Pete Moore - HALO Talks: Live at IHRSA

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, 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 learn more. Insight Tracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add Interage 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age and see how you're aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. That's insightracker.com forward slash future. Welcome to the future of fitness, man.

I feel like I'm in the future of fitness. I'm caught in a time warp.

Good to see you. Yeah, you too. You know, I've heard your name so many times. I've been told I need to meet you so many times. So many times, if I had a nickel for every time, I'd have more than what I have in my crypto wallet.

So that's true. I don't do the crypto thing because I don't understand it, but maybe it's not understandable. Well, I understand it's not working for me. So that's about that's about all I know. Yeah, I'm looking at cash flow, EBITDA, audited financials, little things like that, real estate, property I could touch.

Well, it's great to have you, man. That's nice. You've built quite a following, you know a lot of people, and then obviously you have a lot of influence in the industry. And you know, there's there's a lot of questions I want to get into, especially about your podcast career, why you did it, why you started it, what you get from it. But maybe if we can just start at your origin story, man, how'd you uh within the fitness, the context of the fitness and and health industry, how'd you get started?

Yeah, somewhat of a circuitous road, but then you know, starting back in elementary school, I used to play soccer and I was the goalie because I didn't want to run around and I thought it was pretty beneficial to be able to use your hands. I was like, I'll take that spot. Um and uh I became pretty good at as a goalkeeper and I became a good athlete, but I I realized early on that I always played defense and I always was part of the the cause of not losing. And you know, I got other guys that that are on the field that are that are winning, and they're I never really kind of defined myself as like how many points I put up or how many goals I scored. I was always just I wanted to make sure that we were, you know, we had a very strong defense. And um my dad ran a company, he was the CEO of a company, and I saw how much work he would do to kind of prepare himself for the next day and didn't delegate as much as he as he used to, as he should have. But I learned, you know, very quickly the benefits of math and understanding the numbers back in the day. I went to Emory and then I went to uh Harvard Business School, and then I got lucky enough to get a job at a firm down in Florida in 1999 called Brockway Morandam Partners. And the first day I was there, they had their Monday morning meeting and introduced me as a senior associate, and they went over the deals that they had under uh letter of intent. And they owned an aerospace parts company, they owned a agricultural tank business and a company that did the blue chemicals for the toilets and the uh and the uh diagonal soap in the airplanes, you know. So it was kind of very much in industry agnostic, you know, somewhat boring, steady-eddy businesses. And they had a um letter of intent to buy Gold's Gym International with the largest Gold's Gym franchisee at the time, Galliani Brothers. I kind of glanced around the room pretty quickly. I realized, you know, I'm definitely the only guy that has a Gold's Gym membership in this firm right now of eight people. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that has a tank top that actually fits. I was pretty good shape at the time. And and I spent my whole life playing sports and you know being a team. So I kind of raised my hand. I said, hey, you mind if I be on this Gold's Gym deal? And kind of added some of my accolades. Like I was the intramural athlete of the year back in the day. I have a health club membership. I uh belonged to Gold's. I had some Gold's Gym t-shirts and uh got onto that deal and basically I haven't left the industry since August 1st of 1999. Yeah, so you've seen some changes. Seen a lot of changes. You know, I originally, when I got involved, the idea was just to buy and build health clubs, do acquisitions. Back in 97, 98, the internet was kind of changing the world. I was at business school at the time. They somewhat brainwash you at business school that, you know, if you have a big idea, go for it. You know, worst case scenario, you have a Harvard Business School, you know, diploma and you'll you'll figure out a way to right-size your life. You still land okay, yeah. Yeah, even if you know you hit the ground, like there'll be a trampoline below you. So I ended up starting up a software company that basically did all the online fitness nutrition, Salesforce Management software. You were in the Daxco booth here. Yeah, we used to do all this back in the day, but it was 20 years ago when no one was really savvy enough to use the internet and the tools that were available. And also, you know, the pipe, the pipes weren't big enough to really deliver that. So we used to do this on AOL dial-up. And I used to run around the country as a crazy entrepreneur and try and sell one to 10 club health club chains on using our software. And I'd go walk around with a digital camera like Norm Cates, and I would take pictures of their club, and then we'd go to their house because they didn't have a DSL line. They didn't want to pay 35 bucks for a DSL line or they didn't want to do, they didn't want to buy computers for the club. This is even before Wi-Fi. So if you think about uploading a three meg file up through a 28-8 modem, you got a lot of time to sit in somebody's house. Yeah. Wait for that to happen. So they're asking me questions about, you know, what's it like to be in private equity? You know, what DBITA? How do I structure this? Do you mind doing this Excel for me? I got this PowerPoint I'm trying to put together. So I kind of was a banker running around in internet clothing for three years and basically met all these regional health club operators, you know, selling software, but I was always the guy, you know, who worked in investment banking before business school, went to hard business school, and then, you know, worked at Brockway Moran, which is one of the only private equity firms in the space. And then after three years of doing that and just kind of breaking even and not taking a salary for three and a half years, I went back to banking. And that's when a lot of groups were looking at investing in the health club industry. And at that point, I unraveled and understood the whole business and understood also which people were worthy of getting capital, had financials that were decipherable, you know, understood how to run their play, whatever that was, and kind of became one of the people on Wall Street, if you will, even though we're working on Park Avenue, of you know, call me before you do this deal. Let me just tell you if this is, you know, legit business. So that's kind of how it all evolved.

