The Business of Rowing & Connected Fitness - Shane Farmer

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level Five Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Boom, we're live. Shane Farmer, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I think so too, man. I, you know, I I obviously I've been in the crossroad world for a long time, not as in-depth in the last three years as I was previously, but I just remember you through, you know, Invictus and then being this rowing guy, and then me watching videos on how to teach my clients how to row properly. And I don't want to put you in a box, but that's how I just remember you very early on. And look at you now, man. You know, grown up growing a business. It's been a journey. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's really exciting to finally get you on the show. And I think uh one of the things that was really funny is, you know, I always apologize to my listeners because I talk about conversations previous to recording, but we were just talking about how you should never try to train your spouse if you're a coach.

Ever. Just don't. That's just the biggest takeaway from today's podcast is just don't. Just leave it alone. Yeah.

And I was recounting at least four times, which I've tried and failed. And it's not like it takes a month or two to realize that this isn't working. It's it's in the first like three to six hours.

Instantaneous feedback. I mean, it's for me, it's like a three-minute turnaround realization. And maybe that's probably it might be because we've had like more touches on that front. You know, she was in my rowing club forever, as I was talking about earlier. And it's just uh it's a thing. It's a and everybody, like you said, every single spouse who is a coach whose spouse is not a coach has probably had to go through this at one point or another.

Yeah. You know, I I always remember being at my gym in an environment where I was known as an expert and respected, and then coming home and getting the complete opposite. Everything questioned, right?

That mentality is exactly right. You're like, I they they fly me around the world to talk about this one thing. I like they put a microphone in my hands because they trust me enough to speak to thousands of people at a time about this one thing. And you come home, you're like, I am nothing. I know nothing. I have I I don't even know where my knowledge came from. I'm questioning everything that I thought I knew.

Yeah, I think uh people call it imposter syndrome, but maybe it's just marriage. You know, that keeps you kind of grounded and uh believing that you really don't know what you're doing. And that's you know, it's not an unhealthy thing.

No, maybe it's a necessary humility driver. Like it is intended to just keep us level and attached to the ground.

Anyway, so uh Shane, man, for people who don't know you, give us your background. How'd you how'd you get to be where you are in the business you've developed and you know, such a key figure in the fitness industry?

All right, so basically I uh I was a real terrible high school student, very mediocre athlete, but the only thing that got me grades enough to stick with sports was that I just loved sports my whole life. And grades improved once I got to college. I found uh rowing is kind of you know, if I breeze through the story, I found rowing because I slept through baseball tryouts and um just rapidly fell in love with the sport of rowing, had this amazing four years uh at school at the University of San Diego rowing, and we went to the national championships, loved it. At the same time, we were introduced to CrossFit through Stefan Rocher. For anybody who's been in the CrossFit world, that name probably rings a bell. And he was our strength and conditioning coach at our school. So while we were, this is 2006, we were introduced to CrossFit, and we were using that as our strength training for rowing. So coming out of college, I was too small to be a heavyweight and too light, whatever. I just was I was in the purgatory of what a rower was intended to be. And so I just never had a future beyond collegiate rowing. But I made the jump over to uh CrossFit and just luckily landed in the lap of Invictus, which was a decent uh competitive gym at the time, started competing in CrossFit, went to the CrossFit games four times, and simultaneously started coaching rowing there when I saw the need, the desperate need for people to uh to learn how to use the rowing machine, and then got picked up by Concept 2, started teaching the CrossFit rowing seminar, did that for several years, then through that and enough exposure to people around the world, saw the need to really bring I wanted to be able to work with more people than just the 25 people in my seminar at any given time. And so I created Dark Horse Rowing. It's called the largest online rowing business in the world.

Wow. Wow. So when you were in that purgatory of size, what how big were you? What was your height and weight?

So I'm 6'3. In my rowing career, I was the lightest I ever got was 163 because I was it was I was cycling happily during the summer and I was trying to see if I could go lightweight, which is 160 for the rowing world. So I was trying to see if I could get there and live there. And my body really wasn't happy. So I lived during my rowing career at about 170 pounds. And then when I moved over to CrossFit, I was basically just a set of lungs and legs and had absolutely no strength anywhere else. I looked like a like a Tour de France cyclist. I was just emaciated from the waist up. And so in my first year and a half of CrossFit, I went real strict paleo and just ate like it was my job, and every meal became miserable for me, and just was under a barbell every day, was eating like crazy, and then put on about 25 pounds that year. Wow. Got up to one 195, and I've just kind of hovered there ever since. Why was eating miserable? How did that happen? Well, it was mostly just because I I my body, like my maintenance is I can kind of still eat almost whatever I want. My body just burns like crazy. And uh, and so for me to gain weight, which I needed to do because I was just I had no muscle on my upper body. And so it was just a calories in equation for me. It's like I just, if I think I'm full, I should probably take five more bites. And then before bed, you know, putting down an entire blender's worth of a crazy shake that included a an entire can of canned pumpkin and half a can of coconut milk and multiple spoons of almond butter. It was just a way to get calories in for me so that my body could grow essentially.

