Sebastien Lagree - Lagree Fitness: 25 Years of Building to an Overnight Global Explosion

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. One theme keeps coming up: the right technology can make or break your business. That's why I'm thrilled to introduce our new presenting sponsor, Perfect Gym. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs. No disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking? No problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They have invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. All right, we are live. Sebastian McGree, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thanks, Eric.

Yeah, man, this is this is really fun. You have been innovating in this space for quite some time. And uh I would say that you know, we're gonna get into all the things you have between, you know, the the patents and the hardware and the devices and the licensing and the corporate store locations and you know, a lot, there's a lot going on in your world. But uh, yeah, there's a lot. And there is uh and a huge personality as well. I think people will figure that out in the next 45 minutes. But the the the renaissance that you are kind of experiencing at this moment, I think is is awesome. I mean, when we talk about you know overnight success built over 20 years, like you know, there's a lot to that. You gotta stick in it, you gotta believe in a vision and a mission and what you're doing and all those things that we talk about as entrepreneurs, but to be able to stick with it for decades on end, see it to, you know, through the end. I was talking to you before this about how like I think of you and I think of like Rick Mayo, who's like just been evolving, right? Iterating for a very long time and continues to do it. So really cool stuff. And let's start with this, Sebastian. For people who don't know who you are and Legree Fitness, maybe give us some of your background. Um, I know it's uh it's a storied background, but let's let's give it a shot.

Well, you know, I mean it's uh you know, I got involved in fitness. Uh well, first of all, I got involved in bodybuilding at a young age. I was like 14 years old, you know, and then basically I you know I was a little fat kid. I I I I was always active, but I also always loved to eat whatever I wanted to eat, right? So in the 80s, I grew up in the 80s and uh probably the only fat kid in France. And then one day I uh I met a girl, fell in love, and that was all the motivation that I needed, you know, to basically uh change my ways and I started to work out, and then I became obsessed with weightlifting and bodybuilding. And then uh I moved from France to the US when I was 17. And then in the US, you know, that was back in 91. In the US, there was so much more information about uh uh bodybuilding. Bodybuilding was already, you know, not in its infancy, it was already kind of well established. So you had a lot of publications, a lot of supplements. So I got really completely sucked in the whole world of bodybuilding and absolutely loved it because for me I'm I'm an introvert, so bodybuilding is a great sport for introverts. And uh fast forward to a few years later, you know, get my college, get good, get my master's in business, all that stuff. But I had this um, I had this uh this desire to go to LA and then to pursue a career uh in acting. So at 24 years old, finished my MBA, all that stuff. I uh I moved to LA and after 30 days of being on auditions, realized that uh this was gonna be uh much more difficult to get an acting gig. And I decided to get into the personal training business because that's something I felt very comfortable with. I know about movement, I know about exercise, something comes very naturally to me. So I became a personal trainer, and that led me to Pilates. And then I started to teach Pilates, I got certified in Pilates, and essentially realized that I was not really enjoying Pilates. This is not really the kind of method that I enjoy, you know, working. I love to sweat, I love to shake, I love getting my muscle pump. Pilates is none of that stuff, right? And it's more rehab and restorative, and every single time I say that, you know, I mean, you'll see when you probably just you know, you know, when you when you when you make a little uh clip out of this, you know, and then you'll have all the Pilates people like, ah Sebastian, is it hits Pilates, and blah blah blah. First of all, I love Pilactis, but I think a lot of people don't even understand. Even Pilates instructors don't even understand what Pilates is. But anyway, so I'm teaching Pilates, and after 30 days, man, I I'm not really enjoying it, I'm not really feeling it. But most importantly, it was the clients that I was training, and they were not enjoying it as well, right? They were doing a Pilates sessions with me, and then they would go to the gym to do the cardio to sweat and all that stuff. So I I asked those all these women, I say, hey, you know, I mean you you you pay me to to have a certain body, but you know, uh as with my my training in bodybuilding, I tell you right now, there's no intensity. Your your muscle is not gonna change by doing this exercise on these machines. We can use the same equipment, but if you allow me to alter the method, to modify the pileatis method, I can give you those results. And so uh I started to teach essentially the prototype version of uh of Le Gris, not knowing it was gonna go anywhere, right? Because for me, I'm just I just want to make my clients happy. And because I'm I'm I'm interested in my auditions and not interested in in building a fitness empire at that moment, right? And so I started to basically do this uh this new method on the Pilates equipment. Originally I called it Pilates Plus because I didn't really care. You know, to me, I just whipped up a method that people wanted, and then I was it, right? And uh it just kept on growing and growing and growing. I got on TV, so you know, like you know, within three months of teaching my method as I get on TV, as we got on shows and stuff like that. Celebrity was come and call me and say, Hey, I I want to do your method of Pilates and all that stuff. And I was just like, I was really shocked that you know, this workout that I just whip up in 10 seconds, right? Because if you know, if you understand fitness and if you it's not complicated, I mean I didn't think I create anything new on the reformer, right? It's just like I'm just doing what makes sense for my clients. That's all it is, right? And after two, three years, I realized that I said, you know, that probably this could be a good career for me. You know, eventually I could actually finance my own movies if I if I'm successful enough, you know, uh at that thing. So I started to pay more attention to this method, but it went through many iterations. The the method that people are doing today is probably degree 10.0. Okay, there's there's been so many iterations because the business evolved many times, because I went through a lot of up and down, and every single time you go through down, you have to readjust, reassess, you know, the direction of the business, the strategy, all that stuff. No, my path to success has been like this, right? It's been upward, but it's up and down, but on the upward trends. And that that is part of being an entrepreneur, which I didn't think I was, right? You know, I didn't think I had anything to do entrepreneur, my inventions. I have over 200 patents now. I'm I don't I don't know, now I'll put 200 plus, you know, on my uh on Instagram because I'm I think 204, 205, but I it's never gonna stop, right? And so I'm kind of stopped counting the patents now. But I didn't even think that I didn't even know that I had it to myself in myself to to be an innovator because I've always had ideas, but you because you don't materialize, you don't manifest those ideas, you know, uh you don't have a chance to see that oh, a lot of people like your ideas, actually. And then you find you, and then over the long run, you realize that, well, you know what? Those people don't have the same ideas, and you're actually the only one coming up with those ideas, and then you realize shit, so that becomes valuable, you know. That's you know, thank you. Sorry about that. And that's kind of how the the the thing evolved, right? So open, uh, so I uh I was teaching in this one studio. The uh the owner loved what I was doing. I could tell the other Pilates instructors were a little threatened, and eventually the owner sold his uh the studio to a new owner. That new owner completely hated what I was doing with the equipment. I'm like, what you're doing is not Pilates, it's dangerous. You have people standing on the reformer, they're sweating, these women are shaking, they're gonna fall off the machine. What you're doing is so dangerous, you know, you can't do this, and then literally just kicked me out of the studio and called other Pilates studio in West Hollywood Beverly and say, Hey, don't hire Sebastian, he's using the equipment in a very dangerous way. What he's doing is dangerous, you shouldn't be doing it. So I had no choice but to open my own location. So I opened my own studio on September 11th, 2001. This is the opening date of Legree. So that Tuesday morning, I will never forget it, you know. And so now I open a studio and I decided to focus on the reformer because of all the Pilates apparatus, I thought the reformer had the most appeal for fitness. I like the chair, the chairs is a good machine, but I thought that for the commercialization of the method, I thought it would be best to stick to one machine. That's it. And the reformer had the most potential because already by then I already knew what I wanted to add to the reformer. I wanted to add platforms on the back, I wanted to make the reformer more of a fitness machine than a rehabilitation machine because the reformer is a rehabilitation. Matter of fact, sometimes they call it the rehabilitative reformer or the clinical reformer. And you people lay on the back on the machines, right? They have shoulder rests to keep people uh anchored on the carriage, and that's what you do. So, but to do group classes, I thought that the reformer was the best format. And I'll stop right here and then let you ask the rest because I can't keep on going like this for hours.

