Ep. #923: Joe Vennare on the Trends and Future of the Business of Fitness

Mike: Hello, and welcome to muscle for life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to learn about the business side of fitness, current trends, predictions of future trends of the commercial side of this industry. And my guest today is Joe Venere, who is the co founder of Fit Insider, F I T Insider, which is a platform that offers industry news and analysis of the business side of fitness and wellness.

Think morning brew, but for fitness. And so in this interview Joe and I talk about current trends in the fitness industry including wearables and subscriptions and where technology and personalization may be headed in the future. We talk about the long term viability of the marketing strategies of working hard to offer legitimate value versus just using sex and sizzle to make as much money as quickly as you can.

Joe and I talk about It’s the intersection of virtual reality and fitness and where that could go gamification of different apps and services. Joe shares some surprising wins and flops in the fitness space and more. Before we get into it, how many calories should you eat to reach your fitness goals faster?

What about your macros? What types of food should you eat? And how many meals should you eat every day? I created a. free 60 second diet quiz that will answer those questions for you and others, including how much alcohol you should drink, whether you should eat more fatty fish to get enough omega 3 fatty acids, what supplements are worth taking and why, and more.

To take the quiz and get your free diet quiz. Personalized diet plan. Go to muscleforlife. show slash diet quiz, muscleforlife. show slash diet quiz. Now answer the questions and learn what you need to do in the kitchen to lose fat, build muscle and get healthy. Hey, Joe, it’s nice to meet you and thanks for taking the time to do this.

Yeah. I’m super stoked. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Yeah. We were just talking offline. I, I didn’t know that you’ve been kicking around in the fitness space. At least it sounds like as long as I have. And in your previous life, you had a similar business and that, I started with, I guess you could say it’s, it was content, right?

I started with a book, but then that moved into, that’s all I ever really sold initially were books. And then I had a blog, which, muscle for life and then found a way into supplements and so forth. And now you have of course. Everyone’s going to compare what you’re doing now to morning brew, right?

So a morning brew type of approach to fitness, which I thought was clever and I liked what you were doing. And so I thought it would be fun to talk to you about the business side, a bit of the business side of fitness and so is there some of the interesting things that you’ve seen in the space since you’ve been working on fit insider and maybe some predictions and where you think things are headed in the fitness racket?

Joe: Yeah, for sure. A ton of stuff to talk about and even just like jamming on. Workouts and what you’re up to in general still super jacked and keeping up with that as well. Because you mentioned, my brother and I been working together for almost 15 years and all of that has centered around health and fitness.

And initially that was like. Coming up and, playing football and wanting to get in shape and learning about it ourselves and all the way to our 1st real business, which was personal training training people in the park, teaching group fitness classes at the YMCA, getting all the certifications and just getting in the game at.

20 years old, because we were so excited about it. And, really enjoyed all the things that people naturally go through, like, how you feel when you get in shape and going through that journey and wanting to get better and learn about it. And so from group fitness and personal training to subleasing spaces and figuring out how we make more money per class or per training session.

And then eventually opening a gym and, a 12, 000 square foot, like functional training center and CrossFit gym, and then developing programs and certifications to help other instructors grow their business. So you did that with all the very certifications, ACE and NASA, and NSCA, like teaching these courses and getting them accredited and all that fun stuff.

And then, yeah, growing that into what was at the time. In the tooth and mid to mid 2000s how do we create and distribute content on the Internet? And everything from affiliates to drop shipping to selling information products, that was our kind of for foray into, I say a bridge or a gateway into the technology world, but even super early on looking at folks like yourself and, Ben Greenfield and a few others who were even early then, yeah, we sold.

PDFs and workout plans and drop ship equipment basically all over the world and did that for, I think, probably 4 or 5 years. And then just fast forward a little bit, keep this story abbreviated a bit, but ended up getting into, we started a venture backed technology company. So we were developing software and content again, all geared towards how to live a healthier lifestyle.

And do that locally. So discover these things around you in your city. And that led us to fit insider, which is yeah, the business of fitness and wellness. We have a newsletter podcast, a bunch of resources jobs board as well as early stage investment fund that we invest in technology companies across health, fitness, wellness, very broadly.

And yeah, I’ll take the, comparison to morning brew, we’re not quite at, whatever, three, five, however, many millions of subscribers they have at this point. I think I just 

Mike: recently their copy says three. That’s yeah. 

Joe: But hopefully, yeah, definitely on that trajectory and leveraging that instead of saying Hey, how do we maximize advertising revenue?

Which we certainly do, but really building this platform that says, how do we build community around the operators, investors, executives, and fitness and wellness and really put as much value insight news analysis out there into the world that enables us to, help people build or navigate or scale their businesses in this space to hopefully impact and benefit people trying to live a healthier lifestyle at the end of the day.

Mike: Yeah, I love it. I love the progression. I find it, maybe a little bit personally endearing when, I come across people who have come into fitness the way that you have because it’s clearly something that you have gotten into because you wanted to help people like you don’t run. group fitness classes, unless you like helping people get into better shape.

You don’t personally train people and you don’t have any success at least in it, unless you actually like helping people get into better shape. It’s nice to see that. And then now you’ve taken that and sounds like you’ve gone from strength to strength and figured out, okay, how do we make a bigger impact?

How do we, Make a bigger business. How do we find, what do we really like to do again to spread the gospel of health and fitness, but what are, and it’s fun also to, as I was talking to you offline just about this, but it’s fun after doing something for a long time also to find A new game that is in line again with your passions, but maybe allows you to do something bigger or something that you’ve always been interested in getting more into the online world and then the tech world.

And so that’s cool to hear. And so speaking then to your current venture what are. Some trends right now that you’ve seen in the business of fitness what are some of the things that are where that wave that you’re seeing that the wave is starting to build or maybe it’s even starting to crest, it’s not petering out, like we’re just seeing the beginning of it. 

Joe: As we talk about it now and think about the path that it definitely wasn’t as linear as it seems in hindsight. It was very, it never is. Yeah. But it was very much like heads down and just figuring out what can we do? What’s working? What’s not working? Move to the next thing.

And so it’s it’s only in hindsight that it’s oh, wow it really did work out that it was like, how do we go from teaching 1 person to a group of 10 people? To a hundred people to a thousand, so on and so forth to you accelerate that impact. And it’s now, how do we help a bunch of people who are starting and running companies impact thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people like at scale.

So yeah, it definitely wasn’t the original vision, but nonetheless, here we are, and just thinking about what you talk about. What are the trends right that the people are thinking about? What’s the finding fitness right now? And I think a huge part of the reason that we started fit insider and frankly, at least a piece of why that it’s working is because a lot of what is said or discussed about the industry is very like headline driven, very almost sensationalized, right?

Especially when it comes to the business. Because you see the pelotons of the world and Fitbit’s in the news and, all these companies that are wearables and all the technology pieces, and that’s certainly important, but delving deeper into what’s actually happening. I always start from the perspective that the vast majority of people.

Don’t exercise at all. They’re not gym members. They don’t work out. They don’t think about, what they’re eating. And I say that because that means the industry is relatively untapped, right? There’s so much more opportunity and really need to create solutions for all these different people who the existing.

Kind of products don’t appeal to them maybe they don’t want to go to the gym. They don’t want to figure it out at home and work out by themselves. And they’re certainly, making call it the wrong decisions when it comes to nutrition and all the things that go along with that. And yeah, fitness wise over the last couple of years, we saw this kind of evolution from just the gyms, right?

The planet fitness is of the world. You sign up. You. Probably don’t go to be honest. And if you do, maybe you’re hoping at least. Yeah. That is the business model. It’s built on breakage, meaning like they’re signing up more people than could possibly be there at any 1 time. And so if all those people did come, it’d be bad.

It wouldn’t be good for them and they know this. And so then you got into this world of boutique fitness. Where it was much more curated, the amenities were on point. The instructors are, look like you right there. They’re out there leading the way and they’re super charismatic and delivering a really high quality experience, but it’s expensive.

And it’s not for everybody. And then all along from. Type O to P90X to, sweat into the oldies. Like this at home fitness thing, like always existed. And now what we’ve started to see is like from the Pelotons of the world, like, how do we integrate this in a way into a package or bundle that people want to engage with it?

