Sam Miller - Proteus Motion: Reinventing Resistance Training

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what's going on inside your body. People age at different speeds, and generic annual blood work doesn't properly evaluate your biological age, but InsightTracker does. InsightTracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add Interage 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age and see how you're aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. That's insight tracker.com forward slash future. Sam Miller, welcome to the future of fitness. Thanks, Eric. Good to be here. Great to have you. I am very eager to learn more about Proteus and what you guys are doing there. It's a very exciting time. Uh, you know, we are recording this uh towards the end of the dog days of summer here uh in 2022. So to give people a bit of context of when this conversation is actually taking place, because I know things are moving very quickly for you guys. So uh it's very exciting, you know. My own bias when I first saw uh what this Proteus machine is and the technology, I was like, okay, that's just it looks like a huge, you know, uh gun turret of some sort. I'm like, I'm not sure I get it. And then the more I dove into, I'm like, okay, I'm starting to get this. And then I'm starting to, you know, like some of the the the uh information and use cases that you're presenting to me offline, it's really starting to get interesting. And then the funding is getting really interesting. So there's this thing's about to set to to pop off. So anyway, I'm I'm just setting the table. I want to get into, of course, your backstory, Sam, and how this whole thing started, and then we'll uh we'll go from there.

Yeah, sounds great. Um, yeah, and you're you're not wrong about any of those things. I mean, there's an incredible amount of depth here, and we've even got you know customers of ours that are you know been longtime customers that are still discovering new layers, and that's part of the beauty of this. But um, but yeah, see so so um you know, I'm the founder and CEO of of Proteus. I I started Proteus and um officially incorporated in 2016, but I've been working on it several years prior. Um, and what we what we do, what what what we really focus on from a value standpoint is we have patented the first and only way to measure physical strength and power for every human movement. So if you think about this in the context of you know the landscape of human performance and all these different kind of important pillars, whether whether it's body composition, sleep and recovery, biomechanics, each of those pillars has been kind of tackled completely with a new um with a technology that provides information comprehensively. From a strength and power standpoint, we've kind of noticed that there's these huge limitations from a data and understanding standpoint. And and what I mean by limitations is like if you really ask somebody what you know how strong they are, just as an example, or how powerful are they, we usually kind of reference some stat about uh squatting or a bench or whatever it may be. And those are important kind of measurement um or movements to measure without question. Um, but uh they're all kind of movements that are performed in a straight line, right? In order to measure strength, you need force, right? Uh so um, you know, when when you're doing a movement um with a cable machine or a free weight, it's providing force in one direction. So it doesn't actually allow you to measure accurately throughout rotation, right? For example. So we figured out is a way to measure uh um strength and power for every human movement. Um we did that by um creating force, what we call 3D resistance, which is adaptive resistance, no matter what direction you move, it's constant. Feels like you're moving through a fluid. Um and that has unlocked this new kind of measurement capability. Um we've rolled that into a software product that delivers insights from full-body strength tests in as little as three minutes. Um, and what that does is it lets you discover where strength and speed stands compared to people like you for any movement or all movements, um, and then what to focus on and why. Um it's really this kind of like next level personalization for training programs. But it's not just a testing tool, it's as I mentioned, a kind of revolutionary resistance training tool. So this resistance modality, we'll call 3D resistance, provides um a completely new style or modality of training that is um uh we've clinically proven actually produces up to two times greater uh peak neuromuscular activation than a free weight and a cable machine at the same resistance level. Uh it's almost entirely concentric, concentrically biased. So there's very limited to minimal eccentric component to it. It's totally safe, uh, user controlled, and very low impact on the joints. And the experience of working out on it, if you're using it for HIT, for example, hit style training, um, is you know, this like you know, we've got one workout in our software that's like fighting through quicksand for four minutes, and it's incredibly taxing, right? Um, it's just kind of like neural experience. It's a totally new workout experience. So um, but but really the thesis of what we're doing is really like around for decades we've relied on limited movements to evaluate strength. Um, and um those limitations are around evaluating strength uh in a straight line for movement in a straight line, which is like about 5% of human movement. So we've filled this huge void in data and understanding of strength and movement, especially for rotation. Uh, rolled that into an assessment product, and that is the beginning or the entry point to discovering Proteus as a means of a data hub of information to understand how and why you should be training in certain ways and what other tools you should use. And then, of course, um, when appropriate, to use Proteus as a training tool itself.

Awesome.

