Barbell Shrugged - Fittogether: Healthy Social Media Focused on Fitness w/ Anders Varner, and Doug Larson, and Scott Bowen - Barbell Shrugged - #480

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

**This week only, buy a Bundle, get 3 FREE Barbell Shrugged Resistance Bands. Only 135 in stock. Act NOW**   Scott is a lifelong fitness junkie and self-proclaimed “gym rat”. His love for fitness started off early in life developing a love for soccer and team sports. While most kids had books in their backpacks to bring to school and for homework, Scott always had a soccer ball in his. During lunch breaks Scott would go outside and juggle or practice dribbling skills while his classmates ate lunch.     Scott’s father purchased a “DP Home Gym” for their house in Montclair, VA and that was his first interaction with weight training.  It was not long before he was fully addicted to the ritual and started buying bodybuilding books and spending all his time after school in a local gym in Woodbridge, VA called “The Arena” with some of his best friends and soccer teammates.  Once the changes started to become noticeable and the strength started kicking in, there was no turning back. In the 30+ years of being in and out of gyms, Scott never took more than probably 10 days off from being in the gym until COVID hit us this year. S   Scott loves being with friends and family and, of course, sharing fitness stories and conquests. It really comes as no surprise that he found a way to build his future around building relationships and providing a platform like FitTogether that allows so many like minded people to gather in one place with the only goal in mind of helping every single member succeed in their fitness journey, TOGETHER.   In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Building communities inside gyms Taking action and using social media for good Building the Fittogether app to unite the fitness industry Eliminating negativity and just focusing on fitness How personal trainers can benefit from social media and Fittogether  How gym owners can increase sales and community using Fittogether  And more…   Download Fittogether: http://onelink.to/fittogether    Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram   **This week only, buy a Bundle, get 3 FREE Barbell Shrugged Resistance Bands. Only 135 in stock. Act NOW**   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.magbreakthrough.com/shrugged - use coupon code SHRUGGED10 to save up to 40%   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrugged family, this week only. Buy a bundle, get three free Barbell Shrugged resistance bands, as well as a brand new e-book, Bands and Bodyweight for Hypertrophy. You get a brand new training program, you get free resistance bands, and you're going to save 75% to 85% depending upon which Barbell Shrugged training bundle you purchase. Saving 75% to 85 percent on five to seven programs including training programs bundled with mobility bundled with nutrition so that you can reach your goals faster training programs the bundles everything's going out and on top of that you're going to get

free three free resistance bands with your purchase of the barbell shrug nutrition uh training bundle this week. Super excited to get this stuff out, and they're flying off the shelves. So make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. That's where the training bundles are. You can buy one of those. Get your resistance bands. Get your free training program, and go get jacked.

This week on the show, Scott Bowen from Fit Together. We've been talking about this app. We're super excited about it. We started working with them. It's been really cool because the toxicity of social media these days is just killing me. I can't stand it. I enjoy fitness. I like seeing people work out. I enjoy seeing people doing healthy things. It's good for my eyeballs. It's good for the information that I digest to have healthy people doing healthy things. It's good for my eyeballs. It's good for the information that I digest to have healthy people doing healthy things around me and in my newsfeed. So I've been off of Instagram a lot. I've been off of Facebook a ton in the past year just because it's so toxic. And Fit Together has really been helping just keep things more focused. And we had Scott Bowen on the podcast today.

And you can get over to Fit Together in the app store. It's F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together, in your app store. Download it. You can find me at Anders Varner. And then search for the group Barbell Shrug. We've got a bunch of people in there hanging out, chatting, and having a good time. So get over to the app store. It's really fun to be able to just see a fitness-focused social media app.

Gym owners, you can set your gyms up. Personal trainers, you can set up just some really cool fitness-specific stuff to build a clientele on the app. It's a little bit of a combination between LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram all in one. So there's a professional setting to it, which I am set up in there as as well as gym owners, you can you can set your gym and class time. So fit together. F I T-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, the Fit Together app. Download it on all of your devices. And here it is, the CEO and founder of Fit Together, Scott Bowen. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Vard or Doug Larson. Scott Bowen from the Fit Together

app. Today, we are talking about some social media. More importantly, not just social media, but like the coolest idea to come out of social media more importantly not just social media but like the coolest idea to come out of social media in a very long time because when i go to facebook first thing that happens to me i get annoyed i get angry i see all the people they're talking about politics they're talking about race they're talking about all the stuff i just want to see people doing deadlifts that's all i want i want to go to Facebook. I want to see dudes. Even if you're a good looking dude and in shape, I want to see it. If you're a hot chick doing deadlifts, I want to see it. And the only place to do that right now is Fit Together because it's a social media app just for

fitness. And dude, give me a little background about yourself, but I really want to hear why in the world somebody would really, I mean, developing an app is not like the easiest thing in the world. Why did you kind of decide to take this on and, you know, niche out the social media piece to just getting into fitness? Yeah, so I guess it's kind of a long story at this point, right? So by trade, I'm a technology consultant. You know, I basically spent the past 19 years of my life. I walk in and out of doors for large corporations. I sit down in boardrooms with guys with titles like CFOs and CIOs and things like that.