They stick to it. They continue more importantly, from a business perspective to pay for it on a monthly basis. So you have this subscription aspect. In addition to the sunk cost of a 2, 000 piece of equipment. Plus what is Peloton? It’s 50 

Mike: a month or something. It’s not cheap. 

Joe: Yeah. As far as 

Mike: monthly subscriptions go, that’s high.

What do we pay for Netflix these days? Like 15 or something. 

Joe: Exactly. And so and they’re experimenting with the price all the time now to figure out what people are willing to pay and how they, maximize the value there. Even in the most recent years, call it up to 2020 pre pandemic, the biggest innovation wasn’t at home fitness or connected equipment.

Even it was the bundling of that service into the package hardware software content, right? Such that they can continue to get you to pay for it on a monthly basis. Oh, by the way, the hope is that like you continue to improve over that period of time as well, because if you’re, if you adhere to almost any form of exercise long enough, like it’s going to work.

So people fell in love with it and they’ve done a fantastic job and they’ve spawned the creation of, we’ve called it like the Peloton of X strength training, boutique fitness, cycling, treadmill, so on and so forth. Pilates, boxing all these different companies have launched in that space.

What you saw happen with the pandemic was. When you don’t have another option when you can’t go to the gym, when maybe you can’t get your hands on dumbbells or free weights and these companies that are providing all of these like connected solutions people rushed out and bought them.

And now we’re seeing obviously the tide has turned a little bit. The pendulum, the honeymoon has ended as people are now venturing back out and. Maybe not exercising at all. Not using that equipment or maybe not paying for that subscription anymore. So now we’re really entering into if the pandemic pulled demand forward, meaning people who were likely to purchase these products over some period of time, they just did it in that condensed period of time. Now what’s the next thing? What is the next thing that people are willing to pay for or somehow solves that? And what people across the industry talk about right now is 1 personalization.

And that means like going beyond so often when people talk about personalization, they thought it comes down to actually preferences. So the introduction to personalization is preferences, meaning what instructor do you like? What modalities do you like? What music do you like? How many days a week?

Are you working out? And that’s super baseline. That’s Not actual personalization. So getting to the place where you can take That’s a good 

Mike: start though. 

Joe: You can 

Mike: imagine if you’re one of those consumers, you’re going to take, even if it’s just that level of personalization, you’re going to take that over none.

Because if it does actually. affect the service. Now, in some cases, this would be fake personalization, right? Where you’re taking the survey and you’re just going to get the cookie cutter recommendation anyway. But if it truly does go, okay, if this is what you like, we can craft that experience for you.

There’s value in that, right? 

Joe: Absolutely. And that is working for people so much so that you see if you go into any of these Facebook groups for a Peloton or tonal, which is like a connected strength training device, people are raving, right? They love it. They love that. They’re essentially getting the recommendations of how much weight to use, or maybe which class to take or.

Even a playlist, like it’s referring them a playlist and they love the playlist. Yep. And so it’s certain, see that’s smart. 

Mike: You think of what Netflix has been so good at with tweaking their algorithms to find things that you might like. 

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a huge kind of step in the right direction.

But I think the potentially more interesting thing and what’s going to separate some of these companies when they get into true personalization is like they know based on. Maybe my wearable device or a sleep tracker, or because I logged my calories or meals, like, how much activity do I need to do to lose or gain weight?

What do am I recovered enough to be able to do this high intensity interval workout? Should I take today off and they refer me a meditation session instead? Am I injury prone or overtraining? And can they give me a protocol for that? And really getting down into those details to say really take the guesswork out of it for people.

Because I think especially when you. Just starting out, it’s like you hop on the bike, maybe, or you hit the weights and then you’re super sore and you’re like, shit am I supposed to feel this way? Should I work out tomorrow? Or how many days do I take off? And you’re probably not eating the right things to recover from that workout.

So all of this gets it all becomes hurdles and. You end up not going back that next day, or not using the machine again, or whatever it is. So if you can remove those barriers and that friction from the experience through true personalization, I think it unlocks a whole new world when it comes to.

The end game, right? If you’re talking from a business perspective, retaining members, and if you’re talking from like an outcome perspective, like actually making progress towards your goals and adhering to it over a long period of time that’s definitely one of the trends that are like top of mind right now.

And how much 

Mike: of that do you think is legitimate value versus unnecessary complexification for the purposes of marketing? 

Joe: It’s a great question, right? Like this, that speaks to the broader kind of contradiction of my life. Almost when it comes to being in the fitness space and the technology space is that base level, you don’t need any of this equipment.

You don’t need any of this technology. You don’t like all the bells and whistles. If you walk, ride your bike, do bodyweight exercises, maybe swing a kettlebell, eat, clean, kind of real food, sleep, not smoke, like you’re going to be in a great spot. That’s where like I am and I’m like, man, I wish.

That worked for everybody, but clearly given the rates of obesity, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, heart disease, so on and so forth. It doesn’t it’s not working. And so that’s where I come to this other side, right? I’m pulling in 2 different directions. What do we need to do? Do we need to come up with a solution?

The personalization do we need to come up with and we can potentially talk about gamification, right? And what that does for people. And does that inspire people to work out more? Do we need to come up with like turnkey diet, weight loss, nutrition, whether it’s meal plans or supplementation or blood tests?

Maybe. And so we hope that by creating this content and talking to these founders and funding these companies, like some of these things are going to break through in a way that maybe who would have thought that calm or headspace could mainstream meditation and mental health in the way that they have.

Who would have thought that Therabody and Hyperice could mainstream essentially myofascial release in recovery practices in the way that they have. And so you go down the line and it’s yeah, that is the hope that you can create these categories. And yes, some of it is marketing hype. No, you don’t need these things but hopefully it does unlock like real value for people.

Mike: Yeah. I’ve thought about this in the context of particularly Legion and personalization in the world of supplementation, where You’ll see some of these companies, you’re going to take some sort of test. It might be a blood test. It might be a DNA test. And then they say that, for example, they’re going to build you this custom multivitamin specifically for you.

The marketing angle smart, but when you look at the product, is that necessary? No, it’s not. And is that even better than a well formulated product? Multivitamin. I would point to legions not just cause it’s mine, but I think objectively, if you look at that formulation, I can tell you, it’s a very expensive product to make.

We don’t skimp on it. And so I would say that if you compare legions triumph, just are quote unquote, we do have a different formulation for men and women, but if you look at that and you compare that to what you’re getting with this fancy personalized multivitamin, you’re going to be worse off with the ladder.

And I also, I’ve seen a lot of appeals to science that are dubious where you’re getting this DNA test and this, you’ll also see this in the diet and training recommendation space, right? Where the they are. claiming to give very specific diet recommend, like even down to avoid these certain types of foods or set your macros up this way.

Train this way, work in these rep ranges these volume ranges, blah, blah, blah, based on your DNA. It sounds nice, but my understanding is that the science is is very new and a lot of these supposed. Correlations between certain gene expressions and then certain physiological differences that would warrant these changes are tenuous to be genuine, to be generous.

If not just wholly invented. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t pursued it. I wish. It were otherwise. And if somebody could make a really good evidence based argument, I’d love to hear it because then I would offer it. It’d be in my interest to do that. I haven’t yet simply because although I like the marketing, I don’t like the ethics of it.

Joe: Yeah. And I totally, not only I get that, but I agree with that sentiment. And it’s there is the best case scenario. The hope is that. Somebody is developing this technology that they are developing a test or a protocol or some way to actually test whatever it is, my blood, my microbiome, my saliva, you name it and recommend some type of diet or maybe a whole regiment and I think this is just like pushing further down that personalization path.

Maybe I’ll try to bring it full circle, but the hope is that somebody is creating that. But short of doing that, most people are marketing this, preference based or cookie cutter template of, oh, if you check these five boxes, we give you this thing versus this thing. And it’s it’s not really based on me as an individual.

It’s based on like overall, like general aggregation curation of pro versus con or risk factors or like overarching, like super high level things. So it’s again we’re trying to go as like saying okay, who is developing that biosensor or that wearable or that testing process, whatever that is like.

Going through some level of clinical validation or trials, or if not FDA approval, something along those lines, or they’re at least funding the study of this stuff to say Oh, this test, this process, this, it works. And here’s how we scale it and here’s how we distribute it. So someone like yourself could go to them and be like, Oh, we’re going to use so and so’s a hundred percent.

