Natalia Karbasova: Fitness Tech Preview - 2021

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. So here's the deal: entrepreneurs and business owners undoubtedly walk a different path, which means they need a different set of metrics. The great news is that level five mentors is actually quantified. Yep, that's right. If you go to level5mentors.com forward slash survey, you can take the freedom assessment, get your personal score, and see how you are stacking up. That's levelfivementors.com forward slash survey. And don't worry, it's free. Well, I'll answer that question for you. You're not. Because you can't until now. Morpheus arms coaches with accessible, intelligent, communicable client insights to save coaches time and ultimately increase your value and earn more money. By collecting lifestyle data from 90% of the current wearable market and combining that data with cutting-edge proprietary technology, Morpheus provides an accurate and reliable recovery score for all of your clients served up on a simple and elegant dashboard. No more guessing, just the real, honest data alongside the insights from Morpheus into what to actually do with it. In the gym, in a home, outdoors, with personalized heart rate zones for each individual client. Combined with custom alerts, in-app messaging, and other amazing features, this is the ultimate coaching machine. Go to trainwithmorpheus.com to learn more. That's trainwithmorpheusmo rus.com. Please go check out our wonderful sponsors. And if you get value out of this show, I ask you to do three things. Please go subscribe, give us a favorable rating, and share this episode on social media or wherever you like to go chat with friends. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Natalia, welcome to the future of fitness.

Hey, great to be here.

Yeah, it's very exciting to have you. You know, we've been trying to get this whole interview set for a while and the stars aligned. We got everything done. And what an I'm glad it actually took it. Yeah, it took. I'm glad it took this long, to be honest with you, because we have so much to talk about. I mean, today's date is December 22nd of 2020. We're about to, you know, wrap up the year and get into 2021, but you know, fitness technology. What a year for fitness technology 2020 has been. So we're definitely going to talk about that. It's obviously one of my favorite topics. I presume it's your favorite topic as well. But let's start by this. Give us a little bit of your backstory, Natalia. How did you get to where you are with the Fit Tech Summit and everything that you do?

Yeah, sure, sure. So I'm I'm I have a crazy background because I'm a Russian living in Germany. And I've been in Germany for 12 years. And in that time, I've um got my fitness trainer license because I was just interested in the space, you know. I used to be a truck and field athlete in Russia, no doping. I wasn't that good.

Right.

I know, I know. Everyone is asking this question. And I I actually come from the media space. So I've been in the media space for about 15 years, the last nine years as part of the big media company in Germany. It's called Borda. And I kind of was always interested in tech society, what's happening with the future. And this is where I kind of brought my two interests, tech and um health and fitness together, and founded the Fit Tech Company. That's pretty much it of a story, and we're kind of happy that this year went the way it did, although that was super difficult for you know lots of actors. So I just don't need to tell that. But it also showed how important technology is, and it also accelerated lots of developments that would have taken way longer otherwise.

Yes, I agree. It's it's accelerated so many things that you know. I I've been so excited to get you on this podcast, Natalia, because I think you and I both want to play similar roles within the industry. When I started this show back in 2017, I was really just interested in, you know, having been an operator for so long. I'm like, God, this just seems so archaic. You know, like there's gotta be a better way to deliver health and fitness than just what we did, you know, trading time for money, group classes, all that stuff is great, but I just knew there was something better, and I wanted to start a podcast and start asking questions and learning and educating my audience and all of that. And I think you do a very serious very, very similar thing with your FitTech Summit. So tell us about that. Like, what is the summit? What is the events? What is it that you actually do on a day-to-day?

Yeah, sure. So the FitTech Summit is the leading conference platform in Europe, which is devoted to fitness technology and the future of well-being and healthy lifestyle. And what that means is that uh for two years uh so far, well, now it's three years actually, we've been uh bringing together around 1,000 executives from the fitness, tech, health, big tech space, together with startups and investors. We've been scouting interesting startups that could present at the event, you know, in person at that time and digitally in the future, of course. And we kind of see ourselves as connector as the content and network platform that helps the industry to move forward. And we do that by bringing interesting events to the market, but also by building other services in the future.

And you guys are just in Europe right now. Do you have any plans to come out our way out to North America?