Yeah. Were you doing like uh what the rock does and wake up at a specific time at night, eat something, and then go back to bed?

No, but I should have because I would drink this. I think I calculated it was it was like 2250 calories in this shake that I would do, but I would do it like right before. Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, it was an entire blender, it was huge. You know, I actually got it from Asia Bartow back in the day. Like he was the one that turned me on to this recipe, and it was delicious. It tasted like Thanksgiving dinner every night, um, thanks to the canned pumpkin. But I would drink it like 45 minutes before bed. That's way too much for your body to try and process while it's attempting to downregulate and recover while you're sleeping. So inevitably, every night I'd wake up maybe an hour and a half into sleep, just drenched in like the digestion sweats every night. It was such a poor choice. But you know, I was I was wet behind the ears. I I didn't really, I wasn't thinking anything of it. I wasn't smart enough to analyze that pattern yet. So yeah, and you're you're probably just young and super adaptable and malleable too. Yeah, I you know, I was 22, 21 at the time. No, I was about 22, 23, I guess. Yeah, you know, it was fine at the time. Now it would wreck me. It would wreck me. I'd be done.

Yeah, I can't even try it. So tell me about, well, first of all, we'll talk about the the business of rowing. How big is the rowing market? It's something that's actually been a kind of a mystery to me, I presume. And now maybe we can talk about pre-COVID and then you know, I don't know how many rowers have been sold over the last six months. And for people listening today's recording is October 13th, 2020. Yeah, how big is the rowing market, man?

Give me some some estimates. I wish, I wish there were some clean estimates out there. The best that I've got was kind of a it was like a patting your own backs market research report that British Rowing did maybe three, four years ago, and everybody latched onto that really quickly. But you know, in time we look back on that, like, well, I think they were kind of trying to justify their existence and what their future goals were. But it was the first market research research report that we'd really seen. But if we're looking at like machines sold, the best we've got are estimates. Like, I think concept two's gotta have in the four million machines out there, I'm guessing. I this is just a guess, you know, because we're talking lifetime machines here, these machines last forever. And that's just on concept two's side. So, like if we're then adding in water rower and hydro, which is you know, new player to the game, and then all of the inexpensive Amazon machines, like I think, you know, we're markets like we're in the tens of millions, probably. And then you also have to keep in mind, too, like you were talking pre-COVID, post-COVID. COVID has has essentially just blown up rowing because people are looking for like what's that one thing I can have at home so that I don't have to have an entire gym. And the rowing machine has really like kind of sifted its way to the top as a a real viable player. So, you know, my business has has blown up since COVID started. And this is just the constant question we get is I can't afford a concept to what machine should I buy? And everybody's just trying to find a rowing machine and get it into their house. And so all of a sudden rowing is is popular. Yeah. The market size is just growing.

Yeah, it's it's only getting bigger. I mean, even you know, five years ago, you know, trying to find a C2 rower was difficult. You know, if I saw a gym going out of business or something like that, was the first one down there with a handful of cash, be like, hey, I'll take those two rowers for a thousand. You know, they've always been hard to get. And people, you know, there's got to be so many that are sitting in the corners of gyms too that just aren't being utilized right now. That was always the thing. I was like, the gym I go to now is awesome. Uh that's a community-based gym, and it's more of a community center, really. But there's the rowers just sit there, yeah, and no one's using them. And it's just this amazing conditioning machine. They're just waiting for the right users. Yeah. Yeah, just people are educated because a lot of people get on it and that you know they're inefficient. Well, inefficiency isn't a bad thing if you're looking to just burn calories, right? But they just don't really know how to use it and you know they feel silly doing it. But you can tell right off the bat when somebody knows what they're doing. Uh, you can actually hear it from a little ways away. So Shane, tell me about your business.