And I think, so the idea there is we’ve talked about it as trickle down health that if you, and it’s. This is not like this is applied in other industries, like Tesla, for example, where they’re trying to fund this super high level premium, whatever car battery software, and they slowly over time, bring the price down such that it’s like widely available.

And there are plenty of other examples, right? Of companies that have done this in the fitness and health space. There was a time where Gatorade was legitimately free. For athletes on the field going super hard formulated for them. And it’s Oh, it works. And so like now there’s all kinds of things like too sugary and like all the stuff that goes behind that.

But the idea of like hydration and what is healthy hydration and how do you do that? Same thing with a heart rate monitor, for example, it was developed. I think in Finland for Olympic athletes. And it was like, Oh, this works. And it has applications to the consumer kind of market. So like, how do we get it there?

And I think. And there are a kind of handful of companies now that are doing this kind of like testing process and developing the protocols. Everybody from one’s called Zoe and they’re a microbiome like testing company and they’ve developed diets and processes around what does a true personalized diet actually look like?

And 

Mike: what are the benefits when you compare it to? Just, I guess you could say smart evidence based eating, which would be you eating enough protein and eating several minimally three better is probably five or six servings of vegetables per day. Ideally you have a nice you eat the rainbow as our moms would say, it actually is a good idea.

They throw in some fruit, you throw in some grains, maybe some seeds, some legumes, and you throw in a little bit of indulgence if you’ll, if you want that. And that is a. We have a lot of research on eating like that, and we know that works really well, and especially when you combine that with regular exercise, like you mentioned, not smoking, not abusing alcohol.

And, of course, you don’t need any special anything to do any of that. And so what I would be most interested in is how some of these more forward looking technologies compare to that baseline. Even though I understand the argument of what you were alluding to earlier. It’s almost like the noble lie, right?

Where, all right, fine. We are maybe misleading people a little bit as to the importance of this and really the efficacy and how evidence based it is, but if that’s what it takes to convince them to start eating well and to start exercising, if we were to simply eat healthy. Dumb it down or make it less sexy.

They wouldn’t do it. Are we really doing anything wrong? And I understand that argument, but I liken that though, to just any type of argument where you’re saying the ends justify the means and that, that is used and has been used to justify major. Atrocities and like sociopaths and psychopaths love that line of thinking.

And of course, the counter argument to that, though, is is it necessary to be dishonest, though? Is there another way that it could be done that is honest, that produces the same outcome? And that’s just the, some of the thoughts I’ve had and just watching how this stuff evolves.

Same. I’m right there with you. 

Joe: And that’s the, ultimately I think part of it too, is like you mentioned getting into this industry and personal training and group fitness in the first place from the perspective of just like really wanting to help people. And I think we bring that perspective to the technology industry and to all these different bells and whistles in a way that like other people don’t, because I look at it and we constantly part of this game, is like sifting through nonsense and being like, This is bullshit.

Nobody’s going to use this. It’s not going to help. And your background 

Mike: helps with that because you actually understand everything. I’ve been talking about. You’re not just dazzled by money. 

Joe: And I think even a step beyond that, like we understand it from the perspective of being me. In the gym with a mom who’s crying because she’s putting in all this time and she’s not seeing the results and she’s doing the right things.

And what does that human side look like? What does the empathy look like? What is the discipline and consistency look like for people who are doing this? And yeah, there are plenty of times where we just straight up have to say this is nonsense. And we can’t.

Support it, or we’re not going to but I, and truth be told there are plenty of companies that it’s way easier to make money than it is to have actual health outcomes and the, in the consumer space, especially they are not held accountable to that. And so I guess my answer or kind of caveat to what you were saying, which I completely agree with, right?

If people did. Practice moderation, ate healthy, ate real foods ate vegetables, enough protein, slept enough, did all those things. It would go a long way. I guess on the flip side of that, there are, there’s this kind of approach that is called sometimes food is medicine. Sometimes it’s called prescribed foods, but the idea that, You know, 85 plus percent of healthcare spending is related to chronic diet related conditions.

And so once you get to that point, like, All of the maybe exercise isn’t going to work right away, especially for somebody who’s like pretty bad off, or maybe like moderate diet intervention is not going to work in that same way. How do we tackle this problem? And this is probably getting in too far in the weeds, like health care wise, but like, how do we tackle this problem such that health care companies and insurers are incentivized to pay for this so we can help get those people healthier.

It ends up benefiting all of us. That’s a way different. like thing than like a personalized supplement that might not be personalized. But that is an approach and an emerging kind of like sector that I think could potentially end up evolving what we’re doing from like a diet nutrition.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike: And like you mentioned earlier, that is the biggest Potential market. And those are the people who need the most help. Talking about these hyper quote, unquote, personalized supplements. I would bet that a lot of the people on those subscriptions are in pretty good shape already.

And the, it’s nice to help those people but they don’t need nearly as much help as the people you mentioned who currently are very out of shape, very unhealthy, not doing anything. But who would like to do something, they just haven’t done it yet, or they’re not sure what to do yet or maybe you might be able to get to people who are maybe run one wrong down in terms of their progression, and they’re not thinking about it yet, but they’re not happy with their situation.

They’re not ready. To make any major change, but they’re getting there. So how do you get them there? And then how do you get the people who want to make a change to do it in a way that is sustainable and is going to keep them going, right? You mentioned gamification. Is that, I think everybody listening, I guess you could quickly explain what that is.

And I’d be curious if, I’ve seen attempts at it in. The space, but it is, has anything really stuck? Is there anything that’s interesting that is up and coming that has caught your eye? 

Joe: Yeah, it’s definitely and just to maybe tie a ribbon around what we were talking about we have to break this mold of selling.

New and more things to the same group of people. And it’s we keep, we try to come back to that time and time again. It’s the easiest way to make money. As 

Mike: you mentioned, it really is. Once you have people who are buying stuff from you, the easiest way to talk about, you know this, but one of the easiest ways to grow a business is once you have an established customer base is just make more things for them to buy.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. You can do that in a, in an ethical way. But. To your point, it really depends on what are you trying to do? Are you just trying to make as much money as you can? Or are you trying to also have an impact in people’s lives and in some of these more alarming trends that we’re seeing?

Joe: Yeah. And so that’s a good transition, I think. Cause it’s something I’ve been excited about into the gamification space. So There it is a buzzword, right? There’s all different. There have been many attempts at it from Oh, just simply putting in game dynamics, meaning like, how do you get a badge?

Do you get a reward? Do you get a high five from somebody or from an instructor or virtually like all these things that just like in one way or another incentivize you to continue to participate or go on to the next level or stay engaged. And so I think that was probably the previous. Call it generation or attempt at gamifying workouts.

And the reason why it’s interesting, right? When you talk about appealing to a new audience, the, especially among younger generations, Gen Z, et cetera, the level at which they’re participating in e sports like call of duty, online gaming in general. Like living in like virtual world, whether it’s Roblox or, other somewhat early, but virtual reality, like they’re, it’s a billion dollar industry.

It’s growing super fast. They have professional teams, like focused on this. I don’t follow it 

Mike: at all, but I remember seeing a clip. There was like a huge stadium of people to watch. I was like, wow, this has come a 

Joe: lot, especially internationally. People making millions of dollars like playing online games, but beyond that, just like spending all of their time there.

And so it’s if their attention is there and they like it. Okay. How do we use this for? Let’s call it good in this case, right? Health getting people moving. And there are a lot of things about the gaming that is. Addicting just like social networking. And so like, how do you take those dynamics, put them into something that like makes you healthier in some way.

And so the evolution that we’ve started to see in that space are with companies like Zwift is a good example. It’s a virtual cycling and running game. So it’s like an online platform, but instead of going on and seeing a fitness instructor, you are basically a virtual. Cyclist and you’re, I don’t know what the right word for it is.

I want to say emoji, but it’s emoji emoticon or avid. There you go. Avatar was escaping. Me is going around the screen and there are different worlds and some of them are recreation. So it looks like, Mario cart, right? But it’s cyclists and you’re going around the racetrack you’re doing. Very popular call like tour de France segments or popular routes around the world or just like virtual worlds that they’ve created.