Well, I'd love to. This is kind of my dream because you know, North America is a great market, and I believe that this is such a great market because the traditional fitness industry has been, you know, kind of non- not really innovative in the recent years. So that at the same time, we've got lots of investment budgets and investment money, other people's money, as I love to say, as you see with the innovations and uh with uh investments in a tonal or the acquisition of Miro or Peloton, of course. And this money has been put to use, put to good use, I would say, by the companies that decided to disrupt the traditional market in the state, which are now also moving globally.

Yeah, I mean, just it's moving so fast. There's been so much money invested in the fitness industry, specifically fitness technology connected tech. What where do you think? And just yesterday, I think it was announced that um pre-corps was bought by Peloton. But you know, something like a $420 million deal. And at first I'm like, that doesn't make sense. And then I read the article about it, which you know, there's a couple few dozen of them at least. I'm like, okay, now it makes sense why they're doing it and how it aligns with them. You know, when when you look at all these acquisitions and all this money coming into the market, what who do you think is emerging in 2020 as some of the big winners?

Well, this is a very good question, but let us just talk quickly about Peloton first. Sure. Um, because I think this is just an interesting case, and I believe that the whole traditional fitness industry is just, you know, this is this is a wake-up call. If this is not a wake-up call, then I don't know what to do, right? Because what we've seen so far, Peloton has been on the market for eight years now, and like they've been really kind of visible in the last, I would say, two to three years, right? Before that, they were just kind of a shabby startup from New York who that was doing strange things for strange people, and uh that was not understood by investors in Silicon Valley. And why? Well, because the Silicon Valley guys have great climate, they can just get out outdoors, get on their bike, and you know, they don't need this kind of solution, or at least they think they don't need this kind of solution, which means even on that side, we've seen the investor uh bias uh towards uh such kind of technology, right? And um, what we see here is that Peloton started with the targeting very specific niche community, which turned out not to be that niche, actually. But at that time everyone thought that was just a small segment of the market. And now they are also entering the B2B space. Well, they've been there, but they can really accelerate their efforts in that space. And uh they will be using the distribution channels, the production channels of um pre-core, which actually also means that even if the or when the home fitness spike will be over and will be hopefully still returning to to you know to normal business or almost normal business, starting to travel again, going to the gyms again, and so on and so forth, Peloton will still be there. So by this move, they've just proved that they are not a home fitness hyped kind of thing, but they're here to stay. And I think this is just a very important and serious signal to the rest of the market.

Yeah, yeah, that's really that's interesting. So, you know, in a way they did speak and put their foot down and say, we're not going anywhere. This isn't a temporary thing, we are now permanently part of the industry.

Yeah, no, I know. And what's interesting, we have friends in Germany who are called Sports Tech X, check them out, and they've just brought out a fitness tech report, and they found out that the top 10 cities or top cities in fitness tech by number of startups are London, New York, and San Francisco. So these are all big cities where, well, London, New York, where you might not be able just to get out into the nature into open that quickly, right? And this is where the trend is also going. The city dwellers do want to have the advantages of um and an access to the latest trading training technology and just you know keep fit by all means possible.

Yeah, so that's that's a big deal. So, what else in 2020? What who do you think is what were some of the things that maybe surprised you and and yeah, who are the big winners in your mind?

And it's so interesting because if you just look at this, the the users of Swift and Peloton, you might think they're doing the same things, but basically they're so so different. A Swift user is someone who will definitely look down at a Peloton user, right? And a Peloton user will never understand how a Swift user can be that hardcore and that dedicated to the you know to their um training goals without that much fun, right? So I think these two are definitely the winners of 2020. The home fitness companies like Tonal, of course, as well, but also mental health companies or meditation companies like Calm or Headspace, I believe that they've been doing a great job, and they also have a number of cooperations with you know Cities and uh other companies like Microsoft to bring more productivity, calm, and mindfulness to the workspace, for example. And I believe that they will be also growing in the future.

Yeah, yeah, I would agree. You know, so there's there's certain obvious categories that people are seeing. I mean, you know, connected fitness, you know, the Pelotons and tonals of the world, you know, wearable technologies is now, you know, way in the forefront. Everybody's getting something, and and you know, people are trying to figure out what to do with the data. What other things like I'm wondering about you know, maybe some obscure categories that you're seeing coming, like, you know, any kind of genetic profiling or yeah, what what are some of the the oddballs that maybe you see coming down the pipe next year?