I listen to them talk about their business problems of the day and what they're going through. And then I try to figure out different ways to use technology to solve those problems. Right. Yeah. So a bunch of years ago, I was sitting in a boardroom with a very nationally acclaimed gym here in the United States of America. And I was listening to their execs kind of bitch about churn and problems with trainers and not being able to keep people around. Overall, lack of connection to their members, just basic type of stuff, right? And during the course of the conversation, they were obviously trying to figure out ways, I think, at that time to spend less money with the technology that I was at the time

selling to them. But as I was listening to these guys talk, it became really clear to me that what they really didn't need was necessarily more of the stuff that I was trying to sell them. But something completely different, something that none of the gyms had actually had. And it was just a better way for members to connect with the gyms, for members to connect with the trainers and kind of put everybody all into one place, right? There hadn't been anything like it up until that time. You know, there were definitely apps out there that people use for social and stuff like that. There's certainly apps that are out there that are used for even gym management, right? That just kind of have those certain aspects of the software for

gyms. But nobody had ever thought to put everybody into one place. So when I had the idea, it was more or less, I kind of had the thought process of a LinkedIn, but for the fitness community, right? Because I didn't want it to be just about the social stuff. The social stuff is obviously a huge component of it. And I think there's tons of people out there that probably feel like you do, Anders, and I do, you know, that in today's world, the stuff that we look at at Facebook, it's just not of any interest to me. I have no desire to log on to Facebook or Instagram or any of these things and see the type of toxicity that goes on in these apps all day right so that was certainly a driving force behind it but you have to have something more than just

I think the social aspect for it to be valuable for it to be a valuable business you know what I mean and so that's why I kind of added in the aspect of having the trainers and the gyms, because there are certain ways that you can obviously turn those into business aspects of the app to drive revenue so that when somebody sees that, you know, new investors and people like that, they see it as something more than just people just doing, you know, deadlifts and squats and stuff like that. There's an actual business element to it. So that was kind of the driving force behind it. I will tell you that taking it on i whatever somebody tells you it costs to start up a business it's probably 10x that or 20x that yeah if somebody fucking tells you it's easy they're lying through your teeth um it's only easy because you enjoy it i love it i i've learned

more but it's still hard it's ridiculous you know i have had uh in the past bunch of years i've had people overseas steal code from me i've had friends here stateside that i've paid tons of money to to do development for me for certain projects that never came through never did the projects and just kind of left me hanging. You know, I've lost relationships over it. It's been the most challenging thing I've ever done. But, you know, to this day, this many years after I started it, the one thing that's never changed is the fact that I truly believe

deep down in my bones this is something that our community needs is a platform just for us with features built just for us where places like you and I and Doug can go on a daily basis to see the stuff we want to see but also not have our brains filled with the absolute toxicity that you see in places like Facebook I just can't take it what features are being most engaging for your current users especially stuff that's that uniquely different from Facebook or Instagram? Yeah, good question, right? So initially, right now, I think the stuff that you're seeing that's different, obviously, the use of challenges. Right now, the way that we have the app built,

we had to kind of jump on a certain bandwagon when we got on board because obviously, developing different things takes time and takes money. So we built our challenge feature and our goal setting feature and all that type of stuff on Fitbit, Fitbit technology, right? So wearables. So one of the things that's going to be big both now and in Fit Together's future is the use of syncing with all these different types of wearables and trackers to be able to do different things in the fitness world.

So I think for sure one of the things that you see more people using now just in our space, in our app, it's different than a Facebook obviously, is to be able to create those challenges with friends and other users and things like that, to be able to track your goals, whether it's calories burned and things of that nature, miles run, all that type of stuff. So you're starting to see people latch on to those different types of features. But you know, the interesting thing is it's so new. I think there's still a large percentage of our population and our users that are still kind of touring around inside the app and don't know all the cool stuff that it can do because there is so much that you can do

there's calendaring functions you know you can uh get trainers you can get time with your trainer all different kinds of things so i think we're still kind of learning what um what it's going to be and what people are going to want from us the most when i scroll my feed i see a ton of people that have posted their calories miles and steps uh what's the what's the benefit there i almost feel like it's automatically generated is that is that true that no well kind of right so the way that that works with fitbit is we only sync with fitbit at the time being so if you sync your your your fit together app with fitbit it'll pull your statistics directly from fitbit and pull it into your news feed onto fit together and the general purpose of having

those statistics brought in is so that people can use those when they create challenges or when they're tracking their goals and their steps and vice versa and all of those items are listed too we have a basically a dashboard that tracks all your appointments and training steps and vice versa. And all of those items are listed too. We have basically a dashboard that tracks all your appointments and training sessions and all kinds of stuff like that. And all your Fitbit statistics are all located in that particular spot too so you can kind of see what you've done for the day, how many steps you've done, calories, and everything else. The fact that you guys have kind of built in the opportunity

for trainers and gyms to make money does that provide like a a specific i guess uh advantage to you as an app so you don't get kind of stuck in that i feel like every time i i hear somebody talk about facebook uh or instagram of how it like the only way i shouldn't say the way, but one of the biggest ways and their largest way of making money is through ads. Is that, since trainers can go in and schedule things with clients and gym owners can use it and, you know, making money is built into it, does that keep the ad rev side as something you're maybe interested in further down the road or just as far as monetizing the app, how does that

work for you? Yeah. So good question, right? So obviously I think in an app like this, there's always going to be some sort of advertising revenue. I don't think there's really any way around that at this point. It's just a matter of whether or not, is that your sole source of revenue or do you have other interesting ways to create that monthly recurring revenue model which so many investors and businesses want to see right so that was kind of the um the reason why we built the app the way that we did with trainers and gym managers because there are certain things inherently that you can charge for with those types of users that they're used to paying for to create those different types of business models from that aspect, right? When you think about something like a Facebook, you know, you're like, well, what's the product?

