Sam Cole - FitXR - The Broadening Opportunities in Virtual, Augmented, & Mixed Realities

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Yeah, I I think my my kind of career trajectory into this space is a little bit um particularly unusual. Like I started my career in in finance and I was working in the finance industry. Um, but I always had this deep passion for fitness more broadly after playing a lot of sport when I was younger. And and around kind of 2014, I I was convinced that the next computing platform after the smartphone would be some kind of uh augmented reality glasses. And so we would move from having a screen that we interfaced with that we pulled out of our pockets on a for often of us too regular basis to uh you know a wearable device that we used to interact with that the same kind of content. And I felt like once that happened, fitness everywhere could be transformed, whether that was at the home, in the gym, or outdoors, by a highly personalized and highly contextual um content layer. And I I remember being in a a weights room of a 24-7 gym in in London at the time, and I was just hit with this kind of vision that I just I felt like once that played out, this whole space where you had a group of individuals there all kind of augmenting their reality to an extent, right? They've all everyone in that environment was wearing headphones and trying to bring in music to make the experience more enjoyable and engaging. And I just imagined being guided and motivated through that same set of routines that I was doing in that world, uh, but with this content layer that was that was really enriching the experience. And you know, fast forward a few years, uh I met my co-founder who had a uh successful career in the mobile gaming uh industry, and we uh we brought in these kind of the intersection of two three key worlds, I should say. So it was uh virtual reality and augmented reality technology, fitness and and gaming. And we felt like with the three of them molding together, you know, we really wanted to build experiences that were the most fun way for people to work out. And we've been really focused on building up the virtual reality at home part of our vision to date. Uh, but as a company, we're um we're just super excited about the whole immersive technology spectrum. So virtual reality, mixed reality, and uh and augmented reality.

What's uh I'm familiar with virtual, I'm familiar with augmented, but what's mixed reality?

The easiest way to think about mixed is um I personally think is when you're able to deliver an augmented reality-like experience. So you're able to see your actual surroundings uh but through a VR headset. So that kind of those kind of experiences will be available with the next generation of headsets that will be shipping later this year or early next year. And what we get really excited about from a fitness perspective is the uh additional modalities or equipment interactions that we'll be able to support by by bringing those by bringing that technology into house.

Yeah, interesting. So what exactly does FitXR, you know, like lay it out for us? Like what is the actual product? Are you guys a hardware company, a software company? Um, who tends to be you know the people who are engaging in your your your company and its its products? Um Yeah, give us give us an idea of who you guys are.

Yeah, so we see although we interact, we we operate at the intersection of those three worlds that I talked about before, we see ourselves as a as a digital fitness company, um, not a gaming studio. And we feel like that's important because a number of players in the kind of fitness gaming space in the past have produced products that we felt were 99% game and 1% product, a 1% fitness product. And we really wanted to deliver experiences at the end of the day that achieve results, and that's fundamentally shaped a lot of things inside the company from how we think about design decisions to how we work with uh you know some of the world's best fitness instructors. It's been it's really been integral to our DNA from day one. To think about the product experience right now, and it's it's it's much better to try it or or watch a video as a as a secondary thing than to hear me talk about it. But the best way to think about it is you're able you strap one of the uh widely available virtual reality headsets in the market. The Quest 2 from Meta is probably the most accessible. Uh, but you strap that headset on and you're transported to a virtual fitness club. And inside that virtual fitness club, you're able to interact with and go through a number of classes that have been choreographed by a team of professional fitness instructors, mostly based in New York, uh, across three main modalities. So dance, boxing, and high-intensity interval training. Um, and we take a lot of inspiration from the group, group fitness world. A lot of our instructors teach at some of the best uh studios in Manhattan or elsewhere. Um and we take a lot of structure and inspiration from that space. But when you see that how that's applied into a virtual reality setting, when we don't have any real-world restrictions, um, we're able to completely transform how the look and feel of the experience uh so that we're able to deliver something that's far more fun and engaging. Um to take boxing, for example, uh a lot of the experience is similar to what you would get inside a boxer-size class, um, but you have cues flying towards you on the beat of the music, and you interact with those cues as you're guided throughout the experience. And then I just sorry, I just to dig into your your point before your final point around who we who we serve. I think initially, as virtual reality was primarily used as a as a video gaming console or video game device, we primarily served people who had bought virtual reality headsets and discovered fitness as a secondary benefit. Um and then what's been happening is the technology's become far more mainstream in the last couple of years. Um, our audience has expanded significantly, and we're seeing this entirely new demographic of people come through. We kind of call them fitness first customers. And these customers are buying virtual reality headsets specifically to use them as pieces of fitness equipment. And this audience is is really wide in terms of age demographic and also really varied in terms of fitness ability as well. So we see everyone coming through from the people who hated the idea of going to the gym, never found exercise engaging, and have literally had a life-changing, transformative experience with Fit XR because they really didn't think exercise was for them. Um, which I really just interpret as they hadn't find found the right exercise product for them right the way through to people who use Fit XR as part of a complementary part of their existing fitness routines. And we feel like through personalization of the product experience and a really varied product experience, we're able to serve serve uh customers throughout that spectrum.