Well, there's uh there's a lot of things that I would love to touch on there. Number one, I was a chubby little kid too, and I often think that it was probably one of the greatest gifts I could have got because I got had the opportunity to kind of climb out of it, and I'm like, I'm never going back, right? And I think that kind of pushed you into obviously bodybuilding into the career that you're at now. So it's it's interesting to hear to say that. I'm quite, you know, when when you started bodybuilding at a young age, was there anybody you followed? Was there any like inspirations? I mean, a lot of of course there's muscle magazine, there's a lot of different things, right? So where where did you get your information back in?

Well man, I I I grew up in the French countryside, you know. So I was watching movies with Arnold, Silverstallone, Drunk with Vendame, you know, Loufer, you know, I'm watching those guys. I'm like, oh my God. You know, I remember that scene in Commando when he goes like this, you know, and he riffs his shirt off, you know, like rip the shirt. You know, he flex, and he's just like, you're like 11, 12 years old, you're watching this stuff like, oh my god, this is like the best thing ever. It's you know, so so you get obsessed with this stuff. And when I was lifting weights in France, I remember I was going to Vaux Casson in the suburb, and there was like only a few members. I mean, I would go at night, maybe there was like 10, 15 people working out, you know, weekend I was the only one person with two or three of the bodybuilders. I made friends with a lot of other bodybuilders, and it taught me a lot, you know. And but it was like in the 80s, you know, in France. It was just it was very starting up, whereas in the US it was already much further along. And uh it was, it's I I started to work out, and uh, I have to tell you that it just I was really into video game at the time, and I got obsessed about I got as obsessed lifting weight and bodybuilding as I was for video game, it just like clicked with me. I'm just like, I really loved it, you know. And my dad was just giving me shit about it. It's like I can't believe that you spend your time, you know, you go to the gym and you just sit down and just do some exercise. But I couldn't explain to him. It's like it feels amazing. I I I love these moments where I'm put my headphone on and I work out, and I just it's incredibly therapeutical, you know. So uh, which I didn't know at the time, but I I got completely into it.

Yeah, awesome. And uh, you know, it's I listen to your story, I'm like, that is such an LA success story. Like, I don't know if what you've done could have happened in any other city besides Los Angeles. Do you ever think about that?

