Rick Mayo - Finding Your Place In The New Wellness Ecosystem

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 futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey listeners, this episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at InsightTracker. Do you want to add more years to your life and more life to your years? Of course you do, which means you need to make a change. And that is what Insight Tracker is all about. Founded by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometric data from MIT Tufts at Harvard. So what's our secret? First, Insight Tracker uses its patented algorithm to analyze your body's data and offer you a clearer picture than you've ever had before of what's actually going on inside you. Then Insight Tracker provides you with a concrete, science-backed action plan for living a longer, healthier life. And it tracks your progress every day, every step of the way. For a very limited time, Insight Tracker is offering future fitness podcast listeners 25% off store wide. Visit InsightTracker.com slash future to get your offer code and try to InsightTracker today. InsightTracker, because change is an inside job. But are you leveraging it? And perhaps more importantly, are you saving yourself time and making more money because of it? 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 trainwithmorpheusm-o-r p-e-us.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. Rick Mayo, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thank you, sir. How are you, Eric?

I'm doing really well. I feel like this is a conversation long time coming, man. I've I've been in the industry for a while, as you have. I've heard your names so many times over, especially over the past few years. And we've had great conversations in the past. And it's just exciting to finally get this time to spend with you and talk about the industry and all of your amazingly valuable insights into it. So thanks for coming on, man. I think the the place I always like to start is just if you could give us your backstory and how you uh got into the industry, how you started Alloy, and where things are at. Let's let's start there.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And likewise, by the way, thank you for the compliments. But yeah, so we've been in the industry for a minute, almost 30 years now. And I opened my first brick and mortar when I was a uh a junior in college, and I was paying my way through school as a personal trainer. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool to take this service of personal training and put four walls and create a customer experience around it? Because at the time, you know, personal training wasn't even a legitimate industry, which for the young folks listening or you know, any certain guys on my team like to talk, have me tell old stories about the good old days, about when if you had a trainer in the early 90s, it was a bit like having a tennis pro in the 80s, like it was a woo-woo thing, like the ladies would laugh, ooh, you have a trainer for that type of stuff. Sure. It wasn't even a legitimate industry, but it it started evolving into the 90s. We opened this facility in 92 dedicated to just personal training, and then went from there. And so somewhere between 92 and 98. I mean, all of our clients, by the way, at that time, it was like what all the cool kids were doing. So we're in Atlanta, which is like RB capital of the world. So you can imagine our clients were Usher and LA Reed and Madonna and all these, like all these types of people that would come to the gym. And then over time, as personal training became an actual uh recognized service, we started to attract people that just needed better health and better fitness. And so we needed to evolve also the business model a little bit, which we did. So in 1998, we had been open for what, six years, and we did a million dollars a year in training at that point, which is a lot in a small space one-on-one. Now, clients were paying a lot of money, so you can imagine a business model where you had fewer clientele paying two to three thousand dollars a month to exercise with you. And then in '99, we had a bit of a hiccup running. We were first to market. So I was running a decent business model, but we had the old story that you hear in the industry where we had 1099 contractors as trainers who were basically self-employed, running a business within my business. I was giving them leads, they were then creating loyalty with themselves, and then had a couple of guys leave. And they were two guys that held a lot of my revenue. And so we know around between 35 and 40% of my total revenue. So they left and then had a couple of other mishaps. And I went from being the smartest guy in the world to going from $83,000 plus dollars a month in revenue down to $12,000 a month in revenue. Married, still am, and had a mortgage and two young kids at the time. And so while I started it in college, it was like now it had evolved into a real job, if you will, a career. And so we had two choices either, of course, get a real job or you don't wear sweatpants to work every day, or suck it up, pull up your bootstraps, and uh figure out how to do a better business. So we decided on the ladder because I really liked what we did. And then we started systemizing everything we did from how we said hello, goodbye, to how we train people, also how we induct new customers, how do we answer the phone? And that then took us about a year and a half to get back on our feet. And then it led to training groups of up to six people and still being able to claim personal training. And we launched the first ever boot camp, which was like uh year 2000, I think, certainly in our area. And that was like 25 people all working out, getting sweaty together. So we were ended up by the time, by the time it was all said and done, we had 8,000 square feet. We were doing several million dollars in revenue, and we had this really like multi-multi-service approach. We had a do-it-on-your own option. We had what we call team training, which is 25 people getting sweaty option. We had uh personal training in a small group setting, and then we had personal training one-on-one. And everything was going great. It put me on the radar because we were doing this high revenue. I started doing some consulting, some speaking. And then, next thing you know, we had a gold gym owner come in that I'd met through the industry, and he was visiting on a Saturday morning. And we had 40 people in team and 10 coaches doing small groups. The place is just a madhouse. And he just looked around and thought, he just said, Man, I've never seen anything like this. Is it possible that you could put this in my gym to replace my personal training department? And we thought, man, I don't know. Our market position was you're those guys were these guys, right? Don't go there, come here because we we care more. But we thought he wasn't really competitive, he was pretty far away. So that would be an interesting challenge. So we cleaned everything up, put it on a digital platform, launched it, and fast forward to the end of 2019, and we had licensed over 2,300 clubs worldwide, everywhere from Tasmania and Dubai and India and Cyprus and everything in between to doing work with some really big franchise brands like Anytime Fitness Goals Gym and building white-labeled versions of what we do for those guys and watching them scale it. And uh at the end of 2019, we decided, you know what? Instead of working to be the special sauce in everyone else's franchise, let's just pivot and do our own. So we pivoted to full-on franchising and then did pretty good. We've sold quite a few and got a bunch more in the pipeline. So we're we're learning as we go, as much as we know about scaling a business and as much as licensing is franchise light, franchising is a whole other animal. So I enjoy learning and I enjoy being the underdog, so to speak, or at least clawing my way up and learning as we go. And that's where we are now for franchising. So things are going amazing, but we we have a long way to go.