Yeah, I'm I'm glad you you brought up that part because I was going to ask you about that. I was just curious about the marketing of it. Because like you you said earlier, you have to, it's hard to, it's one thing to describe it, but it's a whole nother thing to experience it. That's the whole point of VR, is that it's extremely experiential. And I was curious about how you were going about marketing it. Like, you know, it makes sense that you would target people who already have, you know, some sort of VR headset, um, you know, already engaging it because it's like, well, like podcasting. Like I I want to go get I want to go on other people's podcasts because people who listen to other to podcasts will listen to an average of seven different ones, right? So they've already broken people have already broken through that thing of like, what is a podcast? And same with you know uh VR, I would imagine like once somebody's kind of broken through, got the headset and they're using other applications, it's probably easier. But now it sounds like you've kind of gotten through that initial part, and now you're getting into like this whole other market of people who are specifically coming for fitness in VR. Am I getting that somewhat accurate?

Yeah, I think that's right. I think the other interesting thing here, and you you hit it on the head when you said um, you know, VR are so experiential. Uh, you know, a lot of the connected fitness companies will report significantly increased conversion rates when uh a consumer has been able to try the experience in store. You know, this was an integral part of Peloton's rollout strategy initially, was to try and get people to try the experience inside inside shopping malls. Um and I think if that's true for a product like Peloton, it's even significantly more true for a product like Fit XR because it is so experiential. Um and so I think that's why for us, especially in terms of this fitness first demographic that I spoke about before, um, referral has been such a key driver for us. Um, because we have people having these you know often life-changing experiences inside Fit XR, telling their friends and family about it. And uh that's been a really powerful um you know growth lever for us. And uh and I think has um has has definitely been driving this going forward, particularly in a in a in a world where it's been very difficult to set up retail locations to be able to let people try it for themselves.

Is is that on the map? Are you guys going to set up some some retail locations or like uh places where people can go and and personally experience it? I mean, because I would imagine too, a challenge for you guys is that you don't control the hardware, which is an advantage and a somewhat disadvantage at different times, right? There's there's an upside and downside to that. It's like, well, you know, um anybody who has an Oculus or uh what was the one that you had from um Meta, whatever these different brands have, then you can you can sit on top of that. Is that correct? But also you you have to wait for them to go sell the devices, right? Which doesn't seem like they're having any problem doing. Um so to talk to me, how did you how did you come up with those decisions to kind of stay agnostic on the hardware?

Yeah, I think that's that's been an interesting one because I think with the success of connected fitness, um, there's been a lot of investor excitement around uh companies that were kind of following the Peloton model and and combining the the hardware, like have having the full stack, right? Hardware and software um fully integrated. Um I think for us the way that we've viewed this is the technology that we're trying to operate on is evolving at such a significant rate, um, and there's such vast amounts of money coming into research and in and development in these spaces to drive that innovation. Um I don't think that kind of that approach makes sense in in in in our area. Um I also think so what we've done to to to work through that is is work very collaboratively with all of the platforms that we sell on. So we're on um Steam, which is prime primarily uh targeted towards people who use virtual reality headsets for game for gaming purposes. We're also on PlayStation and and on Meta. Um and we work very closely with all of the stores that we sell on. Uh for a lot of the time it's been about us um advocating as to why fitness inside virtual reality was going to be such an important use case to drive ecosystem growth. And I think what we now see, which has been fantastic with with the folks over at Meta, is that fitness is is seen on the same priority level as gaming or productivity in terms of importance for them and focus for them. And that's really been um driven by the fact that you know FitXR is one of the top retention rates on their store. Um and so people are having a habitual experience with our product, but also with the underlying hardware, uh, but also because fitness in general is is bringing in this entirely new uh cohort of customers who weren't interested in buying a VI headset as a gaming console, uh, but but are interested in buying one as a piece of fitness equipment?

