Power Moves: Andy Peat & Jason Moore - Snap Fitness rolls out Spren's AI coaches and body composition to 1,100 gyms worldwide

This is Derek Melzone and welcome to this special Power Moves edition of the Future Big Method. In these brief segments, we spot like breaking news and advancement across the industry's biggest health food and wellness. From partnerships and acquisitions to product multi-s and investment rounds, we bring you exclusive direct insights from topic industry voices. Power Moves are brought to you by the Podcast Collective. Learn more at Podcast Collective. Hey friends, this is Eric Malzone, and this episode of the Future of 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 speaking 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. Andy Pete, Jason Moore. Welcome to this special power move edition of the future of fitness. So for people wondering what the heck is a power move, it is, as we were just talking about, essentially it's the podcast version of a press release, right? We get a little bit more in-depth on major moves within the industry, things like partnerships, like we're about to talk about right now, any kind of financial transactions, major innovations in the marketplace so that everyone uh in our industry can keep up to date and learn from people like you guys who are out on the front. So really excited about what you guys are going on. I mean, I've known you guys for many years. Um, I've known of your brands for many years, and this seems like such a no-brainer partnership for both the companies that you guys represent, but also the consumers. So let's start with this. Andy, if you want to give a quick introduction to who you are at Lyft Brands, and then we'll get on to Jason, then we'll talk about the partnership.

For sure. Yeah, no, great to be here. Thank you. My name is Andy Pete. I'm the CEO of Fitness on Demand, one of the executives for Lyft Brands. So we're a parent company for multiple fitness brands, the biggest being Snap Fitness, which is 1,100 clubs, uh franchise gyms around the world, and Fitness on Demand, which is a essentially content management um software platform that works with gyms to bring their apps to life, to, you know, display content on screens in group fitness studios and all sorts of solutions. So um great to be here.

Yeah, thank you, Andy. Jason, how about learning the show to you?

Yep, Jason Moore, the CEO of Sprint, S P R E N, and uh spent the last decade building a lot of different measurement technologies to assess the body and guide people towards better health and fitness outcomes. And uh yeah, we're excited to dig in here with this partnership because it unlocks a lot more of what people's data can actually do for them, which we'll talk about.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so I think the most logical place here uh to start would be with you, Jason. Maybe describe what Spren is and that'll merge into, you know, in its current iteration. Of course, you've evolved quite a bit over the years since you've been at the helm of Spren. But uh, and then we'll talk about how that's gonna, you know, come into the world of Lyft France.

Yeah, thanks. Um so basically, I mean, kind of like I mentioned, we've spent 10 years developing tech that unlocks insights from the body across the spectrum of heart rate variability, heart rate, recovery, readiness, stress, inflammation, and more recently, body composition analysis. And in the past couple of years, we've invented this camera technology that lets you measure body composition accurately comparable to a DEXA scan using just your smartphone. And so Andy was one of the first people actually to find that as an innovator himself. He likes to push the tech stuff onto me, but Andy's an innovator, and I've come to learn that deeply over the couple of years of collaboration here. Um, and he saw where things were going and recognized the potential of combining that type of technology with a gym experience and coaching services and content, on-demand content, and a bunch of other stuff. So that's kind of we've been collaborating now behind the scenes for a couple of years and developing this together. But it's something that we're excited to bring to the market more broadly now and integrate our tech in with, you know, Andy and others. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Andy, I always find that the best way to describe what the partnership will look like is maybe walk us through what the consumer experience will be now that you guys are partnered with Sprint. Yeah. What is that going to look like?

For sure. Yeah. So yeah, there's I really look at it as a bit of a triangle of offering that is unique to Sprint. And that's why I really liked it. And the technology, you know, Jason said even two years ago, when I reached out to them just for the body scanner in the phone, I thought that that was just a really compelling way to get people's get people's results, track their results without needing to purchase a big scanner and having a gym and all those sorts of stuff. And ever since then, the world of AI has come in and it's sort of, you know, making everyone question what are we going to do with AI on the consumer side? And what Jason's built is ultimately, like I said, this triangle where there's a body scanner. It then gives you an AI coach, which you can tailor to your brand, which I really like it. So at Snap Fitness, we will have an AI coach that is unique to us. It takes those body scan results and ultimately says to the consumer, hey, what's your goal? What's your lifestyle? What's your deal? All the sort of normal questions. And then based off that, it compiles a nutrition and exercise plan for me. And within the app, I can log my food. It keeps me accountable. Um, and I essentially have a coach in my on my phone who's telling me at certain times of the day that I haven't eaten enough protein for the day. And what's really cool about it is then it will be like time for your scan. I do the scan at home and it will make real-time adjustments to my nutritional plan and exercise plan based on where I'm at currently. And I really liked that because I thought, you know, in our Snap Fitness business, you know, we have, you know, a lot of members, we do have some fantastic personal trainers out there, and we're really working to beef up the personal training part of our business. But, you know, ultimately, if that's 10% of our membership base that have a trainer, we're probably doing best in class numbers, like very good numbers. But what about the other 90%? What am I going to do with them? And how do I give them the tools for success? The other side to it is this, you know, nutrition piece, body scanner piece, and AI coaching. I don't want to build though that. Like I don't have the time, the resources are best spent elsewhere doing our core businesses. So we decided to find a partner in that world that that is already doing it, that does it really well. And that's where Sprint and Jason come along and they've worked really well with us. So that was a long-winded answer. The the consumer will get this the Snap Fitness and Fitness on Demand members will get the opportunity to try for free for a period of time that triangle of body scanning, coaching, and nutritional got uh nutritional plans and logging. Um, and then if they choose to carry on with that service, they will pay, they will pay for that themselves. But at a at what we believe to be a really great, great offering and price.