Yeah, no, I it couldn't happen because TV and the cinema is a huge medium for fitness. And matter of fact, right now I'm doing a documentary on the future of fitness, part two, with fitness and how fitness is actually impacting uh mental health and spiritual, right? And yeah, you know, rights is a fantastic name. And I I'm trying to describe when the fitness phenomenon took off, and you really took off in the 70s, but what do you have in the 70s? You have Pumping Iron, uh, you have uh Rocky, and you start to have more movies that show more guys buffed, you know, and the 80s, this is when it's really the the 80s is really kind of the birth of all the uh action movies, right? So with Arnold and all that stuff, and Hollywood and and the TV industry really helped launch the fitness phenomena because in the 60s it wasn't like that, the 50s, 40s, but you know, 40s and 30s, and people forget that in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, you have doctors advocating smoking and they're telling people not to work out. They say working out is bad for you, but smoking is great for you, right? Smoke is reducing stress and anxiety up until like in the in the 50s and 60s, they had so many cancer cases, and they finally had to redact that, you know, and then fitness became more of a but really Hollywood really helped to popularize uh uh fitness. So for me to to for for my method to to take hold, right, and to grow, Hollywood was definitely best because that trained a lot of celebrities, and that brought a lot of attention early on. Like I started to get featured in the press in 2000, uh, what was it, 1999, 2000, and it started, you know, and it's just in it and it's snowballed. And and what I did in LA, I don't think I could have done anywhere else. Now I can operate anywhere from the world because the method is like in over 50 countries and all that stuff, but yeah, uh LA was a huge um Yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about the machine. What makes it unique? What is special about the Legree fitness machine?

I'm glad you asked me that question. What makes it unique, Eric, is the fact that the machine is constantly changing. I'm constantly evolving the machine. The difference between me and other fitness manufacturers, so someone is gonna make a machine and they're gonna have the they're gonna go to Asia because there's no more manufacturing in the US, it's dead. Okay, there's just no one manufactures in the US. So you go to Asia, but when you go to Asia, you know you're not just speaking, you make 10 or 20 machines, but you have to make a thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand. So manufacturers, you know, they want to they have the tooling costs and they want to absorb the tooling costs of the machines and they want to stamp out those machines and sell this. For me, it's not like that. Once I make a machine, I'm using it in the studio, I'm learning from it, and immediately I'm starting to work on improving it. So for me, I like to do short, uh, I like to do really short MOQs because I know the machine is evolving. So, what makes the degree unique and stand out compared to every other manufacturer is that I'm constantly releasing new machines, updated machines, new features, and I've been doing this relentlessly since the the my first machine came out, which is in 2006, the ProFormer. And I cannot help myself. I absolutely love working on this machine, tweaking those machines. Now we're gonna start adding a year to the models. So there'll be like, for example, the 2026 Mega Pro or 2027 Mega Pro and so on, because we're constantly adding features. And I'm basically following a little bit uh the the business format as a as a as uh as a uh as uh as an exotic car manufacturer, like Lamborghini or Ferrari or Porsche, for example, or by releasing those limited editions, you know, by constantly tweaking the design and uh the aesthetics and the functionality. And there's never one machine is never quite the same, right? When you go from one year to the next. And I think originally it was pissing people off because it was always coming out with uh quote unquote better machines, but now people are actually embracing that philosophy because they realize that they're always I'm always moving forward. And this moving forward makes it impossible for people to catch up with me and do copies. So this is in itself also a great business strategy against copycats and not counterfeits, because now we have uh counterfeits and replicas coming from China.

So the question that probably a lot of people are are thinking to themselves is so okay, what's what's there between a Plotties reformer, right? Like the traditional one, and now there's tons of different variations coming into the market with the the absolute explosion of Plotties as it's crazy. So what's the difference between what you guys do and some of these traditional, more traditional pieces of hardware?