That's a nice backstory about Proteus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the backstory is is interesting, I think. Uh, which I'm happy to dive into.

Please do. Yeah, I'm curious about the impetus for this. Was it, you know, did you say was this the problem you set out to solve, or was it something that you kind of sorted out along the way and and iterated into what this is now?

Great question. Um so I started this to solve uh to really unlock this this new data set. Um, it has taken the journey has not been a straight line. Um and uh and and so the backstory of this is essentially, you know, I grew up an athlete of all sorts and sports. Um I had a really painful condition in my knee when I was, you know, a very young athlete, which put me into physical therapy and then into training and then back to physical therapy and then the training. So I was kind of like grew up with this, you know, a lot of experience, um kind of struggling throughout this process. And my two observations, I think, through those experiences were that you've got these incredibly talented physical therapists and trainers that have limited tools or technology to use to deliver what I think could have been, could could could be the you know full potential of their services. And um there are kind of two uh deficiencies that I saw on that front from a process and technology standpoint. One is this lack of the ability to personalize training. So I would go through some of these, you know, you know, late-stage rehab, return to play um, and and training programs with uh, you know, some peers of mine that had very different conditions that they were treating or recovering from. And we would walk out with a sheet of paper that with the exact same program, same plan. Um, and so to me, it was around data, right? Actionable data, data that's actually useful. Um, that's number one. And then number two is when you look at a, you know, um, when you walk into a gym, um, they look very similar, if not the same, same types of tools and training equipment they did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s in a lot of ways. My observation. Um and to me, what I think the discovery was um that in order to unlock strength data that's really focused on rotation and and complex movement, which is how humans move, you need um to start with the equipment and have that equipment provide forces uh that are three-dimensional so that you could accurately measure strength and power through those movements. So the solution there uh that that I found was actually um uh to start by using a mechanical uh invention that my father invented in MIT and spun out of MIT in the early 90s. And he had uh been working in the biomechanics lab and you know came up with it. He was trying to develop a resistance training machine that you could train without inertia in all different directions. And he developed this, like spun it out of MIT, developed this thing in the basement of my house when I was growing up, which was like this crazy contraption, he's a brilliant engineer. And uh it uh he could only get resistance in two of the three planes, and it kind of fizzled out over time. But it was like this deep-seated, you know, this experience or memory that I had always had of you know, the machine in the basement. Um, and so what I realized was he had been trying to you know create this resistance training modality, but I realized if I can solve that problem three-dimensionally, that's gonna unlock data and I can build software around that to deliver services through this. So our approach was very different than a lot of the other kind of the connected fitness space, which is around like put a sensor or a screen onto an existing piece of equipment. Our approach was invent a completely new type of equipment, then digitize that, and then we that produces completely new and differentiated data and information, and then turn that into software products that provide totally next level differentiated uh value.

I love that backstory. I mean, the just the the image of this machine sitting in your uh basement and your dad's tinkering with it, right? Just it's it's such a classic uh it's such a classic story. Who where did you get initial traction with this? Like who are some of the early adopters with the the uh the actual technology?

