Future of Fitness

Fabio Zonin is a StrongFirst Certified Instructor. He is a former powerlifter, natural bodybuilder, and the owner of fitness centers. He has authored many articles for Italian popular magazines and websites that are dedicated to fitness, bodybuilding, and strength. How have things been in Italy over the last 90 days for you? Fabio says that it is getting better in Italy.  Italy did not have the experience to deal with the COVID.  Italy is open again, however, they do have their rules with social distancing, sanitization, and masks.  Within the organization of Strong First, you have been evolving and shifting as well, can you give us some insights into some updates on that? How are you working out Strong First now?  Strong First is a company that is based on live events, and the events were often rescheduled or canceled, it was difficult in the beginning.  Managing events were not easy, so Strong First worked on creating a stronger online presence to help their customers to stay strong at home.  Strong First turned some of their in-person events into online live events.  Strong First sees their events becoming smaller.  Does Strong First have first branded gyms or studious? Strong  First has gyms that have specific requirements. It needs to have certified instructors.  Strong First reached over 50 gyms and then COVID occurred, it will take a few months before they start creating and reopening gyms. How many certified coaches does Strong First have? What are some of the numbers you guys have as far as your community? Strong First has 4000 instructors worldwide in over 50 countries.  Coaches need to recertify every 2 years, and Elite Instructors need to recertify every 3 years.  Strong First had to give extended recertification dates for coaches due to COVID.  Pablo was on the Joe Rogan podcast. How did that affect the community? Do you see any traction? How did that affect the community?  What was the result of that? It increased traction, from people who did not know who Strong First was.  Pablo is a natural-born leader, and it was a great podcast.  The podcast piqued interest from outsiders and was great for the community.  Is there any particular technology that you guys are looking at right now to kind of step into the next evolution fo what this industry may look like? Strong First is looking int a training app and a streaming system for online training to provide a window to our instructors to be seen.  Technology and going online will help people be coached by different people and in different countries.  It can be difficult finding a trainer that fits your time but using different times zones can change this.  How do you think the fitness industry is going to be fundamentally different?  Zonin is concerned that going too fast into going online may affect quality.  Zonin has been basing a lot of his feedback on his online sessions on the feedback using people’s faces, and the transition to online made it difficult to see how people reacted.  When COVID started, a lot of people turned to be an online presenter, you need to learn how to present in front of a camera and the way you teach.  So many social media gifts did not give away quality workouts, the student has no idea how to figure out what is good or what is bad.  Resources: Email: contact@fabiosowning.com Website: Strong First Website

Emmet Williams came into My Zone with his partner Dave Wright in between 2010 and 2011. The two had been introduced to heart rate monitoring technology and wanted to use that to be an accurate representation and motivator for customers’ fitness and health.  How did you end up with My Zone? It began in the Fitness Industry with a marketing company called Creative Fitness Marketing, it was based in America, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.  When Williams was based in Australia, he took equities within that business, when he was 26 years old, and grew it.  Williams came into My Zone in 2010/2011 and had a network established around the industry.  Williams’s partner, Dave Wright, looked at the heartrate products, which caused Williams to look at it from a genuine perspective.  Williams and Wright believed that using this technology would help drive engagement and that would drive retention.  The experience of William and Wright managed to apply this concept better than the new technology that was arising in the market.  My Zone is a combination of both hardware and software, is that right? It is a mix of hardware - being a heart rate belt, and monitor - as well as software - which includes club display and the smartphone app. The goal is to make the client feel good and keep them motivated.  The sense of achievement that comes along with this practice is what keeps the client interested.  There is a leaderboard on My Zone that helps build a sense of community.  Is there any functional fitness or how are you guys applying this to other models? Besides spinning and cycling.  Heart rate has been attached to cycling for a long time, and My Zone took into consideration the science and the simplicity of the concept and incorporated that.  My Zone aspired to build a point system that is perfect for the gym industry.  My Zone looks at your fitness level - such as a gold handicap - which democratized exorcise. It removes who the fittest person is in the room, and levels the exercising in the glass. Each person practices in their fitness level.  It does not matter what exercise you are doing, as long as you are doing some form of exercise.  When a consumer buys it, is it part of their gym membership? Can they buy it independently?  My Zones business model is selling to the gym operator, but the waistband can be bought on Amazon.  Are there any new metrics that you are looking into? Heart rate viability is an interesting way to go, but it can be a challenge, and My Zone is not delving into that.  They are looking at their heart rate recovery, which will portray how healthy your cardiovascular system is.  Heart rate recovery can predict your fitness age and your mortality rate by seeing how healthy the metrics are, and they will be clinically proven to be accurate.  How is your company building that gamification and community in this new hybrid world we’re in?  Williams believes that it all begins with strategy and the operative system.  My Zone encourages half-year huddles, which is to review the mid-year mark, and they ask the operators what their strategy is. Often times, they do not have a response to that, which is okay.  They teach them a practice that helps establish a strategy to help figure out where they would like to go with the year going forward, and finding your anchors.  My Zone is a good fit if one of your anchors is a community, results, and sustainability. It gives you a goal and a status ranking.  My Zone strives to position itself as an authority to bring rewards and community to the customers.  What are some of the biggest challenges you are facing now as an organization?  My Zone came into this year with a growth plan and took their existing products and new services into consideration, but that was turned over due to COVID.  They want to focus on their existing customers and want to help to reboot them before they concentrate on growth.  My Zone has a few products such as the mZ remote, as well as the patented fitness the releasing in the Fall (2020). My Zone expanded into Germany and Singapore, and are looking forward to spending more time at improving there.  Are there any kind of strategic partnerships or collaborations you guys are looking for? My Zones API goes out to many vendors and is very happy to show their data.  My Zone has a very open mind when it comes to new technologies.  Is there anything you are reading right now that you would recommend to the audience?  Steve Schwarzman - What it takes: Lessons in Pursuit of success. Matthew Syed - The power of diverse thinking.  Sean Ellis - Hacking Growth.  Resources: Website: myzone.org Emmet Williams Email: ew@myzone.org