Sure. Sure. So when I came in the picture in 1998, you know, the reformer is just basically a wooden machine. You have a carriage, you have shoulder rest, you have basically two cables to allow you to do movements with the carriage. You don't have a platform on the front, uh, there's no platform, there's not nothing on the back end, right? You're only using one end, excuse me, of the machine. You have like a little footbar that you can use to do some stretch and things like that. But then that's it. You know, the uh it's it's a it's a very simply designed concept. What I liked about the reformer is the fact you have this rolling carriage, so it's good for stability, it's attached to the springs and the cable. So the fact that you have this moving carriage attached to the spring on the cable gives you the opportunity to pretty much as many movements as you want to. So you have free range of motion and you have the elasticity from the spring, right? So this is kind of what drew me from the reformer was the fact you have those springs. The spring is like basically a hybrid between a dumbbell and a rubber band. It's the best possible source of tension. And I think our bodybuilders over there right now should actually start working with spring-based tension because you get a pump that is unbelievable using the springs, okay? And also I think there's a huge therapeutic aspect, and I'm working with doctors who actually want to integrate Legris as part of the recovery for cancer patients because there's actually a lot of new studies that suggest that uh, for example, the shaking, the variable tension, all that stuff helps you to uh to release the toxicity you can get from chemo and other things. So I'm working, I've been talking to uh doctors here in the US, doctor in France. This morning I was just talking to a team of doctors who want to start to do uh to you to basically have Legris part of the protocol. This was never the original attempt, but that's kind of uh another application, I would say, of the method. But anyway, so the reformer was really basically designed. So when I came in the picture, I'm like, well, first of all, on the reformer, uh you use the springs on the front to support you against gravity or to give you some control resistance. And I thought you could there was a whole other side of the reformer, like you could do exercise on the back end used to work on counter resistance, but unfortunately, you had no features to to use the springs in counter resistance. So I added a platform on the back, I added a set of handles on the back, I added more cables, and eventually on the carriage itself, because we started to do more exercises in the back, I had to modify the carriage so we have more anchoring points, right? Because the carriage always wants to come back toward the front because of the springs are located. So you have to have like this this areas you can grab, you can just basically grip. So I really started to transform uh the reformer to a point where it's it's like taking basically like uh you know uh uh you know uh taking a four-model T basically and transforming it into you know a modern-day car, right? By adding AC, and then you have like cruise control and stuff. And that's essentially what I did to the reformer, right? I did all these other features for the for the practice of Legri. And I did a lot of features. Now the cool thing is a lot of the features have been analog, so just mechanical features, but now I'm getting into the whole digitalization of the uh the equipment, and that is where really I'm really interested, you know, by adding sensors to the carriage and adding sensors to the rails, started to be able to measure velocity, force, control. You can you can measure time and attention, I can measure all this stuff that I'm I've been kind of doing in my head when I teach a class is not gonna have the actual metrics, we can have the metrics for a person. We can actually add AI to the machine now where the AI helps with progressive overloading, because progressive overloading is a huge part of the method. And you know, talking B2B, you know, for for for those people who want to keep their their their their clientele, you you know, to retain the clients, you have to be able one way to retain your clients is to show them performance, you know, increasing performance. Right now, on the analog machine, when people work out on the mega, they may get stronger, but they don't realize that because the spray has several tensions built into it. A spray can go to 10 pounds, 15 pounds, 20, 30, 35 pounds. So you don't need to change your spraints. So over six months or a year, you could be working with the same sprains. So psychologically, you're like, Oh, I have I'm working with that same spring, I'm not getting stronger. No, that's not true. You are Are working against a greater greater amount of resistance from the same spring, you just don't notice it. So if I can just show it on the screen that lesson from month to month to month, even though using the same spring tension, you're actually working against a greater amount of resistance, you are getting stronger. That I think is going to help also to retain clients. Because at the gym, when you work out and you start with five pounds and you go to 10 pounds, you go to 15 pounds and 20 pounds, you see it right there. It's just using those dumbbells, they're getting bigger. You see the number going up on the dumbbell. So it's motivating. But when you do agree, you don't notice the subtle differences. So with the digitalization of the equipment by adding AI to the machine, I'll be saying, hey, Eric, boom, look at that. Your strength has improved 3% from last week. Your flexibility has gone 10% from last month. Your time and attention went up, you know, 25%. Your fitness level has improved 37%, because then I'll be able to also demonstrate that you're going to get this increase in performances. Meanwhile, your heart rate is going to drop down. I'm working on Polar. We're going to integrate Polar into because Polar for me is the best uh heart rate monitoring system that exists. So I'm I'm I'm I'm working with them. We're going to integrate that into the machine, and you'll be able to see finally, you know, what I've always wanted to see is like the progress. I noticed that I see that, but you'll have the actual metrics and you'll be able to use those metrics and then be able to plan your workout and all that stuff. So there's a lot that is happening and a lot, but for me, the best part really right now is now. You know, everything led to now. For me, I'm super excited. I'm not excited about what I built in the past. I'm excited about what's to come because these are the machines that I've been thinking about for the past 10, 15 years. And I couldn't because I either didn't write with the right manufacturers or I didn't know how to go about it, you know, or the technology was simply too expensive. Now the cost has dropped down, so it's more available. It's a beautiful time right now, Eric, to make fitness equipment.

Awesome. Well said. So let's talk about the model. There, I have a lot of other questions, but I feel like talking about your business model is gonna like uncover a lot of those answers. So you went with a licensing, licensing plus education model. Like yeah, explain that. It's very unique.