Yeah, so so when I started um when I decided basically made the decision to uh to you know pick up the pieces of what my dad had been working on, and then I you know actually got a U-Haul, you know, picked it up in Georgia, drove it up to New York. This must this is in 2015. Um I had uh I had huge struggles in trying to even communicate what I it was that I was trying to do. And it is actually still in some ways continues to be a a challenge for us today, um, which I think will persist until Proteus is ubiquitous as as we um, you know, uh our our vision is uh um, you know, will that that's kind of the the goal of the intent. Um but uh you know it's it's really something you have to touch and feel to understand and you know you have that in-person experience because it's just completely unlike anything you you felt before. So for me, it was around proof of concept and do it in the kind of the lowest cost way possible. It was a huge challenge for me at that point in time to you know raise capital to fund the development of this. So it was a lot of bootstrapping and trial and error. And so the the first points of traction actually came in physical therapy um and in uh and in the kind of the medical institutional side. So I had developed a relationship with somebody by the name of Dr. George Davies, who is uh, you know, uh they call him the godfather of isokinetics. Isokinetics is that he's like biodex machines. You see those huge, they're kind of like dinosaurs now, but um great muscle testing uh technology that was, you know, really kind of rose to prominence in the 80s and 90s. Um but he's uh he's this very, very experienced, very influential individual on the either the physical therapy and medical research side. And I developed a relationship with George and through that started to, I was in New York at the time, started to like identify, okay, who are the, you know, I kind of self-educated. I have an engineering background in cons in the construction and you know, in healthcare space. Um and uh so I had done a lot of self-education on reading, you know, physical therapy, education materials, textbooks, thousands of research studies, and just immersing myself, kinesiology, immersing myself in the space, but I realized, you know, we've got I've got you know knowledge and information gaps, and I really need partners that can bring the right world-class expertise to the table. So what I did was I found a way to get to um the hospital for special surgery. And that's the the number one orthopedic hospital in the United States. And I kind of worked my way into their innovation group to, and they they decided to give me a chance and devote resources to um collaborate on kind of co-developing the beginnings of this. Um, they then turned into a customer later on, and then later on beyond that, an investor. But to me, it was around we were really focused on physical therapy, right? Um improving outcomes, right, in a shorter period of time and being able to objectively track progress. That was the core initial focus. As we kind of developed the product further and we started to realize, hey, this is actually something you can use for the simulation of real life movement, right? Um, we started to that kind of started to take us into uh into sports and then specifically elite sports. And then it within then within that kind of category was really around that really that focus turned to baseball. Um and uh when we first went into that market, we you know, I think we were doing all the wrong things, like you know, having people do throwing motions on it, which is really not something that you should do. You should not throw high speed on protein. You just not throw high speed unless you're using a baseball. It's just not, it's not uh, it's not a healthy, healthy thing to do. Um, but we were doing a lot of experimentation um at that point, and then you know, eventually we kind of you know suspended our egos enough to basically say, let's listen to what how the our early adopter customers are using this, listen to that and that only, and then use that to start to figure out what's working and what's not, and that's how we really started to fine-tune this a little bit more, which led us down the road to Eric Cressy.

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, Cressy, that when I was doing my research for this, you know, as soon as I saw Cressy involved in this, I'm like, okay, that guy doesn't that guy doesn't get involved in technology unless there's something really meaty there. And you know, it's not just Cressy, right? I mean, you guys uh Bryson DeChambeau, uh, David Winfield, who, you know, for people who are old enough know he's a really big deal in the baseball world, right? Um uh MLB pitcher Chris Capuano as well. I mean, there's a there's a lot of big names, and we could probably go on and on and on. You could tell me many more. Uh, but you know, it's it seems to be that in the rotational sports, you're you saw a lot of traction early and continued. Is that uh is that a true statement?

Yeah, that's that's totally correct. Um, you know, I think in in a guy like Cressy's a perfect example because we kind of are looking at this, you know, the sports training landscape and saying, okay, in the same way that, you know, for the same reasons that took me to the hospital for special surgery, was I I was kind of looking at our view on this is there's so much depth to this. This is this isn't what we're doing at Protease is like absolutely not one of those gimmicky flash in the pan type things. This is something that we plan to be, like I said before, ubiquitous, you know, we're gonna be around for a long, long time, we're gonna be really growing and expanding to other markets. And this is our belief is that it won't be too long before this is becomes just a core standard from a measurement standpoint, but also a training standpoint. So when we were looking at the the sports training space, we kind of looked at that landscape and said, who are the folks that we identify as having, you know, great influence, great reputations, and and are really kind of cerebral, right? Um, and are not the kind of folks that will just, you know, anyone can come and pay them for a spot and they'll, you know, kind of promote it or whatever. So we said, let's take the harder approach here, which is gonna, I think, pay off in the long term, which is uh authentically win over, you know, this select group of people at the top of that list was really cressy. I mean, it was someone that we admire very much. And so it's funny because it took me 18 months for me to even get him on the phone, like because all he was seeing out there was, you know, fit videos of throwing on Proteus and all the, just like I said, all the wrong stuff, right? And so he was just not even interested. And then once we we I kind of found a way to have him open the door to at least say, okay, we'll let these guys come in and just do an in-in-service demo for our group. And once we did that and actually started to show him and talk to him, and he you could see the wheels turning, and that's when he really had kind of a mind expansion and started to see this is uh very different than what I thought it was, a lot of depth. And we actually that was that was almost three years ago. Um, and we have been working, I've said the following two years after that, or year and a half, working extremely closely together at both of his facilities in Massachusetts and Florida, and even going so far as to develop together a performance test that we call the Cressi's the Cressy Performance Test, which is available in our software that produces a full-body report. And that is like the second iteration of a test that uh has really been primed for kind of elite athletes beyond baseball, too. But it helps coaches basically identify you know, is somebody speed dominant, strength dominant, high speed, high strength, low strength, and then using that information, basically the difference between power and acceleration, to determine how they should be training. And one of the most interesting findings we found there is that the majority of, or 56% of the people, the elite athletes that have tested, gone through this test on Proteus, which is like 15 exercises in three minutes, um, were that they were deficient not in strength, but they were deficient in speed. And what that meant was that those individuals should be training, the majority should be training at lighter resistance and high speeds, not heavy resistance. Um, so some really, really interesting um findings, and we and there's a lot more depth to from a data standpoint, but that's really the summary level, which I think is really interesting from a from a um when you think about the impact of even that level of information on the ability to personalize, right? So by body area, by movement type, um being able to be prescriptive, um, and it's really this tool that empowers trainers to make better decisions and really, really fast with great buy-in and engagement from the end user.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. And I I as I'm listening to you describe this whole you know thing unfold with Cressy and his application and all that rotational sports. I'm like, ah, you got traction rotational sports. My mind's like, well, what is not a rotational sport? Like, I can't, in my mind, I can't think of a single. I was like, oh, sprint straight line sprinting. I'm like, no, there's tons of rotation in the torso and the hips, and all these things are going on, right? Like, is there a non rotational sport out there?