What it what is the business of rowing with that you've built? So, man, like I I didn't even know where the business was going to end up when I started it, frankly. I didn't start it. You know, we have we have the world's largest rowing YouTube channel. We're about to crack 100,000 subscribers, which is super excited about because that was not in my wildest dreams that I think we would ever get there. I in my in my mind, I was like, you know, I don't know, this market's probably like 40,000 people strong. And I thought that was the the largest that our market could possibly be. So to be at 100,000 is like, wow. But what the business really started as was people were asking for programming as I was traveling around doing the CrossFit Rowing seminar back in the day. And I didn't have any way to do that other than to do custom programming, which, as you know, is expensive and not cost efficient for the end user. And so most people, when I would tell them the price, be like, well, you know, it's gonna be 99 bucks a month, you know, back in the day. And back in the day, online programming was still pretty young. And so people are like, no, no, no way will I do that. And uh and that just rapidly led me to understand that we needed a cost-efficient way of being able to teach people. And so then I started to try and coach through blog articles and photos, and that was a flailing failure. You know, it's very, very hard to teach the movement of rowing through words and images, still images. So after about a year of that, and then kind of realized, all right, well, we need to, I guess I need to start making videos because I was searching on YouTube for anything, and the only thing I could find were five 10-year-old videos on the on the Concept 2 website that were just generic. It was just one video that said, here's how to row. And uh, I just realized how much more nuanced it was. So what I essentially spent my fur that next year doing was trying to walk back from the rowing stroke in its entirety to how we can break that down into its parts. And then how can I make those parts so easily acceptable by anyone who has no background in rowing, who has frankly no interest in even learning about rowing? Like I if I were to say, hey, I don't want you to love rowing, but let me at least try and make the the movement make sense to you, that was kind of where I came from. And uh so then it started with unpacking that and then learning how to put that into a package that would be cost efficient for people. And so that was the crew, that's our core product still to this day. So we started there, and then at the same time it turned into the YouTube channel because I realized, well, if nobody else is making the video, I guess that's gonna fall on me if I want that content made. So I committed to a video every week for with no end timeline on that. So that was in April of 2016, and here we are, you know, what, five years later? Almost four years, and uh we haven't stopped, and now we're at two videos a week. And then we found out we were pregnant with our first kid, and I was still traveling for the CrossFit running seminar, and I just thought I don't want to still be on the road with a baby at home, I don't want that to be how I'm earning my living. So then I set about trying to figure out how to teach a course or a seminar online, and that was how we came out with the academy, which is now the CrossFit specialty course provider for rowing. And so now we can provide that that rowing course online, and it's actually turned out to be 10 times more effective than in person, in my opinion. And uh, so that's kind of that's the business is we are trying to be as vertically integrated as possible from teaching an end user to a business owner or a coach how to use rowing machines. We just demystify the whole process.

Yeah, that's great. So, as a consumer with the crew, which is your your core product, what what are the deliverables on that? What do I get?

So, first and foremost, what makes the crew as powerful and as big as it is is our community. Because inside the community, number one, you have the largest now uh indoor rowing community in the world meeting and chatting in one place under our umbrella. Um, but two, what's really great about that is that we provide coaching review anytime you want for $19 a month. So you can drop a video of you rowing, and our coach or coaches will come and critique that and say, hey, here's what I'm seeing, here's what you should do to fix it. Nowhere else, no, literally not a single other program or person or machine is doing that right now. And this is for $19 a month. Like you're getting actual coaching for that. And so that's that's the real big piece is like there is a coach that's ready to answer your questions, help you navigate the minefield of learning the rowing machine and figuring it out for the first time, where everybody that's in that community has gone through that process. So you're not gonna feel ostracized for not being a competitive rower because frankly, when somebody reaches that stage, we kind of let you like spread your wings and go fly and find a different coach. We are much more like the people's coach and uh or the people's program. And so that's that's deliverable number one. And I just really emphasize that because that is really what adds value to it. Then the rest is that's the easy part, right? That's the we have a library of programs that you can choose from. So you can be on whatever track you want. If you want to improve at your 500-meter, a marathon, if you want to figure out how to row for calories because you're a crossfitter, or you want to understand drag factor, there's a program in there for you to choose and work through. And all of it uh is totally navigated. Then we also have strength work in there that you can choose from. It's just a big library for you to kind of choose your own adventure.

And is this all do people find this through darkhorserowing.com? Is that the best place for you? Yeah.

Yep. Darkhorserwing.com and then just under we have a workouts tab, and you can find our programs in there.

Do you think rowing, you know, obviously we established the size of the market, it's it's huge. Do you think it is a standalone fitness offering? What I mean by that is it's something that people can completely devote themselves in rowing and then get everything they need as far as fitness, outside, of course, like you know, the lifestyle factors of nutrition and sleep and stress. Do you think someone could solely devote themselves to this and and stay in phenomenal shape or at least healthy for the majority of their life?