Mike Hansen got into this industry in the 90s and discovered that his passion was fitness. He changed his mindset to an entrepreneur mindset and wanted to make fitness more fun for people. He wanted to tie gaming with fitness, and through that saw that there was a big gap within the fitness industry digitally.  How do you define a smart gym? What would things look like back in 2010-2011 compared to now?  Hansen says that he believed you could connect better with people, and knew who he was.  Ultimately it was aimed at understanding the consumers and sending them the right message.  Ultimately it was a timing factor when it came to fitness apps, as back in the early days people saw them as information apps, and not aimed at assisting the user.  In the world of Smart Champs, who do you think is doing really well?  Hansen says he has not seen one fully executed, he sees a lot of vendors that potentially solve part of that niche.  He believes it is yet to be fully brought together.  There are a lot of opportunities when it comes to being able to make gym-related concepts Smart, but it is just not there yet in the industry.  Explain how the Hub would work, explain the concept.  There is a multitude of places where someone could work out, the application will potentially control where you exercise.  The Hub will provide assistance and Hansen will provide the value within the application.  Looking at what we have seen over the past 90 days, how much did you expect to see, and how much has been a surprise for you?  Hansen's business has had to adapt in order to adopt the shifts that are driven by the consumer.  There was an indication that there would be a shift to a smarter change to society all around. 74% of clubs now have a digital or some sort of streaming to offer, whereas before it was as low as 5%.  Hansen found the pace of the VR and its move into the market to be the biggest surprise for him.  So you are a managing partner in Endorvins, what is Endorvins all about? What brought this about?  Endorvins is a full-service fitness streaming agency - it is the first fully dedicated and integrated agency that is determined to take businesses online within fitness and streaming.  This was brought on when Hansen was working on a project last year and he identified a big gap within service.  What do the actual processes look like for making a company digital?  Determine your content strategy in order to determine the tools you require.  Once it has gotten to that point, an individual will be taken to their procurement process.  After which the individual can be introduced to the market.  Once all of that is established, Endorvins will handle everything from content uploading to doing title management and publishing.  Endorvins also extends into licensing and is truly end to end.  Do you think as you move forward, who do you think your main clients will be coming from?  Hansen says their target market is to connect fitness creators to consumers, their primary markets for opportunity is in fitness boutiques.  Endorvins cross over any market that serves content.  Hansen believes that there will be a change in the market to offering a more digitized manner of content and distribution.  Can you expand on what your thoughts are on the decentralization of fitness and what that is looking like from a historical perspective? As a gym owner, the walls need to be broken down and change from being a location provider to a service model.  In order to support your member as a service company, you have to be able to have the ability to communicate with your customer - this may mean streaming, and you will need to embrace technology in order to achieve this.  What do you think the gym model is going to look like a year from now, from health clubs down to boutiques, who do you think is going to thrive?  Hansen believes that those who will thrive are those who are going to embrace a hybrid model, and believes it will be able to serve a customer as a consumer service will today.  Your business model will need to be changed to a 24-hour service, and convenience is important and you need to embrace that.  What are some things that did not go right? What was a challenge for you as you were navigating these waters? Hansen says that placing cameras in fitness rooms was bad timing in 2014/2015.  He believes that the only way to get better in the timing factor is to root himself into the job side of the equation - he now does consumer interviews.  What was the intention of placing cameras in the fitness room?  Hansen had the idea that he wanted to create a broadcasting network specifically designed for gyms to reach their markers.  He wanted to build a content catalog and give that content catalog to broadcasters to be placed on TV.  How are you seeing the gaming industry and the fitness industry merging? Where are they overlapping now?  Hansens says that they looked at the VR and the AR, and has toyed with the idea that whether or not people will exercise if it is a video game.  Gaming can be an entertainment factor and can be a distraction to the exercise.  On the other side, gaming is more for a younger generation, so you would have to embrace social media more targeted towards the younger generation.  You mentioned your vision for a record label model. Can you expand on that?  Hansen believes that the digital market opportunity is not structured right, and this means that most people create content, and have more conversation around brand and distribution.  They want to structure relationships between music and the instructor.  Hansen believes that they can bring a fitness label into the fitness industry, and that is the vision for their future.  You mentioned that there was some machine learning that you’re working on, some AI, can you expand on that?  Hansen says that they identified a big data gap related to streaming, so they went ahead and focused on pulling all that data into one single platform.  The platform will allow users to read dashboards specifically for fitness streaming, which is easy to use.  Endorvins will be the only company that will offer a specifically fitness-focused streaming data layer.  Let’s say I’m Bobby, a mid-level accountant at a firm, now working remotely from home looking for ways to now engage in my health and fitness and improve my health and fitness. How does this technology or concept help me improve myself?  