I don't think there's any, I I actually don't think there's any movement that's even purely non rotation. Rotational. Even even like a textbook, you know, pure strat sagittal plane movement involves some rotation somewhere, right? It might be minimal. But, you know, I I you you nailed it right there, which is that like it's just about you know, five percent of human movement or less than that really is movement that is in a straight line. Like we don't, that's not how humans move. We rotate, we twist, we turn. It's almost all rotation. So the the idea, the notion that we've struggled to be able to be able to evaluate rotational strength and power is kind of crazy when you think about it and zoom in, uh, or and zoom out and think about it in that context. And what we've done in a lot of ways is kind of like a force plate for rotation, but for any conceivable movement, uh, and and uniquely for throughout a movement pattern, and through no matter what movement it is at what speed, um, which has been like it was this huge uh achievement when we first realized we could we could extract this data and this information, and we we have a a whole number of patents on on all this technology development. We uniquely are the only ones in the world that can do this. And then the question then came well, what does it mean? Who cares, right? What do you what do you do with this information? And that's what we've been working on the last couple of years, really, with these uh partners. Um, you know, beyond Eric, Eric Cressy, it's now expanded to Bobby Stroop, who's Patrick Mahomes' trainer, you know, um, even uh Jason Walsh, who trains Sean White, and um uh, you know, guys like Spencer Tatum trains John Rahm. I mean, these guys are Proteus, you know, inner inner circle collaborators, and and uh being able to almost import or upload their brains or algorithmic thinking into our software for decision-making purposes is incredibly exciting. Um, and that's kind of where we're headed with this as a diagnostic tool that goes well beyond athletic training and uh and and elite athlete training and sports training.

People age at different speeds, and the date on your license may not represent your inner biological age at all. If you're looking for ways to extend your health span and slow down the aging process, the keys to health and longevity run in your blood. That's why Insight Tracker provides you with a personalized plan to boost your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized, and more importantly, where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add inner age 2.0 to any plan for a definitive calculation of your true biological age to see how you're aging from the inside out. I was proud to find out I'm a few years younger than I thought I was. For a limited time, you can get 20% off the entire Inside Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to check it out, learn more, and get your own. It's insight tracker.com forward slash future. On to the show. Yeah, those are uh those are some smart, smart people you just listed off there. Uh you know, shout out to Spencer too, friend of the show. Uh so you know, as as many things happen, like they start at you know, elite, you know, one one in one spectrum or the other, right? Like I always look at as like the 1% elite, you know, uh athletes, combat. And then on the other side, there's the 1%, which are just highly, you know, unfortunately dysfunctional, right? Uh, you know, whether due to disease or you know, some some other issues that have gone awry. The uh so as you start to come towards the middle, right? The other 98%, you know, how how is that approach? And this kind of leans into what you were talking about earlier, pre-recording of being more of a platform and a B2B use. Uh so explain us how how are you starting to infiltrate that other 98%?