Yeah, great story, Rick. That is that's so much experience. And I listened to one of that going back to when you hit that first major, as you described it, a hiccup trainers walked away. You had a huge reduction in monthly revenue, which I've I feel that I've been there. Exactly. Yeah, what do you think your early success out of the gate was a hindrance in the long run? Or do you think it was helpful to you going back? Obviously, there's nothing you can change and everything happens for a reason, and all those cliches because they're true. But do you think that was a benefit to you early on, having huge success and seeing a huge drop off, or do you think, or do you think it was a benefit?

I definitely think it was a benefit. Do you mean with the hiccup itself? Yeah. Am I glad that happened, right? Yeah. And the the answer would be yes, because uh if I hadn't had the hiccup, I would have always thought that I was smarter than I was. So I I had only hit home runs up until that point. I had never really had any challenges. And so I think everyone needs a bit of humble pie, sometimes the whole pie at once, which is what I got. But if you look at the story, and it's not any kind of a special story, it's a story often repeated in several businesses and people's lives, it's the hiccup, if you will, and the struggling back from that forced us to build a systematic approach to training, which became the impetus for a licensing company that took something I created in college and put it over in over 2,000 gyms worldwide. So, as much as at the time it was horrible, and I really thought I was going to lose my home and when everything else at the time, in hindsight, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have created a licensing or systems to be able to serve a licensing company, which would have not allowed me to franchise. So literally everything was built off of that, what was a seemingly catastrophic event.

Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, you hear so many stories of success in business, and there's always uh some at least one huge obstacle that was overcome. And I always in my experience too is whenever my back has been against the wall and you're you're probably inside or scared, quite frankly, just absolutely front, it motivates you that fear or anger or the negative emotions that you get in that state really fuel uh some sort of leap forward that you don't see yet. It just makes you do things that maybe complacency had set in and was being a roadblock to more success. So it's I think as people listen to this and that story, it's really an interesting thing. If you're going through that or something's gonna happen to you, you'll reflect on when something like that did happen. Just know that it really probably did catapult you forward or made you ask a very hard question. Do I really want to do this? Or do I have the stomach for it? Because there's nothing wrong with getting a job. Yeah, you can't wear sweatpants, right? Most of the time. But it is there is something to it. And I think nowadays, especially I have it's funny, I was talking to uh Brandon Cullen on a recent episode about uh from Anabolic about uh entrepreneurship. And sometimes it's really there's a dark side to it that a lot of people don't put on their Instagram and that can be very challenging at the end of the day if it goes well, it's extremely rewarding. I want to get into the one of the major topics I want to cover with you today because uh so many people see success, and we'll talk about the fitness industry, but I'm actually working on another consulting project outside the industry where it's a similar question. It's like, okay, I have a successful location, maybe two, maybe even three. What do I do? And people are like, I should franchise. It seems to be this jump forward to franchising. But there's definitely different options. And you having seen it all over your 30-year experience, what insights do you have of people who are facing those decisions, or maybe those thoughts have just popped in their head?