Yeah, you know, I you brought up some interesting questions for me. Maybe we could just take a big step back for a second, Sam, and you can kind of educate us on the VR as a as a market totally, like the technology you mentioned how fast it's advancing, like how accessible is it? Like how much are these headsets costing nowadays? What what does the total landscape of virtual reality look like right now? And this is March 2022.

Yeah, so I I think VR, if you go back a few years, VR in 2015 and 2016 kind of underwent the first stage of of you know the hype cycle that often gets applied to early stage technologies where um there was a lot of interesting promise, a lot of vision, and the underlying technology kind of failed to be able to deliver on those hyped up expectations. And then it's then gone through a period of um of building up towards that, right? Because I think those uh those expectations were unrealistic and were so hyped up. Um and the technology in the background has just been building and building and building, and companies like FedExR have just been building and building and building. Um I think a major inflection point along that journey was the release of standalone headsets, so headsets that weren't tethered to a a PC or other or other or other console. Um and why I think that's been so significant is is it's just made that the technology underlying technology so much more accessible. I also think, like you said, price is an important factor, and and I think there's been some aggressive pricing coming into the space as well, which means that you can now buy a standalone headset from Meta, for example, uh for $300. And and you don't need any additional equipment to run that experience, it's completely standalone. Um you also see PlayStation coming back. Um, so they had PlayStation VR1, and uh and they've now bringing out towards the end of this year uh PlayStation VR two, and then you also have uh rumors of Apple coming into this space at some point in time in the next 12 months. Um so yeah, I think there's been there's been a lot of success primarily on the meta side in terms of getting an early head start here in terms of the the wider headset uh ecosystem. Uh and then a lot of a lot of what PlayStation coming back into the fold. And I think the you know the rumors about Apple coming in uh uh are interesting for everyone involved in the space.

Yeah, I mean, and anytime Apple gets involved in something, it gets really uh it's really interesting, man. So I who what are the major applications that people are using VR for now? I mean, gaming is obvious. Um, I know you know the adult content industry has led the way in technologies in so many different areas, right? That tends to be where a lot of technology starts. Um, you know, besides those two and fitness, what what else is is interesting within the the overall space?

Yeah, I think gaming's worth maybe focusing on a little bit because I think in in gaming, what I think has been interesting for a lot of people in the space is that because you've gone, you've evolved from gaming with your hands, you know, if you think about a PlayStation console, for example, to playing beat saber in in with a with a VR headset on, which is literally think guitar hero crossed with lightsabers. So cues flying at you on the beat of the music and you're slicing them with with lightsabers, super fun. Um but that has has a fitness benefit associated with it, right? Because you're uh you're playing the experience with your body. Um and so there's this whole category of incidental fitness um games on the store, which I think create this this transition which we've we've seen where people might, you know, maybe they even buy it for one of the um the seated VR experiences, buy a headset for a seated VR experience, then try something that has kind of some additional movement incorporated in it, where you're gaming with your body, realize you're getting some kind of workout, and then look for something like FitX Art, which is a lot more structured around being a fitness product first and foremost. So I think gaming's interested in in very wide. I think you then see fitness, um, you also see productivity. So I think working inside virtual reality headsets is gonna definitely be something that we see over the next two to three years really evolve, and a lot of focus is is going on this space. Um really interest Slack, essentially. Yeah, or instead of like instead of us having this the session here, right? Um on Zoom or Google Hangouts, you know, we could be having this session uh in in virtual reality, uh, where we both would feel present inside a virtual space together. And so I think that's that's super interesting. Yeah. Um I then think broader entertainment. So I a lot has been done with sports so far, you know, like Oculus did a lot of early work around partnerships with the NBA, so you could sit courtside and and have a 360 social experience where you and I could sit courtside with each other and what a watch a game together. And I think that kind of stuff is just getting started. So um it's kind of kind of tied to the the productivity piece, but I saw something recently where and this is just getting better and better and better, where I could sit there and have a mixed reality experience where I stretch a 65 you know inch TV on whatever wall I want to in my house. And and therefore I don't need a screen anymore. You know, this a VR headset or an augmented realities headset becomes the screen that I use for whatever purpose. And so I think those broader applications, aside from gaming, I think continue to push, like fitness does, and fitness has done really well to this point in time, continue to push the use case of the headsets so that they're applicable to a wider and wider audience. So I think, you know, historically, you roll back 12 months. I think when people thought about buying a VR headset, it was, you know, 95% a gaming decision. Um like right now, I think that's much more split. You know, you'll find people buying it entirely for fitness purposes, you'll find it people buying it entirely for gaming purposes and a split between the two. And I think roll it forward another 12 months, I think you find an even more kind of nuanced market.