And within that game, there’s you and all of your stats. It’s hooked up to what’s called a power meter indoor trainer. So it’s translating. How hard are you going? What rate are you pedaling? What’s your heart rate? Where are how many miles have you logged and you can do. Cool. Individual training rides, or you can do group rides and races.

So your buddy could be around the world. He’s also doing it. You’re racing him, your head to head. You’re logging these miles. And so it just becomes this virtual race. Just like the cyclists would go outdoors and basically spend an entire weekend or more traveling to this race, going potentially getting a flat tire, it’s maybe raining and the event gets rained out.

Now you’re able to do that. Anytime, anywhere, basically from home or on your bike. That’s very cool. I like 

Mike: that because there’s no deception. There’s no pseudoscience. It’s selling fun and it’s selling exercise and it delivers obviously for, I I’ve come across that and I, the popularity better than I do, but I know it’s doing quite well and that’s very cool simply because.

It is it’s just making exercise more enjoyable and I’m assuming, if they haven’t already vr has to be coming, right? Yeah, we 

Joe: can talk a little bit about vr, but just quickly on Zwift insofar as they’re petitioning for it to be an Olympic sport. They have professional races. They sponsor, All different types of events, there’s professional cyclists on there.

So there’s a whole industry around that, basically, yeah, this whole other segment of it where, it brings these people together and me as maybe an amateur or somebody who’s interested in it. I can compete with these pros, or at least see where I stack up against them, or maybe even go to a competition.

Yeah, there’s all types of more interesting ways in which this escalates to get more people involved. But yeah, on the topic of VR, and I probably should say if it wasn’t. Apparent already, just in terms of, just talking about contradictions and how I think about it. These things aren’t for me.

It’s I have a garage gym that I have the full set up. I love going down there and clanging weights around and running around the neighborhood and pushing a sled and doing all those and totally disconnecting from the world. When I do that, no wearables, no smartwatch, no heart rate tracker. And that’s my escape.

But now when you look at something like VR, it’s who does that appeal to? And it’s maybe somebody who never picked up a weight before and they don’t want to. 

Mike: To, to what you had mentioned earlier, maybe just people who otherwise might do nothing. And that just, for whatever reason, that’s what makes it click for them.

Joe: Yeah. And it’s cool to see and learn more about the two best examples are probably one company called Supernatural which was, it’s a VR. Basically, virtual fitness studio, they make all types of different games from, objects flying at you that you’re smashing with a sword and ducking and moving around to dance games and boxing and they were recently acquired by Facebook or now meta for reportedly 400Million dollars.

Yeah, doing super well, and certainly. If you follow this space intently, Mark Zuckerberg has talked about how he thinks what he calls like the Peloton of virtual reality is Oculus as a fitness platform, basically, or at least some offering within that as being a fitness platform. So that’s why they bought Supernatural and they’re continuing to develop new games and different features around that.

And another 1. Maybe to FedEx are does similar fitness gaming and your, you, why you are also does the fitness gaming and, track your calories and the headset and workout. Progress and all the gamification elements that you would think they go along with that. Yeah, it’s definitely growing quickly.

And obviously, when you have somebody like Facebook making an acquisition of that size in the space, it signals that they think it’s going to be quite big right now. It’s still, VR hasn’t reached that hype cycle or lived up to it in the way that people thought it would. Yeah, 

Mike: I’ve Yeah.

I’ve only, I don’t even know which one I put on. Maybe it was the Oculus and I’m like you all of this stuff is not really for me personally, I thought it was pretty cool. I was like, all right I could see in 10 years, this might be actually impressive, it’s pretty neat. Hey there.

If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new?

Word of Mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Are there any surprise Wins that you’ve seen that just stand out where, or maybe even flops, I’ve seen this in the supplement space. For example when that company ghost first came out, if I had the chance to invest in it, I probably would have passed.

Although maybe if I would have learned who’s behind it and how much money they were putting into it, I actually might have thought differently, but all I didn’t know that initially. And that’s an example of something that I would have. I thought that this is going to fail. They’re selling supplements to 18 year old kids purely as a lifestyle play, just like trying to sell all sex.

It’s all sizzle. It’s no steak. It’s just gathering up a couple influencers and saying, Hey, I have money. I have girls, I have cars. And. I drink ghost protein and I did not think that was going to work. And now, I’m guessing their revenue is probably North of 80 to 100 million a year. So I was wrong, but I’m sure you have some examples like that both ways, right?

Joe: Yeah. It’s, when I think about I don’t know, even flops. It’s it’s not so much that maybe they went out of business. It’s just maybe more surprising that it didn’t work out or maybe didn’t work out to the level that it was intended to. So just a couple off the top and this, it speaks to some broader trends that we’re seeing.

So more recently, you have a company like Lululemon, they acquired mirror, which is like a interactive workout program. Screen that goes in your house, and they also have a subscription and content and a whole bunch of things that go along with that. They paid 500M dollars for that company and they’re now figuring out what the integration looks like.

How do we get Lululemon customers to buy mirrors to subscribe to the content? Do we put them in the stores? Do we have events that like we show them off like all these different things? And they’ve recently rolled out like a pretty aggressive plan to. Maximize that acquisition and obviously like another example of that is like Nike, who has like the Nike training club, the Nike run club, they do so much around like engagement and building this lifestyle of activity.

And they did it without any hardware, right? So mirror is like a physical piece of hardware. It’s thousands of dollars just 

Mike: through, through an app basically is how a series of apps, right? 

Joe: After they shut down their fuel ban, right? They were like, the original wearable 1 of the original wearable makers.

So they moved away from hardware. Actually, when they saw what apple was doing. At the time, I think it was like, 2014, maybe earlier than that. But Tim cook was on Nike’s board and he was obviously at Apple and he was like, Hey, we’re making like the wearable and we’re going to take over the space.

And at that time, Nike basically said, okay, we’re going to wind down our fuel band and figure out another path forward. So I’ll have to say like this crossover of like, how do we engage people digitally, but also like around health and fitness and this lifestyle. One that didn’t work out so well. Under Armour spent almost a billion dollars acquiring my fitness pal at a mondo and a couple other companies.

They launched a connected shoe. They launched like a health kit did not work. So all they ended up selling off my fitness pal. They wound down almost all of their. Digital fitness offerings and have moved away from this, like technology angle as these other companies I’ve ramped up in that space.

So to me, I think that’s one that kind of stands out as did not work. How do you integrate this health fitness lifestyle with the retail side of it? Can we sell people more shoes? Can we figure out what they’re training for? Can we recommend them products? So like definitely didn’t work and maybe down that path, even though it was acquired and it’s still a big company. They have a lot of users, but like Fitbit was the preeminent like wearable before now, everybody, Apple, obviously with the Apple watch, but you have companies like aura and whoop and others that have come out and. Really taking over that space in a meaningful way.

And Fitbit was right there, like way ahead of that didn’t develop. 

Mike: I was surprised to see whoop success given where Fitbit was at. When it came out, I didn’t know enough about the space to like necessarily bet against it, but I just didn’t, I didn’t see it. I, and. Fast forward to today, it’s interesting was whoops breakthrough, was it via golfers?

Is that really where 

Joe: they had a kind of a big breakthrough around golfers. So everybody from like Rory McIlroy to Justin Thomas and a bunch of others Tiger woods has like basically been like spotted with it. And some of those players. Athletes invested in the company. So like Rory McIlroy is an investor, Patrick Mahomes is an investor and a bunch of others at this point as well.

So they benefited from what we’ve called like the athlete investor playbook, get these guys to buy in super early, get the kind of authentic marketing around it. They promote it. Then they use their data, they take Patrick Mahomes data from a Super Bowl, his heart rate, like his recovery the night before, like his performance throughout the game.

And they basically published that data as like content marketing into whoop. It’s it’s pretty cool how they did that. 

Mike: I don’t pay too close attention, but I think I saw them. They have a podcast, right? Where they get Rory on and I’m sure they’ve gotten Patrick on. And so then, creates more hype around that product.

And that’s That’s very shareable content as well, because I’m guessing those guys don’t do many podcasts. 