I think that's a great question, first of all. And I think that it's there's no wrong answer, right? So the main reason to franchise, and this will make sense, is that you can scale faster using other people's capital. That's all. That's basically it. It doesn't mean that, and and this would be a stress test for whether you should or not, doesn't mean that you can't use your own capital and put more skin in the game and double down and own all the clubs corporately. There's a lot of franchises, food franchises that have done that, that have said, hey, we're gonna franchise, but first we're gonna order open several corporate stores. And then they find out that the stores are so stinking lucrative corporately that it doesn't make sense to franchise. And they found that they can scale corporately, so why not just continue to do that? Or there's companies that are 50-50, 50% of the company of the stores are owned corporately, and the other 50% are franchised, right? Some are more corporate, less franchised, some are 100% franchised. So there's not a right or wrong answer. I think the key is would you be willing to spend your own capital? Do you believe in it enough? Do you know in your heart of hearts and with your analytical data that it will scale? If it does, then it then franchising is a good option. If not, and this is really where you have to be honest with yourself, it's expensive to build and market a franchise. And I I knew that, but I didn't know, I didn't feel it until I did. So you can plan on being in the at least the million-dollar range to build a good one and to market it correctly to be successful. Even then, Eric, when you look at the stats, I think it's some 85% of franchises never bust a total of 50 units. And that's a sobering number, right? To I think one thing that that certainly doesn't get coached enough in entrepreneurship is mitigating the downside. Like, what is the downside and can you live with it? So if you're sitting on two to three great locations, plan on spending a lot of money if you want to go to franchising. And do you really want to do that? Can you mitigate the downside? Meaning if you got four or five open and two of them were stinkers, you're dead in the water. So you're a million dollars into building this thing, you didn't get proof of concept, you've got two out of the four that are open that are not performing well, and unit economics are everything, especially early on. Are you willing to take that risk? Or should you keep going corporately if you in your scenario you've got your two or three, maybe you do six to ten corporately. And maybe there's a few bugs you find when you move into a market that's not in your own backyard. Maybe you go into an adjacent city that's 50 miles away, and you find that things are a bit different there, right? We were lucky enough to have the lens of licensing, which in coaching and working with all types of brands from CrossFit to giant tennis centers, we were able to then discover what was scalable, what wasn't, and different, even in foreign markets. What did we do that was really the special sauce and what parts and pieces were not as defensive? But we were lucky in that regard. But again, it wasn't something we said, this wasn't part of the overall plan. It was just a natural evolution of what we had done. So I think it's a question that's not as easy to answer as yeah, go for it. I think you just need to stress test some of the things that I just mentioned. And if you do it right, it can be wildly lucrative. But more often than not, it's just expensive and it's not lucrative. So you really have to believe in your processes and your concept.

So I think a lot of people will look at licensing as something in the middle. But would you say that's an accurate, having gone through that as well? When is that an accurate thought? And when is licensing applicable?