Obscure categories is a good one. Well, what I've just seen is that, for example, a German company called Bosch, which is actually a traditional technology-driven company, which has been present in all different kinds of industries with their solutions, has just announced that they've also developed kind of a sensor based on self-learning AI, which can be used for fitness. And this is something which really surprised me because you know, you just don't expect such a company to go into the fitness space, although they just make sense if you think twice about that, right? So I think that companies that are not facing consumer directly, but providing the backbone for other companies to grow fast might be an interesting case next year. The same goes for a Swiss startup Vay, which is uh doing motion tracking as a back end as a service. So this would be definitely something I would look I would have a look at.

Yeah, interesting. How about artificial intelligence? I mean, it's it's you know, I don't think it's truly understood what machine learning is, right? People think it's uh, you know, Skynet from the movie Terminator, but it is, you know, there's so much data now. Who do you think is winning the data game, or who is winning, or who's going to win the data game?

Well, that's a good question, but this would definitely not be the gyms, at least the way it looks like right now, right? We see that Apple is going to the space with uh Fitness Plus, with Apple Watch actually becoming the synonym for health and fitness wearable, right? And they do aggregate lots of data across all their platforms. So this is definitely a big winner of the of the of the data uh war, you can put it like that, right? And of course, the uh the the guys from Google are also sitting on huge amounts of data. They know what you what kind of symptoms you're you're googling for, right? They can offer you data solutions. They own, or to be more precise, the alphabet holding owns a couple of companies that are researching the the the health tech space and the longevity space. And I I believe that it's super difficult to catch up to this data gap, if you could call it like this, uh, for newcomers in the market.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I here's what I feel overall is happening in 2020 is that the everyday fitness professional, you know, the personal trainer, the the coach, may not be fully aware because rightfully so, they're wrapped up and focused on what they need to do to get through the year, right? But meanwhile, you're seeing this significant like cosmic shift in the industry where all these huge players are coming in and investing a ton of money. And I had Jim Kroll on a on a recent podcast, and we talked about, you know, what's different this year. And he's like, well, now you're starting to see Ivy League investment investor types paying attention to the fitness industry. This didn't happen before. And I'm wondering, you know, what does this mean for the everyday fitness professional now that these huge players are coming in and they're putting a lot of time and energy and focus on it? What do you what do you have to say to those people? What do you, what, what's the optimistic, what's the realistic message that you have for the everyday fitness professional?

Well, I guess we we need to differentiate who are we we're talking about. So we if we're just talking about fitness trainers, it kind of, you know, we can compare that with the um tech-driven developments in the educational industry, right? So we've had this like five to eight years ago approximately. We've had this huge wave in online learning with massive open online courses by Coursera and uh the likes of it being everywhere, right? And um we still believe that accountability is super important. This is where you need real learning mechanisms so that people can first of all show up to class, which is that accessible, like in YouTube video, if you compare that to the fitness industry, right? On the one hand, and that they kind of finish the sprint or the marathon, depending on what their goals are. And um this is why I'm still kind of partially optimistic about the traditional fitness professionals, because we are humans and do we do need the human touch, which the pandemic has also shown very clearly, right? There's so many people who are suffering from depression and from some mental disorders just because they just cannot talk to anyone in real, right? So I believe this human touch is super important for the industry, and um those who've been high performance performers in the no in normal times would still be able to thrive in this new kind of market. Like just recent examples. In in London, three instructors, or I guess there were four of them, anyways, kind of couple of superstar instructors has just launched their own fitness platform, right? Which is gonna be purely digital, and uh that would be aimed at providing structured, resistant-based uh resistance-based workouts, for example. So we've had have these superstars who have a high audience reach, and they are able to scale the experience and to move into the digital space on the one hand. Who will really suffer those who've been kind of commoditized, right? An average fitness trainer who can tell you how to use the machine, but that's pretty much it, right? So they will have a real problem because you know, they need to have some unique selling proposition to be still needed in this new age.

Yeah, I'm curious too, because we had talked, those are really good insights, Natalia. I we talked before the recording about you know how Europe and United States, or maybe was in the recording, about how United States is now kind of paying more attention from the tech side to the fitness industry. But you know, Europe, I feel like Europe has been very tech heavy for a long time. Where do you see like, do you think the European market is in this essence more mature on the tech side? Or what's what's your take on the difference between the two markets?