Yeah, great story, man. Well, you know, this is actually, I have a lot of questions for you, but I'd like to start with this one because it's top of mind. Over the last three years, and feel free to agree, disagree, the uh appetite for investors, especially VCs and you know, more of the typical Wall Street, seems to have increased in the industry. Um why do you think that is? Is it is it the technological advancements? Is it new eyeballs on it? Is what is it do you think that's changed uh in the last three?

I'm gonna answer this question probably not the way you think I'm gonna answer it. There's a lot of irrational investing that goes on, and if you're missing out, and I think Peloton was probably one of the groups out there that you know ran to the moon and did a great job of providing, you know, digital fitness to people during the pandemic. I mean, it was a saving grace, probably a lot more mental health, you know, situations and issues right now. And if you were a fly on the wall inside of a venture capital firm, you know, and you looked at the health club industry and you said, okay, this could be like these people could be like an arcade, or this could be like a blockbuster, you know, and there's a there's like ninety billion dollars worldwide of of revenue, and what venture capitals like to do is disrupt industries and steal people's you know recurrent revenue streams. So, you know, a lot of groups went in with I'm the Peloton of rowing, I'm the Peloton of you know, group cycling, I'm the Peloton of Pilates, I'm the Peloton of this and that. Right. You know, just like you had seven, eight years ago, you know, I'm the Uber of this, I'm the Uber of that, and yeah, you know, Airbnb. Yeah, Airbnb of this niche, and yeah, you know what you find out at the end of the day is that you're not, and most of these companies aren't, right? Because there's only like one or two category killers, and then everyone else tries to kind of play or you know, run it, you know, swim in their wake. And so there's a lot of irrational investing. There's gonna a lot of there's going to be a lot of money lost that was put into the industry. And there's also put in evaluations that don't make any sense to people like me. And there's also like sticker prices that the average person saying, like, oh my god, that company's worth $200 million. They took in $20 million and they sold 10%. Well, what people don't know is that the $20 million that got put in is the first money out, right? So they're in at like a $20 million valuation. And if the company gets sold for $20 million, they get their $20 back, right? So the $200 million is kind of what their upside potentially is only 10% of the upside instead of what it should be like probably 40 or 50% of the upside of what those companies are really worth. But a lot of these deals get priced as if there's no competition, and they're like priced to win, okay, and they're not priced to post. You know, they're not priced appropriately, and that's what happens, you know, when euphoria kind of sets in and people have irrational expectations of how somebody's gonna go and buy a connected rowing machine or connected whatever mirror or what have you. Look, some of those companies over time could be great businesses, but the venture capital firms I think were focused on behavioral change and that that people were gonna stop working out in health clubs, and they just actually didn't understand the psychology that if you don't leave your house, you're probably not gonna make friends. Yeah, you know, real friends, you're probably not gonna find a date, okay? A lot of people go to a health club, one, to look better, to feel better, and also to find people they want to hang out with, or they want to, you know, find a girlfriend or a boyfriend or what have you. And, you know, there's limitations to doing that, you know, in your apartment. And also, you know, people's apartments are not really designed for you to work out on those floors. You know, the reason why we have like flooring companies that at a trade show is because the flooring's designed to not, you know, crush your knees and give you like shin splints, right? Your apartment was not designed for that, especially in Manhattan. And a lot of people don't want to spend two, three thousand dollars on a piece of equipment that they know they're not gonna use. So the market size I think is limited. And then the bizarre thing is like even over the last six months, these at-home companies are putting up ads on, you know, during you know, the Super Bowl and during, you know, all these big events and the NCAA. And I'm like, if you had the thought of buying a home piece of fitness equipment, like that that came and went already. You know, like the market's done. They should have like pivoted into let me not compete against you as a health club operator. Let me put my equipment in there, treat your health club as a showroom, right? I'll give it to you on consignment and I'll give you 20% of the sale. Right, I'll put a QR code on there, and I'll put all your content of your instructors onto my piece of equipment. And this is what I think is going to happen, or at least what should happen, and use the health clubs as like a showroom and a distribution partner. You don't try and get their EFT, you're not getting it. It's not happening. Yeah, right. So it should be an extension of the health club, and you should be partnered with them as an equipment, you know, and a technology provider. Not, you know, I'm gonna take your member away. It's like you're not in the five-mile radius except virtually, and and people want more than that.