Yeah, I think so. I think anybody that's interested in franchising, you can start with a license. What is the difference? Because that's a big question. Because sometimes those two terms are interchangeable. Like even in the franchise world, I'll help you, I'll listen to people say that they sold a few licenses here or there. So there's some real definitive rules. There's three big rules that you have to follow to be a franchise versus a license. So in other words, if you're going to license, you can't act as a franchise. So one of those is that they can't run your brand on the front door, right? Now you might say, what about CrossFit? That's a license. CrossFit provided zero support, which was another one of the rules. So you can pick and choose, but you can't do all three things, right? And and the last one is you can't invoke any kind of control. So, in other words, I can't say, okay, you can buy an alloy as a license, by the way. If I'm licensing, you can't license an alloy, put my name on the front door, I provide you business systems and support. And then if I don't like what you're doing, I shut you down. That's franchising. So if you're going to license, you just need to understand that while it's a lower barrier to entry, you're not going to have as much control, and you may not have your name on the front door. And if you do, you can have zero control. And if you and again, we I think crossover would be the best example of a license where you can license the name for $2,000 a year, but there's really no, as we all know, the each location is completely different because they are there's no business systems and there's no control, and they couldn't do that, or they would then by default be a franchise. Yeah, so it's a good interim step. Just understand what it is and what the rules are around it, and what's your value proposition? What are you licensing then? Because you can't do all things, right? You can't be a franchise. So are you licensing is in a name? Is it programs? Is it business systems? Is it software? There's a lot of different ways to license and things to license that keep you out of trouble from franchising. But if you just think you're gonna license and then provide essentially what a franchise does, and a lot of folks do this. If you don't understand, once you get into it, you get good legal advice, they'll turn you off of it. But some folks start down the road and say, Listen, I want a franchise, but I don't want to pay all the money to develop a franchise. So I'm just gonna license. There you go. Okay, but what you don't want to do is get out of the gate, have 50 or 60 sold, and have the government step in and say, Oh no, you're definitely a franchise. That's gonna get expensive to the point where you'll be out of business.

Who's the governing body on all this? Who who says that's a franchise, that's a license. Is there like who who does that?

All I know is it's the government, but I'm the worst person on my team to answer that question. But there is a governing body, and it's done by state. So one thing that's interesting is when you do go to franchising, there are certain states where where you need to register, and they're called registration states, and they're all different. So some states are like, Yeah, you need to register, but it's just a $250 fee. Other states say, Oh no, we have to check your franchise disclosure documents, and you have to provide us with three years of PLs, and you have to insure yourself, and it's crazy, right? It's a bit of a money grab for the states, to be honest. But at the end of the day, what they're trying to do in their best efforts is protect the consumers, and that's gonna cost you some fees to do that. So you would not be able to register in those states as a franchise if in fact you were simply a license. So if you just stayed under the radar and tried to essentially promote franchise light, you're gonna get caught. And the way that you're gonna get caught is that you are gonna say, I don't like what that guy's doing with um Eric's gym brand. And so I'm gonna tell him he can't have my license anymore. He's invested in systems and in your program, and he's upset. So he then tells his local officials, hey, this guy can't do that, and he sues you, and then you are deemed as a franchise, and then you're in big trouble. So I know a lot of folks in fitness are like, ah, that's never gonna happen. And it's great to play best case scenario, but remember when I talked about developing a franchise, same thing here. You have to mitigate the downside. You have to think about okay, if the worst case scenario happened, could I live with that? Yes. I love the whole you can speak to this, Eric. We talk about sort of the glamorization of entrepreneurship, burn the ships and never look back. And I just I call BS on all that. I don't know anybody that's been successful over the long haul that approaches business like that. You have to look at the downsides and be able to live with the worst case scenario. And if you can't, don't do it because it could likely ruin your life.

Yeah. Yeah, I I totally agree. There's a series of questions that I ask myself when I'm what I what I'm facing what I call big scary decisions. And the first question is, what is the worst possible thing that can happen? And you boil it down. You bring it to what exactly what that is. When I opened my first business, I was like, worst thing that can happen is that maybe I live in the gym. And if that doesn't go well, then I go back to corporate America. I was like, I can live with that. It's worth the risk, right?

That you just nailed it in the most simple form ever. That's exactly what everyone needs to do with every decision. Yeah. That has to do with these big business decisions because there's things that you do along the way. And if you're not careful, Murphy's at work always, because something is going to happen in your business and it's not going to be favorable. And if you can't live with the worst case scenario and it would literally ruin you, don't do it.