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Yeah, I I think so. I think you and I probably have some pretty shared beliefs in this space. Um I think there's been a lot maybe a lot a lot documented, a lot of people working on what you know the future state of education looks at more broadly, whether that's just people learning in different ways or just being able to deliver education through a more engaging um medium. And so I think that's I definitely see what you're what you're saying there in terms of virtual reality. I haven't seen I haven't seen any kind of wide-scale uses of this, but I think one thing that we're interested in from a fitness perspective is um you know, we really see our our mission here about trying to make fitness fun and engaging for for everyone and trying to prove that fitness can be for everyone, because for a lot of the the population, in fact, the majority of Americans, there's this belief that fitness isn't for them. Um and so one thing that we know is that if you're able to reach people when they're in their early early adolescence, um, and you're able to demonstrate that sport or fitness can be engaging at that pivotal moment in someone's life, um, they have a far, far higher chance of being active in later life and benefiting from all of the health um benefits from doing so. And so one of the things that we're really passionate about is by trying to find ways through adapting our content both into adapting the product both in terms of content perspective, but also delivery methods about where our product is available to try and reach that that specific audience, because I just think it can have such outsized impacts on a long-term basis. Um, so yeah, I think the the whole educational or VR, you know, VR with young people, VR with people when they're learning, I think is is really interesting.

Yeah, I I agree, man. And I think, you know, to your point, you know, when you look at this as I I'm fortunate that I played sports at a young age. I was engaged in athletics and then, you know, hence fitness. So I've always had that like it for me, I I need to work out. It's just it's a no-brainer. It's not, it's not something, it's just part of my day. It's like brushing my teeth. Like I'm just gonna do it eventually. And a lot of people, you know, and whether I enjoy it or not is inconsequential. It's like I don't, do I enjoy brushing my teeth? No, but I know it's good for me, so I do it, right? But I think a lot of people don't have that early on, you know, it wasn't ingrained in them. Like I can't get rid of it, even if I wanted to. But I think the gaming and making it more fun is very, is very interesting. Um, and I think there's a lot of people, you know, people are taking that same approach. I mean, I've noticed, you know, just with the the trend of guests that I've had on the show, that there's a lot more people coming from the gaming world who are interested in fitness, right? And I know that's not the angle that you're particularly taking, but it's just an interesting observation to see that that's actually happening in the gamification of it.