Yeah, great answer, man. And to set the context too, we are sitting in the middle of the floor at Ursa 2022 in Miami Beach and surrounded by fitness technology companies, new brands, big old brands, and things like that. I haven't walked the floor yet, but obviously you're smack in the middle of it. You probably have interviewed some interesting people. What are you seeing this year that may be different than previous years, if anything?

Huge change is the fact that technology and data companies have a larger presence than the equipment companies. They're the ones hosting the events, and they're the ones basically building the biggest relationships. And a lot of it's because data is the weapon of choice right now, and it's going to be. I gave a speech yesterday at our at our event, and uh, you know, used some military references here, but you know, when Ukraine started to protect themselves from Russia, you know, the only thing you heard on CNN or MSNBC or Fox or whatever is like, we need javelins. Like that's our weapon. Like, no one said, like, we need some tanks, we need some supply routes, we need like a couple of airplanes. Dude, we need javelins, right? That's all everything was talking about. So I said yesterday, like, what's your javelin? Like, walk around this place as if like this is a weapons showroom, right? And figure out what weapon you're gonna use to compete against Planet Fitness. What weapon are you gonna use to compete against Peloton? You know, and I said that Planet Fitness has a business model. I love what they're doing because they're bringing in people that would never join this industry, you know, like an Uber driver or like your waiter or waitress or people you meet, you know, some guy at my dad's, you know, plays tennis at my dad's, you know, over 75, you know, facility. Where do you work out? Go to Planet Fitness, you know. Yeah, that's awesome, dude. I'm psyched that you do that, right? And they got like their little key cards, you know, purple key cards, and they all feel welcome. Yeah. But they spend $14,000 a month on advertising. Nobody spends that kind of money. So you got to walk around the show and figure out like, what's my javelin? Like, how do I compete against 14,000? Either I spend the 14 or I go get a data system like Daxco and you know, VFP, and I have all these weapons, or I use promotion vault on the gift cards, and I say, okay, this is how I'm gonna keep this flow of new leads coming, and this is how I'm gonna embrace my members. And all this data that you can, if you actually took the time to use the data and analyze it, and then pick up the phone and use it as a weapon to be like, hey, Eric, I see like, you know, you took three classes last week. What are you trying to achieve? You know, why doesn't anybody do that? Why when I walk into a soul cycle, if I spend, not bragging, if I spend like probably I don't know, five classes a week. I spend $200 a week at Soul Cycle. Okay, $800, right? Right, yeah. And I get a great workout, I love it because it it replicates for me like my synagogue. Like it's my spiritual place. It's my workout facility, and it's also like my substitute for going to a nightclub and buying a bottle of Grey Goose, and then my Citibank called me the next day asking me if like there was fraud on my credit card. Like, no, dude, I've done this like every week from when I was like 27 years old to like 37. Like I did the same exact thing. Stop calling me, you know. Anyway, my point is that nobody there, you know, looks at the data and says, like, hey, Pete's, yeah, he's been here a long time and he's been doing the same thing. Like, maybe we can help him get to the next level or something. Like, use that data, and that's even rudimentary data, right? Just check-ins. Yeah. But you can see like what classes I'm going into, who I'm going in there with, what instructor I'm following. You know, how how can you incent me? You know, I'm on the treadmill. Give me an offer through like promotion vault for like a $50 Nike card because you know I must have busted my sneakers by now, right? Yeah. So like use that data and actually don't use the data and the technology as an excuse for not talking to me. I was talking to someone else the other day, and I'll I'll slow down here. I'm talking to somebody the other day, right? And he's like, um, yeah, I sent an email out. I'm like, bro, you got 300 members. Just talk to them. Yeah, freaking talk to them.