Joe: Yeah. We’ll all met as the CEO. He does a great job and they have their podcast. But I think in addition to the athlete piece, which was definitely a huge help, it was what they did with, they it’s called a recovery score.

And it’s not about your activity data, right? It’s not about how many steps you take. It’s not about, how many calories you burned necessarily. They give you this measurement and display of how much strain did you do during the day. And then based on that strain, how recovered are you?

And then with that recovery, your readiness score. And it’s like red, yellow, green. And they display it in the app. There was a time, especially when they were first starting to catch on that. If you typed in whoop on Twitter, for example, it was like. Screenshots of people’s recovery scores and that concept versus, Fitbit, which was like an arbitrary, which is really unproven at this point, like 10, 000 steps, this idea of am I ready to perform and strain and all those things I think was a big unlock for them.

Mike: That makes sense. And is that solely based on HRV heart rate variability or are there other factors? Yes. 

Joe: There’s other factors, but a huge piece of that was heart rate variability. So they also like basically mainstreamed that idea of now people who nerd out on health optimization and the data and wearables, it’s super common to talk about.

Heart rate variability and blood oxygen levels and like REM sleep and like tracking all these things again, beyond calories or steps or like super high level numbers. It’s almost like status quo, like table stakes that you have heart rate variability, Fitbit does it now or a ring does it as well.

It’s you pretty much have to have that to get into the game. 

Mike: And it sounds like also then who did a good job paying attention to what was really resonating which maybe was this recovery point and thinking about how do we lean really heavily into this? Because people like this, which is just good.

It’s a good business practice. 

Joe: And it was also another way of saying, like, how do we make a sleep tracker without calling it a sleep tracker? 

Mike: Yeah, more than, yeah. 

Joe: And so all the things that go into that and all the practices, of course that, from meditation to avoiding alcohol to, recover taking rest days when you need them and all those various things that again have evolved.

Not only what a wearable is, but what you’re measuring and how you’re thinking about your health. Oh, by the way, if you just slept enough and didn’t drink alcohol, like we talked about before. I was 

Mike: going to get 

Joe: to that 

Mike: because it is funny. Whoop had sent me a band some time ago and I, I wore it just for the sleep tracking because I was curious disturbances.

I was just curious, actually the correlation between disturbances, which is just when you’re people listening, when you’re moving around, you’re not awake necessarily, but You’re not in that catatonic deep sleep state you’re moving around a bit. And I just wanted to see the correlation between the number of disturbances and how rested I felt.

And there, there definitely, there is one, no question, more disturbances means more restless sleep, right? And so I thought that was interesting. The recovery metric, I personally did not find interesting. I do know a bit about HRV. And I know that it’s not as simple as if you watch the trend, it can be useful.

So if your HRV is trending downward, that means that you are falling more and more behind in recovery, I guess you could say. And if it’s trending upward, the opposite is true. if it’s static, if the trend is static, then you’re recovering fine, but To, to look at an individual reading, it might be quite a bit below your baseline, but that doesn’t actually mean that, Oh no, you’re not recovered well enough to go do your workout today.

I would get occasionally an anomalous, really low recovery just cause my HRV fell. Even though the previous day was like a rest day, I didn’t even lift. And. I wasn’t cutting and I slept fine and I felt great. But according to the device, Oh, I was in the red. And on the flip side, I, I would have instances where I slept terribly and do not feel good.

And you go PR. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or before the recovery, I’m in the nineties or whatever, and I’m green. And then there’s that point as well, that, just because you didn’t sleep well and you don’t feel so great. Yeah, your workout might feel a bit harder, but you can go and train.

Now, if you have a string of seven nights of terrible sleep, all right, maybe you actually should just chill out and give your body a break or something. So anyways, people would ask me about it. And I don’t say that necessarily to criticize whoop, cause I do appreciate them sending me a band.

I just, that was my experience. That’s the summary of my experience. 

Joe: Listen, I’m with you and maybe the realistic borderline pessimistic view. And then maybe the optimistic view, like I, I’m fortunate enough also to like, try out a bunch of these devices and, have had them all at one point in time.

I don’t use any of them. Yeah, I stopped using it. Cause I was like, Oh okay. That was interesting. And again, for me I pretty much try to sleep exactly the same every night. I eat almost the same things every day. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I get it. I get it. When I had an off night I know when I had an off night.

So there’s that level. And so I don’t use them, but then there are people that swear by them and got them totally hooked on their healthy habits, which is fantastic. And then the step beyond that is this is, whether it’s whooper, any other wearable device, or even H. R. V. blood oxygen levels, measuring sleep, you name it.

This is a point on a very long journey to. What does it look like to actually you wake up, you step out of bed, you’re whatever you go into the bathroom, the bath mat that you’re standing on senses, everything like your weight, your body composition, your measures, your heart rate does everything scans.

You puts a reading on the mirror. It tells you these things happen. This changed. You might want to do this. You might want to do that. Like you have. The device that you wear on your wrist, you don’t even have to look at your phone again. That’s all it appears maybe on the mirror on your television screen.

Then would you want that? Would you, I think if it were like that ubiquitous and frictionless, like the thing I don’t like about it now is I, you have all these different devices and this is part of a trend slash opportunity in the broader industry is that. So I am the target customer, right?

For all of these things, and I have the disposable income. I would probably buy them or try them. And if they worked, I would pay for it forever. But the problem is it’s still all so siloed that I have to figure out my workout over here. Then I have to come over here and figure out my nutrition and meal plan, come over here, figure out my mental health, like whatever type of wellness, anxiety, stress, come over here, figure out my sleep and it’s I’m paying for 6 different subscriptions and devices and none of it works together and it doesn’t sync up and it takes up way too much time.

It’s I’m just going to do the Majority the right things as much as I can, and I’ll figure it out and get, 80 20. And that’s 

Mike: exactly the point, right? Where by just sticking to the simple Luddite approach of doing the things that, work, that’s the 20 percent that gives you 80.

And do you want to be messing around with 6 different apps and. Data sets and to try to maybe stretch for another 5% not 

Joe: really. And I’m not a professional athlete who gets paid millions of dollars to figure this out. And I don’t have a team of people working on it. So no, I’m not going to do that.

I also want to have my life. If it could happen seamlessly. That just I woke up the measurements, this, it told me that do this. Don’t do that. Your food’s being delivered at this time already prepared already cooked to the exact specifications. Here’s your workout. This is what you’re going to do when you go to the gym.

I would, yeah, I would definitely sign up for that. And I think, we’re certainly a ways away from that, but that’s where we’re going. And this is already happening in some sectors where you look at remote patient monitoring and just like ubiquitous health sensing in a house or in a room that alert somebody if, an elderly person falls, or if they haven’t responded in a period of time, like all these things.

It’s happening when you look at the broader trends and zoom out across like health and health care and wellness more broadly, but piecing it together. I think there’s a huge opportunity not only for different companies to do that, but when you think about maybe M and a, like mergers and acquisitions or companies coming together or partnering strategic partnerships those are the things that get super interesting beyond peloton, who’s, obviously the company that springs to mind in this space they say, oh, we want to have 100, 000, 000 members. That’s the, our big goal. They have 7, 000, 000 members, which is like nothing to, write off 100, 000, 000. That’s their,

And it’s what if you had whatever, take your 7 million, but you impacted their life across nutrition, stress, wellness, like all of these different recovery, instead of saying Oh, we want to be the sole fitness brand. What if we were the wellness integrated health and wellness platform?

I think somebody will do that and it will be a massive company. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. That’s an interesting, I think of some of these more sophisticated nutrition apps that are out there that do a good job managing your calories and macros for you more so than, something like my fitness pal.

It’s basically on you. You need to know exactly what you’re doing. Whereas some of these other apps work with weekly numbers and daily ranges and adjust them. things based on what actually happens and you have to input body comp data. But if you do, then it’s almost like having a nutrition coach that is there to just tweak things for you.

And I don’t know of anything in the training space yet that is going to be harder to do, but. Theoretically, I think it probably can be done. So somebody probably will do it. And as you mentioned, as you get more of these pieces, eventually they could be stitched together, or maybe somebody big is, they’re going to develop a lot of these things in house and again, offer that all inclusive experience.

Yeah. 