This is more on the b2b side of the equation. Hansen changed the example to a real-time example of clubs that know what percentage of their members are using their streaming solution.  This will allow you to establish which of your users are within the proximity to come to your facility, if they are close enough, give it to them for free.  Market segmentation will improve your business and retention and will improve your capture rates.  You need to have a profile for your clients because people's lives change daily.  What is it you need right now? What are some of the challenges that you are facing? What is it that the industry can help you with?  Hansen says he needs more hours in his day, but from an industry perspective, he needs people to embrace this online digital transformation.  Do not neglect the fact that if it did not work for you, that it does not work.  You need to be open to change.  Resources: Email: mikeh@endorvins.net  Phone number: 833 227 4469

Sumit Seth comes from a very humble background and worked in the hospital healthcare space, and did work for Henry Ford's Hospitals, UnitedHealth Group, and did his Masters degree in hospital healthcare administration. A few years later he realized fitness is true healthcare. A trainer Seth had - Jake Freeman - changed his life, and made him want to change and impact the lives of others, and feels blessed through this. So, he started working towards establishing Naamly.  Do you see the fitness industry coming more aligned with - and even becoming - the health and wellness industry? How do you see what is currently happening with Covid-19 and the pandemic and this huge rush towards health? How do you see the industry rising up?  Seth believes that Covid-19 has accelerated a lot of things, and acts as a catalyst for what is almost an eventuality.  There are some trends in play when it comes to an ageing population and the rise of obesity and chronic disease, which are things we already knew about and were already becoming mainstream healthcare.  There is a “health is wealth” mentality, and people have realized that as you live longer, the quality of life matters and the quality of life can only be reached when you have mental and physical health. Covid-19 is helping individuals realize the importance of health. Seth speculates that there will be a rise in people going to the gyms and a move within the digital space of fitness and health.  Seth believes there will be a merge between fitness and health.  How did your company start? How did you come up with the concept?  Seth had a background both in healthcare and running a staffing firm, however, it was all about the people for him, the people make the biggest difference.  They wanted to create something where they could recognise and celebrate people, initially causing them to target both yoga fitness and massage, but soon decided on the fitness space.  Seth and his partner Jake decided to contribute here, and they started to focus on the trainer, which morphed into focusing on the gym owner - because it is also about celebrating entrepreneurs.  They decided to dedicate their foreseeable future to focus on celebrating entrepreneurs and helping them succeed, which in turn creates healthier communities.  What are the benefits of Naamly? You serve gym owners, right?  Naamly serves gym owners and helps train gyms in engaging their members, empowering their staff, and whatever success means to them - whether it is leading a fulfilling life, or making more money - that is our model.  What does the service entail? How does it work?  Naamly focuses on three broad value propositions; engage members, staff empowerment, and centralized communication tools.  Engaging members lead to better connectivity, which in turn leads to members trusting you and returning.  Staff empowerment leads to staff wanting to take action and puts their hearts in the right place.  Centralized communication tools help the gym owner in building connections and deeper relationships with their members. Naamly brings email, phone and text under one shared inbox, so trainers or staff members can see what goes on.  How many people is Naamly serving? What is the trajectory of the business looking like?  Naamly is going very well, despite all the self-limiting beliefs Seth had in the past that he had to work through.  Seth says that Naamly has made its fair share of mistakes, but they learned from them, and have been very fortunate in getting things right.   Naamly serves thousands of members now, and consider themselves very fortunate to be seen as a worthwhile partner.  What has been one of the biggest personal challenges you have had working in Naamly?  Seth says one of the biggest challenges for him was work/life balance, as an entrepreneur, you work very hard for something and you see it manifest, you want to continue tending to it.  The last company Seth worked at, the factor that drove him away was when his child did not understand why he was there and not working, this caused him to leave that job in search of balance.  Seth admits that the lines of balance are blurred when one works from home, and you are enjoying your work more. What are some of the biggest takeaways for you from working with Ken?  Ken taught Seth to take time for himself, and in doing so the world won’t crash and burn, and work will still be there when he gets back.  Ken also taught Seth how to go outside of his comfort zone and embrace new and fresh ideas, which led Seth to a lot of personal growth.  If you get started at 4 a.m, what time does your day finish?  Seth finishes his day at around 10-11 p.m at night.  What is the biggest challenge you are facing within your business right now? Externally the biggest problem Seth faces is about wanting to help more gym owners and make an impact on their life.  Naamely is also facing scalability challenges and morphing their own processes because they are getting new personas in and they all have nuanced needs.  Basically their core problems are how to scale internally, and how to continue spreading the word.  Resources:  Sumit Seth: summit@naamly.com  Website: Naamly.com 