Well, you're the product. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is selling every aspect of your, you know, your website and everything else to the highest bidder every 20 seconds, right? So in those types of instances, the only thing that is being sold is you. And a model that has... That's messed up. When you click that button, everything goes. Zuckerberg owns you. He's buying that big house because I'm out there doing deadlifts. He's selling my deadlift. Pretty much. And that's one thing. Right. But I mean, that's just, that's kind of how it goes, right? And I think there's now this,

I think the vast majority of people understand that I am the product and for some reason they've become okay with it. I think it's something that, you know, for some people it's a trade off. Well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to put everything on here because I know if I put everything on here, it's all going to get sold off to the highest bidder. And so again, you know, when, when we developed fit together, we wanted to make sure there was different ways to generate the revenue so that it's not only just a business, but there's other things that we can do other than just show ads to people, right? So that's why we kind of modeled it more after the LinkedIn model, which has been

extremely successful over the years, rather than something that's just a social network, where the only way to bring money into the house is by selling your users information. That's something we wanted to stay away from. What makes you feel like you can go and play in the game when there's such well-established brands like Facebook and Instagram? I mean, it's all the same person, but there's some big players out there, and LinkedIn for that matter. There's some really big players and LinkedIn for that matter. Like there's some really big players to, to step into that, into that realm. Yeah. And I, it's, it's certainly not an easy task, right? Are you going to own a whole block in San Francisco? Like Zuckerberg,

like a whole block, the big one. I would, I would, I would stay in San Diego. Differentiation. I like that. So I would not go to San, Anders. Ah, differentiation. I like that. So I would not go to San Francisco being number one. But, you know, competing, it's, look, I don't view myself necessarily as competing with a Facebook or whatever, right? There's never going to be another Facebook. I'm not stupid.

And I'm not going to get 2 billion fitness users on Fit Together, right? But are there maybe 25 million? Are there 50 million? Are there a hundred million people globally that might be interested in an application that is just fitness based, that is only going to be, you know, an environment with positive reinforcement and good people doing good stuff every day. I, I kind of bet my life on it. I have invested everything I have at this point into the thought process that if we give our communities something that is of value, that has these things, that they'll use it. And I still think that run by us, right?

So I think there's something to be said for that. Yeah. Are there ways that when you've kind of laid out the app that you have put in place so that it keeps things positive? Like I only follow fitness people, really. Maybe Joe Rogan, you could call him a fitness person. I do. Yeah. Um, but even my, my, my very fitness focused Instagram feed has turned very political, which leads me to a lot of unfollow or muting, not unfollowing, more passive aggressive.

Like, have you structurally built the app so that it stays more positive? Is that a possibility? So I think, you know, from a structural point, I don't know. I don't know what we could do in that sense to structure it so that happens. I'm hopeful, right, that the people that come join us, join us for the reason because they don't want to be around that other stuff. So far, we've been able to this point to not really see any of it. You know, we're kind of lucky in that sense. I think the vast majority of folks that have joined, whether it's been because of barbell shrugged or whatever other the case, they're coming for those reasons, right? They

don't want to have the stuff in their feed that uh is kind of clogging up their feet on a daily basis it's toxic and negative and all these things so have i built something no not necessarily i'm i'm in it you kind of get to the point i've thought of i've actually talked about this with the wife right well what do you do if it goes down that direction do you do you ban people or do you ask them not to do it and all this thing and for me that's troublesome because you know one of the problems i have with social media as it is right now you know i i feel like they censor things right if it doesn't fit their that was going to be the one i wanted to ask you next yeah so keep going it's yeah So for me, that's kind

of, it's a man it's, it's walking a fine fucking line. I'll tell you that because I don't want to get to a point where I feel like fit together has to censor things. I don't ever want to have to be the guy behind the scenes going, that's not for us. Right. Because that's, that's not what I want it to be. My hope is that it just doesn't go down that path. Good luck. You got here. Go down that path, right? But it seems like at every turn we go nowadays

that eventually it does. So you know what, Anders? I don't have the answer to that right now. I am hopeful that when folks come, they see the benefit of not having this thing, being surrounded by it and they just don't start it. I've considered,

you know, adding language to the terms and privacy, you know, to kind of talk to that fact, Hey, we're trying to keep it, um, in this direction.

And, you know, if you get reported or something, or if people find your stuff offensive, obviously we have ways to report those things. But as far as me being a censor of anyone's speech man that's not something it's tricky right so i mean really especially yeah especially with everything that's kind of going on in the crossfit space right now

um we we had no interest in talking about much of what was going on because we like to talk to experts that know things and we don't really know things about giant politics and world affairs and rioting that stuff's way out of our realm but then all of a sudden greg glassman does things that chucks it right in the middle of the fitness scene and we we kind of have to go in and do a show on it and luckily it was pretty well received um but there are you know when we have such like a fitness focused group of people and you know at some point i feel like we we do get into a place where censorship or like where, where do you draw the line?

I guess is, is a, is a really big question and it's hard to answer because I feel like we're, we're very similar to what you're talking about and that I don't, I don't want it to deal with it. Much less do I want to deal with myself being uneducated in a specific subject and then have to talk about it to thousands of people that don't really,

even though I'm telling you I'm uneducated in it, but then at the same time, it's like, you're kind of making a statement. But it's also very, very fitness focused and relevant to where we are in the fitness world right now. I guess, you know, when you put this together, are you designing it specifically for like we're posting workouts, we're getting trainers to do meetups? You know, are you able to stay away from kind of like the current affairs things and really keeping it by the features that you build in it to just having, you know you know, squats, deadlifts and bench press and calories. We'll have some walking. Yeah. Uh, it's cert again, man, it's certainly the hope that we can keep it that way. I think, uh, I think time will tell, right. I think, uh, at this point we've been able to keep it that way. I don't know. I think there's enough different features and things that we've built in that it's obviously, you know, between I keep thinking back to is when I, when I built the model the way I did.

When Facebook first kind of started a bunch of years ago, people would actually go there and you could interact with brands. You would see, you know, potentially gym pages, whether it's 24 hour fitness or LA fitness or golds that all had these pages on Facebook. There was interaction between the brand and the client, right? The user. I think over time, as you can clearly see, you know, that's all died away, which is a big benefit to the way that we built this. I think by giving gyms and the users and the trainers their own platform to talk and interact is only going to wind up helping us stay more positive. I mean, if you go through and look at some of these gym pages right now on

Facebook, they post every day, but nobody's interacting with it because everybody just goes to Facebook nowadays to basically talk shit about, you know, Donald Trump or Joe Biden or whatever, whatever makes them angry for the day. So I think by having this particular platform geared in the way that it's geared, again, my hope is that it just, by nature, keeps it more positive and keeps some of that stuff on the outskirts. Yeah, I'm actually super interested in that because Doug and I talk about it all the time. It seems like people go there to be mad now. Like, I don't want to be mad. I don't like being angry. Those are emotions that I would just try not to have.