Yeah, it's a great, great question. So um so first thing I should clarify is that like we we're not this is not a an at-home connected fitness product. I mean, we actually we have several installs like that, but this is we are primarily almost entirely B2B focused. So we view the our current market focus right now as we um provide our our product and our our service um through both hardware and software to businesses that provide services to competitive athletes, right? That that's kind of our our primary focus. Now, competitive athletes is you know, that definition is really broad. Um I think their competitive athletes is about 15% of the total population in the US. It's a lot more. It includes people who are just you know pretty serious about their golfing, right? They're at any age, right? Um, and it also includes both physical therapy and training and the fusion, those separated, but also the fusion of the two. Um so so I mean, I think what what we're really focused on is we, you know, we're not selling our our product and our service right now so much as saying, like, hey, we've got a better way to do things that's you know gonna produce better results. I mean, those things are true, and our and we have a lot of proof points around that, but it's really around like I'm an entrepreneur through and through, and our market is entrepreneurs, right? Our market are people that are the trainers, physical therapists who have decided to turn their passion into a business. Um, and that business, you know, the service that they provide is so valuable that people can and should be paying for it. And so what we do is provide a system that they can leverage to attract more of those people, to do their current what they're doing now much more efficiently, to completely level up on their um uh the quality of services, but also the ability for them to um uh especially provide their trainers with information to make really informed decisions around personalized training and training programs, um, and also to produce direct revenue through uh you know selling uh uh assessment services. So we've got examples in the in the golf training space, for example, of you know, that implementing Proteus. Um it started one, you know, one of our clients, a star, early pioneer, a guy named Jarrett Phillips at Trained PMT, started, he incorporated Proteus, very early adopter, uh, along with uh, you know, uh I think it was K Vest, a force plate, and a track man. And I think he realized over 14 months that the strongest data correlation was between Proteus and a Trackman. So his business is now entirely built around uh uh Proteus as the measurement hub and then a track man, and basically to the point where he can you know predict with high confidence what your swing, your club speed, uh club head speed and distance will be with just a few minutes of testing on Proteus. But what he's done is he's done doing assessments in half the time he previously was able to do. He's now maxed capacity for the volume of people that are seeking his services to get assessed. So from 10 clients a week to 40 clients a week, so 400%. And he's now increased his prices by 23% on the assessments just by using Proteus and leveraging it. So it kind of is like a superhuman strength or super superhuman powers for these already incredible trainers. Um, but it's the ultimate platform for creativity. So what we love is it's a platform, it's not undermining what the trainer does, it only empowers them to do you know, bigger and better and and and greater. And the best trainers are the ones that can utilize it the best. And and so that that's one of the most beautiful things that we found. So we're really like that's how we've attacked that sports training space. But for us, the other, the the really big, big markets are the pure physical therapy space, of which we're um, we've got some very compelling propositions for those businesses with how to leverage billing codes to produce an ROI by just having produce in a very unique way, combining training and testing together. Um, and in the more kind of mainstream fitness space, we have a presence in little, small presence in biohacking that's growing, right? Um and uh boutique, like high-end personal training. And then we're we really do have some some very interesting um uh pilots that are going on right now in the mainstream commercial fitness space. Um, I can't drop names at this point in time, but uh incredibly exciting from a assess member assessment standpoint, but then really, really um leaning into this is a completely new, very effective workout style of training and modality that delivers this very, very um efficient uh and exciting uh experience for training that has been very, very popular and appealing to um 40 to 65-year-old women, as well as the um uh 50 to 85-year-old male population, um just as well as the 25 to 45-year-old highly fit, highly competitive um uh uh male and female population. So I just kind of named a huge spectrum of demographics, but that's the beauty of it, is that it's used by right now ages eight to age 88, uh, and from everywhere from post-operative rehab, where it's very safe, to peak performance training, everything in between as a training tool, you know, which is very, very unique and kind of dizzying when you think about it from a where should we go, where should we focus standpoint. That's always been a challenge for us.

Yeah, that that 40 to 60 female demo, that's really interesting. Like what can you just dive into that for a little bit?

