Habits and Hustle - Episode 119: Aly Orady – Founder & CEO Tonal, 15-Year Silicon Valley Vet, Engineer, and Entrepreneur

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Aly Orady is the Founder and CEO of Tonal, a 15-Year Silicon Valley Veteran, Engineer, and Entrepreneur. After working decades in countless engineering positions and watching his own health and wellness fall to the wayside, even being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, Aly put his knowledge and trade to the test to create an in-home personal trainer and fitness center. After tackling his own challenges and approaching his life with the same intensity he used in his craft he sorted his own health and set out to make it easier for others. Aly spent years developing digital, magnetic, artificially intelligent weights/personal training systems and has now revolutionized the health and fitness sector. Hear it from the man, himself, designing a product that wasn’t even close to existing, starting a business, and growing it into a recent 1.6 Billion dollar worth, with no idea of how to start except with a brilliant product and unending determination. Check it out and learn how the weight training we all know is about to be left in the past. Youtube Link to This Episode  Tonal’s Instagram Tonal’s Website ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Guys is Tony Robbins you're listening to habits in hustle pressure I'm your biggest fan and I think I've single-handedly sold about half of your tonals, but probably not half, but I mean a lot because what happens is I talk about it so much because it's like authentic. I genuinely really love it and I think it's far superior to any other connected fitness you know, machine out there. So I always tell people, if you don't trust me, come over to my house and use it.

They use it and they're like sold. I love it. No, it's too. By the way, where did you grow up? Canada, and I was gonna ask you about that too, because I saw you into McMaster and Hamilton on Toyota. I did, and I can hear Canadian accent ask you about that too because I saw you went to McMaster in Hamilton on to your out. I did. I can hear Canadian accent from you know hundreds of miles away apparently.

So I'm from Toronto. I'm from Winnipeg and then I moved to Toronto for many many. I went to school in Toronto also. So amazing. Okay cool. You have to hear like just down there. Yeah. I went to I went to George Brown. I went to you have, I went to University of Manitoba first, I got my undergrad and then I went for business school in Toronto. Cool. And so when I saw you're in your bio that you went to McMaster, I'm like, oh my God, I mean, it's totally. I like love you, I mean I love you, I love your product and now I love you.

Thank you. We actually opened up a Toronto office last year as well. And I'd say about, I don't know, 20, 25% of our staff are in Toronto. We've just been pouring money into an intergrowing that office. And it's now, it's quickly becoming a large office. I love that. Oh my gosh. I have to tell you that I know you've been around since 2015, right? But like the pre like COVID, like just sky right just catapulted

your entire business, right? Like yeah, we I started the company in 2015, but the products only been in markets since like 2018-2019. Yeah, so we actually, that first year for our first year, like 2019, for our first year, was a really good year for us by first year standards. And then we kind of coasted into 2020, like you'd expect with the new year, new year season. And then we were expecting things to start to slow down just a little bit as you head into summer, because people generally spend their money on vacations, off into equipment. And then COVID happened,

and then it was like the Black Friday we had in 2019. That was every day for like six months. Oh my gosh. Over. Oh, 100%. You know, I'll tell you just like I said, from just the fact that I was like, I am was I am such a big fan so many my friends colleagues

What have you started ordering these machines because I I honestly like I when I like something It's very evident like you know when I don't like something you know when I do like something and they're all like then like as if I worked in the Manufacturing they're all texting me and emailing me like, it's on that core. Yeah, where's my tonal? I'm like, listen, I don't work in the factory. All I can tell you is once you get it, you're going to really like it. That's all I know. I don't know if you know this. Maybe you do. I actually wrote a column for entrepreneur. I wanted these mag, yeah, about me thinking that tonal, and I went through like a bunch of different,

at-home equipment companies, and I said that tonal was like the begotty of any connected home fitness equipment, because it is. I mean, when people constantly call me and they ask me, what do you think of this machine? What do you think of the mirror? What do you think of this? I'm like, okay, you guys, it's not even in a, it's not even a comparison. Like, it's like saying, like, well, should I get this key out or should I go and get like this, like, McLaren? It's like,

literally, that's how I say it to people. I'm literally, and I'm not getting paid. I'm literally, this is how I feel. The artificial intelligence of that machine, the digital weights, there's nothing on the market that is like it, and that's why I really wanted to have you on because I just genuinely thought you created, like you disrupted the market, in my opinion, in home fitness and you're doing it better than anybody, and you're constantly leveling up.

Like every time I turn on my machine, there's another upgrade that I'm like, okay, there was an upgrade yesterday. I can't even keep track of all the different upgrades you have. Thank you, I love it. I'm glad. You could tell it's real though, right? Like I'm not just saying it. No, it's totally, it's totally, it's like a genuine and self-entic and we get, you know,

we do get our fair share of love and I think that's what motivates us. And so, like, for our, you know, for our staff, like, they're working really, really long hours to put out all those software updates, but I think they're also seeing the response of like, this is actually like having an impact on people's lives, and they can see the R&D. It's just like this is way bigger than Cardi. Cardi was like little sliver is like this biking and running and treadmills and ellipticals, and then there's just like this. It's what it's actually like your passion is the fuel that my team actually run by. It's what keeps them.

The pandemic was hard. Like, it was mentally hard. It was emotionally hard for our employees, right? And then this is the energy that helps drive them forward and work from home culture. You know, the pressure of like scaling ADEX in one year, the social fabric around us falling apart. The public health fabric around us fall.

It was a hard time for everyone, right? But let me just introduce you, because I just, like, raved about you for 10 minutes. But how do you pronounce it here? Well, you're welcome. You pronounce it in Ali Oradi. Ali, Ali Oradi?

Yeah, it's Ali. Yeah, it's Ali. Yeah, it's Ali O'Radi. It's like Muhammad Ali without the Muhammad. I like it. And you are the founder and CEO of Tetonal, which is the most advanced connected fitness at home workout system that I've ever seen. And I think that it would challenge any other machine. And I am so happy to have you as if you haven't noticed by now. Thank you. I'm really, really happy to be here. And you've been, as you were just talking like

to such a passionate advocate for the last year, since you've had a tonal, I'm just so excited to talk with you about it. And you're Canadian. So even that's even more of a thing. McMaster, you went to enter, you're an engineer, you went to school in McMaster because you were born in Ontario and then you went back.

You didn't stay in Canada the whole time, did you? No, I was born in Hamilton. So my parents are immigrants. Hence the name Ali, they came from Egypt. It has to sell in Y. All of North Africa spells Ali with a Y. So, you know, Egypt, Morocco, Tunis, that's why it's a Y instead of an I. And they were doing their PhDs at McMaster, and I was born there. And then after they graduated, we moved around for a couple of years and landed in Ann Arbor

Michigan, where my dad was a professor at U of M. And then, you know, yeah, and then when I was 15 years old, I graduated high school a little early, so when I was 15, I graduated high school, went back to McMaster to do my undergrad, did a computer electrical engineering degree at age 19, I moved to Silicon Valley, and I'd been here ever since, and I was like 1998. So that's kind of like how I moved around.

But I've maintained that, you know, I saw a lot of friends in Ann Arbor, and I've maintained that connection to Toronto. And like we were talking about earlier, we actually last year opened up an office there and have like precinct giving a percentage of our staffing has gone there in the last year. So kind of a little bit everything.