So I guess there are two ways of answering this. But number one, uh, as you mentioned, your listeners are gonna probably hate this, but I'm gonna call back to our conversation pre uh pre-starting the recording here. But I'm very anti-dogmatic on anything, whether that's nutrition, fitness, whatever it may be. So I will be the first to say that rowing is a fantastic tool that I think could help somebody accomplish a lot of their fitness goals because it's low impact, it's very risk averse. So there's very little risk of much negative happening to you. You can work on your strength, you can work on your conditioning, you can work lactic threshold. I mean, you can work a whole lot of different avenues with this, including coordination. There's just a whole ton that comes from it. But is it the end-all be-all the absolute number one thing that you should choose? No, there are thousands of different ways to do that. You know, the thing that I would advocate anybody do to stay or to get fit and healthy is the thing that you'll continue to do that you love. And so, do I think it's a great standalone machine that offers a ton of value? Absolutely, I wouldn't be in this doing this very thing if I didn't think that. But in a more broad concept, I think there are also lots of things that can do that for you.

Yeah, great answer, man. Well, well done. So let's talk about the future of this. You've developed quite a business behind a passion, right? And that's so cliche the way I made that sound. But uh hey, there's a lot more to go into building a business, people, than passion, trust me. Yeah, yes. So you you've really kind of found something you love, something you've been doing for a long time. You've created create a great business. And there's a lot, I mean, right now, you know, businesses are or the fitness industry shifting so quickly, and a lot of people are building out subscription services and you know, looking to connected fitness and you know, Apple's throwing their hat in the ring now with Apple Fitness and all everything's changing, right? It's crazy. Let's start to look at this. I guess you know one of the things that we want to talk about was connected fitness. So before we talk about a thing, I like to define a thing. When you say connected fitness, what does that mean to you, Shane?

When I'm thinking of connected fitness in this specific moment in time, to me, I'm thinking of machines or equipment that is sold with a pre-configured connected setup, whether that's a class experience or whether that's well, essentially it's that. It's a some kind of digitally connected experience that you're receiving that comes in kind with the machine itself that you're purchasing or the equipment that you're purchasing.

Got it. So Peloton. Yeah, exactly.

Peloton or mirror or tonal or exactly.

Man, the uh amount of money investment dollars are getting pumped into those three right now is just beyond. It's crazy. It's no joke. No joke, no joke. So is there something like this in rowing? And if not, why?

Yeah, there are. Um we've got so I actually am staring at it right now. I have one in my garage, it's called Hydro. There's another on its way to me that's called Ergata. There are several others, you know, Nordic Track has their own. I think it's the Nordic Track 900 or something like that. Haven't given it a try yet. Then you have uh several companies which are trying to just create the platform, which adds on top of a concept two or something or a water rower, something like that. And then you have something like us, which is a way more basic from a tech perspective that's trying to kind of live on top of anybody's machine. So there's a healthy amount happening in the space right now.

Yeah, it's happening a lot of the different divisions of the fitness vertical too. Yeah, I I mean I have so many conversations with you know new companies and products and services. And here's one thing I'd love to ask you because there are, like I said just a few moments ago, there's a lot of people looking to build a subscription membership model for and build a community around it, right? You know, you look at someone like uh guys at Garage Gym or Brood Strength, like everybody is is coming up with these things. And you know, my good friend Deacon Andrews is coming out with one too. If if you're coaching people through that process on the business side, what are some of the things that you tell them up front before they get started on a venture like this?

Number one, your objective. And frankly, the hard work that you should put in up front before just flipping the switch on a subscription product, especially when it comes to fitness, is trying to figure out how to create as realistic of an experience as possible for that person at home. Think about your end user when you're building this. Don't just take your normal programming, throw it into an Excel spreadsheet, and then just hit the on-switch and expect that people are going to come flocking to it. You need to create some kind of experiential integration that makes it feel acceptable to them. I mean, that's why our why I started with our community. Because if you look at our programming, for example, it's it's nothing pretty. It's text-based, it lives in in uh teachable, which is a very simple software. It's a course software, it's not a fitness software. And I'll be the first to say there's nothing beautiful about it, nor necessarily integrate it. Our integration comes, though, in the community. And that's where we deliver a ton of value to make the experience feel as real as possible to somebody. And I think that's where a lot of let's call them, you know, creators right now, fitness creators maybe, are struggling. Is you really have to crack the nut of what does your end user expect from an experience? And if they could be with you in person, how do you bridge that gap between what they would want to get from you, the person that they follow and trust and know and want to use online? How do you how do you build that trust and bridge that gap to a digital product? And when you can do that, I mean, I worry that all this quote unquote connected fitness that we're seeing in the space right now is very light on the consumer's expected experience. A lot of these companies are just punching out class after class after class, hiring trainers like crazy who look good and can put together a good playlist and can, you know, sound good on the mic. But does that truly fulfill the end experience that you know you and I have come to find from like a really valuable gym experience? I'd argue that many of them are missing that. And but they're able to put out this incredibly beautiful product, right? Because they get plenty of funding to be able to build something masterful that looks beautiful, can sit in the middle of your living room, and and you've got this this fantastic thing to look at. But does it truly fulfill the experience that you want? I'd argue that many of them kind of fall short there.