Sure. So um I'll give you an example. We've got a population of um uh 40 to 65-year-old females at a one of our sites in southern New Jersey. Um, it's actually uh it's actually a physical therapy, sports medicine physical therapies focus site, but that has like leveraged Proteus uh to justify continuation of care. Um so they've they've really like continued the relationship beyond the okay, insurance is done paying this. Now I'm gonna keep the relationship with this individual coming back, um, who's gonna pay out of pocket for services that are gonna be, you know, really using the facility as a gym. So the continuation of care is really um is really exciting. It's also very valuable for a lot of these businesses that want to keep people for longer, not just say goodbye when insurance stops paying, right? For for rehab. So we've got this population of 40 to 65-year-old women in southern New Jersey that has um started 10 10 to uh 15 minute hit style workouts on Proteus. There's like a library of of workouts. We have a we have a freestyle mode of training, which is like hit quick start on a treadmill, just change resistance and go. We've got a workout section of the software, which is more structured, follow along to the video. You know, it's kind of like fun. There's like hit style stuff, there's you know, the quadzilla, the afterburner, you know, and then there's warm-ups, cooldowns, and a whole and then some sports-specific stuff and content. And then there's performance testing, which is like the deep analytics, which is the totally new uh and in very exciting world. So the workout side of things, we've got some hit style sessions that are it's super low impact on the joints, right? In a way that cable machines cannot uh be because it's totally user controlled. We just let go of the handle and it just probably stops moving. Um because of the heightened uh two times greater neuromuscular stimulation compared to a free rate in a cable machine, it's produces this neural experience that is it's engaging you throughout every point of every movement and on the return part of the movement. So you just don't get a break. We we liken it to fighting through quicksand for five minutes. Um, and because it's concentrically biased, you can use it almost every day without soreness, right? So it complements a lot of programming that involve heavy eccentric, but it's like it's really this, it's very, very different style of training. So this group um has become fanatical about using Proteus as a training tool. And they started this phrase, do you Proteus, this community uh in southern New Jersey, which we just love to see. And um uh and what they're doing is they're actually paying out of pocket. Um, I think it's between 20 and 25 dollars for a 15-minute session on Proteus out of pocket, two to three times a week. Um, you know, they've been doing this for nine, I think nine months now, uh getting close to a year, if not if not beyond them, uh if not beyond that. Um, and it's been a great source of revenue and engagement and retention for these businesses, but also incredibly exciting for these end users, this population that is, you know, I think someone just learning out Proteus wouldn't necessarily understand that it would be appealing for them, but it it absolutely is. So um it's pretty exciting, and that's kind of like one of the things that we're warming up as uh as we get into education uh for Proteus customers of how to leverage how to unlock Proteus' value for all different uh types of your clients, right? Um different applications, you know, whether your focus is I want to produce more revenue versus I want greater retention, I want a marketability. Um and it's really been creating a buzz at a lot of these facilities where you know the the I think that on average our our facil our our customers, of which we've got you know more than 150 sites now, they they do almost 200 sessions per month on Proteus uh on the low on that's on the low end, with our top performing sites doing anywhere from 300 to 600 monthly sessions. Um, it's becomes one of the most popul like popular pieces of equipment, most commonly used, partially because it has there's so much stickiness to it, so much versatility. It's you know, it's you used for testing every once in a while, but then you know, every between those two-week testing periods is you're training on it, you know, in conjunction with other tools that you're using for training in your gym. It just is that it's a you know, it's a triple threat, and then some.

Yeah. Fascinating. It's it's always those unexpected outcomes that uh that are really thrilling, right? It's just it's it's such a bonus to the the original vision that you had going for this. I want to shift a little bit to the business. I guess first question I have is um, you know, uh the unit economic, like how much, how much does this cost for for a consumer, roughly? And uh something that I want to ask you about too, because just looking at the videos, it looks like it has a fairly large footprint. Like it's it's a it's a fairly big piece of equipment. Like give me some in from the the the B2B consumer standpoint. Like what is what do those details look like?

Sure. Um, so I'll start with uh on the on the pricing side. Um it I mean we've got uh we've got uh pricing and financing options right now that allow you know credit approved individuals or businesses to acquire Proteus with no upfront payment and then basically turning into a you know roughly $500 a month. Um uh and so there's some really, really great programs we have that are really focused on allowing, you know, targeting businesses and individuals that want to acquire the system and start implementing into their business without the without an upfront payment, um, without an expensive equipment purchase, and being able to really uh like really from day one be focusing on that ROI, right? And so when you know that you know you're gonna be able to do XYZ bigger, better, and more of, and actually start charging for those things or premiums or operate more efficiently, those it it pays for itself almost immediately. So there's some really, really compelling options there. Um and and it and definitely when you look at the landscape of you know the kind of uh the there's no parallel on the software side, but on the on the hardware side alone. I mean, that's you know, it's it's uh it's right in the ballpark of what you'd expect a kind of a commercial piece of of a fitness equipment uh would be. But the when you bundle it all together and finance it, some of those options, it's you know, 500 bucks a month is very, very reasonable when you think about like that's the only thing that you have to pay when you think about what you can do with it and what you can generate off of that. That's number one. Um, from a size perspective, it's actually a lot smaller than person than they think.