Yeah, I think the the sport, the sport thing's interesting because I think I think for a lot of people, if you've you know, if you if you've played sport growing up, you've you've probably found that you're able to get into that flow-like state where you've where you forget what you're doing because the experience in of itself is so enjoyable. And so if you have that with sport or you have that with any type of exercise, I think it gives you that kind of confidence to know that if you're doing something for the first time, like say you, I don't know, you wanted to try CrossFit and you try CrossFit and you're just like, man, that really wasn't for me. I like I hated that, I couldn't get into the flow like state, I didn't enjoy that at all, you'd still have the confidence to go, I'm not gonna rule out all types of exercise because I had one bad experience. Or you might go to the you might go to a specific type of gym, right? Um, and you just might not feel the vibe inside that environment. It might not be for you. And and again, you wouldn't rule out the whole category as a result. But I think for for a lot of people, if you haven't had that sport um or or or any kind of engagement with fitness while you've been growing up, you might have had you know two or three really negative experiences where you then decide that this entire category of of fitness or exercise more broadly just isn't for you. And we hear a lot of our customers saying this um because they've never been able to get into that flow-like state where they forget they lose track of time. And and so every time they go to a gym and jump on a treadmill or try and run outside or have gone to a boot camp class, they've always been counting the clock and just thinking that this was a miserable experience. And and when they have that flow-like state, it's like that's the that's truly powerful, truly transformational. Because you can imagine the whole thing, this whole concept of like I found exercise super hard because I was always counting the clock, you know, that disappears. And with like for people who have been active, they know that they can find that in certain ways. Like, I feel like I'm really fortunate after hating running when I was playing sport. I now like I I find listening to some tunes and going for a run is like the best way to clear my head. And I love running outdoors. Um, and I find it really meditative, but but I didn't have that in my early life. I hated running and and I and I came to that over I kind of matured into it, I suppose. But I I think I I also can see that the power of getting into that flow-like state, and and I think that's the thing that we find is so transformational with our customers that haven't ever had that before. They they literally leave comments on our community pages saying things like, I didn't think exercise was for me, and then I put on the headset and I was transported to a completely different world. I lost track of time, I was in there for 45 minutes, and I've never exercised for that time, that length of time in my life. And I took the headset off and I was completely drenched in sweat, and then I and my muscles ached and I felt fantastic, you know, and it's like that that's such a powerful experience for these for people to have for the first time when when historically they've like ridden off the whole thing. It's just not for me because because I haven't been able to find the right product experience in this space to you know to get me into that flow like state. I've never been able to find something that captures my attention in this way. And I think I think the immersive technologies piece here is is is such a powerful part. Like it delivers so many things because you know, firstly, there's no distractions. Secondly, you're able to really ramp up the the kind of visual gratification or the immersiveness of the experience to make it super fun and engaging. Um we leverage a lot of best practice from the group fitness industry, a lot of tried and tested techniques, right? Which is like great instructor, great soundtrack, highly synchronous experience of the music, um and and also the pr the presence of others. One thing that we found powerfully motivating from the group fitness classes that we loved attending as a as an early team was exercising with all of those aspects, but also looking over and having people in the class with you that were pushing as hard as you were. And so we've brought that into FitXR as well. Um so yeah, I think um I think being able to kind of deliver that is um is is I think often such a transformational thing that that yeah, that's what we get really excited about when I when I talked to you before about you know trying to go further than any other fitness company's gone in terms of uh you know total number of consumers. And we really think that the opportunity here is to be, you know, as widely used as Netflix um into in terms of absolute reach.

Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, I I I really like the way you described or you brought in the concept of flow state. Because I I think that that basically nails nails the issue right on. Is you know, people just can't it's it's fitness nowadays is like they gotta drag themselves to the gym, they gotta make it through. I mean, I've been in numerous classes where I look at the clock, I'm like, oh my God, it's only been three minutes. It felt like a half hour, right? And you just dread it. And people dread the workout experience. And so, you know, finding that flow and giving people that you know that fluidity and that engagement and that that time warp is really an experience that people really latch on to, especially if it's beneficial to their health. Um, maybe we could so we zoomed out there for a while, Sam. Maybe we can zoom back in. So, what is what does the market look like specific to the fitness industry? Like, you know, what kind of competition are you facing? Who are the big players here? Um, give us some insights there, please.

Yeah, I think there's there's two main players in this space. So there's FitXR, and the other main player is a company called Supernatural. Um they were recently acquired by Meta. Um, so that's that's going through FTC clearance at the moment. Um, I think the other the other landscape is made up of um a lot of smaller players who are doing really interesting stuff more broadly, and then there's uh a big chunk of gaming experiences like I spoke about, which are I think haven't been built for the purpose of fitness, but definitely have a movement aspect associated with them. Um and then there's a number of players moving into the space for the for the first time. So Les Mills recently released an experience with with a Spanish developer called Otters Lab who have done some other virtual reality titles. Um Lightboxer, which was a connected fitness company, um, has also released a VR experience for the first time. So I feel like you know, after being the only ones in this space for for a for a long time, there's a lot of new entrants coming, and and we think that's great because it ultimately it's um I think it's providing more options for customers and also you know promoting the this this message that virtual reality, you know, very much so can be used as a as a as a piece of fitness equipment or a tool for uh to get an at-home workout.