I believe it depends. So Europe is uh really well known for its kind of you know serious tech innovation. Where Europe is not really good at is marketing, or you know, to put it really generally, because they have to differentiate from industry to industry uh and from country to country, because Europe is a continent, it's not a country, right? But what we see is there's lots of great ideas and bright heads here in Europe, but what they often lack is access to funding, because if you compare the funding in in for fitness tech in Germany or in Europe in general and in the United States, this is such a great difference, right? There's still not enough money on the market for this kind of innovation, and I hope this will gotta be this will change in the future because we're uh more and more recognize the importance of digital health and um of digital fitness.

Yeah, and who are, I mean, if you look at over here, I mean, do you have the same players in Europe? Do you have the Pelotons and the Tonals, or do you have different names over there?

Well, we we do have the, for example, technology. They're an Italian company, it's been around for, I guess, 30 years, and um they're doing great stuff, right? They're doing really good stuff, they're doing lots of research. And of course, I believe they're really observing what Peloton is doing very closely. We do have a mirror company which is called Vaja, it's V V-A-H-A in Berlin, which is also moving to the space really rapidly, which I love. We do have eGM in Munich, which is a connected fitness circle company, and they've been funded by, I believe it's over 100 million so far, and they're also doing a great job because they've just occupied the niche for kind of guided training uh within a gym with no urgent need for a personal trainer. So there we do have good names here, but what lacks in Europe is lots of funding which is necessary to bring the products to the market to consumers. But this is also changing right now. For example, there's been like since a couple of months, there's a digital health fund which is which has been started in Germany by two publishing houses. The one specialized in more or less business media. And the other specialized in health media. So they're looking for, it's called Digital Health Fund by Award and Build Verlag, which is kind of word and picture publishing house, if you translate this one. And Hunter's Blood, which is a leading financial and economic publication in Germany. And they're also looking for innovation in this space. What they can bring to the table as well is of course the media reach, which is super important if you want to reach the consumers.

Yeah, I would imagine the majority of the funding here in the United States comes out of the Valley, right? I mean, I don't know that for sure, but that's my guess. New York, Silicon Valley.

Well, yeah, New York and San Francisco are super, super strong on this side. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So Natalia, if if you had, let's say I handed you $10,000. Okay. And I'm like, I want you to invest in a fitness tech company for 2021. Who would you invest in? Stock tip.

Give me one million for a thousand.

Get away. Uh okay, so let's say a lump sum. Let's play it fun. Right? Let's say you did have a uh, you know, a quarter million dollars, right? And you were gonna go as an investor into a company, you know, on this side of the pond or your side of the pond. Who who would you be looking at? Maybe give us your your top three.

You mean kind of sector I'd be looking at?

Or particular companies. Both. Yeah, let's look at broad categories. Uh, you know, which particular sector would you look at? And is there any particular companies that you think would you would uh you'd you'd place your bet on?

Well, this is a great question because you know I'm so inspired by this market and um I'm so excited about it that it's really difficult to decide. Yeah. Well, um I believe one of the categories would be kind of a mixture of gamification, AI, and real-time competition, which I think would be super interesting in the years to come. Because what we've seen so far is that people want to compete, right? People want to feel the presence of others, and definitely we'll see the rise of online competitions or hybrid competitions, where you'd be able to, you know, move along, whatever anyone else is doing on site, you will be able to compete as a virtual sports, as a virtual athlete, for example. So I could definitely imagine this scenario. I would also look at the intersection of professional sports and fitness. Like my dream would be, you know, a lot of us have our fans of some specific athletes, like soccer players, whatever, right? And my dream would be to be able to kind of be able to replicate the the training routines of this specific athlete, of course, with adjustments to my current um fitness level, where AI and uh biosciences come into play, so that I have kind of a big brother sounds really bad in that context, but kind of an avatar of myself or the way I could I could be, right? Because we need to remember lots of people will be suffering from loneliness in the future. Like in the in the in the UK, they already have the Minister for Loneliness, right? In Japan, loneliness is a huge problem. So, and I believe this is something we could solve with the means of technology, because there will just not be enough people to solve everyone's loneliness problem.

Yeah, I mean that is that's just to kind of isolate it into the words you use, you know, the loneliness problem. I don't think it's being talked about, at least widespread here in the United States, but it's a big deal. It really is. You know, I have an 82-year-old mom who's now in an assisted living center, and you know, she's in California and it's like she's locked down. We can't, we can't see her. And, you know, I talk to her every day, but she's just drastically lonely. And, you know, she's one of millions of people who are just kind of locked in. You know, they either they don't feel safe, you know, going out in public due to the virus, or maybe now, you know, I don't know, many things that that cause it, or they're you know, being actually told to stay home.