So that's that's kind of my first that that's I mean, that's a whole that's that's a whole topic for an entire podcast is how do you make it experiential for the client? I mean, you know, back in February when the pandemic hit, everybody started, you know, streaming the workouts, doing Zoom training, like everybody did, and totally justifiable and understandable. That's we didn't know what was happening. So, you know, you gotta maintain your clients, make sure you're communicating and still delivering you know some sort of value to them. And then it started to come to a you know a really fast roadblock when people just got tired of being in front of Zoom. People didn't want to jump into a Facebook Live, you know. And so then you started seeing, you know, people who have or you know, companies that have kind of been in this connected working in this connected fitness space from um, you know, obviously the big ones we mentioned earlier earlier with Peloton, a mirror and tonal, but also like these ones that are a little bit more accessible for fitness professionals, consumers, like Emoto Sumo or you know, A Sensei has some really interesting hardware that they're developing. And everyone's in a race to make this more experiential. And when you look at your community, from where is your community? Is it housed in the Facebook community or is it something else external?

Yeah, we use a private Facebook community on top of teachable.

So, what how do you strive? What are some of the things without you know giving away any secret sauce? But how do you how do you make the experience more adapted to the consumer and give them kind of that even that extra 5% over what they may get just through a streaming service?

Well, number one, everything so it it helps to understand the business. Um, if I if we can start with this statement that the idiom of a dark horse, and for people who don't know what a dark horse is, that basically be an underdog, somebody who like hasn't gotten the fair shake, but is willing to work hard, commit themselves to the process, and understand that their process is more valuable than the outcome. And that by committing to that process, they can essentially steer their lives in the direction that they want to take it. So the idiom of a dark horse is everything that I stand for with this business. And if you can understand that, then you'll understand why we go to the lengths that we go to to support our end users, our members. Because whether you're paying $9 a month or where whether you're paying $149 a month with us, depending on whatever your product you're in, I want to build you up as an entire human. And that is that is spoken through our communication patterns in always. Any coach that I have working for me understands that and understands that there is no room for negativity or negative chatter. There is always room to lift people up. And so, in every communication that we put out across all of our products, in the Facebook community, what have you, we are making sure that every single member who comes into that community understands that those are our guardrails. And our coaches actively are watching that. And everybody abides by that, lives by that, and that's the community that we've fostered. And if somebody doesn't want to live within those guardrails, I have no problem. Here's your money back. We're not for you. Please go find someplace else that that better suits you because we don't need that here. So I have no problem turning business away. And I think it's extremely important that in everything that we do, we support you, the dark horse, the person who has a rowing machine sitting in their basement who is just they they get in 20-minute workouts three times a week because that's all you can squeeze in, because they're working a full-time job, they've got two kids, and they're just trying to take a little bit of time to themselves. Right. So it's through those communication patterns that we really drive home that we are we mean it when we talk about a community. I mean, in every way. And that's why we will coach you if you you know send video of your rowing. That's why any question that you have at this point, if somebody asks a question in our community, you have eight responses from members before my coach even has a chance to get to it to answer it. Like that's how helpful our community is. And that just permeates through everything that we do. Oh, that's great.

So I I derailed us there on that one, but you said one of the first things for someone starting some kind of subscription or membership-based service was you know, creating a realistic experience and understanding who your client is, right? What's after that?

After that, it's deciding how you want to digitally deliver. You got to suss that out for you. If you love being on camera, then you have to sort out, okay, how do I create uh an environment on camera that is palatable to my audience? If you want to do it through audio, great. Do you want to run it as a podcast? Do you want to do it through text, which is how I started, and now we're evolving and learning to grow. Uh, and thanks to my coaches for you know being able to allow us to grow in that way. But you have to decide how you're going to deliver in a way that you can maintain and commit to because your commitment to that process is what's going to make your product successful. Unless you have a million subscribers on Instagram and you announce a new product, and those people are so authentically into what you're doing that you can turn on the switch and 5,000 people sign up on day one, you're gonna have to work at it. You're gonna have to grind, you're gonna have to commit to this being a long-term process that isn't just a part-time band-aid because of COVID, but that this is a true long-term value driver for your followers, your members, and your business.