Yeah, it's interesting. So the data thing is fascinating. I I was had the pleasure and honor of uh moderating a panel yesterday with the EGM. So thank you, Sean. Thank you, Dana, for having me to do that. First of all, if you're looking at great. And and and data was a big thing. How do we make all this data and make it simple? Right. And that that's the key thing. And most of all, I mean, there's so many, obviously, I'm deep in the fitness technology world, and I I it interests me a lot. I think it's fascinating. It's a really exciting place. 15 years in the industry, started as a coach, gym owner. Yep. And now starting to see all the technology come in. And I see a lot of stuff that's like really cool. I'm like, wow, that's cool. It's cool. Yeah, but it's not a job. But but what is it doing? Yeah, what's the end result? And I think the same thing with data is we're like, we're collecting all the data, like, well, that's cool. That's a new data set, that's a new data point. You know, first of all, but how do we actually boil it down to something simple that benefits the consumer and getting people in? And of course, we always talk about the other 80%, right? Exactly. The other 80%, like you talked about, those people don't normally go to a gym, right? So it's it's interesting, and I can't wait to actually cruise the floor today and see what kind of fun and interesting things that people are are cooking up nowadays, because that I'm just looking around as we're talking, I'm like, that looks like a weird machine. I wonder what that does. But there's there's there's a lot going on here.

Yeah. I mean, if you think about um a company, a service, a product, and I say this all the time on our podcast, you have to solve a frustration. If you don't solve frustration that maybe you had as an entrepreneur and then commercialize that, yeah, that reduction or elimination of that frustration, you don't have a company. Yeah. Right? So you got to think about that. When you're developing a product, if you're selling a product, what is it gonna do for me? What are the results? How much have you done? How much do I need to do once you hand it to me? Um, so I think all the intelligence is there now to do it, but you know, not everyone's gonna hire a data scientist, right? And it's got to be dumbed down, not dumbed down, but it's probably simplified to the point where my director of marketing, my director of operations, my head of personal training, give me the bar charts and the, you know, what do I do? Like, I got a signal. Used to have the uh aura ring. I purposely lost it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, why is that? Keep saying pay attention. You know, like I didn't sleep. I'm like, dude, I know I didn't sleep well, but like tell me what to do about it. Just don't give me like a stop sign every time. It's the so what now what. Yeah, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do with it, right? Yeah, so I got sick of it, so I left it in the hotel room purposely.

So I really uh I want to talk about your podcast, man. Uh you've you've been doing this a lot. About the same time as you. Yeah, yeah, we've been in the game for a while, and it's uh you're definitely considered prolific, I would say, within the industry. It's a good word, right? I like to work. Yeah, I don't know, man. We just normally use it, it just came up, but it's true. And it's a lot of work putting together a podcast. It's you know, it's literally a part-time job that most of the time you don't really get paid for, right? And but you do it because you like it. But that's me. I I'm curious about yours. So, Halo, and why did you start it? Let's start with that. What was the impetus? What made you want to do it?