It would make me a happier person if I wasn't going to a place consistently, but it turns out people get really addicted to that stuff. And then they go on and write these like long diatribes and then they're answering comments. Like it's, it's really challenging to keep a place positive and actually be able to have an interactive community. Almost as a business, because it's such an angry place,

you don't want to interact because someone's just always trying to do the gotcha and they turn businesses off. So how, I mean, when you're building that out and realizing that you're trying to keep people happy, how do we go about that? And in a space where like, people are looking for that gotcha moment on, on a business page. I don't want to get canceled, dude.

Why about shrug can't get canceled. I do. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm 100% on the same page with you. I would, I would honestly tell you if it weren't for the fact that Facebook makes me have a personal page in order to have the business page, I wouldn't even have a Facebook account. I would, I would never log into an app like that at all, unless I had to have this particular thing that they require me to have so that I can have a business page, which look, you know, for a business like mine, I've got to have that page. I don't, I don't have an option. Right. But me personally, if I didn't have fit together or by the time fit

together gets to be where it needs to be, I won't be on Facebook. I don't want to have anything to do with that platform, with the way people interact on it. it's just, it's bad mojo all the way around, man. And I feel like no matter, to your point earlier, I just want to do fitness, dude. That's all I want to do, man. Doug, that's going to be our next t-shirt. I just want to do fitness, dude. It seems so easy, right? I just want to surround myself with people that are positive, the people that set goals for themselves the way that I do, people that will log online and give you a thumbs up or, you know,

a fist bump for, you know, having a killer workout, all that shit, man. That's all I want. I don't want to be around Joe Biden memes, Donald Trump memes and all the other shit that goes along with just logging into an app these days. And I have no desire for it. Just what bothers me the most is, is watching friends and family that I've loved for years, you know, that get engaged with this stuff, and wind up saying things that are just outright mean and hurtful. And I don't think they realize that, you know, they're saying these things and like a fishbowl type experience and that,

you know, you might've just defriended somebody because now you realize that this person feels a certain way. And to me, it's just, I don't see any good coming from it lately. It's, it's really kind of troublesome to me, to be honest. Kind of getting back to the actual functionality of it. Where did you start from kind of the user experience of being able to go on? Doug was talking about tracking and linking

it up with the Fitbit stats that they give you each day. What were kind of some of the big rock must haves when you were building it out for the users? And then I'd love to just kind of progress that into the gym owners and what it can be for a personal trainer as well yeah so good question you know originally when we built it the the very first rendition that we had was only social users and trainers and so it wasn't until a little while after that where we added the gym members but when I built it I wanted to with the name like Fit Together, right, you kind of want to have something that is all-encompassing and has

something for everybody, which was always my intention. There's clearly a gym focus, right? I am a gym guy. I've been a gym guy since I was probably 13 or something, right? I don't think up until this COVID thing happened, I don't think I've gone more than probably seven or eight days if I was sick or something of not being in a gym. So the things that we wanted to build in were kind of multifaceted. We wanted to make sure we had that aspect of how do people connect with their trainers? How do people connect with their gyms better? How do people connect with other members of that gym better or even other members of other gyms, right? So you wanted to have that aspect of that community, just being able to talk and interact on a larger level and not just always be, you know, held down to just the 24-hour fitness on Balboa, right? You know, you want to kind of be able to meet people from all the way around. So that's why we built it that way. You know, there were so many things when we first started going that were challenging. And one of the things that we did to make sure that we had something for all

the outdoor fitness fanatics too, is we created these things called fit spots. And a fit spot is nothing more than basically just an outdoor fitness venue. That's kind of like, consider like an outdoor gym, like a hiking trail or something along those lines where basically you can create a fit spot. And that fit spot is somewhere where people go do fitness activities, right? Yeah. So once you're following a fit spot, you know, whenever anybody is doing something that fit spot, you'll get notified of it so that you can also go to this venue and potentially

have a new group of people to do things with too. So we try to really look at things from a holistic aspect of not just the gym, but also what are our runners doing? What are our hikers doing? What are our bikers doing? Mountain bikers and stuff like that. So I really wanted to make sure that we had something for everybody, right? Not just guys like me that just go to the gym every day. And that was kind of how the whole thing evolved from just being kind of a just go to the gym every day. And that was kind of how the whole thing evolved from just being kind of a gym space to being a holistic, you know, we've got something for everybody now. And that's the way we wanted to keep it. So yeah, see that you guys have goals quantified at the top of your profile. You tell me more about that. What's the thought

process behind having the goals quantified right on your profile? Yeah, so actually that's just all that does. That's just a counter, right? So you can use the Fitbit right now. Again, there's a couple other wearables that are kind of interesting to me. There's one called Atlas, which you guys might be familiar with, and some other ones that are geared towards more what you and I do, right, the weightlifting stuff. But the goals featured basically on the profile page is nothing more than a counter, right? So you can set your goals every day using Fitbit

for how many steps or miles or whatever you want to do or calories burned and stuff like that. And it has a timer set up. So after you achieve that goal, it'll consider the goal done and completed and then it'll go towards your goals completed number up on your profile page. So it's just, it's a simple little view to remind you that, you know, I did what I was supposed to do today. I hit the number, get the little check Mark type of thing and get a little bit of reinforcement on your profile page and that's it. So it just keeps track of the stuff nice and neat right there on your profile.

That's what that's for. When you check it off, you check off that goal does automatically post in your feed that you accomplished the goal. Yeah. You'll actually get a notification saying that you crushed your goal, right? And then people will give you kudos. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask about that, too.