Joe: And there’s that opportunity, which is build it and, or consolidate it, somebody comes in and buys a bunch of these companies, rolls them up. Yep. Or on the other end of the spectrum, what it’s starting to look like in some areas is that’s what Google is going to do. That’s what Apple’s going to do.

And there’s a whole list of, privacy and monopolies and all that stuff that, that has to data and all that comes up when you go down that path. But when you look at Google buying Fitbit, integrating with Samsung, building their health OS, releasing a pixel watch, having an entire healthcare, like in health research.

What are the obviously that kind of signals? How do we do this? And same thing with apple from apple watch to apple fitness plus to health kit, their research kit. They, you name it. There’s been reports that they’re doing, glucose monitoring, heart rate, sensing a primary care service.

Amazon is already doing primary care. They released a health wearable. They released a fitness platform. Except for those companies, they’re so big that it’s not interesting for them to go after the 100 billion dollar global fitness market. They want to go after the 4 trillion dollar U. S. healthcare market, the multi trillion 100 trillion dollar global healthcare market separate conversation.

But that’s what it looks like is a kind of integrated bundle. And backing into who’s paying for this. How do you incentivize it? And does it get anybody any healthier besides just spending a bunch of money? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s interesting. Having the behemoths come into the space. Certainly cause changes. That’s for sure, because they have enough money to do anything. It just takes time. But let’s let’s wrap up with talking about supplementation. Is there anything particularly interesting in the supplementation space or thoughts as to where you think things might be going?

Yeah, let’s say good things that are on the horizon. Plenty of dumb and bad things. 

Joe: Yeah. You obviously you’re the expert in this 

Mike: area, way more than me. And I wish I had a great answer to my own question. I got asked this by somebody who he works for a big talent agency and, there’s maybe some interesting potential synergies between Legion and this group.

We’ll see where it goes, but, so he was asking about. Innovation. He was like, he doesn’t know much about the space. So he’s Oh, you have some of these companies and they have these collagen supplements, collagen protein. And they’re like, yeah, there’s no innovation there. That’s actually just bullshit.

Especially college and protein is just garbage. And that’s what I told him. I have enough of a relationship with him. I don’t have to be. Diplomatic, so to speak, I can just explain to him like, collagen protein is garbage. It’s trash to your protein. It’s cheap. And there is a big coordinated marketing push behind collagen.

You have some big wins and some companies, big acquisitions, but unfortunately, in supplementation, there is so little true innovation because as you mentioned earlier in this interview, that it’s much easier to just make a marketing pitch that makes a lot of money It’s much easier to do that than it is to do real research and create something that is truly unique.

Joe: Yeah, it always has been to some extent like the wild west when it comes to supplements that like they’re not regulated. We don’t know what’s on the like is what’s on the label in there, like all the things that come along with that. So I’d say and not as like a cop out answer, but as far as what’s realistic, even the idea that companies are now taking and like planning their flag.

These are clean ingredients. We’re sourcing this ethically. We know what’s we’re putting it on the label that this is somehow verified and tested. And there’s that clarity and transparency on the ingredients and all the stuff and the production and where it comes from. That’s what we’re doing.

That’s a huge step from where we were, like, just not a couple of years ago. So to have brands doing that and also like removing fillers, removing sugars, removing like all the stuff that again, 

Mike: In my case, just artificial ingredients all together. I know that some people don’t care about that, but a lot of my customers, they do care about that.

That’s one of the reasons they pick my stuff. 

Joe: And that’s huge. That’s huge for me personally, with the stuff that. That I choose and use as well. It’s like just having that clarity around like what I’m putting, obviously I care about what I’m putting into my body, so why would I go and take all this junk, but yeah, I think that’s probably like the most apparent to me.

The other one it’s, I would say trend wise is what you talked about from the collagen and a lot of these, whether or not they work again, there’s no regulation. There’s no hydration. 

Mike: Electrolytes are another that you mentioned that I wish I could sell one and with a clean conscience because we get asked all the time to make one.

I’ve looked at a lot of the research myself. I’ve spoken with people who know a lot more about this stuff, professors who have looked at research. And unfortunately, the best pitch that I could honestly give is if you do long workouts, multiple hours, if you’re like an endurance athlete and you’re outside in very hot weather, then you might benefit slightly.

From an electrolyte supplement. And part of that benefit is only that it’s going to encourage you to drink enough water because it makes it tasty. There’s that. And there are a couple of other benefits that you might, it might make it worthwhile, but it also might not because it depends on your physiology and how you respond.

You might notice absolutely nothing. Not many people are going to buy that product. If you’re just a normal person going in the gym, doing your workouts a few hours a week, this has absolutely no relevance to you. That’s like at least 80 percent of my customers. So 

Joe: yeah, it’s like mostly like the whole conversation, but just taking that a step further, like beyond the supplements themselves and whether or not like personalization gets to a point where it’s actually effective one, I guess good thing is like how this has made its way into just like better for you food and beverage in general. Like same thing with supplements, same thing with everything else we’ve talked about here today. There’s a lot of snake oil. There’s a lot of like slight of hand.

There’s a lot of claims that aren’t backed up, but like in general, the idea that like, oh we’re aware of. Protein in this particular food, and now we’re adding protein. So that makes it easier to get. We’re removing sugars and refined, process, highly processed, artificial ingredients.

We’re thinking about what are the quote unquote, functional benefits of the things that we’re eating? And they’re just putting it into different drinks, different foods, different, you like, you name it beverages in a way that It just makes it widely accessible. So it’s like just in me opting for this, whatever drink no, it might not increase my performance.

No, it’s not going to make me superhuman, but it’s it’s better than me drinking sugary soda. It’s better than me eating like white bread, like whatever it was that I was going to do otherwise. So I, I’m someone who’s like. Again, I eat the same thing every day. I’m super boring. I don’t really think about the taste is maybe weird as that sounds, but like for other people who it’s like, we just made it moderately better.

And like the ingredients, it does have a higher protein content, or it does have lower sugar did switch out this, whatever artificial ingredient, like that’s coming from the awareness and like the overall growth of yeah. The supplement industry and like the recognition that these things are healthier and we’re not getting enough of them in our diet.

So like, how do we give it to people in a more accessible way? So it’s not like directly on the nose supplementation, but I think it’s a super interesting and impactful kind of trickle down. 

Mike: Yeah. That’s definitely being driven by. By market forces, by people caring more about that stuff.

And, that’s something I’ve talked about from the beginning is, as consumers you’re voting with your dollars, as they say. There’s a lot of truth in that. So you as an educated consumer making a choice to support a company that’s doing some of these things that, that.

These positive things you just mentioned. If enough individual people do that, other businesses start to take notice and then the whole industry starts to shift. And I agree with you that, that is, that shift is occurring at a kind of macro level. And that’s encouraging. There’s more talk at least about.

Science based formulations. Some of it is disingenuous, but some of it is not there. I’m not the only one making good evidence based products, and that’s nice to see as well. And, something else that this is something that I’ve thought about and at an individual product level, although I would not say that any of my products are innovative.

I don’t think that’s the right word. However, because I’m willing to spend a lot more on my products than most of my can, my competitors, I am able to make unique formulations that contain ingredients that are not normally seen. Like in my joint supplement there is a form of type two collagen that has good research for improving health and function in joints in both healthy joints and dysfunctional joints, which is pretty unique, but it’s very expensive off the top of my head.

I don’t know the exact number, but I’m going to guess just that ingredient alone. I want to say it costs me around 8 a bottle just to put that ingredient in it. But that is an ingredient that I got excited about because it’s unique in its mechanism. The research is solid. And again, it can benefit people with healthy joints and prevent development of arthritis just through an inflammation and a reaction that it’s basically it’s an immune, so it’s like an autoimmune reaction that eats away at joint cartilage over time.

So through choosing those types of ingredients and saying, yeah, I’m willing to accept a lower margin on this product, whereas normally the pill products are the super high margin and the powders are. Low error, and then protein super low. That’s the normal model protein. You might not even make much money on pre workout.

You might not make much money on, but those get you, your customers, then you sell them pills that have huge margins. That’s normally how it works. And something else that, I’ve I’ve also tried to do is, and I’d be curious as to your thoughts, just in, it’s really just a business strategy as as and as obviously people listening know, I put a lot of emphasis on educating people and helping people understand that supplements are supplementary by definition, and even the best supplements can only do so much, but if you’re looking for.