Sorry, what's the actual sticker price then? I mean, in in a broad range, like I know uh I'm sure there's package deals for multiple units and things like that, but what can they expect if they're gonna pay cash?

Yeah, so there's we're we're trying to reject like any upward pressure on pricing due to inflation because we're really trying to like keep it keep it very steady. But I think you generally speaking, from a you know, sticker price if you're not financing, can be, you know, entry points usually around you know, roughly $15,000 for the hardware, give or take. It really depends on like um uh it really depends on how payments are split up. And then from a software perspective, you can, you know, we're we're developing new tiers on the software pricing, but right now, um, you know, it's usually around, you know, at least, you know, or in the range of you know, 300 bucks a month in change for uh for the software license. But I think what we've started to do is develop a system that allows us to really adapt depending on the business type, because we want to what we figured out is that it's not this isn't one size fits all, especially when you look at you've got a you know boutique, high-end personal training, personal training studio that has a different expectation for the volume of clients. Like they they're gonna mat they can only get so many clients. It's not gonna be a super high volume site, right? That shouldn't be this, that's not the same price point as another gym that is gonna have a thousand people testing on this every month. So I you know, we we like to say that um what internally we evaluate uh potential pricing conversations or potential pricing structures depending on the customer segment. And we like to have that conversation initially by starting with understanding what does this person need, how does their business operate, and then go from there. So those numbers that I just gave are really kind of general, like peanut buttering over all of it. There's a there's basically a pretty big sway uh above and and below those numbers depending on the customer type. Um so uh, but I think the way to think about it is for sure from a from a the the easiest way to think about it is you know, when you break it down financing-wise and bundle things together, right? You basically can acquire the system when you're credit approved for zero dollars down, um, you know, and and roughly 500 bucks a month. Um uh so on the and then on the size standpoint, what's interesting is we found that there's been uh when people see it in person, they actually the common reaction is, oh, this is not that big. And uh a lot of that is because when Proteus is usually shown, like a lot of our customers, they actually just designate a space for it because it becomes kind of like a you know a central point. They don't want to kind of hide it amongst other equipment. So there's not commonly like a references of for size of it next to a you know another piece of equipment. Dimensionally, it is a smaller footprint than a um, you know, a commercial woodway tread treadmill. Got it. Right, and it it um and it has less operational footprint than a standard cable machine. So it really uh it fits really nicely into corners, it fits very nicely into, you know, amongst other equipment and in a pretty compact spaces. Um, we also have different options that we have for on the install. It's it's pretty interesting when we designed this. We had been producing the Proteus 1.0, which is a lot bigger, bulkier, um, totally different design for for several years uh prior. And I used to like literally personally build those things myself and in in Long Island City with our small team. We redesigned the entire thing top to top down uh in 2020 into early 2021, uh focusing on scalability and and lower cost. And uh as part of that, we really looked at the ease of installation and transport. And so it's pretty cool. Like when it arrives at a facility, there's actually wheels that come out of the bottom and you roll it into a facility and then retract the wheels and put it into place. And then there's you can either have it bolted to the ground, or we've just rolled out a freestanding. Floor stand that is like a very low profile, kind of three plates, um, three small plates that Proteus legs mount to, um, which has been which has been, and then it basically you plug it into a 120-volt outlet, turn it on, connect it to Wi-Fi, and boom, you're done. It's like the craziest, the easiest, crazy setup um that you can imagine. So it's pretty cool. And that that whole process is improving dramatically from an onboarding perspective and and so forth. It's it's pretty exciting where we're headed with it.

Yeah, right on. So I want to, I know we're starting to butt up on time here, but I do want to cover the the the number side of things. I mean, uh just less than a month ago, this recording, you know, uh announced your your series A. Congratulations. Uh, that's that's tremendous. That puts some some gas in the tank, right? Um, give us you know what what you can share. So that was eight and a half million uh you know that that you guys raised. And I'm sure there's more coming in, usually on the heels of something like that, right? What uh what other numbers can you share as far as like employees, devices out there? You know, give us give us some insights of what you can.