Yeah, it's it sounds like science fiction, but it's actually happening now. Right? Especially if you've been in the industry for a long time. You're like, I used to do like assessments, you know, on a paper with a uh, you know, yeah, it's wild. So the data, one of the things I'm curious about, everyone talks about data nowadays. A lot of people don't really know the value or how to extract gold from the data, but this has got to be an exciting time for the unique data sets that you guys are gonna be working with. So what what is what are your hopes on that side, Jason?

Yeah, I mean, data pulling insights out of data is what I've spent my entire career on. And I um, you know, as Andy was saying, basically what we've done is we've taken this really deep technology out of the lab and brought it into the real world together and made it useful to people. But there's a lot of data, and we try to distill it down and say you don't have to track everything all the time. You just need to track what matters to you right now, basically, which for many people coming into the gym is body composition. And for many people going to the gym regularly is body composition, and that's whether they're interested in longevity or performance or aesthetics, et cetera. We also integrate with wearables, provide HRV readings if people want to do that using the camera of their phone as well. And so there's definitely an opportunity to collect for a person a lot of data and turn that around into real value. That's what Andy was trying to get at there too, as well, is like as you collect this data, it's working for you 24-7. So your AI coach will automatically check in and say, hey, like Andy said, maybe you're not on track to get enough protein today. Let's um make some plans around dinner to correct for that. Or maybe, hey, you're 90% of the way to your step goal today and you want to be a little bit more active, let's go for a 15-minute walk and try to reach that step goal. Also, really important is that as people, you know, throughout the year, we all do this. We kind of ebb and flow in our motivation and getting into the gym and being consistent and stuff like that. You now have an accountability partner and a motivation partner that's not just like a cheerleader. It's not just generically saying like, great job for exercising, or you should exercise more. It actually has access to your data and gives you that real personal touch that says, like, hey, when you consistently go twice a week, you make steady progress. And we've seen it in your data, right? And that hits a little bit more deeply than just generally saying people should work out more, for example. And maybe going too often, if somebody's trying to go six days a week or something like that, and then burning themselves out, we can use the combination of HRV and body composition and resting heart rate and a bunch of other things to uh recognize that pattern and get ahead of it. Yeah. As a few examples.

Yeah, everything's personalized and contextual. I think that's that's the big thing. I mean, we've been looking, I've always been dreaming over the last, you know, eight years of having this just especially if you've ever been a coach who's sat down and done programming for a lot of people, you know, one-on-one, and then you realize how much time it is, and then how moot it is at times because they'll get sick or they'll go traveling and then their life changes like, well, this eight-week plan I just wrote is garbage now. Um but if you have stuff like this, you can save a lot of time, right, by making it very contextual to the client, making sure they're spot on, but having it adaptive to to how they change their lives and the data that's flowing in. So super, super cool. And um, you know, from an operator side side, Andy, like where do you expect the biggest ROI on something like this? Is it retention? Is it engagement with new clients? Is it upsells to personal training? Like, what do you what do you hope for?