Yeah. Well, I wanted to do the licensing because honestly, I have a small team, and then the minute you're gonna do a franchise, first of all, when you're a franchise, people don't realize is you have to register your franchise in every fucking state, and it's expensive, right? It could be 20, 30, 40, 50,000 per state, if not more, plus you know, the all the lawyers, then you have a different taxation system, different regulations. I'm like, fuck that shit. Okay. All I want to do is I want to sell the equipment, I want machine people to buy the equipment so that I have all that RD money to keep basically keep making those machines better. Because for me, I got these machines in my head and they have to come out. And the only way they can come out is by selling licenses and equipment. So I thought, you know what? I don't want you to tell me how to run my business. So why should I run? Why should I tell you how to run your business? So now I license the name and the methods, so people pay literally, it's like $4,000 a year to license the degree name and the mega former, $2,000 for the Mini Pro, $1,000 for the micro, a thousand dollars a year. So it's really uh, you know, it's really affordable. And that makes the licensing just your sales like pancakes. We sell multiple licenses a day. We open multiple CGs a day now, so it's very effortless. Licensees love it because they only have a five-page agreement. They don't have like a 25 or 30 or 75-page franchise, you know, with all the do's and don'ts, you know. And it's the fitness industry, okay? It's like the cooking industry. But ultimately, you're gonna do what they want to do, okay? Whether you have a license agreement or a franchise agreement or a partnership agreement, okay. You're always gonna have those divas coming in, teaching the class, and then they're gonna want to do it their own way anyway. So, you know, franchise protects you a little bit more than a license in a term. But at one point you realize it doesn't matter. You know, you if you have a bad agent or whatever, it's better to be uh doing it with a license than a franchise, you know. I feel that for those people out there who want to create their own franchise, you have to understand that you have to be okay with people doing things differently. It's just human nature. People have different logics, people have different preferences, people have different agendas. I honestly don't think the franchise model works in fitness. I'm sure you're gonna have a bunch of investors and analysts telling me, well, you know what? You know, this franchise are with billions of dollars. I'm like, yeah, but I I don't I don't I don't look see for me I've never I'm I'm not doing this for the money, man. I'm I'm not if I want to become a billionaire tomorrow, I can. Okay, I sell my business, I'm a billionaire. I don't I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in making machines that are transforming people's life. Okay, I want to help people to upgrade on the physical, mental, and spiritual level, and that's where I'm going. And that's why I just want to focus on so the license is a format that allows me to achieve that goal with a smaller team and then really focus on the RD. Because for me, the RD is the it's the most critical component of my business. All of my copycats, right? All the people who are library inspired, quote unquote, you know, none of them have a patent, none of them have actually a direction. What they're doing, they're trying to basically just, I don't know, maybe formulate, you know, or establish a protocol from something I did maybe in the past. But for me, fitness is about evolution, it's about progression, you know. So how can you just do the same shit, the same workout, the same routine? Because that's what a franchise would do, right? Say, Eric, these are your sessions for this week, these are the same for the next week, and we're not really changing that. We're not we're not changing the format because a franchise is like a McDonald's, right? You want to have the same product, the same session, session after session. It's the opposite of bodybuilding. It's literally the franchise system prevents you from the progression, you know, because this is a machine, we're not moving the machine, we're not changing the machine, we're not changing the protocol. You have to change the protocol. You have to change the machine because your body gets stronger, your body is evolving. It's ridiculous to think that that you want to free something and you think you're gonna have you know results coming from the same thing over and over. You know, for me, you know, when people open a franchise or do a franchise in business, it's like telling me, okay, Eric, we're gonna do, we're gonna work on your biceps and we'll do the same three sets of exercise with the same weight and the same repetition for the duration of your membership. Fuck that. You know, there's there's no sense of progression. And so for me, the license doesn't the license doesn't obligate me to upgrade, you know, licenses. Licensees can update, upgrade the equipment on their own time, but it gives me the revenues that I need for me to continue making those machines better, uh, more intense, safer, more unique, you know, because for me, authenticity and uniqueness are the two cornerstones of regret. Very important for me to be different from everyone else, but also to keep the method safe, effective, and efficient, right? This uh if you're an equipment manufacturer today and and and safety and efficiency and effectiveness is not in your mind, don't make fitness equipment.

So walk me through this, Sebastian. If I'm I'm interested in becoming a licensee, uh I want to start Malzone fitness up here, right? I need to get a machine, I need to get education. Can I license the the brand name of Legree on my storefront? Like what yeah, what is what does that all entail?

Yeah, absolutely. So the license allows you to use all the IP, right? So we have mega former degree, and then it's funny because I have sometimes people tell me that, well, I don't know if I should pay you $4,000 a year to use the word Legree. Well, it's interesting because I have so many Cs and D's that I send to people out. There's there's a value in the name, but people don't want to pay for it, okay? And $4,000 a year to license the name, that's for the Mega. It's $2,000 if you have the Mini. It's very little. Then you have your teacher training. Uh so the t-shirt training is not included in the license, it's different. We allow people to have basically different days, right? They can pick how they want to do t-shirt training. I I wish people understood more the importance of the t-shirt training because you want to have great trainers. You know, your number one asset at the studio is always a trainer. All right, so everything else is secondary. The trainer is really what is going to bring people back. So you want to spend the time on the teacher training to make your trainer feels comfortable because the degree is uh degree, if you have a bodybuilding training background, I think you'll pick up degree very quickly, but there's still it's still a sophisticated method to teach in a group format. When you teach something to 10 people, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 people, you know, the method uh you need to have you you need to have a uh um a strategy. You can't you can't just uh you need to be trained, you need to hear us, you need to know what you go after because you have so many participants in class, and you do exercise where people can fall off the machine and really hurt themselves. So you really have to know what you're doing with uh with the equipment. And you also know uh have to know about sequencing, right? And so you want to spend the time learning how to teach effectively. So we have this teacher training that you do, and then after that, you know, you get your machines, but you know, you can buy the machines, you can lease the machines, we have a lease uh in the US. We will once uh in start at then about a couple years from now, 2027, we should uh have a first international lease with the digital equipment because the digital the digital equipment will be plugged in into a server, and then I can just you know I can control that. So I think once once we have international lease, it's gonna really help uh the studio. And then that's it. You know, it's it's really I'm available uh Zoom. We have a whole team, I'm creating a whole website right now to assist people with all the marketing, all the strategic. You know, I'm telling people how to overtake copycats because copycats are literally like a sitting breakfast for my licensees. So I'm teaching them how to basically use the method against the copycats. And like in LA, for example, we've shut down a few locations because copycats are easy targets, you know. And I, you know, I tell licensees like what do you open the in a in the middle of nowhere, open where there's a nest of copycats and then clean our house. You know, you have the uh security technology, you have the method, just go in there. So I help people out, strategize as well a little bit if they want to. You know, some people have their own strategy and I don't get involved. Other people really want to do what I would do, and uh, and I help them out. You know, so with the license, it kind of gave me that that that flexibility that I can help you as much as you need to, or not at all. You know, it's it's you got this, you got this. All right, okay, hands off.