No, that's incredible. So what made you go back to school in Canada for that undergrad degree? Why have you been a master? Well, it's a funny little story. I think there were two things. One is, so I told you I graduated early when I was 15. It wasn't just me, I had a twin sister. We actually part of the reason we graduated so early is we were like really competitive. And so we both like graduate, you know, at age 15. And

my dad works for U of M and trivia fact, U of M's want to three universities in the country that doesn't give tuition assistance to the children or professors. So if you're a professor, they're your kids pay full price, right? So my dad is looking at me and my sister and they're like, oh my god, these kids graduated way earlier than I was expecting. And so he makes a deal with us. He's like, if you can get a full board scholarship somewhere, when you graduate, the college fund is yours. All the money I've saved up for your college fund, it's yours, the day you graduate.

And so me and my sister start looking around and we start looking at Canada because education there is actually government subsidized. And then we get full board scholarships. So we go to school, we go to school and McMaster and then when we graduate my dad, my dad, plus a Ciccicac which was a wonderful way to start your life, actually had money to buy a car for my first job. Very privileged by the way, I fully admit that. This is like to like graduate in this day and age like in the late 90s without college Jan, it's just like insane. The other thing is, and this is funny,

because like the juxtaposition versus where I am now, is in Canada, it's a lot more like the British system. And when you go to engineering school, like 95% of your classes are engineering and science. Like, the idea of like GEDs and English classes, and like, we had none of that. It was all technical. And in my naive, like 15 year old self, I looked at that as like a

huge plus and I get this technical education and then I graduate and I'm 19 years old and I'm working for Hewlett Packard and there's super computing lab designing computer chips. And if at that moment in time you told me that one day I'd be the CEO of like the fastest growing fitness company out of like fallen out of my chair laughing. Like I thought I was going to be doing like be designing computers for the rest of my life. And here I am. 20 years later, and I'm the CEO of a fitness company, who would have thought? And not just any fitness company, in my opinion, one of the best.

And that's amazing. And you're telling me this because I am, like we were talking about, obviously, I'm Canadian. And it's interesting because people don't even, even, if you don't know what you don't know, right? And people don't even realize that the educational system, it is subsidized and it's a really good education. Some of these schools are just like, they like run circles around some of the American schools and you're paying like $5,000 a year and that's a lot, you know what I mean?

And, right, and so, and I think people who know that know that, and the fact that you were able to kind of go there and get that chunk, I can't even imagine, like that must have been like hundreds of thousands of dollars that you got from your college, you know, from that amount, because school in the US is like 50,000, 80,000 a year,

depending on the school. I mean, is that how we kind of help launch tonal is with that money or? No, it wasn't, it wasn't that much. My dad wasn't actually the best saver. Oh, okay. Yeah, like $11. It was in there. No, it was, it was enough to buy a car. I literally, I spent it, I spent it all on my first car to be honest.

So, okay. So, it was like, like, it's not, I, it, I spent it all on my first car to be honest. So, it's not, I look, I wish. So I actually worked, I worked for 15 years in the technology sector. So I designed computer chips for you, Packer, and then I, when I was about two years into my career at HP, I realized that like, I love designing short computers, but I wasn't a big company person. HP was like hundreds of thousands of employees. And so I went to go join my first startup

and I was designing Telecom here, like the kind of equipment that you bolt onto cell towers and things like that. So I spent 15 years designing Telecom gear storage, video on demand, like big heavy iron, like big equipment, the kind of stuff you move with forklifts, like funny story, before Tonal I never designed anything that ran on just one power cord, right? That's the kind of stuff you move with forklifts, like funny story, before Tonal, I never designed anything that ran on just one power

board, right? That's the kind of stuff I worked on. Like big heavy stuff. And then when I'm about 35 years old, like by that point, I'm really overweight. I have developed type 2 diabetes, I've developed sleep apnea, my health is a complete disaster. And I'm like, I have got to do something, something about this. Like, and so I quit my job job and I basically decided that like, hey, it's funny, everything I've ever made my full-time job, whether it's school or the startup or HP. I've always been successful at those things.

And so I'm just going to make health my full-time job. And I read and I cooked and I learned about nutrition. And I go to the gym and I work out. And I lost about 70 pounds in nine months and eventually I got my A1C scores basically my diabetes metric back in line and my sleep apnea just disappeared and I got really healthy. But the crux of it all was with strength training. And for a lot of folks when you're trying to get healthy, when you're trying to even burn

fat lose weight, you go to the gym and you do cardio, and I did that for a few weeks, and then I plateaued, and I still remember the moment when I looked over, and I saw all the personal changes were in the weight room, and none of them were in the cardio section. And I'm like, well, I'm doing something wrong. And I slowly got more and more drawn into that world, but it was hard. It's intimidating to walk in there,

like you're surrounded by all these big guys. And it's an intimidating place, especially if you don't know what you're doing. And I think the thing that made me more comfortable is I realized very few people actually, you know, what they were doing, even the people who'd been in the wait room for a decade. They were just doing the same routine day in and day out. They do the obligatory bicep curl and bench press. day in and day out, the duty of the regulatory bicep curl and bench press. And I just became more and more aware over that journey that there had to be a better way. And that's ultimately what led to tunnel.

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Get grilling at Whole Foods Market Terms Apply. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space. Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on, like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Wow, I mean, what an amazing concept, because for those of people who don't know,

who've haven't seen a tonal, which is like I was saying, the digital weight home strength equipment, it literally, I hate to use this and I know it's like, it's like the Peloton of Strength training for people because everyone knows what a Peloton is, right? So for those of you who don't know what a tonal is, it literally is that because you have really good coaches who motivate you throughout the workouts and the machine, as you get stronger, the machine is so, it's the artificial intelligence, it increases your weight. So you're never,

you never really plateau or you don't have to plateau. And there's a zillion programs to pick from. So there's no boredom. You can do like, even, you can pick. And you can, I mean, I'm talking, like, it's up to my company. You can talk about it. But the idea, I guess why I'm so blown away, it was like, I've never seen anything. I've been in the fitness business for so long.

I've never seen a machine like that. How did you, like, you just kind of got, where was your first conceptual idea when you decided that you wanted to do a machine like this? Like, what was the stage one? Because obviously, it's evolved a lot from there because where it is now, it could not have been where, where did it begin?

Like, it kind of walk us through that. Well, it all started with digital weight. Like, the moment was when I realized the weights were dumb and if they were digital, we could actually make them more compact, more smart, more useful. That's really the difference between us and everyone else in the connective fitness sector. In the connective fitness sector, it's pretty much people, like every company out there what they've done is they've taken some sort of group fitness experience and brought that

into the home. That was not our goal. Our goal is to bring a personal trainer into the home to give you the equipment and the personalization you get with a personal trainer. So you can actually achieve your goals. Don't give me wrong. We also have some group fitness formats. We have yoga. We have everything that you want because once we're in the home, we view ourselves as having to be your fitness device, like your one fitness device. But the goal is a level of personalization you get with a personal trainer.

And of course with a personal trainer, strength training is that's the main thing you do with a personal trainer. For a reason, it's effective, right? It's how you reshape your body and its abilities. But that moment was I was sitting on a bench at the gym at like six AM in the morning, staring at this giant cable cross-over machine

after I lost all this weight and gotten strong and healthy. I was thinking to myself, I really wish I didn't have to come to the gym every single day. I wish I could just do this at home. I realized the reason this thing was so big was because it relies on big metal plates and gravity to function. If I could replace those big metal plates with electricity, you can generate a lot of force of electricity. You propel electric cars, those high speed trains that go 300 miles an hour in Japan

and love it, that's all like electricity and electromagnetics. That's actually the technology that's only uses electromagnetics and electricity that generate up to 200 pounds of force in a super compact form factor. Making the first electronic digital weight, actually, and I realize this at the moment, I'm like, it wouldn't just be compact, it also would be smart. Because dumbbells, they have no data. You can't, you can't, like a dumbbell doesn't tell you whether your form is good or bad, it doesn't tell you how hard you're pulling or how fast you're moving. Tonal has all of that data.