Yeah.

It's a big deal, right? It's interesting that it's being spoken about more, you know, seemingly in Europe. Is that so you said the ministry of loneliness, that's a thing?

Well, that's a thing in the UK. I don't know if it if that has to do with Brexit, to be honest. But um, you know, I had to think of this movie um which was on the market like 70 years ago, I believe. Movie, you know, I somehow had to think about that. If we had the opportunity for those um who are being you know most fragile in this current situation to provide them with some help, with someone they can talk to. That could be a real person as well, you know, but that could also be an algorithm. And that that algorithm could help them go for a walk, move a little bit, get up, you know, and kind of help them find the sense in what they're doing again. That might be a thing.

Well, you know, there was a recent study, and I read it and then I've talked about it with someone else on the show. And I'll probably brutalize the actual results, but here is the point is that they, you know, in a in a therap in a therapeutic context, they had people talk to real people and then people and then talk to AI, right? And not only could people not really distinguish the difference, but they actually preferred the AI.

Well, that's that's huge.

Yeah. And it's fascinating, and I can understand why. Maybe because if you know, once you especially once you realize afterwards that you are taking at talking to AI, maybe it takes that those barriers away, you be more open because you're not afraid of judgment from another human. You know, it's it is in the movie her keeps coming up in conversations this year uh all the time for me. So it's really funny that you brought it up again.

And so the Turing test uh is done. So the next step is just how we can find meaningful applications of the eye that lead not don't lead to less low to more loneliness as social media do at the moment, but to less loneliness and more physical activity.

How do you how how does social media attribute to more loneliness, do you think?

Oh, there's been studies, you know, with fear of missing out and people feeling depressed after seeing all these beautiful pictures of their friends and family doing all these incredible things and uh themselves being not that awesome in their own opinion, in their own eyes. So this is definitely something which has been proven by studies, and I believe we'll see the trend towards more abstinence from social media or specific social media, and uh also hopefully, you know, I'm an optimist, so hopefully more involvement in the real life. And if this involvement is being facilitated by AI, well we have to weight weight things against each other. So if somebody is not doing anything, you know, a typical couch potato or an elderly person who is kind of you know not used to to working to working out, that's that would be a good solution for them, as long as they don't feel more disengaged, but otherwise. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, I I just watched a documentary last night, Natalia, on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. So I'm just gonna ask this question out of pure curiosity. But do you see anybody taking blockchain technology and applying it to the fitness industry?

Yeah, definitely. So there's been some cases so far, also in Europe. I haven't seen the the this technology being actively used that far, but I believe that could change because we're also seeing the uh the rise of health tech applications where, for example, in Germany, there's this kind of e-recipe, which the German government is especially proud of, which basically means that the uh insurances will reimburse the costs for specific apps that have been recognized as medical apps, right? So here we're just speaking about medicine first. So people with some conditions that are medical conditions. But I definitely could see this stretching to the fitness space as well, because prevention is, as we know, the best medicine. You know, if we could prescribe appeal and appeal, and that would be anywhere anything, that should definitely be physical exercise. So the the blockchain would help us to be way more transparent about what's happening on the health and fitness side of societies and individuals. And of course, that would also kind of try to solve the the issue with the data transparency and data privacy, which is now being concentrated, as we said at the beginning, in the hands of few tech concerts.

Interesting, great points. So you just mentioned a few seconds ago that you are an optimist. I am too. Yeah, right. I mean, I I think I would not, I don't think it would be sane to be optimistic all the time.

But that being said between an optimist and pessimist. What a pessimist says this will not this will this will just get worse. And the optimist says, no, no, no, they will get way, way, way worse. Anyways, that's what kind of kind of an tapping.

So you you're an optimist. What are you what are you really optimistic about going into 2021? What do you think is is really the exciting thing? And you know, our audience is fitness professionals, you know, executives, leaders within the industry. What what do you think everybody should be optimistic about next year?