Yeah. Yeah. And for people listening, the the second question is it's well, I regret not having tried in 10 years. And then finally, what's the tiniest first step? And if you can follow that framework, it actually gets you like 80% of the way down the decision tree. And it's it's always worked for me so far.

Um it's it's funny. I mean, you've never talked about this, but that's exactly what we did when going to franchising, right? It's okay. So we're powering all these franchises, we're seeing it scale successfully in a franchise structure. Okay, what would be the biggest downside to going here? And the answer was if it didn't work, we would still be able to license. You can actually formulate your business. This would make no sense, but you can formulate your business as a franchise and go to market as a license. You can go that way, you just can't go the other way. So if we could continue to grow that side of the business, worst case scenario. And if I didn't do it, would I regret it? Yes, I would. That was an honest answer. And that is the same decision tree that we use. So it's interesting to hear that you use the same questions.

Yeah, that is fascinating. And I just because I think they're true. And maybe I read it somewhere along the line, but I just that's always what I follow back on because it just seems to work. And it just also gets you excited about it. And I love the third question, too, that I asked myself, which is what's the tiniest first step? Because that's creates action. I think about when I sold when I sold the gyms. The first thing I asked myself was, okay, now that I decided to move forward, sell, and then relocate with my wife, I guess I'll just create a list of people who may buy it. And that was it. That was day one. You know, day two, I did something else. And uh it just creates momentum. So yeah, there's a lot to it. There's a lot to how you make decisions. And I think in business you have to be a calculated. And like you said, man, Murphy is always working. And uh, if you can't live with the old if you can't live with the worst case scenario, then really think what you're doing. Really good stuff. So I I I want there's another major topic that I'm dying to cover with you, and that is, of course, podcasts called the future of fitness. But as we are entering into this, God, I hate using this term, the new normal. Today's March 25th, 2021, for the listeners. As we go into the start, the spring, the summer, vaccines are out, we're expecting people to come back to the gyms, technology has taken us hugely forward in the industry, people are now working out from home more often. Like all these different factors happen in the new year. So, as you describe it so eloquently, it's like the ecosystem is different. So, describe what do you mean by that and how is the ecosystem different? And then as we move forward, how as a fitness professional, business owner, entrepreneur, how can you fit into that ecosystem?

Yeah, million-dollar question, right? So I think the word ecosystem, and I I just read a fantastic white paper, and it escapes me, the author. So I apologize to that person if they're listening, they're probably not, but hopefully they are, because I think they were from overseas. But it was essentially describing this the difference between a hybrid, which is a model that I've heard described quite a bit, where you know, okay, you need to do multiple things as an owner, as a business owner. So say I'm a brick and mortar owner, great. I also need to develop an app and I need to be streaming classes, I need to start working on nutrition products, I need to develop a line of supplements, right? That's more of a hybrid model where you're trying to be all things to, or you're trying to sit in all of the different channels in the ecosystem. But really, it's about ecosystems, not a hybrid model. And what that means is you're never going to be the best in all of those verticals. You're just not. So when you look at an ecosystem that involves everything from digital streaming to accountability coaching, to let's just look at the things that revolve around health and fitness. You've got sleep, you've got nutrition, you have supplementation, you have accountability coaching, but strength training, you have cardiovascular training, and then you can break those down even into single modalities. You've got rowing and cycling and Olympic weightlifting. It's like even those have segments, right? So when you look at an individual moving forward, post-COVID especially, but you're looking at an ecosystem of wellness, is would be a better word, I think. And that means that you can't be all things to all people because you just can't win in all of those verticals. So the real important thing to decide is who are you going to be in the ecosystem? And the right answer is that you're going to be the hub. I think that's the best seat to be in. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you're the hub in the wheel and the spokes are all the things that I just you know mentioned, then you have to understand that you just own your vertical, like you're the champion in that particular vertical, and that makes you the hub for your audience. What that also means, though, is that first of all, it doesn't mean that you're not going to have competition in your vertical. You are. You're going to have direct competitors, still going to have to be the best at that vertical. What it means is that you have to have an understanding of the overall ecosystem and how to speak intelligently and be able to leverage the other tools in the client's ecosystem. What does that mean? I'll just give you like real-world examples of our brand as an example. So we are personal training, which means that speaks to specificity and accountability. Then how do I see us in this ecosystem? Our hub is accountability and specificity. So what that means is if we have a customer that comes in the gym and they say, Hey, I'm thinking about buying a Peloton bike, what should I do? My reaction isn't I need to go and develop my own alley branded Peloton bike. What it means is I need to speak to that individual as an individual, and I need to understand how they fit into the ecosystem. And I need to be able to say, when you came to us, you had back issues because you spend most of your days sitting at your desk. So instead of sitting for the additional activities that you choose to do, I would like to see you be more upright. It would be better for your back health. So why don't we get you walking? And to be honest, unless you clean up your sleep hygiene a little bit, none of this is going to matter. You just got that new Apple Watch. Great. There's an adjacent app that you can download that will also help you track your sleep quality. So let's nail sleep quality and keep you on your feet for a while for your other activity. So let's shoot for so many steps a day, as opposed to that. And then we'll revisit this in a month or so and see how we're doing. So that's what I mean. That's a very rudimentary example, but actually a real world example for how we're doing it right now of how the ecosystem is lots of things, none of which, nonetheless, the biggest probably being your telephone, right? Which is in your pocket at all times. That's a competitor of ours now as well. It just does so many things. So it's okay, understanding that I can't be that, I can't produce a smartphone. But what I can do is understand how I fit in there and help people manage their own ecosystems by being that hub for them, if that makes sense. Am I making any sense at all? Yeah, yeah.