Pat on the back, buddy. Then you got friends. You give people kudos as opposed to likes. It's kind of the same way to quantify a post so to speak what I know a lot of people are talking about how the downside psychologically of having likes quantified was there ever a debate to to not put a like button on there so to speak a kudos button in your case um not for us no I mean we're not like I know what you're talking about like with the Instagram stuff and everything where they're kind of thinking that maybe there's some detriment, you know,

psychology-wise or something like that to people that are constantly chasing these things. You know, and there's probably truth to that at some level, right? I do think from a fitness standpoint, though, it's kind of how we all interact, right? I mean, you know, you give each other, when you're a football team, you know, a little slap on the rear, you know, good job, here's your kudos. You know, it's the same thing we all interact, right? I mean, you know, you give each other, when you're a football team, you know, a little slap on the rear, you know, good job, here's your kudos. You know, it's the same thing in the gym, right? You know, you're down there throwing down a PR for bench or for squats or something, you want your boys to kind of give you the high five

or the knuckles or something, and that's basically all that is. I don't see it as being detrimental, really, and there was no, from our standpoint, there was never a discussion as to whether or not to have it I think they can the right you know with the right uses I think it's obviously helpful personal opinion again make sure you get over download the fit together app and all of your app store locations I also want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi Organifi has been with us for a long time. We're like three plus years with them now. Just love the stuff, the greens, the reds, and the golds. They've got

the immunity boost going on over there that's just flying off the shelves. We haven't even really been able to talk about it because they sell out as soon as they get stock. And the greens and the reds and the golds really are the big seller that I enjoy so much. Every time I get my shipment, my box is just loaded with the juices because it's got all the vitamins and minerals that I need that I don't get on a daily basis. And I'm pretty sure you're not getting them either. Two scoops of the green in the morning. I take a red before I work out. And then a gold at night if I have time and I remember to do it. That's kind of the stack that I take throughout the day.

Sunrise to sunset. And it's awesome. Keeps me going. Keeps me healthy. Keeps my systems going, especially my immune system, which is really important these days. We've got this COVID thing going. Gyms are opening back up. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you're going to save 20%. It's Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. You can save 20%. We also want to thank our friends over at Shadow Creative Studios. If you are in the market for setting up a brand new podcast,

you can go from idea to live in two weeks. This setup includes branding, logos, cover art, and more. It's an easy process. All you need to do is record and upload your audio and everything else is done for you. A perfectly produced episode shows up on all the podcast channels. There's a simple payment structure and it can even help with sponsors to make your show profitable.

Shrugged listeners. You're going to save $200. Here's the thing. Production of your podcast is actually a very, very tricky thing. I had no idea how detailed our producers are at putting the sound together, leveling everything out. I'm really loud. Doug's not as loud. Travis is a little bit softer. And it's really important that all of our voices are leveled so that I'm not screaming in your ear. Travis isn't a little bit lower. Doug's doing his thing. Everybody needs to be on the same page.

And if you're recording a podcast, trust me, you're much better at content and you're much better at ideas and creation than you are at creating high quality audio, which is really important because I know you've listened to podcasts that don't sound good before and you get your podcast off the ground, and you can use the code SHRUGGED to save $200. All you need to do is go to podcast.shadowste.io. So it's podcast dot s h a d o w s t u d.io. So think podcast dot shadow studio. But there's a.io podcast dot shadow stud.io you're going to save 200 bucks, you get a free consult to talk about your show, get everything off the ground, get all the cover art made all the things that you're not really interested in that actually make these shows go plus they can hook you up with um a bunch of sponsors to make your show profitable right off the bat and uh make sure you get over there get in the show notes to check it out and uh get back to the show here how does a trainer get a lot more pros and cons there for sure i agree keep it keep it crazy to take it

away i think so how does a trainer get on there and and actually start using it for business so a couple different ways right now in in the feature set for trainers and gym managers going to grow when you when you sign up for fit together right now you have three different methods of potential sign up right we cater to the three different personas you can sign up for Fit Together right now, you have three different methods of potential sign-up, right? We cater to the three different personas. You can sign up as a social user. You can sign up as a trainer or a gym manager. So if you sign up as a trainer, you'll get a different set of questions when you sign up than you would if you were a social user or a gym manager, right? And so as a trainer, you'll have access to some calendaring functions and things like that.

So your clients can basically go to you, see your calendar. They can look directly on there, see when you're open, see when you're not, send you a request for a session, all that kinds of stuff. And they can deny it or propose a new one, that type of thing. And they can also leave ratings for you too, right there on the app also, right? We have on the gym manager side, it goes a little bit further. Their tools are a little bit more in depth. They can manage their current trainers working for the day, their group classes, and things like that. They can see who their most active members are through check-ins, all kinds of things,

who's taking their classes, which classes need to be filled up, all types of little things like that. And then social users that are members of those gyms can obviously do simple things like add themselves to a group class or other things like that or view who's taking a group class through the app feature as well. So each of them have a few different things or a few different tools that are different than the other one to make it a little bit more valuable to them as a user. Yeah, there are gym owners that are going to be listening to this. So if you are a gym owner, can you set your class schedule up in there? Tell like each coach that I'm thinking more in like the,

the CrossFit gym space or the small boutique gym space. Can you go in and use that as kind of maybe not in replace of, because it doesn't run, doesn't do payment processing and stuff like that, but kind of similar to like a mind body or Zen planner, some of the functions that that program has. Yeah, so we're actually and we're finishing up right now. The dashboard for the gyms was built on the desktop, but we're actually finishing up the mobile version of that right now. So yeah, like a gym manager can set up group classes through the app.