A quick fix, a miracle pill powder or potion. I would love for you to find your way to my powder or pill, but then understand the limitations of any of these products, this whole category, and then understand what you really need to know and do to get the result that you want, because you’re not buying the pill or powder just to have a pillar powder swallow.

There’s some sort of result, I’ve tried to, I’ve tried to distinguish. Myself and Legion more at a brand level than trying to do some of these other things that we’ve talked about to lead people to believe that my pre workout is just so utterly unique and personalized or, proprietary science or anything like that, simply because there’s no honest way to do it that way.

But the other way can be done, honestly, 

Joe: yeah, and I think that’s part of what you’ve done from the beginning, almost how it grew very authentically and organically is you, again, we got into this because we wanted to help people. And so we created content about that. You wrote books about it.

We had websites about you create whatever content marketing around it. You. Build the brand around it. You personally are the front man in some ways for that. So it’s very much ingrained in what you were preaching and not in a bad way, but like adding value to the people to talk about what this lifestyle is, how you go about it.

Oh, by the way, you live it personally. And it’s crazy, not only around supplements and nutrition, but across the industry in general, it’s hot, like competing with folks who do have whatever the professional athlete investors and do have endorsements from X, Y, Z, celebrity. And you look at it and you’re like, man it’s tough.

It’s sad that like consumers are getting tricked by that, like in so many different ways just because X, Y, Z person was like, Oh, they founded the company or they put their name on it or, what have you. And so I think there’s that aspect of just. Being authentic and being genuine about wanting to help people from the content that you put out from the brand to the ingredients to the margins.

Like at the end of the day, in some ways it’s like only, that in your heart of hearts and you have to be like, have the conviction to be like, this is just how I’m doing business. And I don’t care that if, I could save myself 8 a bottle on these pills, but I’m not going to do it because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

And consumers have to understand this fact that in some ways, whether it’s. Wearables or subscriptions or supplements, like all those things are optimizing, they’re tweaking, they’re dialing in. They’re like percentage gains that are getting you closer. It’s there’s no point in optimizing if you’re not doing the foundational things consistently and, showing up every day in the gym, showing up every day and eating the right foods.

Sleeping, mental, like all the things we’ve talked about, almost , kicking a dead horse at this point. But yeah, 

Mike: that the standardization of all that has to come first, right? Or what are you optimizing 

Joe: Exactly. There’s, you can’t, do the final 1% if you haven’t done the baseline 99% and do that every day for years and years, basically.

And yeah, I think it’s, and it’s important to say that and it’s cool that. You get on podcasts like this and in the content and everything else. And say that Hey guys, I would love to sell you this thing, but it’s not going to solve all your problems. Like it’s not Yeah. Or like 

Mike: BCAAs I wish the evidence were otherwise, because I get asked all the time why I don’t sell BCAAs and I’ve written about it and it’s in my financial interest.

To think otherwise, but the evidence is very clear that these supplements are good for basically nobody. If you eat enough protein, you do not need an amino acid supplement of any kind branch chain or essential. You’re going to get it all from your protein. Don’t worry about it. I have a list. I was thinking it might even be Worthwhile to add this somewhere.

Maybe I don’t know if it would go in the store, but somewhere where people here are all the things that we don’t sell. And let me explain why here are all the ingredients we don’t use, or at least some of the more popular ones. And here’s why to me, 

Joe: when you look at again, we’ve talked a lot about trends and opportunities and who’s doing what that really opens the door.

To what’s basically called like human in the loop services, we call it accountability as a service, but like this idea of how do you help someone navigate this? How do you help someone make these decisions? And not in a way that it’s like. Data wearables and personalization, all those things, but like actually giving you a coach, giving you a coach for your fitness, giving you a coach for your sleep, giving you a coach for your nutrition.

We’re an investor in a company called future that does this for personal training. Oh, cool. You have 24 seven access to your coach. You text them, they design your workout plans like everything. And just a couple other examples. There’s a company called wellery that does this for nutrition. You take photos of your food.

You send it to your nutritionist. They make your meal plan and a company that’s earlier, but called Crescent that does it for sleep. They. What are you doing before you go to bed? What’s your routine? What, did you drink coffee supplements so on and so forth and all those things. It’s like genuinely help people navigate this and do it in a way.

Because what you’re saying, it’s you essentially have to like, stand up there on the mountaintop and just shout hey guys, I’m trying to do. What’s in your best interest 

Mike: one day, one day, I think you’re going to appreciate my message, even though I understand right now, it doesn’t have the allure of if you just take these pills, you’re going to lose 30 pounds in 30 days.

Joe: You’re like, yeah, they’re like, 

Mike: help me help you. But Hey, that’s on me. That’s on people like me and you and other people, if it’s not going as well as we would like, That’s on us. It’s because of our failures to communicate persuasively enough or to be clever enough. That’s how I look at it.

I actually, I don’t place the blame necessarily at the other person saying, Oh, it’s just because the people are so stupid. And I don’t think that’s a productive way to look at it. 

Joe: No, I think that’s the exactly the right, like to say, it’s all those things like. Why aren’t people buying my product or why aren’t people clicking subscribe, or why aren’t people engaging with my content?

It’s oh, they must not like this that the other thing it’s no, man, it’s like, it’s not compelling enough. It’s not engaging enough. It’s not resonating in the way. So it’s get out there and keep tweaking it until people figure it out. And it’s basically at this point, every day we get up and think about, like, how do we reach more people?

How do we get this message? Like, how do we engage? How do we help more companies and founders? That’s the game every single day. How do we put out more compelling content and get people to subscribe? You’re in it and it’s just like this constant process of reexamining what you’re doing and being.

Super self aware that you don’t have it all figured out and it’s pretty much a moving target. So like you got to start over again almost every day. 

Mike: And you gotta be willing to try things and not have them go to plan. And, I thought that earlier when you were mentioning how it might seem like you had this clean linear progression and, I can relate to that too.

When I published bigger, leaner, stronger, I 10 years ago. Now I had no connections in the industry. I just self published it. I thought, It was going to sell somewhere between zero and not zero copies. I had no master plan whatsoever, but I tried and saw a signal in, in that, Oh, this actually people were buying it.

It was growing. There was traction and then just followed that. Signal and figured out how do I make that stronger? And that’s something that just is important for anybody listening in business is you generate hypotheses about things that you think might work out. You gotta figure out then what’s the easiest and what’s the least expensive way in time and money to test this hypothesis.

Is there a signal here or is it just noise? Do I need to go back to the drawing board? And the faster you can iterate on that. The faster you can find something that is worth pursuing seriously. 

Joe: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know who said it, but it’s a strong opinions loosely held. And that’s like knowing what you’re doing, but also being willing to change or be flexible or double down or back off.

And it’s like, when we first got into, personal training group fitness, now we have a gym and all that stuff. It’s we started a website To get more people to go to the gym and hopefully they would find it on, local search and whatever else, all those reasons, but that turned into, we were writing on the blog.

Oh, wow. A lot of people are visiting the blog. How did they find this? So then we started, we doubled down on creating content for the blog. And then I started writing for, Okay. Men’s health and shape and all these different. And so we got some level of awareness outside of our local area. And we were like, what do we do now?

So we started creating PDFs and workout plans and the information products. Then you started getting, we started getting some traction and awareness among the broader industry, fitness professionals, the certification companies, and they were like, Hey, can you do this for fitness professionals? And we were like, So we started developing like certifications and teach like all the things and it was just like we were moving generally in that direction, but it was just a matter of saying okay, this thing is working.

This thing is not working. Let’s go. Let’s do it again. And we were super fortunate in that at our last company, which was a consumer facing company website and app and, software. We started just publishing, it wasn’t even called Fit Insider at the time. It was just a newsletter to friends. We just put their emails in the, in the recipient line and send it out, once a month or whenever it was.

And people were like, we’d love this. Can you send it more? Can you send podcast? And so we just kept pulling that string and now that is the business. So yeah, it’s crazy how those things work out, but very much just staying dialed in to what is working, what’s not working. And again, being aware enough to know, like we want to go in this general direction and flexible enough to, navigate that as it happens.