No, it's a really good point. I think it's the it's hard to nail down exactly what the ecosystem is because it's so individual to each business or trainer. But what you're describing is the mindset that people have to go into it with. And I think it's very it's powerful because it is a shift and it goes from and I think that white paper you were talking about might have been Ian Mulane from keep me.ai. He was on the show and we went through it and extended it was excellent.

It was the guy from Pure Gym, actually.

Okay. Well, there's been some great white papers out there recently.

Yes, yes.

But uh I digress. I think when you look at the ecosystem right now, we have this kind of place where we can adopt what's out there, pull our heads out from the hole in the sand and say, whoa, consumers have a lot of options. And what you nailed, which I love, is well, how do I become the hub? How do I have all of that funnel through me? And that very much is the mission at Morpheus is how do we take all this data and how do we arm the coach and the trainer to become that that central hub? And Morpheus is obviously, I'm biased. I think it's the best thing that's coming out right now to solve this problem because everyone else is doing it. Google and Apple don't care about the personal trainer. They'll try to, they'll try to really take, they'll take, they'll try to take that role if they can. Why not? And for them, they have the money, they're already in the consumer's arm or in their pocket. So it's not that hard for $10 a month more to be that. So, how do you compete with that? You become the hub, you become the professional, you become where all that information comes through because people are still lost in all of that. You can have a client, like you say, hey, a client got a Peloton, great. Okay, how can we incorporate that into your training program? How can you use that when you're not in the gym? How can you recover better using it? Or let's become, let's make that part of the plan, let's adopt it into what I'm doing, versus resisting it and eventually just getting run over by it. I think we're on the same page, are we?