You basically list how many spots are available in the class, who the trainer is, what time it is, all kinds of good stuff like that. And then after the gym manager populates all that necessary info for each class, it will show under the classes section of the gym page profile page so that users of the gym can go to that part of the app where it says classes on the gym profile page, click a little plus button, and it will add themselves directly to that particular class for whatever the trainer is or whatever the class is. There's also a view roster function, which people can basically use to kind of see who's already taking that class and whether or not, you know,

one of your buddies is already in there or something like that too. So absolutely the payment processing features will be probably coming in probably about a half a year or so. We're working on some of that stuff right now. It's going to have to change the design a little bit, obviously, because to be able to take the payment directly from the app and all that kind of stuff it just adds a little bit more intricacy into what we have right now right now you can add yourself you can take the class that assumes that you're already a member of the gym obviously and

you don't have to exchange money at that point in time yeah um i there are especially out in san diego this is the only place that i actually had it. Um, like the, the class pass, um, apps, do you guys see, uh, kind of going in that direction of notifying where there's open spots in classes, um, specific teachers that are coaching it. Uh, I think that that was like a, at the time it was a really cool thing. Um, after I sold my gym to just kind of be able to bounce around and see all the different kind of opportunities in San Diego. Um, is that

somewhere that you guys feel like, um, there's an opportunity or a place that you guys can grow into? 100%. And that's actually something that's on the docket. It's just a matter of, you know, all this stuff takes money and time to develop right so more than more than you thought too right more money more time yeah if my if my wife only knew you and i might not be having this conversation luckily she's super awesome and super supportive but yeah those things you mentioned are definitely on the docket you know i mean that's something that we feel there's a lot of value to you know for you know we want gyms we want crossfit boxes etc to be able to fill their classes quickly or to have people get notified if a spot opens up and you know we want to be

able to help them fill that we think that's important and i think um depending on how long some of these things last for these you know these new COVID rules and things of that nature where, you know, some of these classes are only allowed half capacity and stuff like that. Having the ability to notify your users if a spot opens up or, you know, whatever the trainer is, has a new class that opens up. Those things are all important now, maybe even more, more so now than ever because you got to be on top of it i i yeah i had my my uh local pool is opening up this week and uh just for me to be able to go swim laps

now me too i have to go on an app and schedule a specific lane at what time i want to go and you know dude my hoa is like there and And for me, that's difficult, right? For most human beings, it's like, well, I'd like to guarantee that I'll be at the pool by 1130 for a 45 minute slot, but you know, life happens, right? So we're starting to see more and more of those things. I think all across our community and the pool that I, you know, that I'm a member of is just one of those things but

the short answer andrews is yes we're we're looking into that stuff love long answers yeah i actually want to go all the way back to that meeting that you had where this idea pops into your brain because you like hanging out in gyms you probably don't spend a whole ton of time around like app developers and, you know, then translating what you, the problem that you want to fix to a developer that probably doesn't spend as much time in the gym as you, um, or like fully understand the fitness language. I would love to hear just some of the early stages of design and, and how long it took to actually get a product to market that you felt good about? Well, so that meeting occurred in probably 2009, if that gives you any indication of when this actually- I did the math right. That's 11 whole years.

Yeah. That's when that meeting happened. But then, to your point, you know, when it originally started, it was obviously absolutely a thing. It was just websites, you know what I mean? So when it first kind of started to happen, I actually, I met a buddy of mine who lives in San Diego who was a developer. And I told him, hey, I've got this idea for a thing. What does that look like? And how do we do it?

And I sat down with him and explained exactly what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it and all that kind of stuff. But, dude, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing about design. I knew nothing about user interface, any of those things right so um i i uh i screwed up a lot over the years um trying to do things um because i thought it needed to be a certain way or because you know my brain saw it a certain way but then you know the way that my brain saw it doesn't necessarily work with the way technology works type of thing right so yeah i i have literally failed a thousand times to get

it to the point where it is today where um it works it does everything it's supposed to do i think people are generally finding it easy to use um we get a lot of good feedback on it uh it just wasn't easy right and i've learned more about user interface and guis and all kinds of shit in the past bunch of years than i ever cared to imagine that i would right i'm a guy with a with a finance degree that you know sells software and data center services and stuff like that but it's been awesome you know i when you when it's your baby and you own it from start to finish you know you have a tendency to kind of take everything more seriously you want to learn every aspect of it and you know you really kind of put your heart

and soul into it and you you learn all these things it wasn't easy looking back on it i probably could have learned how to code by now and built the whole right built the whole damn thing myself but uh you know i've luckily i've had a job that's afforded me the ability to um keep a roof over my head and keep the wife happy and all that kind of good stuff paying other people to do the job properly and build it the way that it needed to be built anytime i work with a developer i just assume they like snap their fingers and the internet happens and i'm like no case, I give them a project and I'm assuming it'll be done by the end of the week.

And they're like, do you realize that what you just told me is like a three month long project? And I'm like, oh, oh, well, it's the internet. It's fast. I feel like it should be done already. It's yeah, that whole thing is insane. Dude, I want to know about your training though. How long you've been training for? This is like your street cred portion of the show where we get to talk about lifting weights. Yeah. I gotta know. I gotta know what

you do. I, I ever since I've probably been like, I don't know, man, 13, I have been in gyms. My dad was in the Coast Guard for 30 years. And he used to bring me and my brothers to the base when we were little, when he would play basketball, and I would just get up in the gym. Like, that's where I started, right? I had like, I think it was a DP universal weight set in my basement in Montclair, Virginia, started off with stuff like that. And then you get into high school and me and some of my buddies, man, we just started to kind of, we were all soccer players, but probably around, you know, ninth grade or so when you kind of start growing and able to kind of keep on a little bit of weight and all that kind of stuff, we really started getting after it and it just became

something that a bunch of us did every day. Never failed, You didn't miss, you never, you never called in sick. A buddy of mine would pick me up in his little brown Dakota truck without power steering. And we would go to this place called the arena down in Woodbridge, Virginia, and we would just lift until you can't lift anymore. And most of it, we just kind of learned on our own. When we were younger, you didn't really know what you were doing. You know, everybody wanted to bench,000 pounds or squat and shit like that, but it's been a lifelong process.