You also can't command, this is called command and control, you can't command, you can't ask a 40-ton dumbbell to instantly become 38 pounds. That's exactly what you can do at home. So you can be in the middle of a bicep curl and then spotter realizes off all that data. I'm like, I don't know, Jen's struggling too much. Let me adjust the weight down just two pounds so you can finish that set. And that's the intelligence of having the personal train that are choosing how much weight you should live, adjusting it in real time, if necessary. Adjusting it, set this set, date a day, changing the pacing of the work, giving you feedback on your form in real time, and then guiding you through multi-week programs where you can actually see your progression with a program built around a particular goal. And a lot of people don't realize the importance of programs.

If you just go to the gym and do random things, you'll get random results. And you can use string training to lose weight or gain weight. How do you even know what you're doing? If you're just going, so having the right program and having a coach that can guide you through the program, teach you how to do it, personalize it to you, that's basically what Donald does, all in the comforting convenience of your home.

Yeah, no, it's amazing. So then, so when you were sitting on this bench, and by the way, did you lose all 70 pounds by just doing resistance training? Did you not do any cardio? No, I did, I did some cardio. So in the beginning, I did, I was on cardio probably, probably for the first like four to six weeks,

I lost maybe the first 10 pounds and then I plateaued. And then from that point forward, I did the best majority of what I do is strength training with a bunch of cardio in there as well. So I kind of think of strength as like the trunk of the tree and then cardio as the pillar. My uncompromising cardio, like the thing that I do, which I think is the most important part of cardio, is interval training. And so at least once a week, I will go outside and I will do interval sprints.

And that is literally like strength training for your heart. It's like the hardest you can drive your heart for 30 seconds, give it a rest, do that again, a few more times. And that's how your heart muscle gets bigger and stronger and no different than how any other muscle in your body gets stronger. That, I definitely do the other thing I tend to do a lot of is things like long distance walks and things like that. when your body gets stronger. That, I definitely do. The other thing I tend to do a lot of

is things like long distance walks and things like that. I think there's value in kind of that low grade kind of long distance cardio. But for most of other things, you can accomplish almost everything you need from a health perspective using strength training. And if you're gonna do one thing into old age for longevity, it's definitely strength training. Especially as people age

cardio is just that's just like wear and tear on your body and strength training does the opposite of wear and tear actually helps you build muscles strength strength and connective tissue and it's literally the best way to age. Yeah it's funny I feel like I'm talking to Sal all over again. I see why you guys go along. I'm sorry. No, no, no, we like literally have this whole conversation and we still do because, you know, the truth that matters, you're absolutely right. I mean, over it, I'm a cardio junkie and I'm really trying to be a recovered cardio junkie because I'm recovering cardio junkie because it is a lot of wear and tear and you plateau and your body gets very used to using that amount of calories that you know it expands type of thing or doesn't expand

Strength training is how you actually shape your body and it's also right and it's also when you have more the more lean muscle mass You have on your body obviously the more calories you actually burn throughout the entire day Not just that actual workout time that you're actually spending working out. And so you're absolutely correct on from an intellectual standpoint. And that's why I was curious if you did any cardio because people get into this mindset where they think they have to do cardio. It's a psychological thing more than it is actually

a practical thing. And so now I'm kind of doing like a hybrid. I do like a combination, but like, I try to do the tonal, I do at least, what I like about it, I do at least five times a week. And for people who like work out a ton, right, who are advanced advanced like I know what I'm doing in terms of all the different exercises and the people that I speak to

about people who are like elite athletes or really in training forever they're like yeah but is it it's a good for like people who know what they're doing you know like okay if someone doesn't know and what I end up doing a lot and what I tell people you don't even have to do the programs it can act act as its own, you know, system where you can just do your own workout using the machines like the arm, the different like handles that it comes with. So that's why I think it's, it actually can be something for everybody, for someone who's beginner, from someone who's an intermediate to an advanced, someone who wants to do their own thing. It's, you know, but not, again, this sound, this literally sounds like a commercial and

I don't mean it. It's like, I swear, I don't mean it's like a commercial. I just like it. No, I like it too. So even in that mode, like the custom workout mode that you're talking about, yes, you can follow along with our coaches and follow through the workouts. But even when you do custom workout and you build your own on our mobile app, you're going to do deadlifts and bicycles and you put together the program, it's not like you

just went into a complete manual mode. We're still in there. We're choosing how much weight you should live for every exercise. We're spotting you. We're counting your data. We're showing you your progress. We're counting your reps. We're giving you feedback on your form.

And so, like, you can have a little bit more control over the programming, but a lot of like the decision making, the writing down, all of that stuff you don't have to do. And so, it's way, way beneficial. And to your point, like, in the world of pro sport, we have dozens and dozens of athletes who are used, professional athletes, like NBA, NFL, like Olympic athletes using this product, we've had about 24, like about two dozen of them invest in the company. After using the product, they'll call us on

the whole of Tonal, can I invest in it? Like we're still a private company, like please can I invest in it? And then we figure something out. But it's not just them, it's also their strength and conditioning coaches. And you go to the strength and conditioning coach and they're like, hey, why'd you like to almost so much? And they're like you have to understand like I'm a professional

I've been doing this my whole life, but I'm normally flying blind I'm standing like 5 feet away from an athlete eyeball and everything and now I have actual data that I can see on the screen and Helps me make better decisions, right? and so there's just all of his value in going to a world that was completely dumb and dark to a world that was intelligent, data, I mean, that's what we've come to expect from everything in our lives, right? And, and, and tonal just delivers that and, you know, on affordable package that fits in every home. And it's there to like, if I could give everyone in, in the world, a personal trainer, that's literally like the mission

around. Yeah, no, we're going gonna get to all the business stuff because about how you have all these celebrities and athletes who are investors, we're gonna talk all about that. I was just like, I was just like, just like fan-girling over the product so much. I just, you know, and I wanna really stay on the point

of how you kind of like just evolve the product because I think it's so brilliant. So then you get this idea, you want to do this digital weight system. What was your first step at it? Because it's never been done. What was the prototype even like? How did you even make the prototype? Maybe I know you're an engineer, but like. That's my answer. I'm an engineer. So I went, I literally like that day. I was so excited about this. I went home. I ordered some parts.

They arrived a few days later. I strapped into my kitchen counter and started working on prototypes. And it took about three months for me to prove to myself that digital weights could be a thing. So yeah, in about three months, I built something that it was kind of a digital weight. And it wasn't like a tone.

Like tone will go from five pounds all the way up to 200 pounds. And it's smooth and it feels amazing. And it's it's premium. This goes from like 25 pounds to 40 pounds. This is the first prototype that I built. So not very much like range, but I could prove that you could do that eccentric mode. Or I could do a bicep curl and it was like, you know, 25 pounds on the way up, 35 pounds on the way down.

And and it started against my like, yeah, this can be a thing. And of course, I knew I had so much more work to do. I also knew it was going to take a lot of money. Like, you know, we could talk about me, but the reality is, the tunnel is taking hundreds of people to make a reality. It took three and a half years to get the product to market. By the time we launched, we were already over 100 employees. We filed like 40 to 50 patents

Like there's a lot that technology here and it took a lot of engineering and that took took money And so as soon as I had that first prototype was just enough to believe I went and started talking to investors Silicon Valley looking for for money And then it became the cycle of like grace the money makes him and progress, the race and more money, makes and progress, it's raised a lot of money, make a lot of progress. But a lot of it is about progress, building a team, bringing in experts, like, I'm in a junior, what do I know about marketing? Right, like, took years for our marketing to get good, because well, not my strength. Right, right.