Yeah, interesting, man. Um I had uh Jeff Morren from Lightboxer on uh probably about five episodes previous to this. People can go back and and uh and listen to to what they're doing. I think that was right before he had made the announcement on the VR. So he kind of broke it here first. Um What about healthcare adaptations? I mean, I I think uh, you know, I was talking to a large smart uh technology company that's in the industry, and we're you know, that there's a huge, tremendous opportunity to connect healthcare and fitness, right? And because everyone, like everyone knows, like if it's fitness is preventative healthcare, it gets people healthier, both you know, physically, mentally, emotionally. It's just it's so good. Um, but we we've been struggled to bridge that gap between the healthcare systems and this. And I think really what it's missing is generally it's a common language, and maybe that common language now is data, right? And we can all agree on data. Um, so I'm curious, do you see any applications for the healthcare industry meeting with the fitness industry somewhere through VR AR and mixed?

Yeah, I I think absolutely. I think maybe to like tie back to the fact that we feel like as a company and product experience, we're able to reach some of the more at-risk people in this space just because they haven't, like the people who aren't exercising, who haven't found fitness engaging in the past. I think that is also a big opportunity. Um I think you're right on the data piece. Uh there's a there's an insurance company over here called we're based in in London, but there's an insurance company over here called Vitality, um, which does a number of partnership opportunities with fitness companies that are basically where you get a discount on, say, a Peloton bike, for example, if you uh if you're able to show and demonstrate that you've been active on that, on that bike. Um and I think those models, you know, should accelerate because like you talked about before, you know, there's the the research is is is very clear around fitness as a um preventative you know healthcare tool. And and therefore I think once you're able to join up the dots more than what we've perhaps been able to do in the past, um I think there's a clear opportunity for that to be funded in that way. Um yeah, I I can I completely agree.

Yeah. Um, you know, I uh I had uh another gentleman, Keith from Olivex, I'm not familiar with with what they're doing. He's out of uh Hong Kong. Um, but they are uh you know working on the fitness metaverse and creating that and kind of through acquisition and development of new applications and you know ways that people can get involved in it, tokenization and all that. Um how and I'm like most people, I I think I'm still kind of struggling to really understand what the fitness metaverse is. I think I know a little bit more than most people now, especially after interviewing Keith. Uh but maybe can you give us some ideas of where you see Fit XR, you know, what role, if any, you'll play in the fitness metaverse. You know, are you guys looking at stuff like tokenization, uh, NFTs, things like that? Like how how how are you looking at that, those pieces of the the coin, that side of the coin?

Yeah, I think a number of people post, you know, meta, Facebook changing their name to meta, and metaverse becoming a much more widely used term in the last kind of six months or so. I think a lot of people have looked at what we've been doing at FitXR and said, you know, you well, you you know, you're building or have built a fitness metaverse. And I think there's a lot of um super interesting visions in like tied to this whole metaverse topic, which um which you know we we as a team and me personally get really excited about, but I also think it's important from time to time to kind of demystify some of these things. And so we we really just think about what we've built and what we're building is a virtual fitness club. So you can put the headset on, you can move to a destination, and I think that's a that's a key part of why people certainly why I liked previously going to the gym, right? It was like I had the separation between home, between office, and between where I worked out. And I think you can get that same separation from your home by by being transported to a virtual destination, and that's a key part of why I think um you know we've wanted to build out this idea of a virtual fitness club. There's also a social aspect in there. So you and I could experience we could take one of our classes uh on demand and we could sit there and have a live multiplayer session where we could see each other's avatars, we could talk to each other, and we could go through the same experience um like we were in the same virtual space together. Um and and I think those things have been core to what we've built thus far and and really tied to this idea about a metaverse being this kind of social space where you can move and meet with people and do various experiences in. Um I think some of the things you talked about relating to some of the more Web3 elements, um, you know, tied to tokenization and NFTs are worth maybe in like digging into as well. I I feel like for us, we do look at some of the interesting things that have been done in this space around um, I suppose points inside of fitness applications or fitness games as as a reward mechanism for bringing people back and enriching that experience. I think it's still very early there around whether you need a token to actually make that happen or or can that just be done through more traditional means? And so I think we've we view that as something that we should stay close to but aren't super actively pursuing. Um I think the NFT stuff is interesting though, because I feel like um there's probably a couple of I think ways that that can be used. Uh one of the most obvious, I think, is just around um being able to open up the spaces in which you exercise in inside FitXR. So again, think about these as as virtual recreations of of you know the traditional physical spaces that you would exercise in more normally. Um I think being able to showcase NFTs and other works of digital art in those exp in those spaces is is super interesting. And so that's something we we stay pretty close to. Um but yeah, maybe it's worth also explaining that there are virtual spaces. Um because going back to my experience of people haven't seen or been able to use FitX R before, the virtual spaces that you experience inside FedEx R today um are extremely varied. So we because we don't have any real world constraints, you could be um, you know, with a C top Vista on a on a Greek island, you could be um in kind of like a futuristic spin studio. Um so yeah, we try and really push the boundaries in terms of the environments that you work out in to make them um yeah as engaging as possible. So we feel like we rare we're really leverage the the lack of real-world constraints we have there.