Uh, it's it's a really interesting point. You know, I think the people that are seeing success right now already committed, like you, at least three years ago, to building a model like this. It just happened to be that the market through a pandemic came to them. You know, and there's there's no no problem being lucky. I have zero problems being lucky.

Uh, you know, and it it just made the process. We saw this and it was like, we're we're in exactly the right place. We have been building for this very time. And we would have kept going. You know, it's not like I was gonna open a studio anytime soon. I tried that. I wasn't a big fan of having that overhead. And so this is exactly we were always going to go this route, and we were gonna ride this wave whether it came or not. It's kind of like I chose rowing back in 2010, before rowing was cool. Nobody was talking about rowing, literally nobody cared. I remember the CrossFit Journal came around to film some videos at Invictus one day, and they were like, oof, uh, and at the time Dave Lipson and Cammy were at the gym, and they're like, We're gonna, you you gotta use Dave for the videos as your demo. And I was like, Dave, why? I don't need Dave in the videos, like I can coach it. They're like, you need the personality, otherwise, nobody's gonna watch the game.

No one's gonna give a shit.

That's exactly right. And listen, and like those moments truly taught me like that has been my motto that internally I've embraced uh basically since then is like nobody gives a shit about rowing. Yeah, nobody. And as soon as I started accepting that, business took off. Like it started, I started to get a foothold with the fitness community. And it's crazy. I've preached this since that time. Like, I will tell anybody who's in the rowing community stop worrying about whether or not people care about rowing. Stop trying to make them care. Nobody wants to care. They don't have any previous context to why they should care. Just give them a better experience. And if they find their own way by reading Boys in the Boat or it it intrigues them enough that they go find an on-water coach wherever they are, great. You just ushered in this amazing new future for somebody. But in the meantime, let's just help them find a better, healthier lifestyle.

Yeah. You know, it's a rowing is a really interesting thing. It's it's hard, man. I mean, we had uh, I don't know if you know these names, but we had Missy Ryan and her husband Tim Ryan were members at my gym in Santa Barbara, and then uh Berkeley Johnson, who's big in the rowing community and you know, for has been a long time, at least a supporter of the rowing community. And so rowing was we used to have row workshops, and he took us out. Uh Augie Berkeley did. He took us out once, I think it was six, six or eight of us, and I can't remember how big the boat was. And he puts, you know, fairly strong, big CrossFit athletes into a boat, and it was a hot mess. It was so funny. 100%. You know, I think I I almost got flown out of the boat, and uh, and just carrying the boat down was the hardest part. So there's it's it's uh it's like a sport of pain, man. I mean, every time, you know, through my experience being coached by James Fitzgerald, uh otherwise known as OPT back then, was like, dude, when you saw a rower come up for anything, like you want you automatically want to vomit just seeing the programming and and nothing quite gets you there. Like I always joked, you only have a certain amount of 2K rows for time in your life before you just die. Like you get a certain amount, and then you just die.

It's like those people that believe you only have a certain number of heartbeats. You only have a certain number of 2Ks in you before your life expires.

Um, so I you know, I'm a believer in as far as like pure mental strength and conditioning, and you can measure it. I rowing is just it's an amazing tool, man. It's it's really, you know, and I'll argue just for the sake of being funny, that I don't think rowing will ever be super cool, man. I think that's fair.

That is absolutely fair.

Just too much suffering.

Listen, I've been I've been saying since we since I started Dark Horse that we were gonna be the company that made cool, we made rowing cool. And I don't think we've done it yet, and I'm not sure that we ever will, but I'll continue to try. Yeah, you gotta strive.

You gotta strive for an ideal. So looking at the industry overall, what do you think it's gonna how do you think this thing's gonna pan out? Let's just put a timeline on it for conversation's sake, you know, uh two years from now. How do you think this industry is gonna be different? Do you think there's still gonna be a lot of gyms out there? Do you think they're gonna gyms, the ones that are out there, are they gonna look different? Is it gonna be integrated somehow with you know online and in-person services? What's your vision for this industry?