You know, what I'm really happy about is that there was this famous quote in the American Declaration of Independence, or famous words, and those are pursuit of happiness, right? I believe that we as humanity are starting to understand that pursuit of happiness also means, first of all, pursuit of health. So this is what corona really made clear to us. Without health, it just doesn't matter, right? And this is what makes me really happy because the attention towards health prevention, keeping fit, strengthening the immune system is there. The question is just how you can capitalize on that in a meaningful way, and who would win this race for you know overall global health? Let me just give you one example. What I believe in is that you know, we've seen biohacking movement for a couple of years, right? This is not new. But what we see today is that lots of people are starting to optimize their productivity, their sleep patterns, their brain patterns, if they can do that, with help of technology. So this movie movement is becoming a definite mainstream. And we'll also see lots of newcomers that will surprise us. I was just thinking of the Russian startup based in Berlin, which is called Endel. And uh it's just been famous or become famous uh because of the integration or partnership with the uh girlfriend of Elon Musk, right? They've created together a lullaby for their daughter, uh, which is basically AI-based music composition. So these kinds of companies will enter the space where we'll see integration of different aspects of arts, culture, professional sports, medicine, fitness, technology for better health, physical and mental health, sleep, productivity. And those one ones will become part of overall health efforts, which will hopefully change the humanity for the better.

That's fantastic. So tell us what what do you have in store for 2021? I mean, I know obviously in-person events, it's touch and go, right? Kind of waiting to see what that's gonna look like. But how are you how are you maneuvering this? How are you planning for next year right now?

Oh, some of those things are still top secret. So I can't tell you everything. But what I can tell you is that we'll definitely be building on building upon the our reputation for being the connectors of this um emerging industry. You know, three years ago when uh we started the FinTech Summit, people were asking us, like, what are you doing again? Is this FinTech? Like, we don't know what FinTech is, right? Yeah, and uh it's funny to think about that today, but in these three years, the industry has just skyrocketed, and I don't see an end to that. So we'll be we'll be uh bringing more formats, more content formats, more event formats to the space, to this industry space, will also keep innovating for us as well, right? So we'll be creating new networks, we'll be helping professionals, industry, all the guys working on the B2B side to connect to each other better. Of course, first of all, in Europe, but also in the states, and we'll also help them to understand the market better, to kind of evaluate where they stand right now and what others think, and who can them can they benchmark themselves again, and in general to create this common narrative for what FitTech actually means and where this can take us.

That's awesome, and it's I think you and I are very similar. I I didn't realize, Natalia, that I was such a connector within the industry until I just started connecting people, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, five almost 600 interviews between two shows, all fitness industry people, and I'm generally curious about it. I get to talk to a lot of people, and I feel very, you know, privileged for that. But I think it's more necessary now than ever. Before, you know, I I tried to I built a networking community in 2019. It was just a Slack community, right?

And why am I not still there?

It was tough to get fitness professionals to kind of focus on okay, well, let's let's get connected, let's network, let's talk about what's coming down the pipe, let's connect, let's support each other, let's look for investors, all those things that now, fast forward a year later, I was just too early because now it all makes sense. Yeah. Right. And you know, it's an industry that is moving really fast. And, you know, there's you know, startup accelerators out there now, there's all kinds of really interesting things going on. So I was just a little early, but I'm really happy now that it makes sense that you know, all this work, all these connections, all of these questions and general curiosity that both you know people like you and myself have had, it finally makes sense. And uh it's kind of cool. So, I mean, I'm hoping that you'll come on my show maybe once a quarter and just give us kind of a tech update on what's going on. That would be great. Love to have you do that. So, I guess if people do want to follow and kind of figure out what's going on with your stuff, Natalia, where where do you send them? What's the the best place? Give us the goods.

Well, the first place is just go to fittechsummit.com and sign up for the newsletter. And um, the second one is join our LinkedIn group. I decided for the more traditional version of it, and uh just let's talk. Let's let's talk, let's connect, let's let's understand where this journey is gonna take us, and let's understand that fitness will never be the same again.

Yeah, there you said. And people, if you're not on LinkedIn and you want to be connected, like get on it. Like, I it's uh it's the best tool. I think it's how you and I connect it. It's how I connect with the majority of my guests, it's how I you know talk a lot about networking opportunities, get on meetings with people. It's one of the best places to be. So yeah, get on it and do all that. So, Natalie, think Natalia, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so glad we finally yeah, it's an absolute pleasure, ladies and gentlemen. Natalia Carposova. 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 and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.