Yeah. So thank you for demystifying that. Um it's it's so anytime you can take someone can take more complex things and even make them one percent simpler for people to understand is really valuable to me. Uh, I want to get into kind of the existential question that evolves around all of this stuff too, which is um in just get you know your opinion of it, because I see the benefits of it. I think a lot of I'm 45, so I've kind of adopted technology, but I'm still weary of it. That's kind of my age group, right? We've we've seen it come along. Um, we use it um, you know, mostly effortlessly, but we're also still kind of you know not sure what to think of it all yet. Um, so you know, is definitely getting people off the couch and being engaged in some sort of fitness program is good, right? Getting people more connected and within communities is good. But you know, there's also the the ready player one, right? And the matrix and all those, you know, common themes that people have seen. Like, is too much technology good overall? Um so you know, when you look at that dynamic of like the benefits versus the the potential downsides, where do you sit? Where where where where does your mind go when you think about that?

Yeah, I think it's it's it's interesting because I I think sometimes a lot of people are surprised to to hear me say things like, I love going, I love running outside, and I still do that very actively. I you know, I was I was running outside today. Um and so I think one of the things that how that's um you know been core to us from a product strategy perspective is that we've never felt like FedEx R needed to be an exclusive part of anyone's fitness regime. Um we've also always believed in trying to bring as broad a range of experiences into FedEx R as possible. So we currently support three modalities. We were the first fitness company in the space, we were the first fitness company to expand beyond one modality, and we're going to continue to push the boundaries in that space. Um because we thought variety was was was super important. Um I also think, you know, as we talked about earlier in in the in the podcast, as the technology becomes more capable of being able to incorporate the environment in which you're you're you know physically located. I think that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities of not virtual reality has it you know its power, but also some of the some of the the the the the cons or pitfalls of that you're talking about here um relate to literally transporting you to a completely different reality. And mixed reality and augmented reality experiences uh have you much more grounded in in in in your present space and that opens up a lot of possibilities. It also has a flip side as well which is like I don't think you're able to deliver as enriching an experience which kind of goes to some of the points we're talking goes against some of the points we're talking about before in terms of being able to really uh work for people to get into that flow-like state um so yeah I think I think a culmination of all of these things coming together means that we certainly don't have a kind of dystopian vision for this. And I think that like it's interesting as well from a from a team perspective we're a remote first company. We we we were hybrid before the pandemic when the pandemic hit we moved fully remote and we've we've stayed that way but we really value in-person um in-person meetings to drive that high degree of of of relationship building and person connection that's hard to get but not impossible to get elsewhere. And so I think that as this evolves, you know maybe going to some of the some of the points I was saying earlier about productivity applications, I think we've we've seen you know been pushed through and and often been required of the last couple of years the ability for us to be able to you know for us to have this conversation on the other side of the world via video conferencing. And I think there's been a lot of great things that have happened about about that. The world's felt a lot smaller and more accessible but also a lot of um you know cons associated with that. I think the same will be true for virtual reality as it continues to expand and becomes more widespread. I think connection wise it will feel great.