And so, I had to hire, hire, you know, great people with a lot of experience from all the right places to kind of build us up to where we are today. And people still, like, they still get a tonal today, and it's hard to tell people how revolutionary this is. They still buy a tonal. And the first thing they say is like, wow, this thing far exceeded my expectations. I'm like, I don't know of any marketing where you get the product, and you're like, it exceeded your expectations.

Usually, like, marketing, like, over-promises a bunch of, oh, I guess it was close enough. Like that's not what it's like with tone a little. No, absolutely. I obviously know why you agree. So, so then how much was your first raise when you first raised the money after you made that prototype between 25 pounds and 40 pounds? So the first raise was 250,000. That took about six months. About another six months later,

I raised about a million and a half. And then about six months after that, I raised 11 million. And now that was, and it's all like there's progress in momentum and that 11 million dollar round was the one that really kind of unleashed us. And now you know this,

but we've raised hundreds of millions of dollars and we're just the momentum is just there right now. And now you know this, but we've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. And we're just the momentum is just there right now. Last year was the year where it really felt like we broke orbit, kind of a deal. I mean, you recently just raised like 250 million, correct? So also, yeah. No, go ahead, please talk. I'm just excited. Oh, yeah. We raised 250 million lead by dragging here.

We signed the term sheet in January, closed in March, and we announced it a couple of weeks later. And so in totality, it's about 450 million, something like that. Wow. And so what is your evaluation as? What I last saw myself, like 1.6 billion, or something like that, is your evaluation as? Last time I saw, was it 1.6 billion or something like that? Is that accurate still? Yeah, that was the valuation as of last close.

So that was when Dragon Year led that round. We've made a lot of progress since then, but you don't actually revalue a business constantly, you revalue it when you money goes in. And so I'll just say we're north of 1.6 billion today. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you what the number is. I can tell you the number.

Wow. OK, so then what did the 11, when you got that $11 million raised, what were you able to do? That, like, because where was the machine or where was your business after you were able to take that money and grow it? So I want to see the, I want it. I want to see how the progression when you got the money, what you were able to do, because I've noticed all the different, I've been seeing the evolution of the product. So where were you at the 11 million mark?

So, on that first million and a half-ish plus the earlier seed round. We got to the point where we built enough product that we were in an alpha trial. So, the alpha trial was we rented it in a part. We built prototypes and they're still footage of me and handful of those early engineers standing in the machine shop and making prototypes. And so, we made two or three prototypes that they looked, they functioned a lot like the existing phone, but they looked nothing like it. They were like, they literally looked like they were made a machine shop, like the big metal parts, so like, but what they proved is they

proved that you could actually get a full body workout and it proved the digital weights work. And we started in AlphaTrial where you invited users to come in and you know, we gave them keys to the apartment and said, you can come here and work out whatever you want and the only stipulation is we're going to film it and we're going to interview like once a week, right? And that was for us to begin, begin that cycle of learning. And that's really what led to that round we brought in investors, we showed them that of course they could interview these users, they could play with equipment and it and it was for them starting to believe this thing was real. And the moment I knew that we had turned the corner on getting people to believe that digital weights and in-home strength training could be a thing, was when I was with the

investor, I ended up leading that round. His name is Rob Coneybear. He was also the first money into Nestle, the first investor to write that check for that Nestle, I first investor to write that check with that Nestle, and that was that back in the day. I remember him, I was standing next to him and he was doing a bicep curl. I don't know why everyone does bicep curls, but everyone's doing bicep curls. He's the easiest thing to do, probably. You're standing there, so he's doing bicep curl.

He looks at me and says, hey, Ali, when the world sees this, do you think anyone's ever going to strengthen the old way again? And I'm like, okay, he's definitely going to invest in this. And I was like, I don't know, eight weeks later, you know, we had the money in our bank account and we were kind of off to the races. But then from that point forward, it was still like another two years

before we got the product out to market. And the thing to realize is like, when you're building something that's new, different revolutionary, like the entire way we were in data trials, we had people come into the office to work out. At some point, we put tonals in 25 homes for 50 people to use for an entire year. Right, and we call them every week and interview them. And so it's not like when we launched, you know, in, you know, in late 2018, it was

this thing where we launched in real life. I wonder if people are going to like this. Like, we had been like iterating and fine tuning the entire way. And when we launched, we had confidence that people, people were going to like it. But, you know, we had to build the technology, we had to ramp up the manufacturing, the supply chain. This is in a simple supply chain, right? It's not, you not, you're not making a printed circuit board with a piece of plastic around it. It's a piece of equipment where a lot of the stuff is custom and novel and it took a really, really long time

to get all this stuff going. And now, of course, we get to benefit from it. We have something that no one else can even make, right? Because it took years of design. It's, you know, we have unique ways of manufacturing it. And customers love it. Members love it. I've never seen so much passion around a product.

No kidding. So do you own that? So does that mean that all these other machines out there are coming out? Because I know even there's a ton out now. There's a ton more coming. Do you own the right to only have artificial intelligence? Can any other machine even use artificial intelligence for digital weights or is it only you guys? We have a lot of the pants that we have are centered

around digital weight and a lot of the pants that we have are centered around artificial intelligence and that the way the AI interacts with, you know, with the digital weights and the customized workouts and the pacing adjustment and all that sort of stuff. There's gonna be, there's a lot of AI technology out there. Most of it is on your, like, there's a lot of apps on your mobile phone that will use AI to do one thing or another on a lot of its computer vision based.

And we also have some of that same technology, but we've gone a step further in that we think that seeing you as one thing, feeling you as another and when you can do both CN feel, you actually have the best data to make the best decisions. And that's really where the digital weight piece comes in. Right. Then how did you go? What did you do with the money from the 11 million to then like the 250, 250 million? How much did the product, the tonal progress in terms of its functionality?

It's true tremendously. I mean, we first launched that first product. It was like in the world of startups, you called minimal viable. Like it's just, it's the, if we knew it was a great product, but there was so much way we had just scratched the surface. And some of that was expanding our content and bringing new coaches onto the platform and adding yoga and a lot of use.

Some of us was continuing to invest in the AI. In the early days, we had pretty good AI that could predict how much weight you should be able to lift for any movement. We've now amassed the largest strength training physiology data set in history. And we're commissioning original research with universities because we're asking people, we're asking physiologists questions they've never been asked before, right? And so you get to build and you just keep taking things to another level. And the thing I think we, it's like core to our core to our culture, like we say

creativity and invention with purpose. And the with purpose piece is essential because our mission is to help everyone be their strongest. And you can do a lot of invention and you can do a lot of research. But at the end of the day, everything we do has to come back to one main point. Can we give people better workouts? Can we make them more effective? Can we help them build better habits? Right. And so, you know, a lot of the stuff that we've also built into the product is it just in the work that experience. It's in the way they navigate our content. It's in the way that we help them build habits and maintain habits and remind them when they're about to break their habit and building an entire experience just like a personal trainer. Personal trainers, not just about what they do with you in session, they're also about what they do with you

in these sweet sessions to make sure you come back and you stay consistent. And that's what we're continuing to build on. And I view that, like, like, building a self-driving car, that takes decades, right? And I view this as a decades long journey for us as well. You know, when you said something I think is very true, and I talk about the Salazar Consistency element, right? Because something You know, when you said something I think is very true and I talk about this a lot as a

consistency element, right? Because something can be hot when you first get it and it's a cool new, you know, shiny ball. I'm curious, just based on all the research that you have on and data that you have on the people who have it, what is the percentage of people that are extremely consistent and do it, basically, consistently throughout the week? And how many people actually drop off, actually, after getting their shiny new toy?