In today’s interview, I have Jen Zygmunt as my guest and we are looking into the world of virtual fitness.  Jen is the SVP of sales and marketing at Wellbeats, which is the world's leading virtual fitness provider, where she is responsible for creating and driving demand.  Along with her thriving career, she is also a wife and mother who enjoys the outdoors and staying active.  What’s your story? How did you get to where you are with Wellbeats (01:13) Jen says she used to be in the consumer goods industry, and she landed in fitness coincidently. However, her mom was a PE teacher growing up, so she has a background in physical fitness.  She has always been passionate about sports, but career-wise, she started in IP sales and ended up in the sales and marketing side of consumer goods.  At the time she was traveling every week, and when she was pregnant with her second child, she thought it was a good opportunity to change her career path.  She dug into her network and started looking for something different. At the same time Jason Von Bank, CEO of Wellbeats, was looking for someone with a sales and marketing background to manage those areas of the company. She met with Jason and she has been with Wellbeats for four and a half years.   Give us some insights into the depth and breadth of the content you guys are producing (04:31) Jen says they have traditional fitness classes like yoga and cycling - anything you can find in the group fitness area.  They also have nutrition classes, which include nutrition education and cooking recipes. Additionally, they offer mindfulness and meditation classes.  They tried to cater to different groups and environments; they have office breaks where you can do a quick workout in the office, and they also offer classes geared around specific sports like golf.  She says they try to accommodate everyone regardless of age, ability, interest or environment.  How do you help companies and corporations become active in the program? (06:36) Jen says technology is very beneficial in this area; it helps you reach customers in different ways with different messages.  It also allows them to recommend specific content to their customer, based on their interests and behaviors within the application. This keeps the customer engaged and ensures that they come back.  Customers return to Wellbeats because the company offers them something they are interested in.  If a customer signs up for a challenge, they will remind them to come back and complete their challenge. She says this drives engagement.  Some people are hard to get motivated and get going, and in most cases, these people must get activated. How do you approach this challenge? (07:27) Jen says Wellbeats provide a lot of tools to help employers motivate their employees.  They have monthly promotional campaigns where they focus on education like how to get started.  They offer education on anything from getting started to breathing exercises and adds that these are important because you shouldn’t just jump into a hiit class if you haven’t been working out.  She says nutrition is another gateway into physical activity, along with mindfulness classes. You can even listen to a podcast based on managing stress and anxiety. What does virtual training look like? (12:00) Jen says that all of their products are on demand right now, so they offer pre-recorded classes within their app.  They try to push people into their fitness assessments or their challenges so that they can fulfill the customers’ needs, whether it’s helping them lose weight, train for a 5k or help them with a work from home challenge.  They’re focused on helping the customer find a solution through a provided schedule.  Wellbeats do live recording on Facebook and social media, even some live events, but these are more event-based and not an everyday occurrence.  Resources Connect with Jen on LinkedIn Visit the Wellbeats Website

Dr. James Hardt moved around a lot in his earlier childhood due to his father being a teacher. This shaped his thinking about the nature of reality and the importance of transcending culture. He accelerated in Mathematics, Science and English in High School, which earned him a Scholarship and went to Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Physics, and then a Masters Degree and PhD in Psychology along with a postdoc in psychophysiology at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco.  What is Psychophysiology?  Dr. Hardt explains this term as psyche meaning “mind” and physiology meaning “body”. This involves interactions between mind and body. Dr. Hardt is a brain scientist and international businessman, and enables people to work with their physiology, the electroencephalogram, learning to control their emotions and their thinking or experiences, all of which are dependent on underlying brainwaves. Brainwaves rule your life - your emotions, feelings, perceptions. Anything that people do to have an effect or experience, they only have an effect if it changes the brainwaves.  What is BioCybernaut? What is the service provided by you? What are the qualities of what you do?  BioCybernaut is to inner space what an astronaut is to outer space. Deconstructing the word, “bio” means body, “cyber” is the calculating technology.  Cipher - long ago - was used to mean doing arithmetic, and calculations.  Naut is a Greek suffix used to describe someone going on an adventure. We now have Cosmonauts and Astronauts and Biosevennauts who explore inner space.  If brain exploration was looked at from a perspective of travel across the United States - New York meaning you know everything, and California is you know nothing - how far do you think we have gotten?  Making the assumption that the trip started in San Francisco, at least halfway across the Bay Bridge, and we are heading to Oakland.  People seem extremely full of angst and depression when everything seems relatively peaceful if you look at the history of mankind, why are we such an unsettled creature?  We are very aware. A cow may not be anxious or worried when being led to the slaughterhouse because they may not be a very aware creature. Whereas humans have the ability to be aware of past, present and future.  Ramadas said “If you want to live high, you have to live outside of time” and Zen Master Suzuki Roshi said, “time is the basis of fear”.  You may be fine in the present, but you may not be in the future.  Dr. Hardt believes perfectionism is a curable disease. An obsession with perfection creates anxiety and impairs your abilities. Letting go of perfectionism you will be closer to perfectionism.  Early psychological research was able to show that anxiety could impair all forms of performance, mental or physical.  Alphas brain waves are like silver bullets against anxiety. This was a basis for a paper Dr. Hardt published in 1978, where he was able to show that if you took high anxiety people and taught them to increase their alpha, both types of anxiety would drop.  There are 6 and 12-month check-ups with previous patients that used this method and proved that they were actually better off further down the line than the day after training.  Why is there shame around anxiety?  If it is believed that something relating to your mental state that you believe is not optimal or as good as those around you, there will be shame.  Dr. Hardt can help relieve this.  If you look at types of drugs that reduce anxiety, are they messing with alpha brain waves, or how are they working? Is this the science-related between he pharma and what you do or is there a connection?  Humans are Bio Electro Magneto Chemical Organisms - our awareness is dependent on proper functioning of biochemistry, the electrical and the magnetic activity which is produced by biological chemical activity.  Drugs allow you to intervene with biochemistry.  When you are working towards doing something, there are activities in your brain when you are doing brainwave feedback where you are doing your processes through consciousness, which alter underlying biochemistry.  