Mike: Yeah. That’s great. I love that. It’s makes me think of yeah, I don’t know who said it but like in somebody, somebody smart like in these opportunities that, that you come across in business to whispers, like many people that they have the wrong idea. They think that great opportunities are like fog horns and they just stop you in your tracks.

That rarely is ever the case. It’s almost always just a whisper that if you are tuned in, And you catch it and you go, maybe we should see where this goes. And sometimes it goes, sometimes it doesn’t. But 

Joe: yeah not to get too woo, but that’s one of my favorite books is the alchemist. And if you haven’t read it, like it is that, and it’s the idea.

Is that who, who wrote that? Paul. Is that Paul? Yeah. Paul O’Connell. I’m probably saying it wrong, but but basically. Mission and life is to find and pursue your calling. And the only way to do that is be like, dialed into it enough to like, start taking those steps down the path. And if you do, basically, if you pursue that and commit to it, the whole world will conspire in your favor to make that happen.

And it was like, I was. I don’t even know when I read that probably in high school maybe even younger. And it was just like this crazy unlock of oh, man there is another way that isn’t just get the perfect grades, get the job, work your job for 30 years, do whatever it is.

And at that point, because I went to school to be a teacher and I was a history teacher and a football coach and obviously took it, took a turn down a different path. But it was all like, with that realization that, yeah, there, there is another way. And it’s if you pursue that.

It these the whispers, right? The doors, the everything starts to feel like, oh, man I just have to keep this going and work super hard. But you got to be, you got to pursue it in the 1st place. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s that is great advice. Something I completely agree with. And I won’t.

Repeat my version of the story you just told, but it’s very similar when I wrote that first book. It was just because I like books and I like writing that’s why I wrote it. And a friend of mine at the time he was training with me. And so I had gotten pretty lean for the first time and I looked pretty good.

And he’s dude, you should just take your shirt off on YouTube and just do like workout videos and sell that when you 

Joe: publish the blog. I remember that blog post. It was like. How I, whatever, lost whatever weight or gained 30 pounds a month. It was like it was like the definitely launched you into another stratosphere.

If that’s what you’re talking about. 

Mike: Oh no, I don’t even exactly remember that but this was before bigger. I even wrote bigger than you’re stronger. I was just some dude in the gym and who had gotten into pretty good shape and help some other people get into good shape.

And I was like this this could help a lot of people. I like, Books. I don’t care to go on YouTube and take my shirt off. It’s just not interesting to me. Even though you could make a good business case for it it, you could make a much better business case. Actually, for me, just going and taking my shirt off on YouTube versus writing a book as a self-published author with no connections, nothing like that’s not a hard business decision to make.

But I was not interested in YouTube and I’m still not really interested in YouTube, to be honest. I much still prefer writing over. I wrote the book because that’s just what interested me. And I like reading. I like books. And I was like, yeah, I’m going to do this just for fun because I think it would.

I’m just curious to see if it could go anywhere if anyone cares. And I put the book up initially for 99 cents on the ebook. There was no audio book. There was no hard copy. It was just a 99 cent ebook that was bigger, leaner, stronger. The first edition. And I did that Only because I was just curious if anybody would read it and care, it sold, I think 20 copies in the first month.

But that, that to me was actually exciting. I was like, yeah, 20 people bought my book. That’s cool. And then I think it sold like 40 the next month. And I was like that’s. Double what it sold in the first one and and eventually, picked up from there. And I put an email address in it in the beginning saying, Hey, if you have any questions, send me an email.

And so I started getting people asking questions. And so it got up to a point where later I was spending probably on average four or five hours per day just answering emails from people. But that was me just following the signal, very similar to. Your story. So it’s awesome. Yeah. It’s a smart way. I think also looking back just for people still listening.

If you’re thinking about getting into business for yourself or this would apply also to people who maybe have a certain level of autonomy inside a company, almost like an intrapreneur type, where I do think, and this is something that I certainly will do in all future business endeavors. I think it’s very smart to discipline yourself and.

This becomes actually even a little bit harder as you become more. Successful because when you have money to throw around and maybe you have a lot of now of the work delegated, you have time to throw around. I’ve seen this people make this mistake where they will invest heavily in something that they should have scaled it down and figured out a way again.

What’s the idea? Here. What’s the hypothesis of why this should work? How are we going to what’s the value proposition? So to speak, what’s unique about this? What’s going to appeal about it? And how do I test this idea as quickly and efficiently as possible? As opposed to I love this idea. I have money.

I have time. I’m going to spend all the I’m going to, we’re going to go two years into development and then it doesn’t quite pan out. And, it’s just I’d say top of mind ish for me these days with other projects that I want to get into. I’ve learned that approach that I just shared is not only the most productive, but also I think the most enjoyable because.

It is pretty annoying to put a lot of time and money into something and then not have it go nearly as well as you had hoped and then look back and realize where you like the wrong assumptions that you made. For example, maybe I can think of projects in my head. Case where it was just one wrong assumption, really like that part of my hypothesis was wrong and that’s why it didn’t go nearly as well as it should have or could have if I would have just went back in the beginning and figured out, all right, before I put all this time into this, how do I test this hypothesis?

I could have learned that sooner, pivoted and done something that, 

Joe: Yeah, look, I’m right there. I would even go a step further and say and from my experience, look, it’s super hard to build a business. Like it’s in all of those challenges and all the things that stack up against you and all the hurdles you have to figure out and navigate.

It’s so many times. We’ve gone down the path of like just being hardheaded and stubborn and like banging our head against the wall. Make this thing work, make this thing work. What’s it gonna take? Try this, try that, do this, do that. And it was always like a sis Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

And at any moment it’s gonna roll back down on you. And then there’s those times and you talk about you talk about testing it and being thoughtful about the value proposition and figuring it out. Like all that. Even if it’s less formal than that, like. Where is the pool coming from? Like the pool from the market telling you that you should do this.

And I don’t mean in the whisper way that we talked about with the alchemist I’m in, in the way, like, where are people putting money on the table? What are people buying? What are they clicking on? What are they like, what are they asking you for? And it’s Oh, no shit. It’s I just have to do this and give people what they actually want.

Provide the value that they’re asking, like actually asking me for, give them the service for the demand that already exists. It’s instead of me just banging my head off the wall over and over again to try to figure this out. And it’s fortunately, we’ve, there’ve been times in the, whatever the course of our, businesses that has happened.

And there’s been times where it hasn’t worked. And like now very much with Fit Insider, it feels like there’s that pool that this is the thing that people want. Oh, by the way, we’re the people uniquely positioned to be able to deliver that thing. And we just got to figure out how to make it the best thing possible.

And it’s all the pieces are right there. As hard as building a business is, it’s It doesn’t have to, and it shouldn’t feel impossible at all times where you’re just grinding. So yeah it’s a crazy feeling. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. We could probably keep going and going. It sounds but I, you’ve been generous with your time, so we should we should wrap up what’s let’s share with people where they can find you, where they can find fit inside or anything else in particular that you would want them to know about.

Joe: Oh yeah. I really appreciate you, you asking and having me on again, but yeah, I would just tell them. Fit insider. So it’s insider. fit. co. We put out a weekly newsletter 

Mike: with two T’s, right? Oh, correct. Yeah. I’m going to put the link in, but for people who aren’t seeing the links. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that insider dot fit with two T’s F I T dot C O newsletter, podcast, website, industry, news analysis reports.

We create a bunch of different resources, like an industry specific. Jobs board an investor directory. So if you’re an early stage company or founder looking for funding, like we help connect people there and then we also invest in companies and founders that are building in this space. And yeah, if anything we talked about today was interesting, you’ll probably like the stuff that we do over there.

Mike: You had mentioned hybrid athlete. I think I did come across that some time ago, but I didn’t connect the name. So 

Joe: we ended up selling it a little while back, so we don’t still run it, but yeah, that was. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just anyway, I came across fitness. I was like, this is cool. I like this.

And so here we are. Awesome, man. But but Hey, thanks again. And maybe in a couple of months we can do another one if if there’s enough new, interesting things to talk about 

Joe: anytime, like you said, we could probably keep jamming all day. So you say when. 

Mike: Cool. Thank you. I hope you liked this episode.

I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you.

And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have. Ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email Mike at muscle for life. com muscle F O R life. com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.