I'd say at 43, almost 44, shit, in a month, I feel like I'm at my best now after all these years. You've kind of got that old man muscle memory type of thing. You can get hurt and learn how to do things different. My training is a thousand times different now at 43 than it was at 23. No question. I had a back surgery and a discectomy when I was 32, which changed the way that I looked at everything when it comes to fitness, how I move, how I train, what I lift, all that shit. It's just, you know, I guess that's why they call it the journey, right? I mean, it's never really ends when it's a part of your life.

You're constantly trying to grow, to learn, to evolve. You know, it's why I pay attention to guys like you and Doug, right? I mean, the stuff that you guys talk about, the stuff that you teach, your programs, even the stuff that you did on about, the stuff that you teach your programs, even the stuff that you did on fit together with the bands for the past 30 days. Right. Yeah. It's it's always a process. I love it. You know, I go in, I put the earbuds in, tool comes on, Metallica comes on, whatever the fuck it is. And you know, that's just, that's my time man i don't talk to anybody i don't i don't mess around it's you know you got the game face on the caffeine

kicks in and that's that's it man that's my time yeah did you ever go the trainer route and coach people dude i feel like everybody that's 40something or late 30s that still lifts weights really consistently, we all started when we were like 14. Yep. I don't really know anybody that still does it that didn't do it when they were that young. No. It's like impossible for us not to, which is a good thing. No, yeah. for us not to which is a good thing no yeah and i i would tell you with 100 certainty that when if i don't do it for a couple of days my my wife notices it you know um well when we started

talking when this covet thing happened we all of our all of our like there's like a lot of built-up tension we're like they took my gym from me. Oh yeah. They took it from me. It was like part of our lives. Yeah. And it was, uh, it, it was unpleasant. I mean, I was absolutely depressed. I was complacent. I didn't really know, uh, how to do, how to do me without having the gym. Right. I mean, I, I wake up at four.30 or 5.

I slam some pre-workout. I go put the earbuds in, and I go do a bunch of shit. I go lift things. I put them down. I lift them again. I put them down. And that's how my life has gone since as long as I can remember. You know, if I have time, I go back later in the day.

So when they took that from us, I got depressed got depressed man i started eating a lot of skittles i i developed a skittles problem for sure they're delicious issue i went i went to my doctor and he took my blood pressure and shit and he looked at me he's like scott man he's like what's what's the deal what happened to you you? It became really clear. I was like, I didn't have my tools. I wasn't myself. And I kind of just – I wasn't doing other things that I could have been doing to combat some of that stuff.

But the gym is my life, dude. It's really funny. Yeah. It's really funny like being up here and the gym's opened this week, or last week, I should say. I think they opened Tuesday of last week. And I brought, like, all the bands and everything, and I, like, go into it with a really positive mental attitude. Like, the gyms are closed. There's nothing I can do.

I have these resistance bands. And then, like, two, three weeks into it, I'm like. I have these resistance bands. And then like two, three weeks into it, I'm like, I got to get to the gym. Like I'm going crazy. I just still need to get in there and like smell the rubber and hang out with the people and like walk around and stare at people. Like it just, I go a legit crazy without going in there. Yeah. It's a, it wasn't pleasant. And I, I really hope that,

uh, you know, if, if it, if, if it happens again, which I hope that it certainly doesn't, I will definitely be more prepared mentally.

Uh, if it happens, you know, knowing now that I can do things like your band workouts and I have that, I went and invested in a bunch of that stuff you know about after about three or four weeks I kind of came to the realization shit man I don't know when we're going back right so I have to figure out something or else I'm going to be in a world of hurt but um I hope to god that they never take it from yeah it's just hard to go wrong

I was running I'm running I got a hill down the street. You can run a long ways. I told you last week I got chased by a rooster, threw me in a ditch. I'm not built for this out here. Did I tell the story on the show yet, Doug? I don't know. I've heard it like 10 times. You probably did. That was good.

Oh, my gosh. That's part of my best stories ever. Yeah, a rooster chased me down the street, threw me in a ditch running out here in rural New Hampshire. I'm not prepared for wildlife. That's typically in a cage and not really wild at all. It's a tiny little animal. I love that you tried to kick it and then fell down.

I did try. Yeah. I'll tell the short story. I went running and I'm out here in rural New Hampshire, and there was two roosters on the side of the road. And I literally, my brain was like, oh, that's cool. I've never run by roosters before. And then I yielded to the roosters and crossed the road,

and this one just took off after me. And I was freaking out, like straight up yelped, like screamed, ah, like help me. And this little six- pound chicken coming after me and then i realized i was gonna get in a fight with the chicken and the best thing i could do was just kick it as far as i could so i stopped i planted my foot kate brought my foot back and slipped right into the ditch i was like on the ledge of the ditch and fell hardcore into the ditch chicken just turned around and ran off. It's like, this is so soft. I wish there was a video of this. I'd be going viral right now. Just

total, total weak sauce. That's what you get living in the suburbs. Man, how do people, what is a little bit of the registration process? We're going to get a bunch of people that want to go over to fit together. Download it in your app store on all devices. It's awesome. We're over there, but what is a little bit of the process to getting onboarded? And what can people see and kind of some of the immediate stuff that they're just a little bit of the first couple of days of getting acquainted with the app and what they can expect? Yeah. So again, first things first, I guess, decide, you know know what you want to register as are you a social user are you going to be a trainer you want to be a gym manager and again each one of those

different types of personas you're going to get access to some different tools to do some different things right we tried to make the onboarding process as simple as possible you know one of the things that i think some apps do poorly is uh signup process. If it's hard or it's difficult, you ask too much bullshit or whatever, you know, people might just log out and never come back. We have, I think, a four or five slide walkthrough process, which we'll take you through, which basically just gets us some really basic information about you. And we take that information in an effort to hopefully make Fit Together more valuable to you, right? Like so our suggested friends module, if you enter your city and the activities you're in,

you know, that's eventually going to suggest people that are in the same area as you like the same stuff, right? We give you an opportunity to enter your three of your main gyms that you work out at in the signup process. So if you have those, once those gyms become active on Fit Together, hopefully here at some point soon, you know, you'll be able to get information and interact directly with those gyms on a daily basis too. We also use that for our check-in feature also, but the signup process is pretty easy. It's only a couple of slides. Only a couple of things are mandated information as far as date of birth and stuff like that. Everything else is optional up front. You can go back at any point in time