What is the research on that? Okay, so I think you're asking me two slightly different questions. So the question is people who would drop off the shiny new toy, it turns out that pretty much doesn't happen. So like close to like 97, 98% of people are still using, like in a particular cohort are still using the tunnel a year later. But what does happen within our community

is there are people who are start off consistent and remain consistent. And there's people who go strong for the first two weeks and then become sporadic. And they remain sporadic pretty much forever. And sporadic means you'll be really good for two weeks and then not so good for two weeks and then really good for two weeks. And those are just different personality types

that people with different challenges in life. And in some ways we have to think about all the different people who use tunnel. If you think about each of them in their own unique way, we can't treat about all the different people who use tunnel, if to think about each of them in their own unique way. We can't treat them all the same. And so there are people where we know they're gonna be consistent and we motivate them by showing them their progress and showing them what they can achieve

and setting higher and higher goals for them. And that keeps them coming back. And then there's the people who are more sporadic and it's about basically intervening and giving them reasons basically intervening and giving them reasons to stay consistent and things like achievements and streaks and that text message or that push notification to get on their phone and you're about to lose your streak. You have 48 hours to work out and different people just need different things and that's

our job. That's what it's our job to keep people working out a healthy amount and to have them actually get results. The other thing I think a lot of people don't realize, or people who've done a lot of cardio, that I'd want to highlight, is the effect of cardio wears off after about four hours. You do cardio and you have this high and then four hours later, kind of fizzles. Strength training lasts about a day and a half, right? You wake up in the next morning, you're a little bit of storage, you're rolling out of bed,

you're in the shower, and you're like, lathering up, and you're like, oh, oh, hello, there's a muscle right there. You notice that for the first time. And that stuff actually helps you keep coming back as well. And so just the effect, the fact that the effect lasts longer keeps the top of mind longer, and that actually helps to build a more consistent result. Then say cardio, where I think we would have to work even harder to keep people consistent in a cardio type of regiment. Right. No, because now it's in someone buys it and it's in their home and I'm curious because

people are like, oh, if it's in my house, I'll use it more often. But is that kind of just more of a myth? Because a lot of times we'll buy a piece of equipment and they use it as a place to put their jackets and coats as a piece of furniture eventually. So I was wondering, because I think that the ability to push notifications and all that, come on, and that's what Apple does well with the watch.

It inspires somebody or motivates somebody. I want to walk as many steps. I want to burn more calories today than I did yesterday. That would inspire me to keep going. That's why I was as curious based on that. Absolutely. This is what the connective industry was built on. If you just give someone a piece of cardio equipment, there is a good chance, six months later, it'll be, it'll turn into a dollar act or start collecting dust. But when you actually put the coaching in there,

you actually, in help people stay a lot more consistent, because they're getting better results, it's easier, it's more like autopilot. Imagine you have a dumbbell there, and before you pick it up, you have to think about, well, what am I going to do today? Yeah. You don't have to do it, Donald.

So that takes a lot of the cognitive and load and friction out. But the other thing is the fact that we actually enroll people in four week programs. So once you're like, commit to a program and we actually, we made it intentionally, you have to click the button that says join. We did that because that was a commitment point for someone. We could have, we argued about, should we even have a join button? Can you just follow a series? No, no, we want people to join and commit. So you make that commitment and you just committed to a program that

sport is a week. Well, you start your week every week. No, I got a fair at which days I'm going to do my my four-tonal workouts for this program. And that helps with consistency. So there's a lot of thought that goes into how do you build something where I can every engagement you're reinforcing this idea of consistency so that people get results. With results, you actually get them coming back for more and it turns into this habit. Right? Habits have to be self-reinforcing.

If a habit was just friction every single day, no one would ever form a habit. It has to eventually become reinforcing and that's what we do. And that's why six months later, it doesn't actually turn into a tolerate. People keep using it. And what we found is even for people who were pretty consistent before, they got a tunnel, after they get a tunnel, they're still consistent, they just work out more times per week. So for a lot of people, it is a step up in their volume of how often they work out. Right.

Well, you just speak in my language of how often they work out. Right. Well, you're speaking my language. It's all about habits. And I think the best way to your point to maintain or keep a habit is to actually see that you're actually doing well and get your confidence and continue on a progression. Like if it's working for you and what you guys do, with those notifications and telling people and how you can see in real

time how you're getting stronger, right? Like, yesterday you used 10 pounds and, you know, or not last week you used 10 pounds. Today you're up to 13 pounds. People like see that in real time that they're actually making a difference. Like, you know, I wrote a book a while ago called Strong as a New Skinny. And one of my taglines that I would always talk about, it's like, not everybody could be skinny, but everybody could be strong.

And you're giving people a goal that's attainable and reachable, which then builds confidence, right? And so the more confident you have, the more it propels you to continue doing that thing. And that's what I think, you know, that's what I found was very synergistic, because that's basically what you're doing. And I know that you have a, was it like 25% of the people or no, people, no, no, I don't know the amount, but you can tell me, but

get 25% stronger over a certain amount of time, the people that use the product. What is it? Yeah, our average member gets 25% stronger in the first 90 days. Right. That's the standard. I think you're, yeah. Yeah, stronger in the first 90 days. That's the standard. I think you're right. Yeah, that's right. 90 days. That wasn't sure what the timeframe was.

And I think, you know, to what you said, you know, when we say, be your strongest, we're thinking about every form of strength because physical strength actually translates into mental strength, resilience. It translates into a lot of things. And this was one of the things that I began to appreciate the deeper and deeper I went until we're all of strength training. You know the grand chess master's strength train

before a big match? No, I do not know that. It's incredible, but physical strength translates into mental strength, emotional strength, stability, resilience, and it's just so incredibly important. You know, I have a busy life. I literally work from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. every single day.

I have a toddler and the only break I take is when I go strength training on tunnel. And that's like my mental reset in the middle of the day. It's more important to me than lunch. Right. People take a break and they have lunch. I'm like, no, it's more important for me to strength training. That's a more effective reset for me to go back and basically do another six hours of work.

Absolutely. So it's so powerful, and I wish more people knew about it. No, I agree with you. And I've done a lot of talking on this that the physical part is like the, it's not the gains you get, you know, choose a pun from overall life. Isn't just the physical gains,

it's not the, it's not the, it's actually not, that's the byproduct. It's actually all the mental gains. I mean, the overall, your physical and your mental are so connected. And that's why things drink training is also extremely important.

Because when you feel physically strong, you feel mentally strong. It just kind of goes, it goes hand in hand. And it makes you feel you can do anything else in the world. So doing a squat is just like doing 10 squats and lunges is like the byproduct in a way, you know. Not true, right? Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care,

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the perfect fries and frosty duo. If you're up later, then so are we. So go ahead and pull through the drive-through. When the craving hits, go night mode at Wendy's. Open till midnight or later. Alright, see ya later. I'm participating in US Wendy's, ours may vary. I wanna talk about all the different investors. So you say, so is that how, I thought it was much more, I was curious, was it much more of a strategy to get athletes and different celebrities to be the investors

or did it happen kind of organically because people just start to know about it and they start using it and they just loved it and they start calling you like you said. Was there? I'm going to say it was, for us it was more organic for the athlete. It was more in the early days, it was more of a strategy. And so just to give you a sense of like the first two investors, I'll tell you what the first three investors came in and I'm from there, it was just like, you know, it was like a snowball effect. Right.

But Tony Gonzalez, you know, NFL Hall of Famer, had started kind of dabbling and start up investing and back when we were still in stealth. I mean, like, we're in an office with fog that windows. No one knows what we're talking about. He gets wind of what we're doing. And I get an email from, you know, a mutual contact. He's like, hey, Tony wants to see the tunnel. And he comes to our offices and we demo the tunnel for him.