Sure. Yeah, happy to. Um uh so we're a team of uh a team of about 30 employees. Uh we're based in uh 30 employees are uh headquartered in Brooklyn, uh New York and Williamsburg. Um, but we've got you know, probably a third of our team is in Southern California, mostly sales and marketing, and then a couple of employees that are kind of remotely uh spread. Um, you know, we actually just hired a uh a couple months ago, a um, you know, uh NASA human health and performance engineer that's you know incredible experience on the fitness equipment side, uh, who's who's based out of Pensacola. So we get a little bit of spread on that on that engineering team, but but mostly based in Brooklyn, New York. Um we have uh the team has expanded, you know, 3x in the last 18 months. Um we first came out with Proteus 2.0, which is our current model, that the kind of the black version, it's much sleeker design in in uh April 2021. At that point in time, that was 18 months ago, we had about 20, 15, 20 machines installed. That were all the 1.0 versions that you know I was in personally involved in building. Um and uh and now we have uh we've exceeded 150 machines um and growing rapidly. So we're in 43 states now. Um the I'll also note that um uh 100% of our growth has been organic. So we have spent to date literally zero dollars on marketing and advertising. Uh it's been 100% through word of mouth. And this is the thing that we like we love so much about what we do. It's so exciting, is like these early adopters that are now it's kind of the early majority that we've been kind of moving into, but um, these are really pioneers, and they've been teaching us almost how they're using and leveraging the system. And then we've been building products, especially on the software side, around that to optimize that, to enhance it, to take it to the next level. That's like through and through what we do. Um, and uh, and so we're we really have this incredible platform. Uh, we say it's the ultimate platform for trainer creativity. Um, being able to create your own tests, customize everything, do the things that you do but better and give you better access to information to make decisions, right? To elevate your services, to you know, keep your clients more engaged, increase that retention, build a better relationship. Um, and it that's we're just beginning on the software side. We're doing about 1% today of what our total capabilities are. And we've been doing this for seven years now. I've been doing this for seven years. So we're just getting started. The fuel that we have from this latest raise is phenomenal for us to uh basically apply or uh employ towards the expansion of our software products, uh, specifically for an audience well beyond the elite sports trainer, which is really what to date we we had been focused on. So just being a realist, like nobody has time to look at a sheet of numbers and say, I know how to, I'm gonna figure out on the spot what this may how to make sense. This doesn't like I love to ask that question to us internally and being like a self-contrarian almost is like, who cares, right? Can I use this now? Does it matter? Like, is this really gonna you know take what I'm doing to the next? Is this really a game changer? It's not if you can't understand it. So we've spent a great amount of time like flipping that completely. We've got an awesome software development and design team, um, and hardware product development is incredible. Um, so it's really around just expanding dramatically on that side and and really going for volume. So we expect that in the next few months we'll have now several hundred installs. All of our kind of the demand has been inbound to us, people hearing about us, word of mouth from customers. Um, and uh we're starting a little bit of outbound uh to really control the message about this is what Proteus is. Uh and uh forget everything you may think you know about it. You need to try it, you need to uh spend the time. It's worth spending the time, get getting to know what it is that we're doing and why it's so significant because it's about to be everywhere.

Yeah, right on, Sam. This is this is great. I I've backstory, you know, your dad's basement all the way to where it is now is just uh it's a really good story. And I'm I'm excited for you. And I, you know, the more I dive into this, the more I talk to you and other people uh within the industry who know this thing, I think it's uh it's got a lot of traction. I think you get a lot of to look forward to. So uh congratulations on everything so far and uh super excited for for what's next for you guys. What uh if people want to get a hold of you, or if you want to send them somewhere online, uh if they want to collaborate or you know work with you, what's what's the best place for them to go?

Yeah, best place to go would actually just be you go to our website, producemotion.com, uh, and then there's a the we're we're launching a new website in about three weeks, so you'll see a an overhaul there, which is gonna be which is super, super exciting. But um, if you go to our website and there's an intake form, kind of you put kind of information who you are and and uh um you'll you'll you uh without question get in touch with the right person from our group. Alternatively, um, you know, there's there's always um you know sales at Proteusmotion.com or reach out to me directly, sam at proteusmotion.com. Um, so uh yeah, we love to we have a great network in this space and rapidly expanding. So we are calling for the best of the best. Uh and um uh you know together we're gonna take over the world. So we appreciate it very much, and thanks for your interest, Eric. Appreciate it, really enjoyed this.

Oh, pleasure's all mine. Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Miller.

Thanks, Eric.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Ministers. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and 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 futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.