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And so I think when you talk about the data, I think about real-world situations like artificial intelligence is an example, it's only going to get better. And so imagine having in, like we have an app and the app works great. But I but what the app isn't doing now, which it it will need to do in the future, is they'll need to be some artificial intelligence. So let's say that we know through predictive data that if someone is having a bad day, like all they have to do is answer on a one through ten how they feel that day. How's your mood? Maybe we may know from data that if your mood is at a four or less, you're much more likely to overindulge, whether it be in alcohol or food or whatever. Again, it's it's it has to be individualistic. And so we know that if this person presses the number four or less, that should then trigger either an automated message of some sort or a reach out from a coach to say, Hey, how are you feeling today? It looks like you're down and out. You you remember what to do, go take a walk before you before you drink two martinis, or go take a walk before you eat a whole cake or whatever that is. Or imagine that in the gym application, instead of having to ask, Hey, how are you feeling today? Because we have the mechanisms to pull up the tiles on the app of the people that are in the session, and we know everything about them statically. But what if you know that was tied to a whoopstrap or a cure ring or something, where when they walk in, there was a red shade in their tile. And we were like, Ooh, Eric, if you didn't sleep at all last night, what's going on? And you're like, Oh, yeah, I just got back in town. I had two bottles of wine with some clients at dinner last night. And we say, All right, great. Listen, today, instead of doing the workout that's on the board or the workout that's on the screen, depending on the application, we're gonna do this for you today. We're gonna power down a little bit until you feel better. That's real personal training in real time. And and the thing about this, Eric, and you get this is why that you guys are doing what you're doing at Morpheus, the data already exists. It's just scatter shot. It's not used in the right way, but it's already out there. So we're not far from this. And this is what I mean by the ecosystem. And this is how you can fit into the ecosystem. You don't have to develop the next QR ring, you don't have to feel threatened by Peloton. Those are just tools in the toolbox, right? They're just things in the ecosystem for you to establish yourself as the hub, become educated around, then understand how to manage those things. So that's really going to be it moving forward is pulling the data together and being able to use it in real time in a way that's specific to the individual standing right in front of you.

Yeah, it's so good, man. And that is, that's exactly what Morpheus is doing. And then I know that's what I'm excited about too is inside tracker. They also are providing a coaching tool. So you can get all the blood and DNA, and that can be sent to the coach, and then the coach can be looked, can really dive into some of the nutritional things or what may be high risk in certain areas for cardiovascular disease or whatever it may be. It it brings all that data in and arming the coach and the fitness professional with more, and then also keeping it as simple as possible, because let's be honest.

Well, I was about to say, like all that's great. And like you said, all that data is there now, but what's the real world application of that, right? That's the key, right? So that I can actually scale a business around it and I can be one coach working with six clients and still be able to use that information relevantly without having to spend hours upon hours scanning medical blood work diagnosis and things like that. But you think about the contrast in what we're talking about, Eric, and the work that you guys are doing to bring this together, contrast that with what exists right now, with what we think is high tech, which is you show up to a brand, you're wearing a heart rate monitor of some sort, and they're gonna help you burn a thousand calories today. That's it. Doesn't matter. So it doesn't matter if you feel like crap, it doesn't matter if you tweaked your knee over the weekend skiing, none of that matters. You're gonna show up to the gym and you're gonna burn a thousand calories an hour. It's the workout of the day, everyone's gonna do it. There's no regressions or progressions, there's no consideration of your rest or your needs or your mood or any of those things. We're gonna have to get better than that, and that's the standard fare right now. And heart rate monitors alone, yeah. Seven, eight years ago, that was slick. That was cool, that seemed high tech, but that that is moving so fast beyond that right now that we're gonna have to evolve pretty quickly into this ecosystem idea, or you're just gonna be irrelevant.

Yeah, it's looping back into the initial in our very beginning of our conversation when we talked about as a business owner when you get backed into uh you know a corner, right? Where you're like, I don't want to be here, but I'm here. I have two choices. I can lay down and die, or I can adapt and thrive, or attempt to thrive. And I feel like, man, the industry, we all know fitness industry had a really rough year in 2020. And now there's some daylight out. So it's now it's almost like an opportunity to kind of shed some skin and become something new. Literally, because consumers went away and now they're coming back. And you can have the opportunity to have a whole new look, a whole new system, a whole new value proposition, and be a bigger part of that ecosystem. And I think that's where we're at as an industry. It's uh it's a good time. Well, we are or we're not.

Time will tell because if you approach the market, let's say you own a big brick and mortar, you're in a 50,000 square foot mid-priced gym. And in your day, back in the day, you were one-stop shop for all health and fitness. So you had a nutritional component in there, you sold supplements, you had a shake bar, you were the membership, you had aerobics classes, you did spin class, you did everything for everyone. You had water, aerobics, you did all that stuff. And anything that jumped into any of those verticals was a competitor because you were trying to be all things to all people in your community. Those days are gone. So if you reopen your facility post-COVID and you want to be a facility that's relevant into five, 10 years down the road, you can't reopen with that mindset. You to your point, you cannot reopen assuming that you are going to be all things to all people because that's just not true. So you've got to figure out where you fit in the ecosystem and understand the other moving parts so you can work along with them, but because fighting back against them or trying to own all verticals is just like the kiss of death. You're not going to be able to do it.