Yeah, that I mean that that strategy work is tremendously valuable. I mean, so many people get into fitness because they love it. You know, they're a trainer, they're a coach, they're in love with you know fitness and and health and well-being. And like myself, you know, I got into it, and I'm like, oh shit, I have to learn the business side of things. Like, this is there's a lot. There's a lot to learn. Have uh to be able to skip a couple of mistakes, right? By by tapping into you know, wealth of knowledge and experience is is extremely valuable. Sebastian, what about the consumer? Like who who's using the the hardware and the the the workout specifically? Is it I presume it resembles you know a Pilates crowd, probably mostly female, upper middle class.

But yeah, who's so so my crowd has evolved tremendously, Eric. So when I first started to do this method back in 1998, I had mostly older white women, right? I had women in their 60s, you know, maybe late 50s, 60s, 70s, and then maybe a a few younger women. And then as I started to basically intensify the method and change the method, as I said to go from all my different machines and stuff like that, the clientele started to get basically broader. So we started to get younger women at first, and then we started to get a few men, and now after that, we started to get you know the full spectrum. So now we have women literally from 18 all the way to 88. And now we have, you know, uh uh now the last couple of years, uh we had white women uh, you know, predominantly, then we had the full spectrum of white women, then we started to have more men coming in. Now we had the Asian community coming in about maybe 2000. See 2000, the Asian community came pretty quickly into that, and then then it was pretty much white women, Asian women, you know, some men. And then the last few years we've had full spectrum. We're getting a lot more guys coming in. Uh, we get more African Americans. Now we have a lot more African Americans owners, which I just love this, you know. Latinos also have been coming in. This the Latino, the Latino community, is it's been there, but it's not being like, you know, very prominent. But in the past 12 months, wow, we just get everyone. Everyone, every country, everything. And now this is exactly what I wanted because I, as a businessman, okay, I don't think it's good to only focus on one section of the market. I want everyone. Fitness is for everyone. So I want every man, women, people in between, you know, from 14 all the way to 114. This is my target market. I want everyone. And so what I'm finding out, so I'm I'm finding out what are the triggers, what triggers you know, the man, what triggers the women, the younger crowd, and I'm making those machines a very specific way to get more and more people. Sure, sometimes you know, you lose some people because you get you start to go too out there, but maybe for every per every student that I lose, I gain 10,000 more, right? It's just it's it's a huge overtake. In the last 27 years, as I've been evolving the method and equipment, I maybe have changed my clientele three or four times. But it's it's great, you know. And and again, as a business person, as a CEO of a company, you must have the conviction, you must have the faith that listen, I'm I'm okay to let go of these people because I'm getting all of these people. And every single time you do this, you kind of broaden the market. And today, this is why we're selling so many, uh, so many machines. You know, we have the micro, the micro is a great machine if you don't have any money. Today, with $10,000, you can start a studio. You can pay for your license, you can pay for your equipment, you can pay for your training, all less than $10,000, and open a studio today and start making money today. You don't have to wait until or to get a big expenses pay us and get 20 machines or whatever. Today, with one machine, you can start in your apartment, start making money. Great. And that's what I wanted because that's how I started. You know, when I first started to do this, I started with uh basically to do one-on-one at people's house. And then after that, I opened uh my studio in my apartment, in my living room. Then I, you know, then I went into a bigger location. So I I know I know very well about baby steps. And so the way I'm I've basically dissected my business is to allow people to start small and then start to make money and then grow with the business. And today we have some licensees who started like you know a few years ago with the micro. Now they're going to the mega, you know, now they build a uh a business, so now they go up on the things. So to me, it's very important to be able to offer this and to target different people with uh, you know, uh also with different uh different means, right? Because not everybody has like two, three, four hundred thousand dollars to to open a studio. But this is why the the method has evolved tremendously. We have people in Paris, you know, we have studios, or they have, or they teach in the apartments, you know. We have people in the Middle East and thing. It's just like, you know, everywhere it's becoming easier and easier to teach the method, and that's exactly what I what I wanted to do. And now it's opening to everyone. We have like, you know, we're we're putting, you know, where where you have all these countries of the AN, you know, the Kazingstones or As Kazinstones or Kurzingston, I can fucking pronounce it. We're we're putting uh studios in countries that I can't just like even know existed, right? And this is this is because it's it's just easy. The the method is just it's very easy, it's very flexible, and it's and it's a leery for everyone.

So yeah, I hear a lot about the individual studio and the trainer and the small business operating and growing with your licenses and your tech. What about any kind of like commercial agreements or enterprise accounts? Like I'm thinking Equinox, right? Is that something today like any of these larger chains utilize what you have?