And he does a few basic movements. And he looks at me. He's like, I'm in. And so for him, he was looking to get more into investing. For us, we're like, sweet, professional athlete. Amazing. And then a similar story happened with Serena Williams also when we were in stealth. And then after we launched and we started selling the product, we had Steph Curry by a tonal

under a student. We didn't know it was him. It turns out that most famous people, they buy stuff, they don't use their real names. We didn't know who Sam and we went and delivered it and installed it and all this sort of stuff. And then like, you know, I don't know, nine months later, like, you know, Aisha puts up a post of like, you know, her and stuff, and they're like getting our work out

in this one. We look at the photo on Instagram, we're like, that's a tonal. And so then we like reach out to like, steps team. And stuff was at the time just getting started with with a new venture funds And they ended up putting in an investment and then as we went into COVID and more and more athletes started losing access to They're like these multi-million dollar training facilities and it turns out your professional You don't really have fitness equipment at home because why would you like it when I work for HP?

I didn't have a super computer at home. I had a super computer at home. Right. Right. So now they're like at home building out home gyms and they're starting to get tunnels and then we're starting to get phone calls from their agents, their managers, their financial managers, sometimes like from out like gun text messages from Freshly Off these like, hey, Ali, you don't know me.

I'm like, you know, so and so. Um, can we talk, right? And they want to invest into it. And it just, it started to pick up, pick up momentum. But it was organic in that it wasn't us going on saying we need professional athletes to endorse our product. It was organic in that they're like, we love this product. We want to be, we want to invest. We want to be involved. And it's just kind of how, how we built up and it was like Steph Curry and then Paul George and it just won after the other and then now it's a few dozen.

Wow. Are they constantly promoting it as well or is it like, is it, how much, you're probably not going to tell me, but like, it's some of it even sweat out equity, like if they just promote it, they get a piece or is it actual money money that they invest in the company? Oh no, no, it's money money money. It's money money. Okay, they wrote a check. They wrote us, wrote us, checks the bightonal stock, just like any other investor would.

And then at that point, you know, at that point, here's a product they believe in, they've invested in. Like, it's not like, you know, it's not like they only gain, they could lose money too. Like they have skin in the game and it's something they believe in. And so they do promote it, but they don't promote it like the brands they're paid to promote. Like at the end of the day, if you're a celebrity, you only get to talk so much about all the products in the world. And so they promote the product and they use it and they show that it's in their life. And sometimes they'll like, you know, do an interview. I'll be doing an article

and someone from Press will it? Can I talk to a press laugh? I really want to kind of get the back story. And we'll say, Hey, why don't you talk to this athlete? Why don't you talk to that athlete? And so there's a lot of that going on. But it's all like genuine and just like love for the product. It's not them like promoting it. like they would the product where they've signed a new Norseman deal and they have to show up a certain number of times per year and do certain number of things, right? No, no, no, I mean, I know that most of them

were actual money investors, but a lot of companies, a big trend with a lot of companies is that they'll say, okay, I'm gonna give you one point if you talk about it all the time, right? So I want to know if you had a combination of those, if you had any of those people, because I know that people are genuinely huge fans. I mean, I'm like, one of these, I wish I would have met you when you were at like the first stage where I could have been an investor. I mean, I'm so bummed that I met you too late. Oh, damn.

Now I can't afford it now. But yeah, that's what I was curious about. And then where do you go from here? I mean, the product is so spectacular. Like, now what? You know, like you have a bunch more money and you're constantly like revolutionizing the product. What's your next iteration?

What's it gonna be? Is there gonna be a person who jumps out of the screen and actually trained you right there in person? Well, I'll be, I mean, all the investment in the iteration is really what's on the screen. Like, you look at Tommel as a piece of equipment, it's the most versatile piece of equipment in the world, right?

It can do so much stuff more than any other piece of strength you can equipment, certainly more than any other piece of strength training but then certainly more than any piece of cardio equipment. And so like once you have equipment in your home, okay, this is your fitness, fitness up, right? Everything fitness, particularly strength training. And then the question is like, what do we keep bringing on to that screen in terms of personal trainers, in terms of content? How smart it is, is it, can it get even smarter, can it get even more personalized, can it get even smarter, can it

get even more personalized, can it deal with special cases? Like last year when we released our first prenatal postnatal content, that was a case we knew that we cared about and wanted to eventually invest in. And so as we keep adding more and more content, more intelligence, more variety, more personalization, it just becomes better and better for more and more people. And, you know, I view it as like we're just getting, in some ways we've just stretched the surface, there are 45 million households in the US who are serious about fitness and want a piece of fitness equipment in their home, 45 million. And, you know, we haven't even broken a million yet. Like we got a long way to go and we got so much more content to make't even broken a million yet. Like, we got a long way to go,

and we got so much more content to make in terms of a million households. So, you're in about a million households right now. No, I said we haven't even broken a million yet. Oh, okay, so you're in about like what? 900,000? Like, how many households are you in? No, we're actually approaching 100,000. 100,000.

So, yeah. So, we're, that's where, yeah. So we're, Wow. So we have, we still have like, it took to 45 million, we have a long way to go. Yeah, you might only had a million. I think you had a million, sorry. Yeah, sorry.

When, like when Paul's on IPO'd, like 40, 30, 40, they had about 500,000 households, right? So just to give you a sense of like, how big this market is, there's so much space out there. So many people who need this type of equipment in their lives that we just have a lot more building to do

and a lot more of these to build and install and a lot more content to create and people to train. That's amazing. That's actually a really good staff that I didn't know. So you have about 100,000. And when Peloton IPO, they only had a half a million bikes out because you would think by the amount of people who are talking about that bike and Peloton as a company, you would think literally that they were selling millions and millions of

products. That's, I have no idea. Well, I mean, I think it's when you're selling at this price point, right, when you're selling a product at cost over a thousand dollars, it doesn't actually take millions and millions of people to build, to build a billion dollar company, right? And so, you know, in some ways, you know, they IPO and we're eventually going to IPO and why is that? It just continues to fuel your growth. Like, we're not interested in building a company where we've only served a million people.

It's a 45 million market, and that's just in the US. And so how many more lives can we change? And then we have clinical trials running with the Mayo Clinic right now for like, Tonal and rehab applications. What are we gonna go do with that? And so there's just so much to do, and we're just getting started.

That's incredible. It's a good segue into my next question for you is that the price point, because it is an expensive price point and it's not for people. You need to have some expendable income. Now, are you planning on with more volume being able to lower the price? Would you come up with another version? That's a little bit more economically friendly for people. Well, we really think about, so the way we think about price point is actually through

the financing programs. So when you think about this, not as, you know, I'm writing a check for like two or three or whatever thousand dollars, and you think about it as, you know, for a hundred fifty dollars a month, then that's, but for tonal, that's all in. That's your subscription, hardware, accessories, delivery, installation, like that's the all in cost for $149 a month on a 36-month financing program. And you look at $149 and what you spend on your cable bill, what you spend on $5 a day at Starbucks is $150, right? What you spend on on a personal trainer what you spend at the gym?

It is a lot it is actually a lot more affordable and what we found is like that notion of like crisis to be It actually varies not with household income, but it varies with people's commitment to fitness So people who say they want to work out four times a week You know 150 dollars a month is no big deal to them, but people are only interested in work out four times a week, $150 a month is no big deal to them, but people are only interested in working out one time a week, well, then they say, oh, that sounds expensive, right? So it's really about when we think about this,

we're thinking about how do we reach different people who have different frequencies of how often they want to work out. But for the market we're serving today, then by the way, that's the 45 million household market, $150 a month is actually a really, really affordable price point. And then who knows from there? You know, it's funny because I forget that also when you go to a so cycle class, it's $35

a class. And people go five days a week or whatever they do. Okay. You guys up. You know, it really, you guys up. You guys up, yeah. You know? You guys, it really does, yeah. And I think when you break it down, like the way you just broke it down, people see it for what it is.