and fill the rest of it in, but the first couple of seconds are pretty easy. Just give us your name, probably your birth date, and a couple other things, and then you'll get dumped right into a news feed. You can kind of see what some people are in there doing, whether it's, you know, training or check-ins or challenges and stuff like that and take it from there. Yeah. If, if they're a, a gym owner is, is the, I clearly am not. So I don't know the actual process, but being a gym owner, what is, how like in depth is the process of getting classes and your trainers set up? Cause that's kind of their, their main function to be able to advertise their gym through that. Yeah. So the gym manager is obviously a little

bit more in depth and we're actually finishing up the mobile portion of the gym manager app right now. So that part's not done and you have to do the dashboard actually on a desktop, which we're fixing, but that should be done shortly. And so as a gym manager, you get the opportunity to obviously list your gym, the address, what you might specialize in, what some of your amenities are and things of that nature, hours of operation, all the typical types of things that you would want people to be able to search for and see on a gym page, right?

And then as your trainers sign up, a trainer can associate themselves with a gym. So if you're Anders and you are a trainer at CrossFit PB, when you sign up as a trainer, you associate yourself with that gym. The gym will accept you as a trainer. And then as a trainer, you can get listed on all the group classes and stuff for the app as well. So we try to make it so that trainers are associated with gyms if they want to be. And that gym can obviously list that trainer in their classes if they need to be. So there's an association factor there to hopefully make things a little bit easier. And once the mobile piece is done, it's going to make all that stuff a little bit more intuitive.

We're a couple of weeks off from that, if I'm being completely honest. Yeah. And then as far as kind of people finding each other outside of here or outside of the app and meeting up at the the fit spots and and going on hikes and stuff like how how does that kind of get structured and where do people find them do they search for the places that they frequent so a couple of things yeah so as as we get to a point with critical mass with this and as fit spots and things of that become more populated, on your dashboard, there's a couple of different things. There's a suggested friends module, which will be based on, again, your location and the activities that you select. So once we start to grow as an app and we get to the point where San Diego is populated, L.A. is populated, et cetera, whatever city you're in, the people that will be shown in your suggested friends part of the dashboard will be people that are in your location or near your location

and have selected in their walkthrough, their setup, the same type of activities that you do, right? So we want to make sure that we're giving you people, introducing you to people that make your life more valuable, right? And from a fit spot standpoint, also in the dashboard, it will have a suggested fit spots space down at the bottom. As those become more populated region by region, you'll get suggested fit spots to possibly follow and join too

if you're an outdoor fitness enthusiast. So you can follow the fit spot and then as people go to that fit spot and do different things or hold events, you'll get notified of all that type of stuff. And then you can kind of go join them if you so choose also. So it'll all be under that dashboard feature for that type of stuff. Killer.

Where can people find you and fit together? Tell them where to go. Me personally? Dude, are you, yeah, you're're the one do you have an actual page yeah obviously everything fits together no yeah so obviously you know scott bowen feel free to add me and you know i tell anders and all these guys you have the most friends you're friends with everybody i noticed i actually i try to send a personal note to everybody that signs up and say, Hey, look, we're new. There's going to be bugs. Add me. It's fine. We'll fix it. But two, you know, I want you guys, everybody that

downloads it. I've put my life into this thing. I want it to be successful. I want you guys to have fun with it. I want you guys to love it. If there's something that you think we can do better, by all means, freaking tell me. Just scott at fittogether.com. Send me an email. Tell me what would make it better. Tell me what would make you use it more. Tell me what would make it more valuable to you as a gym owner. Any of those things. We're on the ground floor here, guys. So if there's things that we can do to make it better, I will absolutely put that on the list of things to do to try to help make this more valuable to you. That's my goal, right? I want it to be valuable to everybody.

So don't be hesitant. Send me a note. Find me on the app. I am more than happy to take your comments into consideration and build this the way that you guys think it should be built. Yeah, and you have a cool group of SoCal people. Our friends of the Shrugged family, Lindsay Renteria, Nicole Zappoli. I know they're hanging out on there all the time. I'm putting a bunch of stuff up. So it's been really cool. I actually really enjoy not seeing all the extra stuff. want to hear my my fitness app story not your not fit together go download fit together here's my broken uh idea for fitness app it was called wad hub you can imagine where i got the name from as you were able to go and click the button of the thing that you were interested in like deadlifts

or squats and then all the videos would filter down from there we never got off the ground we didn't we didn't have the follow-through we needed to uh make wad hub a real business we could we could actually take that feature and make it part of it together that's actually not something that's very it's very hard to do right so there it is that's just a simple filter process we've already got it built i mean that's something we can do for you, bud. I've got no problem with that. Look at that. Doug Larson, tell them where to find you at Fit Together. Find me on Fit Together. Doug Larson.

There it is. Easy. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. You can find us at barbellshrug.com forward slash store. Make sure you get over to Fit Together on the App Store on all of your devices right now. Come and hang out with us. We're putting all kinds of workouts up and it's been really fun connected with the fitness community.

Um, we will see you guys next week. That's a wrap friends. Make sure you get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash store. That is where we are having our big sale on the bands and the program bands of body weight for hypertrophy. All you gotta do is buy a bundle. You get free bands, the program, Bands of Bodyweight for Hypertrophy. All you got to do is buy a bundle.

You get free bands, free program. On top of that, our sponsors over at Fit Together, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together app. Download it in all of your app stores on all of your devices. Also, Organifi, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, and then Shadow Creative Studios. Make sure you get over to podcast.shadowstude.io. That is where you're going to save $200 on your brand new podcast. Get a free consultation.

Get over to the landing page. Get signed up, and you can save 200 bucks. We'll see you guys next month.