Yeah, great, great question. Particularly in and we have we have a few different avenues because of the different businesses in the portfolio, there's a few different outcomes for each side. So I'll focus more on the snap fitness one because that's probably a little bit more relevant to a lot of the listeners being gym operators and in particular being franchised. So you want to make sure that the franchisees are getting a lot out of this. So what we see is two things. Obviously, retention is that sort of fairy tale that everyone, you know, chases and goes after. And and we we just know that the more someone engages with our brand and our brand products, the longer they stay and they become brand advocates and you know, refer their friends and all of that. So we think that if we have a coach that's available to them 24-7 a day that is representing our brand, which is what the sprint coach will do, that fits in with our product offering, which is a 24-hour gym. We need to be able to offer 24-hour support. So that's so it'll it aligns with our brand offering first and foremost. Secondly, as the as the coach gets a little bit smarter, we want to be able to train it to be able to make personalized recommendations that also upsell within the gym. Not necessarily upselling like pro, we don't really do like product offerings or supplements or anything like that. What I'm talking about is really tangible recommendations that benefit the gym. An example might be that the coach notices that maybe my, yeah, maybe my activity in the last two weeks has slow it has just been edging downward. So they recommend a particular trainer at the gym for me to see. And because it's, you know, it's got our integration in place, it knows that that train is free at a particular time and it's one click away from booking it. So it can upsell a trainer. Same with the group fitness class. It might say to me, hey Andy, listen, you you've been going too hard lately. Time to chill out a little bit and stretch. There's a yoga class on tomorrow at five o'clock. Should I book you in for it? And then that gets me in a yoga class potentially, which then I'm engaged with the gym, I stay longer. Um, and then the other one is again, if it's if I'm struggling as a consumer or I'm not going to the gym as often, and that's what most people's problem is. Can it then recommend that I bring someone along with me? So now you've got a system doing referral campaigns for you as well. I see that I see there's those benefits, but really the overarching goal is engagement with the brand. And, you know, already we're like, we're early days in this, even though you know we have been in collaboration for a while. Um, we're early days in this. And even the other day I was in the supermarket and I picked up this piece of steak, and I was just like, oh, I'll ask Coach Charlie actually, it was it didn't give me the macros, it just gave me the weight. So I didn't know what the calories were in it, and I didn't know what the protein content was. So I uh I asked the coach, and this is via texting, hey, I've got this this piece of um the sirloin, and it's 90, I can't remember, it was it was 0.9 of a it was about I can't remember the weight, but whatever. I typed in the weight and it came back with, well, it's it's gonna be around 800 calories and 123 grams of protein, so it's a lot of protein. Like, it just kind of told me what what was in it. Now, okay, so the brand has told me what was in the stake right then and there. Now, if I can get to the point where, you know, obviously someone always has to pay for it, but if it comes with my membership or it ends up being like an add-on, that's fine. But as a Snap Fitness member, maybe I'm getting it cheaper than someone else, then again, my membership to the gym has just become a little bit more valuable because it's assisting me outside of the gym as well as inside of the gym as well. And it that that to me is just that 24-hour support. And so that's what we really like about it, and that's the outcome. And we, you know, one of the biggest questions that that I get asked that I think will just be interesting just to squaw for right now is are you trying to replace personal trainers with this? And I know Jason probably gets that a lot, and the answer is no, and and the biggest piece of evidence around that is Jason's built a product where his he is actually wanting to then take all of our trainers and be able to offer their own personality in an AI coach. So, you know, that's another level that we can take this. Our personal trainers are able to take the platform, work with Jason's team, and actually have them themselves teach the machine to act and talk like itself. So they are providing that support to their clients at scale 24-7, and that saves them time and makes them look better. So overall, I I I I really liked that triangle approach of those three core offerings. I thought that that was really unique. You know, there's a lot of calorie counters and food loggers. That's not unique, but but that is you know interesting and and for those who use it works. There's a lot of AI coaches coming out. There's not a lot of body scanners in a phone. And I looked. There's not a lot, and there's not a lot of good ones either. So to have the three work in unison to me was really, really interesting. We're we've I use it, my team, we've all been using it for months now, and and we really like it, and we think our franchisees will like it, and even more importantly, we think our members will.

Yeah, amazing. Uh Jason, any last thoughts to add to this? This is really exciting, I guess.

Yeah, no, Andy covered it well. I mean, we we basically are trying to make this easy for everyone. That's really the goal here because it's really it's easy to say, to add complexity and to add a bunch of additional things you need to get and all these other things. So we're trying to roll everything we can into one product and service that will really fill those gaps, but base it on a strong layer of val validity. And we've spent years validating just the camera technology alone, millions of dollars of RD, collaborations with dozens of research institutes to validate the accuracy and quality of the data so that you're not garbage in, garbage out. It's based on a really strong foundation there. Um, and that's important to our partners as well, right? Like the average consumer isn't asking, let me see your validation study, but they're trusting the brand to recommend high-quality products. And so that's why it's really important for us beyond just the right thing to do. And then from there, basically we have a turnkey solution that uh really requires no development. Andy has development horsepower, so he's actually doing some extra development around our product to make it more seamless for Snap members and fitness on demand customers. But that's just another layer that's optional to do. So just trying to make it easy for everyone.

Yeah, fantastic, you guys. And if anything, I'm I'm even more excited to check in in six to twelve months because with the rate of technological advancement that we're seeing right now, this could be this could be completely different and better in numerous ways that we haven't even thought of yet. So very interesting stuff. And I hope a lot of other uh partnerships like this follow suit because I think it's uh it's really valuable for the industry and it's obvious, right? I mean, it's not easy from a technological perspective, but it's obvious that this is the direction you go. So kudos to you guys. Thanks for joining me on this, and uh we'll uh we'll see you guys soon. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy Pete, Jason Gore.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks, guys.