But when you say, well, the machine costs this amount and money, thousands of dollars, and then it's $149 a month, you know, it sounds like so much. And it is a lot, but I guess the reality is like, and it's not just so cycle like any class now even random places I mean it's a minimum of like $28 a class at minimum now so you know yeah so then so then that's that's your answer for that so only a hundred thousand homes huh I'm so surprised

it's growing fast it's growing we growing fast. We grew 8x. We grew 8x year over year last year. Wow. Now, who's coming up with all? How big is the team of people who are coming up with all these iterations? Or is it most of the... It was most of that what we see from your brain. No, no, no.

I have a really big, big smart experience team. Toles about four to five hundred people right now. A lot of people. We have people, I mean, we have staffing in 40 different Northshrooms locations, right? Where you can go check out the tonal. We have content studios in LA where we film every single day. We have coaches, we have video editors.

And our content is a little bit more involved in cardio because we have to make sure there's an extensive QA process. Did we give people all the right instructions? Did we say the wrong thing? We said the wrong thing, we can't ship it. You can't laugh off on this date when you're giving someone instructions and strength training. You got to actually, so it's a more rigorous content process to create all that content and drive the quality that you need for strength training. There's a lot of software, AI teams, data teams,

and the manufacturing logistics, the in-home delivery install, that's a customer care, those are massive groups. And so it's an involved business, and it takes a lot. And everyone at Tonal is incredibly mission driven. They are here because they see where this is going, and they want to be a part of it.

I have people who walk around the kind of, like people walk into the building, and back when we were actually in the building together, they walk around and say, wow, everyone here is really fit. And don't get me wrong, it's not like you walk in and everyone looks like Arnold. Just everyone looks like they care about fitness. There's a passion, passion about fitness,

and you walk into our gym at work. And it's occupied all the time. And we encourage people to get their fitness in and be healthy. And so there's an energy that comes with that, right? That constant passion for the product, passion for the number of days. The community we have on Facebook, it all kind of fuels it. And very little is neat at this point. I'm kind of like the watchman at the top of the tower.

I'm sure we're still watchman at the top of the tower, Misha, we're still headed on the right direction, but I like to say I do nothing but I'm responsible for everything. Yeah, I like that. I mean, do you have a bunch of tonals around the office then that are on the walls? How many do you have on the walls or in your gyms? So we have a bunch in our gym obviously where people work out, but when you walk around, like pretty much every engineer has their own tunnel, right? So like, if you walk around, like we have desk, tunnel, desk, tunnel, desk, tunnel, and like, because they're developed, I mean, they're developing software, developing hardware.

Our customer care agents have tunnels on the wall, they can walk up to and play with if we need to help someone answer a question. We have sales reps, where you can hop on a Zoom video call and talk to sales rep and they have tonals and they do Zoom call, point stuff out for you of the tonals. Yeah, we have tonals everywhere. I mean, we love tonals.

Yeah, I'm kidding, right? And then this is kind of a silly question, but I'm just curious, who is the most popular coach you have? a silly question, women's curious, who is the most popular coach you have on? It varies depending on how you measure it. So a coach, Paul, for example, is an incredibly popular coach. People love and people love interacting. And I can. Yeah, people love interacting with like coach Liz, for example, and like in Nicolette and a lot of her workouts

are super, super popular. And they're very, very active in the community. But at the same time, you also ask the question, like, who's our, what's our most popular content? Our most popular workouts are actually by Coach Jackson. And their programs like Go Big, Go Big or Go Home and you know four weeks of fat loss and four weeks of fat loss too and Go Big or Go Home too.

Like there's a set of programming that people are just like obsessed with. Did you just say them? Did you just say them? Did you just say them? Did you just say them? Because I like him because I did a workout with him. I love him. I thought he does a great job.

He knows what he's talking about. Although I like Liz and Paul too. Nicolette and making muscle series were one I had a lot of fun with. People are looking for different things. Sometimes they just care about the coach and the personality. Sometimes they care about the work. Sometimes they care about just getting butt kicked. Depending on what you're looking for, different coaches for sure. There's some really good ones. Some I can do without to be honest, but that doesn't matter, but I do like, I think this has a very nice way about her and I like Paul and I do like

action Jackson. I think, yeah, that's why I was curious, like, who do they come up to the coaches, come up with their own workouts or do you guys do that for them? Yeah, I mean, when we were starting, we didn't go higher instructors, right? We actually went and hired coaches who have certifications on a lot of experience with training people. We went and got them out of some of the best gyms, some of them have PhDs, and that's an area we actually now have a curriculum group that actually is building a lot of the science and the research and a lot of the stuff behind that as well. And so there's there's there's a lot a lot a lot that happens behind the scenes and especially as we add as we add more and more coaches we love the ability for coaches

to create their own workouts and that's important and essential but we also now have to start like driving consistency as well right you know the more coaches you have you can't just turn into everyone does their own thing. You need, you know, our members need that level of like, they know what they're going to do when they work out for this coach or this one or this other one. They kind of have those expectations about what that workout is going to be like and what they're going to get out of it. It can't be a surprise every time you try and you coach. So, so, so, you know, as you scale as you build more and more stuff, you also have to get a little bit more consistent, and we're doing a lot of that stuff, too.

That's not... I mean, so now I've asked you a couple of questions about just in terms of leadership and being an entrepreneur, if that's okay with you, and then you can wrap it up. But, you know, someone who's done such a great job at building something and disrupted the market like you have. What were some of the challenges that you had early on that you learned from? And can you just give people a little bit of that and some like just overall? What were the qualities that you would say also that you have about yourself that makes you a good leader and makes you a good entrepreneur? Well, I mean the biggest challenges every day you're doing something you've literally never done before, right? You never get to perfect a craft of leading a 500 person company

because it's your first time doing it and you don't do that day and day out. So in some ways, that was the biggest challenge. And the way I approach it is the combination of the beginner's mindset of just like knowing that there's probably a bazillion things I don't know about running a 500 person company or bazillion things I don't know about marketing like in the early days of time or bazillion things I don't know and also looking out looking out into the future, right? And so you know in some ways like if you know that I don't know what it's like to lead a 500 person company and I know I don't know it's like to lead a thousand person company, which is in our future. I start learning today about what it's like to lead a thousand person company.

You talk to advisors, you know, in my case, I have executive coaches, I have an executive coach, I meet with regularly and I also, I'm in a peer coaching program with a bunch of CEOs for going through similar entrepreneurship journeys, a company's growing at similar rates at similar stages, and we hold each other accountable. And so it's this constant thing of getting ahead of where you're gonna need to be and planning for that, and just accepting the fact that I don't wanna say

the fact that I'm good, but it's the fact that I'm not ready. I haven't done it before, and I need to start preparing now for me to get there. And it's no different than any other thing in life. You don't get to practice for the Olympics, but you don't get to be practiced at being in the Olympics. It's one time. It's one performance, and it's about always thinking about, I don't get to read you on next year, so I better be ready. Right. No, that's a good idea. So you mentioned two things, peer coaching and executive coaching.

What's a peer coaching? Is that like a YPO type of thing or when you have a bunch of people who are doing the same thing you're doing? It's a little bit more formal than that. So the program I'm in is called TANX CEO. And the way it works is they basically pull us together. They, I think, it does in different groups, but each group is a group of eight CEOs in eight companies. So I'm in a group with like seven other CEOs or companies. And we meet once a quarter for two

days back to back. We literally just go through each other's businesses one by one And you know, there's part of it as like what did you say last time is what you're saying this time Like consistent and a progression on what you did last time did you do what you were gonna say are gonna do? Hey, I'm facing this challenge. What are you facing? Right, so you know as our companies all went through work from home, and all these challenges were happening, we were all comparing notes and pointing each other at resources, and I have an advisor helping with this thing. You should go talk to them.