Not yet, but they will. I'm working on uh on a on a on a deal with uh a chain like this, for example. And so uh it will happen mostly because I made a mistake. You know, we talked about making mistakes early on. One of the biggest mistakes I made was to offer an exclusive arrangement. So in 2006, when I started to license the business, uh, you had an option to keep the license exclusive to you for the market. The mistake I made, I should have just uh allowed studio one year to ramp up, and then after that, not offer the exclusivity, but you know, it was passive income, you know, and and and and and I cannot lie because originally the exclusivity was giving me basically so much money to invest into the RD, and that's what I did. So the exclusive kind of worked initially to help me to pay for RD because RD is really expensive. I mean, RD is just a it's a it's uh it's a bottomless pocket, right? So it's just uh and so but I should have not done that. So now I'm actually working in trying to recover all the exclusive use, and I've done pretty good because now only about 1% of all my agreements are exclusive, 99% are non-exclusive, but that 1% still matter because there's still some pretty important zip codes in the US. And uh and the goal is of course to remove all of these exclusivities. Legree will be uh uh uh a licensing, an exclusively free business. And at that point, I think that one is completely free of exclusive use. There's no more uh limitations. I think that I'll be dealing with pretty much all the big box gym because they're all gonna want Legree. You know, they I think some of them have been basically just you know buying some copycat machines because essentially they you know they had no choice, you know. That was the that's the that's kind of the way around the exclusive use. But once the exclusivity is completely gone, I think that those those companies are gonna they're gonna want to have uh Legree. Plus, I can make customized machines, right? So now with the relationship I built in Asia, I can actually, Eric, if you tell me tomorrow you want to start your own chain of Libree Studio, but you own your own machines, I can actually make a machine just for you.

The things I've been interested in, like the uh the manufacturing, because we're recording in the summer of 2025, just for people's reference. How much have tariffs actually affected your business? And I mean, how much has it played into your strategies? Because I feel like it's it was a it was a lot to start for people who are kind of looking at this. It was like, all right, there's like 130% tariffs on everything, and everyone was like, Oh shit, like this is gonna be big. Now, there's still significant costs involved, but like how how is for you as a business owner, has it been a huge impact or has it been less than what you had expected?

I I simply didn't react at all. I'm like, you know what, it's gonna work itself out. It's to me, there's no way that uh, you know, when when I was hearing that there's 133 or like even 200% tariffs or whatever, uh, you know, I did not react to that because I knew that it was just not possible, not sustainable. If if you start having these like super high tariffs and and all countries start to go at war on the tariffs, no one wins, everyone collapsed. I think there's a lot of these enough intelligent people out there to realize that, hey, wait a minute, we can't do this to each other. We have to come up with some kind of agreement. So for me, I didn't want to overreact. I kept the same price, I didn't want to disturb anything right now. But the pricing on the equipment and the license is impeccable. The the license and the equipment, everything that I do is selling itself. Literally, when I talk to people, I don't sell the license or the business. I only facilitate the opening of the studio. There's I don't have a sales department. We don't sell the license. We all we only have people, but we we only facilitate the opening studios. It's very different. People come to me, they already know they want to open a uh a Legory Studio. It's it's not even a question. They're not asking me about, hey, why should I get your machine and compare it to a copycat? There's none of this stuff. People know what they want, they understand all that stuff. So I have a pricing that works. I didn't want to start to do like other manufacturers that well, if you buy in the US, I'm gonna charge this, but if you buy somewhere else, I charge different same price across, and I'm absorbing all the uh the extra tariff. I'm not happy about it, but uh right now I have uh I have a business that works, and it'd be so stupid for me uh to change that. So yeah, so I'm I'm eating up the the cost of the tariff. Not happy about it, but you know, sometimes you have to do things that you know they're like that. Uh the good thing is we don't have those tariffs, you know. We we uh we ship directly from Asia to everywhere else in the world. So the tariffs only affect uh the portion that is being shipped to the US, it's not affecting us as far as the international sales. And our international sales are growing super fast right now. So now I have a huge uh distribution center in Vietnam. I have three manufacturers, and all these manufacturers are basically just shipping everything to this huge uh distribution place in Vietnam. And I have a distribution center in Paris, and we have uh a couple in the US, and what I'm starting to do now is to open more distribution centers uh throughout the world to facilitate again, you know, the uh uh the distribution of that. So the terror uh is as much.

What international markets are are growing the fastest? I would imagine like UAE must be jamming right now.