Yeah, it's interesting. And I think there's always been a conversation within the industry as do I niche down, become really specific, right? Or do I stay broad? And I don't know. It's always been the answer has always been, well, it depends and it's complicated.

And it still is. Let's not pretend that we've got it all figured out or pontificating what we think. At least there's a a million years of combined experience on this call. So that's that's that's something, if nothing else. But but yeah, I think it just wouldn't make sense to go broad now because there's two technology is the ultimate disruptor, and it is already sitting relevantly in some of these verticals, and quite honestly, creating ones that we didn't even anticipate that would be there, right? Without 5G and the technology to do these things, but it's here now, and so you can adopt it, right? You can work alongside it and understand it, or you can push back and say, no, it's not the way it is. Everybody wants what they've always wanted, and I'm not sure that's the right answer.

Yeah, interesting. So maybe we can I want to end on a really uh high note and you know just too depressing. I think we're just it's all doom and gloom. Yeah, it's just yeah, 45 years of experience, just two jaded guys chatting about the fitness industry.

Doing no, I think there's grumpy guys bitching nothing.

I think it's I think it's been very informative. I think it's been really very real. And but having said, the there's a lot of things that positively did come out of 2020. What do you what are some of the silver linings that you saw coming out of the the crazy year?

Yeah, I think it it forced us all to to let's face it, even on a personal level, like what's really important, right? We're really fortunate. Like we're fortunate to be able to do something that we love every day, to make a positive impact in people's lives, to be able to make a living doing that, right? Hopefully to provide for our families and leave some kind of legacy for our kids. That's all in place. And so I think for everyone, it it forced us all to circle the wagons, really talk about what's important, and get back to the core of what we're supposed to be doing, not just as business owners, but as humans in general. And so I think that was positive. And I think it also really brought to the forefront, it either exposed some leadership gaps that we all possessed personally, you know, internally, we all know it, or the opposite. Maybe some of us were quite a bit stronger than we thought we were, and we had things pretty dialed in. But I think if anything, it was an accelerant to a lot of things that were already going on with technology. Some of those things are super exciting because again, we can leverage a lot of those things if we're keeping open mind. And then I think again, from a leadership standpoint, it gave us um the opportunity to stress test ourselves in times that were less than ideal. We got to develop our muscles, if you would, in areas like leadership, resolve, stiff upper lip, a little bit of backbone. And again, those challenging times are the impetus for great things down the road. And I don't think we know what those are going to be yet, but I guarantee you they're gonna be there. So that to me, and and listen, as much as we did seem uh at times like a couple of grumpy guys that have been in the industry, ultimately a fan of mankind and an ultimate optimist. So it's a little bit of that Stockdale paradox, right? Where, yeah, 2020 wasn't a great year for a lot of us, but at the same time, I never had any doubts that long term that we're gonna come out of this as better than we were as people and certainly as an industry, and that exciting things lay ahead. If nothing else, and I think you would agree with this, as time passes, I think we'll reflect back on this, and it will be a relevant message to say, listen, you need to do everything you can to protect yourself. You can't just rely on government or others to protect you. You've got to do be as healthy as you can, you've got to get on top of that. And so when that message is when it's time and that message can be well received once we're beyond this, I think it'll be good for our industry.

Yeah, I agree, man. Rick, really good stuff, man. And I don't think we are grumpy, I think we're just uh of idealism and realism. That's that's how I'm gonna position it. But Rick, we're if people want to get a hold of you, or yeah, just give us a good where do you send people online?

Yeah, just go to alloyfranchise.com. And if you want to reach out and talk shop, I'm always up for that. You can just leave a message through the site, dig around, see what you like, let me know if you have any questions, and that'd be the best place. And I'm all over social media, just like everyone else is. So at Rick Mayo, everything. So easy to find me.

Right on. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. Rick Mayo. Thank you. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.