A study done by Jean Penniston discovered the alterations brain wave training has on the blood, which reduced beta-endorphins, which is a stress indicator in the brain.  Brain wave training reduces a bad marker of brain biochemistry, which allows you to intervene in the system any place you like.  How long have you been studying this? You don’t count your birthdays anymore, is that right?  Dr. Hardt had started studying this subject even before he was 26.  When anyone comes over for training, Dr. Hardt will have a cake and put a candle in the middle of it to celebrate the fact that this is their first year of their life.  What is your origin story?  Dr. Hardt was a senior in physics at Carnegie Institute of Technology when he came across a sign that said Dr. Joe Kumea will be talking on brain waves. He decided to go.  Dr. Kumea discovered that humans could control their own brain waves in April 1962, he reported this result to the Western Psychological Association meeting in San Francisco.  Dr. Hardt spent his time reading anything he could find on brain waves.  Dr. Hardt rode his motorcycle across the trans-Canadian highway down where he found the Coast Highway and showed up at Dr. Kumeas lab where he volunteered.  Dr. Hardt went to Joanne Gardner after his initial 3-day test and asked her if he could go into the closet with the equipment to play around. She agreed and continued with her work, evidently forgetting him in the closet. Through the 11th course of their 12th course Chinese lunch Joanne was having with her coworkers, she remembered Dr. Hardt was locked in the basement.  Paul Gorman explained to Dr. Hardt that what he experienced in the chamber was meditation, Dr. Hardt then knew after that summer that his life was going to be about this.  How does plant medicine compare and contrast? Is there a bridge that needs to be closed?  If plants change your brain waves, you’ll have experiences.  A friend of Dr. Hardt went to Peru to record the brain waves during Iowa Ceremonies, and it was reported that the increased alpha brain waves were similar to what Dr. Hardt's training started on, but it lacked the negative effect.  There was a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association where medical students who had access to a brainwave computer wanted to see the effects that smoking marijuana would have on their brain. It was established that it increased the power of alphas and had a slight slowing in frequency.  Marijuana destroys short term memory, whereas Dr. Hardt's training does not.  A Biofeedback researcher named Barbara Brown gave College students LSD - before it became illegal - she discovered that it higher the alpha brain waves in some students, and lowered the alpha brain waves in others. The dividing line was whether or not they were visualizers.  What was one of the biggest personal challenges you had as you developed Biocybernaut and what led you down this path?  Dr. Hardt registered during his senior year, he set up an exchange program between the site department at Duquesne University, where they had some professors who were Jesuit Priests from France, who were teaching phenomenology.  Many professors did not want Dr. Hardt to work within this area. He registered as a grad student and became friends with Timothy Leary. Leary and his wife did a lot of LSD, and he’s a social psychological phenomenon. No matter what Leary did he was studying the structure of his consciousness and noting the ways his body influenced his mind.  Dr. Hardt was doing meditation in the Yogananda tradition along with his work in science.  Dr. Hardt learned that brain waves affect the different response the alpha brain waves have in superconscious states, such as Zen and Yoga.  Dr. Hardt tells Dr. Terrence Barret this, and a few hours gets denied the use of the electrophysiological equipment on the grounds that anyone who is interested in consciousness could not be serious about pursuing a PhD in psychology.  The acting Dean showed interest in the study of consciousness, and this allowed Dr. Hardt to continue his studies.  Can you give us insights into what type of people go through your program? What are the benefits? Give us some stories?  Tony Robbins, his wife and her personal assistant have gone through this. Robbins speaks highly of the Biocybernaut program.  Dr. Hardt has trained royalty, European Royalty and Middle Eastern Royalty who bring a lot of people to partake in the training as well.  Dr. Hardt has trained over 200 Canadian Aboriginal people.  Dr. Hardt has also trained professional athletes.  Dr. Hardt trained the Co-Founder of Canada's second-largest oil and gas company.  Dr. Hardt had trained famous chiefs and Shaman and medicine men and women from who attended 12 years a month's schools that existed up until 1989. One individual trained was Chief Willie Little Child - who was on the Truth and Reconciliation commission - he was the first Aboriginal ever to be elected to the Canadian National Parliament. The work Dr. Hardt did in Canada, gave him an invitation to be adopted into the Cree Indian Nation, and was invited to speak at the United Nations Geneva.  Is there anything that you or your business need right now that people can help out with?  Biocybernaut has a program, a dream system which will allow training to be cut down from seven to five days.  Dr. Hardt requires some help with sharing and spreading his business.  Dr. Hardt built the world's first micro computerized brain wave feedback and analyzing system.  Biocybernaut is a very strong decision making tool.  Resources: Doug: dholt@buncher.com  James: jim@bioseparate.com  Website: www.biocybernaut.com

In this episode, I am interviewing Eric Chessen about fitness in the autism population.  Eric is the founder of Autism Fitness, which is a fitness framework dedicated to providing fun and meaningful fitness outcomes to individuals across the spectrum.  How has your life, and business changed over the last three months? (01:14) Eric says he has lived in New York his whole life. He and his wife decided that it was time for a big change, so they relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. They relocated on the first of March, and three weeks later everything changed. They had three autism fitness certification level one courses coming up, which were two-day events. While hoping for the best, they soon realized that they weren’t going to be able to do the seminars.  Eric and his business manager put their heads together and agreed on two main concerns; one was purely from a business perspective, they knew that they had to keep their revenue stream going. Their second concern is that the valuable information they provide can’t be found anywhere else.  His goal is to provide the best possible fitness programming principles, concepts, and strategies to the autism community. They realized how important their information is to people and the community, so they completely restructure their level one certification.  