Instagram handle is at strong. So we we've got that one handle, which is made fantastic. I bought it as an investment actually, like seven years ago. I just started buying Instagram handles. And uh and when I did the workout in Orange County, I was like, how does this make me feel? It makes me feel strong. And I I had the handle and here we are. So yeah, so at strong or or strongplays.co and everything's there. Whether it's buying a franchise, wanting to sign up as a member, wanting to trial as a member, wanting to be an instructor, whatever it is, it's all there.

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for joining me, man. It's been a lot of fun, and uh we'll keep tabs on what you're up to. So yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Michael Ramsey. Thank you. Appreciate it, mate.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was 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 and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as far as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the featureoffitness.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 Malzone, and this is the feature of fitness. Have a great day.