We have, for example, now we're talking about returns of work. And one of the CEOs literally handed us an AD page return to work document that he and his team had crafted. And like, here, just look at this. It might help you. So there's a lot of that going on where like, you're not doing it alone. And that's the thing about leadership,

that's the thing about entrepreneurship is, like you're kind of on an island, right? And it's hard because it's not just that you're the pyramid, you're at the top of a pyramid, and you have this massive team underneath you. You also have this massive board and investor based above you. So you're kind of like the consequence of of this point about all of these people. The people outside

the company, you have advisors. A lot of information is flowing through you and it's about constantly being able to process it and move it and direct stuff and make good decisions even with very little data. When you have other people who are going through that same thing, you know, 12 hours a day, it's good to be able to talk to them and get their support. Absolutely. And then your executive coaching, do you have that once a week with somebody or?

It varies. It's usually once a week or every other week, depending on what we're going through. And so those are like 90-minute sessions often is every week. Oftentimes like all of the specific goals that we're gonna go through. So those are like 90-minute sessions, often is every week. Oftentimes like all the specific goals that we're going to go through. And it's kind of like, it's a little bit like therapy. Mental strength is like, it's one of the biggest things in business. And one of the things that I think shocked me the deeper I got into business is the number of athletes I've met who

later became business people and leaders. And the thing they've often told me is, all you don't understand, and literally say something to be like, I wasn't the best football player, I wasn't the best football player in high school, but I was the person who had the mental strength to make it into the big leagues. And oftentimes it never came back to like, I had better technical skill or I was faster, it came down to like the mental strength of being able to handle that pressure. By the way, that's something I really, really like. It's a trademark of serenavillians, is her mental strength. Under the highest pressure situations.

That coach a lot of it is psychological. It's like, why are you really not doing this thing that you said you're going to do? Right. Kind of breaking it down and setting goals and helping you work through things. It's also going out and doing 360s. Like, the interview people, tonal up and down, up and down the organization and come back and be like, oh, this is what people have to say about you. By the way, it was anonymous.

You're not going to like everything in here. Right. And you go through it and then you start working through it. It's like, oh, well, that has some proof. And the truth is, even if you read something that someone said that you don't like, and maybe it's not even true, the fact that they're thinking that thing means that, well, okay, you're not doing something, right? You're not communicating, right?

You're not like, there's something missing. And so, you're constantly learning from everyone around you, right? You're creating your executive team, right? I'm surrounded by leaders, like people like I have more experience than me. I learn from them every day. Right. No, I think those are very good points. And I think that even like let's say, you know, even Tiger Woods has a coach just because you can and you're like, you know, being a new entrepreneur, you're not going to do everything right. There is no right or wrong. It's like you kind of are learning as you go on the

job. So I like to know what the what know what's the tools that you have in your toolbox as you go and grow. I'm also curious to know when you do those tests or those not tests, when those surveys, where are the couple of the attributes that you people say about you? Good or bad that you see over and over again. The thing I see over and over again is like, authenticity, all he really cares about his team, he really cares about the mission, he really cares about the customer base. And then in terms of negatives,

they're constantly shifting, because every time I hear something, I'm working on it. But let me think through, I'm thinking through the journey. I think in the early days, I'm someone who's really, really even guilt. Like, I could be in the middle of a hurricane and I'm still smiling. Kind of a deal. And a lot of people, I think, struggled with the fact that they couldn't necessarily read my emotions.

And so they're like, we don't always know what all these thinking. And so like sometimes I have to like intentionally be like, I think I need to be dramatic. In order for them to like understand that this thing is important to me. And so I've actually had people like on my team begin to recognize this about me. I have one person's like, Hey, you know that thing you brought up last week? I have a question in terms of like, what will importance to you, is that like a two or a nine, we couldn't really tell. And I'm like, oh, no, that was definitely a nine, right? And so, you know, that was one, that's one thing I've, like, I've learned to like get better at. And, and there's a lot, and like, your team's changing, your team's evolving, and

you're constantly shaping that, that's the importance of like doing these things. Just, you don't really know until when someone goes and asks in an anonymous like a safe way where they'll actually tell you the truth right. And so that feedback is so important right. Coaching is so incredibly important. It's like no one has done anything great in life without a coach. All the best athletes, all the best CEOs, they all have them. I don't want to say if the best kept secret but like if you're not doing it, you're probably not achieving everything you could be achieving. Right.

Right. No, I really agree with you. That's why I was asking you. And this group that you just mentioned, the 10 times, no, the CEO or 10 times CEO. 10X, yeah. 10X, yeah, 10X CEO. I've never heard of that. Is that, can anybody who's a CEO, is it, how do you join?

What is the process with that? It's technically speaking, it's invite, it's invite only referral only, and you have to apply. But basically, the network comes in through the venture venture folks. So, you know, if you are, if you own a business that's backed by some sort of venture investment, there's a very good chance they have a relationship with this program. Now, what's the difference between that and why Pio? Why Pio is for people who don't know, it's called young, young president's organization. And they, what people love about that is the forums that you get into, which is like another, like another six, seven people in a group or eight, whatever.

And that becomes your like cohort. But how are they different in terms of? But you get. I have to tell you, I'm, I've had people harassing me to join YPO for like five years. And I just haven't because I'm afraid that it's just one more thing I have to do. And so I can't actually tell you.

I do know that I people keep warning me, like you only have a few more years to join IPO before you age out. And once you're in, it's the most incredible thing. And so it's a very, very highly endorsed program, but I honestly, I just don't know it well enough to comment. Are you in it? Well, why would you say that? My husband's in it.

I know. I'm just kidding. But how old are you? You do age out, I think it's at 45? No, 50, you age out, right? 50, you age out? I think it's a 45, no 50, you age out, right? 50 you age out? I think it's 45 and I'm 43. So. Oh, no, I think it must be 50 because I think it's called YPO Gold at 50. And then people go to the YPO Gold, but I could be wrong. I don't know. But I think,

what I mean, listen, I think I think I, I, I, I think you could have answered all of my questions. Besides, of course, like half of this podcast, me just like telling you how, I think you could have answered all of my questions. Besides, of course, half of this plot, as it may just like telling you how amazing I think your product is. And again, for people, I am not getting paid to say that. The jet is my, it's authentic. I really do think that you've built an extraordinary, incredible thing, machine, and disrupted the fitness space more than I've seen anybody else do. And, you know, I'm a big fan, as you could tell, so I love having you on the podcast. Thank you so so much for having me. It was wonderful, wonderful speaking with you and wonderful

having you in our community and as, like, the most authentic advocate. And advocate and happy that's at any time. Oh my gosh, where do people find more information? I mean about you or about Tonal, I mean, Tonal you can just go on, you can tell them. Tonal.com, absolutely to see the product, you know, at Tonal and Instagram, at Tonal on Twitter. Visit our locations or demo at Tonal on our website, 40 Nordstrom locations, and about a dozen other locations in addition to that around the country, where you can go physically touch one.

A lot, or even just like get on a Zoom call and like see it. But I think you gotta see it, you got to experience this thing. It really is the most incredible piece of business that I've ever created. It sure is. Well, thank you so much. And it was, it's a pleasure talking to you. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye. This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire YAP Media, and host of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world, and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. Each week, we dive into a new topic like the art of side hustles, how to level up your

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