Like UAE is crazy. We're selling machines to every hotel, every, every every every type of wellness center. It's amazing. Everybody wants to agree in a UE. Matter of fact, I'm gonna go to Dubai next year in February, the first week in February, and we're doing a massive event. I'll do six micro events. Everything is being sold out right now. So we'll have the biggest micro event. We'll have 120 people at one of the uh iconic places in Dubai, and uh, and then we're gonna do something that's just Dubai-like. You know, Dubai is like uh it's like Las Vegas on steroids, right? So it's they love to be over the top. So we're gonna do some events that are really over the top. We have uh uh an event where we're gonna basically put a glass over uh the pool, and then people are gonna be working out literally on the machine over the water. It's it's gonna be really cool. I love stuff like that. In Abu Dhabi, I'm doing an event inside the aquarium. So we're gonna put all the machines inside the tunnels where you see the sharks over you, stuff like that. So we'll have the DJ. I love shit like this. You know, for me, I you know, I've been teaching for so long that when when I do things, I gotta do things that no one else has done before, right? So uh so I'm super excited about this, this, this event. I'm gonna start to promote it in September, but it's already sold out, it's it's great. But we have a lot of so UAE, definitely the Middle East in general. Uh we're getting a lot of growth, a lot of growth in Qatar, lots of growth in Jordan, in Lebanon, lots of growth in Saudi Arabia. We have now more countries in Africa as well opening, which is fantastic. The other growth has been Morocco, Morocco, France. France has been just what the fuck is going on in France? Merci. Like, oh wow, it's just like crazy. And in Canada, there's like certain pockets, you know, like for example, Toronto has been like a very busy market. And then the US in general, it's just like going everywhere. It's just um yeah. And then South America, finally, we start to get, you know, Brazil is going, Argentina, I think Peru, Chile, all this Ecuador, you know, now these places are starting to open, it's getting more popular. So it's been uh it's been great. Mexico, same thing. Mexico, we had like uh we had a few locations for 10 years, and all of a sudden, boom, 15 locations, now 20 locations. So in Mexico, same thing. Once I have enough traction over there, I want to do like a huge micro event. Tahuatlan, uh my what's what's that? What a huge Mayan temple there's just outside of uh Mexico City. I can't even remember how to say it, but I want to do a micro event there. I love to to I love to bring the micro in places that you wouldn't think about working out. Like I want to do one by the Louvre in Paris or one by the FL Tower. I'm doing an event in uh in uh in Cairo when I have the new Micro X coming out next year. So 2027, I want to do an event in uh in by the pyramid of Isa with the Micro X because the Micro X is a very futuristic looking machine, and so it's gonna work really well, I think, with these pyramids that are god knows how old, you know. Awesome, awesome.

I love your flair, man. So the last question I always ask, Sebastian, is uh as an industry, if people are listening and like what's the biggest challenge? What do you need help with? I mean, it sounds like you're building out the digital side of the business. Do you need technology? Do you need integrations? Do you need assistance? Like, are you building your team, your investors? Like, what do you need?

Engineers, man. I I need more engineers, I need more uh electric engineers, software engineers, mechanical engineers. To me, you know, instead of spending money in marketing and trying to convince people that my product is better than somewhere else, I don't need to do this. All I need to do is to build that better product, and that better product will sell itself. But I need smart people because now we are now that we're playing with fire with AI, I want to make sure that it's done in a in a in a smart and effective in the in a in a in a you know useful way because I feel like today people put people put AI on everything now. It's become the new hot word AI this, AI that. You know, I was like, okay, whatever. So for me, I I want to make sure that the innovations are useful. I am not gonna just do something because I'm like, oh, I haven't invented anything in the in the last two hours. Let me put this on this machine and then let's call it black. There's a progression with the method, and I need really smart people. Right now, I have a great engineering team. Uh, we got two labs, one in Vietnam and then uh one in Serbia, but we always need more smart people. I like to surround myself with people that are so much smarter than me because trust me, man, I'm the dumbest of the whole team.

That's on the sign you built a good team. And how if people are listening, they want to reach out and or connect with you, Sebastian. How would you like them to do that or your team?

Uh they can reach out through the uh Instagram, you know, at LegreeFitness or at Sebastian. I mean, if you if you Google Legree, I mean, you should come up to uh to our official website and then you should be able to find a contact.

Awesome, man. Well, Sebastian, this has been a lot of fun. I've had thoroughly enjoyed this conversation uh and here in the history and where you guys are at. And it's I love I love this stuff when you hear about, you know, people have been in it for a long time. They started at the bottom floor of the industry of changing people's lives, right? Creating behavior change, growing, growing, having an idea, and then years, decades later, like it pops and everything goes, right? And that's really cool. I think that's uh a lot of entrepreneurs uh in this space, especially young ones, uh, need to hear stories like this because it takes a little while sometimes, right?

You have two types of entrepreneurs, right? You're gonna have those who are gonna basically create something with the intent of selling it, and then you have those passionate entrepreneurs, right? We're just like, you know, I'm entrepreneurs, but I I'm not I'm not uh I'm gonna uh I'm an entrepreneur by by necessity. You know, I think I'm a I'm a fitness trainer first, and I have a love for for movement. For I mean, I I love the human body. I'm just like I'm I'm in awe in what humans can do. It you it's like you're living in the best, in the highest, uh, most technologically advanced piece of equipment right now. You're living in it, you know. Take care of that body, and that body will take care of you. I mean, it's just uh it's just amazing. So for me, I I'm always gonna be doing this, man. Like even if I one day sell the company, it's gonna be required that I'm still developing these machines until I die because it's just giving me an incredible sense of purpose and fulfillment and happiness. I love to make these machines. It's just like you know, some people do I don't know, they do whatever, and then just for me, they just talking the fitness equipment, give me a lot of joy. You know, I never thought it would happen like this.

Well, congratulations, Sebastian, and thank you for joining me. This has been really fun, I'm sure. Love to get you back on in the uh not so distant future, and we can get an update on everything you're doing.

So it's been our absolutely love that. Yes, I love to talk about all the new stuff. Absolutely.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sebastian Legree. 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 it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the future of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.