They now offer a four-week online course on Zoom. They have certified professionals attending the Zoom calls. Doing the course online has been proven to be more advantageous because they have more time to spend on concepts and asking questions. They were forced into this situation, but it resulted in the production of something that is even better than the original version.  Do you agree that people will make the best out of our current situation and that it may even become a more permanent arrangement? (05:50) Eric agrees that someone who has been successful in a space away from home, also knows what it takes to be successful, even without that space.  He looks at the psychology of choice; it has been proven that people are not only fatigued when having too many choices, but they are also never satisfied.  People get confused when they have too many choices. Ultimately they end up being unhappy with their choice because there were too many options.  When you start putting in constraints, it improves focus and eliminates “noise”. When there isn’t a lot of choices, you pick one and go with it.  For the entrepreneurial-minded, it means making things happen even when you don’t have a lot of options. You don’t have a perfect course of action, but it eliminates a lot of variables.  Describe the type of people that enroll in your program, what is the ideal? (08:34) He says the high caliber of people that enroll in the program continues to astound him.  Autism fitness certification is not something you get into by accident. There’s almost a barrier to entry, and they see a cross-section of the fitness and the wellness community. The people that enroll consist of fitness trainers, PE coaches, physical and occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and parents.  Eric says the parents in the program are some of the most remarkable people because they do this to empower themselves, as well as to make it possible for other parents and families.  The trainers consist of those who are really interested in working with this niche population, but they need more guidance. There are also trainers who have been approached by parents or schools to develop fitness programs.  What will I gain by doing your certification? (15:51) The fitness professionals that take the course are already familiar with the principles of movement, biomechanics, and exercise selection.  The difference between general programming, and programming with the autism population, is that there are adaptive and cognitive variables with the autism population. There are also physical challenges involved because most of the autistic individuals that they work with tend to have gross motor deficits.   He says the adaptive and cognitive areas are where they really make a difference for fitness coaches because they’re looking at adaptive functioning as motivation. In other words, they assess the athlete’s level of motivation to participate, and what steps to take if the athlete isn’t motivated.  The entire course is set up on a contingency basis, meaning that they observe, and then react based on what they see. They provide positive behavior support to a population that generally doesn’t want to engage in vigorous physical activity.  What they are trying to deliver through the course, is having methods that work, and can be implemented immediately. What personal challenges have you encountered on your journey? (24:18) Eric says his biggest challenge is listening to people’s advice.  Another challenge was transitioning into the online world. He never wanted to do anything online but believes that a lot of fitness professionals feel the same way.  It comes back to the psychology of choice; if he wanted a viable and continuous business he had to do it online.  He started embracing it when the certified professionals, whose opinions he values very much, came back after the first few sessions and said that it was even better than the first course.  He just had to listen to what people had to say, and believe them when they said that the product he is producing now is better than the previous one.  Resources Connect with Jen on LinkedIn Visit the AutismFitness Website

Hewitt Tomlin is one of the Partners of TeamBuildr, a company that specializes in simplifying the program building and training regimes for coaches. He started his business in college with his roommates, and it was not an overnight success. They came across a problem that strength coaches had, and this was the fact that they were using Excel to train hundreds of athletes across the country, which was time-consuming for coaches. They eventually built a platform which made this process easier through their platform.  Tell us about your product and what makes TeamBuildr unique?  In the beginning, Tomlin thought that the key to his business would be to build an app that focuses on building good experiences for athletes electronically.  Soon they came to the realization that it is better to target their app to coaches who actually sit down and write these training programs, trying to ensure that coaches could save a couple of hours on writing training programs.  Tomlin placed an emphasis on building a platform that would make manual technical processes easier.  TeamBuildr will strive to always be a platform that is up to date and continuously improving their features.  What are your thoughts on the current status of things? How did the pandemic affect your business?  The current pandemic has accelerated business in a few sectors and remote training tools such as ours, it is beneficial for tools that facilitate some sort of remote transaction.  This means that your competition will increase.  You are solving a piece of the equation by being a remote tool, but there are several aspects that are involved. Tomlin likes to use the example that the highest quality platform may not always be the best selling, it is all in how it is marketed.  If your marketing is not formatted for today's situation, you cannot acquire customers remotely.  Tomlins business is not just about talking about their platform, but it's about helping coaches holistically with their pain points.  What are some features that you find more relevant now than maybe six months ago that you are focusing on?  A social media platform is important.  We have been working on a Team Feed which allows you to share your videos and images. This is important for coaches, they want to be notified of uploads. How do you see yourself fitting into the market? What makes TeamBuildr different?  TeamBuildr has decided to stay true toward what they call the Strength and Conditioning professional.  This means that the programs that you are writing and the feedback that is given has to do with strength training.  They cater towards the market interested in the principle of progressive overload.  How big are the Strength and Conditioning professional market? How does TeamBuildr estimate?  The market can very easily be estimated as it relates to Team Space, which includes high schools, colleges, professional teams, recreational teams, and so on - which is a market that is growing very nicely.  Strength and Conditioning have been growing in High Schools spaces due to the job stability it provides. CrossFit also affected the way Strength and Conditioning were seen, and it popularized it more.  