So, our day job, if you will, is helping people buy and sell companies as a merger and acquisition specialist firm. We do strategic consulting, we help people raise capital, you know, build out territories or orange theory, you know, multi-unit studio chains. And we also have a couple of scene investments that we made. So I like a merchant bank or you know, boutique investment bank. And I've always been trying to be on the cusp of how do I do our job better? What I realized is if I can interview you, if I was selling your company, it was uh you know, Malzone's Fitness and you had 15 clubs, I got to put a one-pager together, I gotta send it to a hundred different groups. I gotta go on the phone or on a Zoom, I gotta have them come to your locations and tour them. If I just did an interview with you for 30 minutes, you'll talk about how you feel, the like what your what segment you're in, how good your team is, you know, what your philosophy is, how you're gonna grow. And basically I've got almost like a like a teaser or like a confidential information memorandum, yeah, you know, audio version. So I really started the podcast to basically try to scale the distribution of opportunities that we're working on. And then at the same time, we came up with this term halo, because I hate the word wellness, and I Googled it, and yeah, I've been telling people uh health and wellness banker for 15 years. I'm like, where's this word come from? Like, no one comes to me with like an awesome wellness idea. Yeah, but what was I mean? Most people think of wellness, what's the first thing they think of? Like a spa? I don't know. I think they think about like, you know, I don't know, eating a little bit healthier or like taking care of yourself or corporate wellness. You know, here's like some discount you're gonna get from your corporation for you know going into LA fitness or something. So I Googled the word wellness, and I find out there was a guy at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Halbert Dunn, back in the 50s, who was a biostatistician, and he was looking at all the data. He's like, wow, all these people getting sick. I got to come up with a movement. So I basically said, okay, what's the antonym of illness? Wellness, right? So if I'm not sick, I'm okay. So think about this day and age of the kind of enthusiasm I have, and and you and like the adrenaline and dorphins that run around this industry. And like, so I'm gonna be the wellness guy. I'm gonna be, I hope everyone's just not sick. I'm like, that's not acceptable to me like that. It's right up there with a holistic. It's like I'm captain wellness. I'm like the guy who's like 15 pounds overweight, like uh. Might have a couple of drinks. I eat french fries all the time, but I look okay, right? That's like your wellness, like poster child. Yeah. So I'm like, all these companies are coming with these amazing ideas, all this like new science and technology, and building these businesses and coming up with these different workout routines. I'm I'm like, we gotta we gotta come up with something better than this. So I was ticking around with some letters. I came up with the Halo Health Active Lifestyle Outdoors, create the Halo effect. And you know, you stand around a water cooler, you know, as a as a saying. And it used to be, oh, what trip did you go on? You know, just like 15 years ago. I went to Panama City or I went to South Beach for the weekend or Vegas. And now it's like, I went to Costa Rica on this retreat, you know, for yoga, or I went with my friends upstate. We went hiking. Yeah, you know, everything that people are doing is about living a Halo lifestyle and all these experiences. And so we came up with Halo Talks. Halo Academy is our boot camp. We do like a two-week business school intensive for people. Right on. And I want to name Halo Advisors. So the idea is over time, and we just got credit Swiss to use the term Halo for their investment summit, which is one of the top 10 investment banks in the world. Yeah, I saw that. Congrats. It was awesome. So I want everyone to say I'm a Halo company at some point in the next five years. So you're a technology company, not supporting health clubs, you're a technology company in the Halo sector. You're a better-for-you beverage company. All right, I support the Halo sector. I'm not a better for you food, and that somehow is like your own category. So if you want to be in this movement of supporting people taking better care of themselves, providing the products and services, I want at some point to, you know, maybe this conference is called instead of the Ursa, you know, trade show, it's called like the Halo, you know, open summit or something, or the Halo, you know, trade show or the Halo Fair. That's our big you know, audacious goal.

Yeah, I love it, man. So so clarify that even more. So when when you if someone says, Oh, you're in wellness, and you say, No, I'm Halo, how do you walk me down that path again for to for clarification? Tell them like, oh no, no, no.