So there, I think we're gonna see two things happen. Number one, any gym that physically exists is gonna have to have a come to Jesus moment with realizing that an online offering is not just a feature, but that it becomes a wholly integrated part of their business. Because without that, too many people at this point have have tasted what home fitness can be and that it's possibly something they could do for the long term. But they still enjoyed the in-person fitness experience enough that they'd like to be able to come in and tune in and join into whatever that experience is. So if you know physical gyms in two years' time, I mean, they need to heavily be looking at how they deliver their digital experience as a part of the package and invest heavily into it. And then you're gonna see the rise of fitness creators who are personalities that drive audiences. And I, you know, maybe this is me being biased because I am a content creator, whatever you want to call me, because I create YouTube videos. But we carry a lot of power with our communities because we're authentically there for them and we show up regularly and we become a person that they get to know. You know, I put my my YouTube personality as like slightly elevated from my standard personality, and you only get snapshots of me, but I am authentically who you see on camera. And this space is going to give power to the creator and take it a little bit away from the platform, I believe. So there's going to be somebody's going to come out there to try and empower creators to go be their own businesses rather than trying to wrap them all up and make them fit under the Peloton model, for example. You know, Peloton brings in an instructor, and that instructor becomes Peloton, not the other way around. They don't just happen to be this great personality who then just happens to use the Peloton machine for their chosen thing. So I think we're going to see a rise in the the content creator as business. We're going to see a whole bunch of these businesses, I believe, as well, the connected fitness hardware products wash out. I think we'll see who who actually does it well and um and who just took on too much funding too early because too many people were excited about it and you know they can't actually cross cross the finish line.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's uh I think a lot of people are sensing what you what you just stated too about empowering the content creator. You know, I've had some really interesting meetings lately with people who are building platforms just for that. You know, you look at people like you with a you know a pretty good size following, you know, people like me with a podcast with a modest following, I would say, but B2B. And you know, how how do we become and there on my other podcast, the Black Diamond Podcast, which I recommend people jump over after and subscribe to that one too, because it's more general entrepreneurship. But uh Sam Lucas from Special Project, you know, is building a whole platform for this. Like, how do we actually make content a business? How do we make it the new e-commerce? And, you know, uh Mike, also who is on the show from Endorphins, you know, he talks about this concept of record labels for fitness. Like imagine, you know, well, we know what record labels are, but they're a fairly new thing 50 years ago. And you know, you go out, you find the talent, and you s you give them opportunity to, you know, become big and you get behind that talent. The talent becomes the the front, right? Not the brand. Uh, I think that's an interesting thought of where this whole thing could go too, but we'll we'll see. There's a lot of people vying to be you know very influential within that space.

Absolutely. And that that discussion is so fascinating to me right now because you know, I'm I'm looking at making investments into that space and moving more into like trying to be a bit more behind the scenes and be able to find those businesses that that I can invest in, not just as a creator, but as an investor, to actually just like take a look at at what's needed out there. Because the number of platforms that have come to me and been like, we would love to have you become a part of the X brand. Like, wait, what? Like, so you want me, you you want Dark Horse to turn into your brand name. And this is a you know, you'll look at their their uh subscriber base, they have 500 followers on Instagram. They're like, we'll pay you 70%. I'm like, oh, cool. That's great. And I also have to give up the dark horse name. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, you know, the number of conversations, uh, it's astounding. I haven't had a single company come to me and be like, hey, we see the value in what you are doing. We would simply like to support that and just be in the background. You we don't have to be the name. We just want to be a platform that that you can thrive on. It hasn't happened. That's why we still use Teachable, which is just a course education platform. I'm hacking Teachable to create my product because it means that I'm not I'm not having to report to somebody who thinks that they have ownership over what I've built at Dark Horse and my followers and our members. It's nuts. You know, everybody just thinks that that they're going to be the next big brand, and you just have to stop and be like, look, this this conversation isn't as level as you think it is. Like we I would love to find a great partner, just nobody's come out of the woodwork yet.

Yeah. Well, you know, you get, you know, over the last few years, you know, and I work with a lot of them, you get a lot of people come into the fitness industry from maybe a tech side, you know, uh coders or app developers or people who've just been in the tech world for a long time and they look at the fitness industry as an opportunity, but they don't know it. You know, they don't know it. They don't know what it takes to actually be successful in this industry from every level, from being a trainer to a coach to a facility owner to a you know, influencer to um man, you know, all the different levels you could possibly enroll you could have within this industry. And now with everything that's changing, there's so many different roles you can have within this industry that that are really exciting. And there's a lot of different ways to reach the consumer. And just like, yeah, I I talk about this. There's I know some really, really successful entrepreneurs who we're talking multiple billion dollar exits, right? Who by all means have retired to advisory roles. But with everything that's changing right now, they are now entering back into the game as operators, CEOs, right? You know, and taking active roles because they think it's such a mouthwatering time to be an entrepreneur because the consumer needs are shifting so fast and strangleholds on industries are being lost and withered, you know, quickly. So it's it's it's crazy, man. And I I think I'm excited for people like you or you know, like uh EC Sinkowski, who uh you know, I have a call with right after this, that's why she's top of mind. But people have been putting in the time, you know. Yeah, not necessarily that you guys saw a pandemic coming, but hey, here we are, right? Right. Uh and I'm excited for you guys. I think it's it's really cool because you've been trying to figure this out, and uh before it was cool to figure it out. So well done.