This has been a big part of TeamBuildrs business, and it is getting bigger.  What has been one of your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur?  When it came to building their business, Tomlin said they were unaware that they were building a software as a service.  A lot of the advice given to Tomlin was not as relevant as it would have been if a business was being built 20 years ago, which meant that they had to seek direction on their own.  Tomlin and his partner discovered that they could be self-sufficient and could make progress for their business, and Tomlin did not understand the concept of taking money to see if it would win or lose within a couple of years.  Have you taken on investors? Are you still bootstrapping?  Tomlin says they never took on any investors, and never took out a loan.  They resorted to selling subscriptions and sold about 10 the first year. Tomlin and his partner were working full-time jobs and would reinvest into the business until the company snowballed.  They have been bootstrap the whole time.  What year did you officially found the company?  Tomlin says they made their first sale in 2012, with a division 3 school in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Tomlin spent his time cold calling coaches and using staff directories to try and get clients.  What are some gems you got from the cold calling experience?  Tomlin explains that when he was cold calling, he knew that this industry required time and trust was a big deal.  The Strength and Conditioning community is very tightly knit and he knew it would take time for it to snowball.  Cold calling is worth it for anyone evaluating when they start on a sales development enterprise.  What is your goal with this company? Do you have an exit strategy? What would you consider to be a success?  Tomlin says that they are pretty transparent about how they look at long term goals for a company.  He enjoys what he does and loves his customers, and says that he would not do anything that puts his business at risk.  They want to build a company that is attractive to people who are interested in buying the Country Club, so to speak.  If customers want to be involved, they would have to invest into the company, and they will inform them of future developments and growth.  They are taking the course that is a balanced approach, which is reinvesting in the company while making it a balanced approach.  Explain your thoughts on the decentralization of the fitness industry, where do they come from?  Tomlin explains that when he talks about decentralization, what he envisions is these really high-quality trainers who go out and learn how to market and acquire customers.  He supports small businesses and thinks a coach building up a business and 50 clients giving them very personal high touch training programs in nutrition advice, life and stress management coaching is a good model.  Tomlin thinks the only thing holding people back from doing this is the marketing and the concept of acquiring customers effectively.  When we look at the current state of your business at Team Builder, what is the biggest need that you guys have right now? What is your biggest challenge?  Similar to other Tech companies, finding good engineers and developers are important, TeamBuildr is considered a product-first company.  TeamBuildr is all about bringing a good product that is sustainable and scalable, and that requires talented and committed people.  TeamBuildr exists to ensure that employees are taken care of as well as customers, and then the economics are to be worried about.  Is your whole team located in DC? Do you have a remote team? How big is your team? TeamBuildr has 7 employees that are in office, but they are currently working remotely due to the epidemic.  The reason behind this was the desire to found a culture for the company, this means they want to bring in people face to face and have decided to be an in-person company.  What are some new products that Team Builder is putting out there?  TeamBuildrs first and foremost product is built for a coach to write their own training programs.  TeamBuildr  also offers resources in the form of templates and training templates.  The company got started on writing new templates for competitive athletes, speed, power and agility which would allow coaches to quickly be able to incorporate these into their training.  TeamBuildr built three to four at home templates that coaches could have access to and use within training their team, that it was of high quality and trustworthy.  Resources:  Facebook: Hewitt Tomlin LinkedIn: Hewitt Tomlin Website: TeamBuildr

Adam Zeitsiff is the CEO of Gold’s Gym. Zeitsiff has faced many challenges during the COVID, which shaped his belief that he may not solve the virus, but he can help to solve the problems within the fitness industry and ensure that it remains alive and thriving.  What kind of challenges have you faced? Give me an example of a challenge you faced over the last 60-90 days that came up where you had to overcome in a creative way? Zeitsiff says that during the shutdown, they faced the problem of supporting their team members, supporting their members and giving through unique content that members could consume from home.  Focusing on restructuring that they were going through, in order to ensure their business would be here 55 years from now.  They had to get really creative in focusing on their future and not getting distracted and keep the focus on bettering the business.  A schedule was built of things that Gold’s Gym had to accomplish, and pulling that through the entire shutdown in order to create a brand that will be here for a long time. Gold Gym tried their best focusing on the positives and hyped up their creativity with how they delivered their services.  What is the difference between just closing down and restructuring? What are the guidelines you have to work with? What does that mean for the company? The differences are that people fall for it due to the fact that they believe they have to protect themselves because they feel as if they can no longer be a concern within the company.  You may have a business that can - and will - survive, it is just important to restructure, remove liabilities and clean up your balance sheet.  The pandemic was difficult on the Fitness industry - and the food industry - we had no way to do any sort of deliveries or get any revenue in.  Gold Gym had to solve these liabilities and had to clean up their balance sheets with some of the clubs they operated.  Gold Gym restructured, removed their liabilities, and cleaned up their balance sheets in order to pull through the pandemic and be in a good position to expand internationally.   Beyond the hybrid model, what are you seeing now? Maybe from a technological perspective, or an entirely new model, what do you think is going to come out of it?  Zeitsiff says since the last time they spoke, they are even stronger than they were. Gold Gym has taken tremendous strides and has quite a few things to announce.  Hybridization is key to creating amazing experiences in the gym. If you are incapable of getting digital solutions that allow individuals to work out when not in a gym, it coincides with the brand's persona.  