It's not wellness, it's Halo because Well, explain to people that you know the wellness movement is is to keep people from getting sick. It's not really to optimize who they are or what they're doing, right? So all these companies here are trying to optimize your performance. They're trying to use the you know your blood work to customize your your supplements and you know, all these triathlons and and all these different, you know, like a Spartan race and all these, you know, 5k and 10K. All these groups are trying to provide you services, activities, goals, results, and being part of this much larger community. And it is creating this halo effect that when people see, hey man, you look great. What how'd you do that, right? You're like, oh, I played tennis, I did Soul Cycle, I haven't eaten French fries, I do whey protein shakes. You know, you're basically delivering to them almost like a prescription of how you live a Halo lifestyle. And all these companies are our little cogs in that wheel of doing something better. And we interviewed this woman, Dave will tell remind me of her name. But it's all about little choices, you know. I go outside right now and you can have a cigarette or you can go and have a bar, right? You can go and drink a water, you can drink a Diet Coke, you know. You can go and take a 15-minute walk, or you can sleep 15 more minutes, right? So all these like little micro choices that people make during the day, yeah, like obesity, diabetes, and loneliness are three things that are curable. You don't have to find a cure for diabetes, you just have to get people not to, you know, partake in in gluttonous behavior.

Yeah.

So I feel if we can create a platform and then get all these investors to say, okay, I get it. You're you're in the halo sector, you're not in the wellness industry. People you say, uh, oh, health club industry, that's where investors go to lose their money. Wellness is like, oh, that's a great idea, but nobody makes any money. You see, when was the last awesome wellness company you found? Yeah, I mean, well, you didn't, because they don't exist.

Yeah. Well, I yeah, I'm starting to work with one, but now, but here's the thing is, and maybe you can tell me because you come from the investment banking background. And I was told this just the other day that if you're looking at at valuations, fitness is usually a 2x and wellness is 5x. Is that is that 5x what? Well, excellent number.

Just EBITDA, I guess. Uh no, I mean, I mean in the health club industry, it should be uh anywhere between like if you got one club, you should be able to sell it to four times EBITDA. And if you got a chain, you know, you could look at six or seven times if you're a planet fitness franchise or you know, they traded 40 times EBITDA. Right. So the multiples there are more bricks and mortar. I think what what you're probably referencing is that wellness technology companies are the total addressable market of like someone looking at the wellness industry might say, this is a huge industry, and yeah, you know, you you you've got market share that you can take that's that's available, yeah, and they might price it up, but there's there's a lot of players out there that are still trying to figure out what their corporate wellness business strategy is. And I'd rather them come in and say, here's what I do, and I'm partnering up with these clubs, or I'm partnering up with all these services, and or I'm I'm an aggregator for corporate entities, and I here's like their Halo products and services. So I just did the word just doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for a lot of people after I describe it to them, and they also say, Oh, yeah, I've been using that word, but it's not you know my favorite choice because it doesn't emanate what they're trying the pat almost like takes the passion out of like the word of the the the narrative. Yeah, so trying to reinsert the passion of it. Yeah, I like it, man. So it came back to the podcast. So how many episodes? So I think you're like three, you're in the three fifties, I would say. Yeah. So what happened was once we started doing this, you know, and and trying to use it to get deals off the ground, we also had companies come to us, and the hardest part about our job in general is to say no to somebody that has uh, you know, that's a passionate entrepreneur, and you say, hey, I want to raise, you know, two to three million dollars for this really cool nutrition platform or this new device or what have you. And one venture capital firms don't like paying intermediaries, right? So private equity groups view an intermediary and an advisor as a as a conduit to increasing the probability of a deal getting closed. Right? Because you're basically holding the hand of an entrepreneur that's never done this before. Yeah, and to get them to understand what's market terms on a contract, they they're willing to pay you for that. It's a transaction cost to them. For a venture capital firm to put money into an early stage company and they want to pay, you know, in the investment banker or the broker or the introducer or what have you, you know, 3% or 5%, they're like, look, that's money that's better spent left in the company. So I want these entrepreneurs to come to me directly. I don't want it intermediary in my way.