I think also I I don't believe there's going to be a substitute for that kind of in-person um connection that you can get uh at least for a you know for the foreseeable future yeah I agree I mean I'm I'm very optimistic about technology's roles you know I just think there's there is over inevitably going to be with anything that that progresses you know there's gonna be a certain amount of escapism and some people who just will overuse it right they'll they'll live in there. I mean it happens in the gaming world already it's already here right people just escape into their gaming chairs for hours and I mean even like Joe Rogan the world famous podcaster talked about his addiction to to video gaming and how he would not you know sleep stay up 22 hours and play games and not know what happened. So I think it's uh I I'm I'm optimistic I just think you know people who are drawn to escapism are always going to be drawn to the most you know um I guess powerful version of it and even if it's just Netflix and chill right like you know how many times have I don't know about you but I put on a you know a good series and next thing six hours have gone by I'm like whoa you know I started making deals with myself well okay I'll watch one more episode but I won't work out in the morning right like those start deals or you know stuff like that. So I think that's I think innately I think that's what most people are concerned about is that escapism part of it.

Yeah it's interesting you draw those parallels though right because it's whether it's like I'm sure like is it is this just an escapism problem or is this a like is this a technology problem because you you know like you said before like if you rewound it back far enough it would have been like people concerned about people spending too much time reading books for example. And now that we have Netflix and gaming and virtual reality it's like those are the categorised as the the scary things but it's like if someone was investing loads of time in a lot in a library they they probably you know probably no one better an eyelid and it probably seen as something like they were they were educating themselves. And so I think it's just about it's like a mindset to to new technology as well which is seen as often seen as scary things. And in some cases you know we all need to like you talked about with with with Netflix it's like a it's like important for us to try and create that balance right and sometimes that's hard. But yeah I think it's I think everything seems scary when it's new and um and I think often there's like a you know there's a positive a strong positive effect that we need to we need to focus on.

Yeah man um right now well this is uh you know I I want to respect your time you know you're really busy I can you're one of those people I can just uh you're easy to ask questions to and you explain things really well um especially in you know more complex areas but um you know the question I always like to ask people towards the end of the the interviews is well what do you need right now like what's important to your business? What what does Fit XR need?

Um what are some of the challenges you guys are facing that perhaps people in our audience would would want to reach out and and talk to you about yeah I think probably probably twofold um you know specific to to your audience here Eric I think we're we're actively looking at lots of uh different partnership opportunities at the moment uh and so we're thinking about a full range of things from some brands that are interested about um speaking with us about you know potentially converting their existing either digital or bricks and mortar experiences into into virtual reality experiences um from people that you know are interested in in in working with us uh alongside helping getting the headsets into into more people's hands um or or you know insurance companies that are looking at partnerships like you talked about earlier. So I think partnerships is a big piece. The other one was we're we're actively hiring at the moment across a range of different roles from engineering product um marketing opportunities. And so we've got a load of open roles uh and aggressively hiring and so I think if there's any people that have listened to this and uh uh interested in you know joining us on our mission here to make fitness more widely available and prove that it's for everyone then I'd encourage you to go to fitxr.com and uh and check out any of the open roles that we have available.

Right on. Right on man well Sam thank you so much for for coming on and explaining all this. I I thought it was I learned a lot so hopefully the audience did as well I found it really interesting and it's definitely something to keep an eye on. If you know if you're any role within the fitness energy industry you've got to be keeping an eye on what's going on in this space. It's just you know it's too important for the future of of the industry. You know if you want people to reach out and and contact you guys I presume your website is there any other places you want to send people online?

Yeah the the website's the best place I think um I I think like you said before I think that we're gonna mention this a few times but it's so experiential I'd I'd encourage anyone that that's that's heard this and is is interested to to get on Amazon or any other place where they were able to get access to a to a quest to headset um to buy it and to try it out because I think that for a lot of our for a lot of the people that even the people who are skeptical right I think that um where we we find that the easiest way to convince people is to get them to do a 30 minute session inside Fit XR. And so um yeah I'd encourage people who are skeptical or interested or um you know convinced then uh to give that a shot. Right on man.

Well thank you Sam this has been really uh informative and I really appreciate your time it's been uh it's been an absolute pleasure ladies and gentlemen Sam Colson thanks a lot Eric hey wait don't leave yet this is your host Eric Malzone and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute if you did I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things it takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way we really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it iTunes Spotify Castbox whatever it may be number two please leave us a favorable review. Number three share put on social media talk about it to your friends send it in a text message whatever it may be please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and 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 dot 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