I'm excited for you, man. Well, it's fun. I mean, it's fun to be able to, especially being able to have, you know, like I'm I'm a Lululemon ambassador. And the number the number of calls that I've fielded with other ambassadors locally who are like, uh-oh. I, you know, my entire business has been as a yoga instructor at this studio, and my studio just closed.

Yeah.

And having these calls to coach them through the process of how to get started on their own is really rewarding to see because they they start making leaps, you know, jumps. You're like, this is super cool to watch. Like, good, you know, you didn't have a job there for a bit, and now of a sudden you have this active following, people that are paying you for what for what you're doing because they value it.

Yeah, yeah, well said, man. And I it's it's a hard transition right now. It's hard. I I don't want to, you know, have my excitement override, my um, you know, sympathy and empathy for those who are, you know, struggling right now, and gym owners specifically, and those who base their living off of of gyms. And it's hard. And that's all I can say. Uh, I don't have any good answers, unfortunately. Well, let's end this on a high note, man. What um what uh tell me about Rovember? Uh tell me what's going on there. Tell me about uh have you guys got some Black Friday action going on? What's what's uh what's coming down the pipe?

Yeah, so we're uh there's definitely be going to be some Black Friday action happening. I don't want to reveal too much, but it's going to be associated with the crew, again, our core product. So, you know, that's that's really where I love to give a lot of love. As far as Rovember goes, it's 30 days of committed rowing. And uh you're basically just signing up for 30 days of uh rowing challenge essentially to row every day of November. We send out a workout into your email inbox every single morning. So for people who love the machine or want to give themselves that nudge for the month of November, we get several thousand people to go through that a year. It's pretty fun. And then there's going to be, I hint at this because it's been behind the scenes and I've run two beta groups through it. But my latest product called the method is going to be going live uh really soon as of the airing of this. I'm not sure if we'll be live yet or if we'll be shortly going live, but it's called the method, and it's kind of my life's work as a coach put into a program that's way more integrated and outside of rowing. We use rowing, but we're also talking about fitness, mobility, mindset, resilience, and then getting into this wonderful concept of misogy, which if you haven't heard of that or or done any research on it, check it out. It's pretty interesting. So this group's called the method, M-I-S-O-G-I. I actually found it from an article in Outdoor Magazine about uh, I forgot who I forgot who the basketball player was nowadays, outdoor magazine in like 2017, I think. And I have held on to this concept ever since, and I've looked, I've like waited for the right outlet for it. And um, it came to fruition because in February I had a motorcycle accident. I was in the hospital for a week, collapsed long, pretty bad traumatic brain injury, took me out for about three months. And my recovery from that was I would get on the bike erg every day and just lightly spin for an hour because that's all I was allowed to do. I wasn't able to, I wasn't allowed to create any trunk pressure. So I couldn't brace for anything, which meant rowing was out. So it's basically walking and biking. And I started turning on YouTube Live every day, and I would just sit there on the bike and I just chat with my audience for an hour every single day for the three months that I was recovering. And it finally like clicked one day. All of the people that were there were looking for we the conversations we went into were so much deeper. And I was like, oh, this is it. So I just had to put some teeth to it. And uh, like I said, I've run two beta groups through it, and it is amazing, amazing. I'm getting to lead live workouts once a week. I'm leading live down regulation sessions where we're doing yin yoga or long stretching, and then I'm taking it into meditations. I'm bringing in like breath work experts and mindset experts who are leading sessions with our group. It's super cool. It's definitely a higher-end product, but uh the method is gonna be going live pretty soon.

Wow, man, that's cool. Yeah, I just did a quick search on the soji, so so I don't forget. I'll check that out later. Chain, man, thank you so much for for coming on the show. This has been a really interesting, um, you know, so much more than just rowing. So much more.

And uh I really thank you for providing the ability to be so much more than rowing.

Yeah, you got it, man. So uh thanks for coming on. People can go check out, you know, we'll put all the information in uh in the show notes too. So yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Shane Farmer.

Eric, thank you so much, man.

Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futureoffitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off