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Yeah, so I said, all right, well, I don't want to say no to people. So what I'd rather do is put them on the podcast, let them do a 30-minute interview similar to what you do, and then let them use that interview to go and send that out to the venture capital, the family offices, and say, if you like my story, right? You might not like my 10-page deck, you might not even understand it, right? Yeah. And how do I get this down to one piece? Let's listen to this 30-minute audio. If you like what you hear and where I'm going and what the size of the market is and how I'm building this out, then call me. So I give them the I give them content, yeah, you know, basically repurposed and almost like I wouldn't say a stamp of approval, but a stamp that, you know, this is credible. Yeah, for sure. And then you, you know, you're on Halo Talk. So we get a lot of people that listen to it, you know, that are that are investors looking for ideas. We also get entrepreneurs that are out there trying to use that to get validation for partnerships or deals that they're working on. And then we also, you know, have it for educational purposes. So in each episode, there's gonna be some aha moment that someone's like, wow, I could use that, or you know, that'll trigger me to think about doing something here, or wow, I use my technology, but I actually don't sit with it and actually pick up the phone, you know. So there'll be some some people call and say, hey, it was great. You know, I did something because of that.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's it's so in some ways it's it's a qualified audio pitch.

Correct. Yeah, free. And yeah, I'm not charging anybody for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not we don't really mean, yeah, we've got some sponsors on it, but the goal is not to, you know, turn this into anything but you know a business-to-business idea lead generator. Yeah, really what it is.

Yeah, and and when did you start it again? What year? March of 2017. 2017. First podcast. Yeah, okay. So I think I started in November of 2017. So we've seen some changes. Uh what are some of the unexpected benefits that you've seen from from hosting a podcast like this?

So the two main benefits. One is at a trade show, doing 25 or 30 of these, and you could really build the relationship with somebody at a 30-minute podcast. They're not checking their phone, they're not talking to other people, nobody's interrupting us, saying, Hey, what's going on? Yeah, right. So it's like one-on-one, and we're we'll be friends after this. And then the second benefit, which I didn't realize was gonna happen, is typically once you take the headphones off, someone's like, Hey, you're talking about my management team. Like, I actually am looking for a new CFL. Or, hey, you talked about I talked about these clubs. I actually don't want those. I want to sell those so if you know somebody. So there's like an intelligence moment kind of right afterwards, yes, where there's some some business opportunity, or at least just furthering the relationship. And we kind of we kind of tread water in confidential information and what people want to do that they don't put up on, you know, they don't put on the airwave. So then you've almost like got the first step of a like a trusted advisor where okay, we're friends now, I've been on the podcast, and now I've got something I can do to help you potentially.

Yeah, yeah, I love it, man. And I I that's exactly the same thing when people ask me that that question is this my this is the best part of my day, usually podcasting, because of the same reason is like I I don't have a cell phone. Yeah, yeah, right? We're not talking, we're just yeah, we're just we're just rapping, man, and and I get to know you personally. And then that that special moment, right? Right after when it's done, it's that that critical moment of like, hey man, how can I help you? Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah, so that's how it evolves. I mean, I love doing, I love talking to people, I love trying to help them get the right answer. Yeah, you know, I tell people that you know you're building a business, it's an experiment. You know, don't think that there's, you know, some here's the 100 things you should do. It's kind of you gotta move around and figure out, you know, where your spot is, and if I can help you do that. One of my mentors from back in the day is guy Peter Brockway, who I mentioned before, I used to work for, used to say, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And he's he said, you know, my role as a private equity investor is to try and keep you from making mistakes that I know or that are analogous to things that I've seen before that didn't work. Yeah. Or I can say, I got great experiences with this. This is just very similar to it. And our basic laws of capitalism and business apply, regardless of AI, this, and you know, CRM that, and you know, whatever. You want to talk, whatever acronyms of of the day, you know. Yeah, take care of people, deliver results, you price the product right, and you stay on it. You know, you got a business. Yeah.

Well, hey, man, I I know we're button up on time, you got a busy day here.

It's cool, man.

So I I guess where where do you want people to go? Where do you want them to do?

Well, look, we got a book called Time to Win Again. You can find that on HaloTalks.com, you can find it on integritysq.com, and we're here to help. And our goal is just bring as much money into the industry as possible and make sure the entrepreneurs here can solve diabetes, loneliness, and um and obesity. And the only way you do that in in a capitalist society is you've got to make sure capitalists seven out of ten letters of capitalism. You know, we better get we gotta bring it in. Yeah, so that's that's our goal, and we're gonna we're gonna stick to it. Yeah, right on, man.

Well, I appreciate the work you do in the industry. Keep it up, man.

Likewise. Thank you for the time, brother. Good hanging. That's fun. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, man.

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