Zeitsiff believes digitizing gyms will be taken to the next level.  There will be people who will personalize the experience more than others, and engage members.  How do you increase experience? I guess that is Gold’s Amp. Is that the project or the answer you guys are working on to this digital fitness solution?  Gold’s Amp has been Gold Gyms foundation to digital fitness since their launch in 2017.  There are a lot of plans in order to develop features, functionality, content, programming and experience.  Who are the people that may never come back to a gym? How is Gold’s Gym trying to get in touch with these people and communicate with them?  Those who do not return may not have been so committed, to begin with, or who are not comfortable being in public spaced.  Gold’s Gym is reaching out to people, and informing them that they are taking necessary precautions to keep things clean.  One can only control what they can control. You can only give them proof that their health is taken into consideration, and that gyms are a safe space to be in.  If you were going to talk to an independent health club owner or someone who owns a couple of facilities, are there any blind spots or anything that you think a lot of those leaders within the health club industry are missing?  It is important to note that gyms are on the hot seat right now, the industry is under the microscope. It is important to show members you are constantly cleaning.  The fitness industry should not be afraid to sell and think about what to sell, and how to sell. It is important to realize people are cautious.  What other leaders in the industry as far as technology are you keeping an eye on? Any companies or names that you would like to highlight? Taking a look at the big guys, and how they innovate and react quickly is the forefront of our businesses.  First and foremost, the big guys need help to innovate and lead. They need their creations integrated within businesses.  Any type of technology that helps with engagement within the fitness industry is vital and is more important now than ever.  What are some of the bigger news outlets that you are on? Zeitsiff was on CNN, NBC Nightly News, and he enjoys the chances to represent Gold’s Gym.  With that level of exposure, how has your life changed over the last 90 days? Zeitsiffs wife keeps him humble, and it has helped him realize that they have a platform and allows him to help the industry.  Zeitsiff has been blessed to be running these brands, and this industry is very much needed in these difficult times. Exercise is medicine.    So Adam, anything else you’d like the fitness industry to hear?  Zeitsiff says that it is important for the fitness industry to continue with what they are doing, and keep helping people with their daily lives.  Resources Connect with Adam on LnikedIn Visit Gold’s Gym Website

In this episode, I had an interview with Max Coleman about his journey to healing, and how it resulted in him becoming the successful CEO of DaoCloud - a wellness practitioner network and marketplace.  We spoke about challenges, health issues, the problems practitioners are currently facing regarding insurance and so much more.  Tell us about your story; your background (4:42) Max is the CEO of Daocloud, which is a wellness practitioner network and marketplace. Daocloud was inspired by his own journey to healing and was founded with his colleague who he met in college. As a kid, he was put on a bunch of ADD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, which did a good job of getting him to concentrate but had a very negative effect on him physically and mentally. To such effect that he was battling chronic back pain at the age of 16. Max started doing extensive research on health and holistic therapies. It took about 6 years to heal his back pain, but he learned a lot about his own health in this journey and realized that at least half the country has a chronic disease. The way he sums it up, most chronic diseases are caused by blocks of energy and emotions in the body, and Daocloud focuses on those aspects to get to the root of the problem. Daocloud recognizes 51 therapies.  After 5 years, the company has a network of 7000 practitioners in 50 states and 180 cities. The company offers a quiz and uses the answers to recommend which practitioner you need. Their mission is to make wellness primary care.  Are there windows into insurance money for these practitioners, or is that still a far thought? (14:42) Medicare and Medicaid recently started covering acupuncture, and chiropractors are also making way. But most insurance companies don’t cover these therapies. Max believes that there is not enough research to prove the efficacy of these treatments, as studies aren’t being funded to scientifically prove that they work. In the future, they will fund studies to prove efficacy so that insurance companies will get on board. Insurance companies make money from monthly instalments, and the people staying alive to pay them. So if they can prove that these therapies provide wellness and a longer lifespan, insurance companies will get on board.  Over the past 5 years, what are some of the challenges you faced as the founder and leader? (16:39) First is that initially, Eric, Max’s co-founder, used to be the CEO. he left about 2 years ago, and that’s when Max became CEO, and just took the company by its reins.  The biggest challenge he describes is loneliness. He feels like he’s in a dark tunnel where he can’t look back, he just has to keep going.  There is a lot of pressure in keeping 7000 practitioners, 1012 investors and his own team of 15 people happy.  In addition, all the stress and anxiety is not healthy, but he believes he was cut out for this because his own struggles with health are what enable him to lead the company. Who do you look up to? (19:26) Max says the first person that comes to mind is Elon Musk. Although he is probably not taking great care of his health, Max idolizes Elon for all that he is doing for the environment.  He looks up to entrepreneurs like Reid Hoffman, who he feels is very underrated.  Jason Calacanis is another idol for him - he believes that he is a great investor, and has a knack for finding founders of value.  Another thing he pointed out about Jason Calacanis, is that he has no problem giving out money for the right reasons, and thinks that founders need more people like him to support them.  Walk me through founder market fit? (22:18) Max describes founder market fit as a way of determining whether a founder would be a good fit to solve the market problem. He uses Jason as an example, saying that he is not too concerned with the business, but rather with the founder; their background, education, personality and so forth. Founders rarely fail because they run out of money; they fail because they give up. That is one of the crucial components to look at when deciding whether or not the founder is a good fit - you need to know that they won’t give up. Resources Connect with Max on LinkedIn Visit the Daocloud Website