Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 920: Brendon Ayanbadejo

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

In this episode Sal, Adam, and Justin catch up with Brendon Ayanbadejo, 2 time NFL Superbowl champion who has transitioned into a very successful business owner. How you do anything is how you do everything. Where did Brendan get his work ethic from? (4:15) The formula to life vs. formula to success. (7:32) What would he say is his greatest weakness? (8:43) The Dog vs. the Pug. Does he fear his kids will grow up without the drive? (9:45) When and how did he get introduced to Orangetheory?  (14:46) What was the learning curve on his first Orangetheory businesses? (19:11) The importance of being the FACE of the business early on. (21:00) What are some of the biggest differences between the locations that were producing more revenue? (21:59) How much money does one need to start a franchise? Typical overhead costs? (23:46) The benefits of being the Area Developer. (27:17) What is his current strategy with acquiring new franchises? (30:36) Is he still throttling down or does he still see ‘a big piece of pie on the table’? (31:37) Does he have any fears they are growing TOO fast? (33:02) How often does he see an owner fail? (35:50) The Great Group Training Trend Debate. (36:30) How much autonomy does an owner/trainer have to “modify” programming in the classes? (54:09) How is OTF getting into HRV and acknowledging new technology? (55:19) The importance of community and learning what is best for your body. (59:25) What does their retention rate look like? (1:02:36) Adam’s two cents to add value to Orangetheory: How they don’t want to be the Starbucks of Fitness. (1:06:30) What would his wife say is his biggest flaw/weakness? Practices he puts in place to be a better man? (1:13:10) How does the success with his business compare to his success with football? (1:17:21) Has he thought about becoming the sounding board for the exit strategy for ex-NFL players? (1:20:18) The lessons learned from one another. (1:23:30) Feathered Guest/People Mentioned: Brendon Ayanbadejo (@brendon310)  Instagram Jordan Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson)  Instagram Products Mentioned: December Promotion: Enroll in Any MAPS Program – 1 Year of Forum Access for FREE! AdaptNation Podcast #52: Mind Pump’s Adam Schafer - Building a Digital Fitness Business, Personal Passions, Hard Home Truths & His Deepest Aspirations Post-NFL, Brendon Ayanbadejo found new rewards in OTF training Orangetheory Fitness | Gym Near You | Try a Free One-Hour Workout What Information is found in the FDD? What Is a Franchise Area Developer? Interview with Orangetheory Fitness’ 2017 Franchisee of the Year Jamie Weeks Mind Pump Episode 903: The Best Time to Take Creatine, Ab Building Mistakes, Natural Ways to Increase Energy & MORE Mind Pump Episode 909: Eating Smart During the Holidays, How NOT to do Plyometrics, Tips for Getting Parasympathetic Post Workout & MORE How is Shiva Observed How Health Club Operators Should Calculate Retention Rates Money lessons learned from pro athletes' financial fouls Mind Pump Episode 907: Cory Schlesinger    

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, ob-mite, up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. What a treat. Huh? My buddy just stopped it in like that last minute. What a cool guy. Yeah, love Brandon.

Yeah, love Brandon. Brandon, I am Badejo. Uh, Badejo? Badejo? I'm not sure. Come on, man. I, uh, Badejo, Bendejo? Badejo? Come on, man. I am Badejo, Badejo. He's a fucking cool guy. You know, when we first started Mind Pump,

Adam was friends with him. He was an ex pro NFL player, went to the Super Bowl, then he opened up Orange Theory gyms, Adam worked for him for a little bit. He was a bit of a hometown hero for me. He grew up in Santa Cruz, played, became NFL superstar. He's a humble, gracious dude. He agreed to come on our show when we were nobody's.

Had great conversation with them. It was always stayed in contact with us. It's always been good support. Just a fucking great guy. Also a very, very smart dude, a very intelligent guy. Like he's got got a good emotional intel. He's a great example for any NFL pro. We glazed over that in the conversation about what does it, 75 or 80% of NFL pros go bankrupt or on welfare after they leave the NFL and

just because they don't think about years. It's a very short-lived career. Yeah, think about years beyond the NFL and he's one of those guys that used the NFL to pursue his masters in business and then to set himself up to be very successful in business. And we really dive in, this is a business conversation. We dove into all the ways to make money at Orn's theory and his success that he's had and asked him about some financials and he shared some personal information with those. So those of you guys that are into those types of conversations will really enjoy it. But we did. We went all over the place. We talked about raising

kids and, you know, his personal growth and self-awareness and things like that. But we really talked a lot of business in this conversation. Nice little group exercise debate. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was like, good, healthy portion of this. Yeah, because we just recently had... Because you guys know, if you listen to the show, Adam stands on group exercise.

So who better than to visit that? And he actually listens to the show and he brought it up. We weren't going to... I wasn't going to going to. I wasn't going to go there. You know, I wasn't trying to hammer him, but I mean, shit, he put it up on a tee for me. He wanted to, what he basically said was he listens to the show. And there's, you know, you wanted to respond to, you know, what I have said about it. I said, well, fuck, let's go there. Yeah, let's go there.

Let's talk about it. I've been to it. So we had a really good conversation around that. I think people will enjoy that too. Yeah, no, it was good. I always enjoy talking to the guy. We've seen him a few times now. He was with us at that dosedest event.

You know, he popped in with his lovely wife and he seems like a great father of the stuff. He's just an overall smart dude. You're gonna want to listen to this episode, especially if you want advice on how to stay motivated, how to succeed, and how to build a fitness business. This is the episode to listen to. Now you can find him on Instagram at BrendanBRENDON310310.

Also, before we get into the episode, I'd like to remind everybody that this month, all months long, if you're enrolling any maps program at all, any of our maps programs, you'll get one year of free access to our private forum, of course, our private forum, Adam, Justin, myself, and even Doug are on their daily. And of course, it's a private forum of fitness enthusiasts, there's doctors, there's personal trainers, there's all kinds of discussions and debates. Mostly fitness sometimes not gets real heated sometimes.

It's a lot of fun. If you enjoy our show, you enjoy our flavor, you'll enjoy the people in our forum. That's a hundred dollar value, totally free if you enroll in any maps programs. Just check out the math program, see which one works for you, go to mapsfitnisproducts.com and that's pretty much it. Here we are talking to our friend, Brendan. Dude, it's been a while since we've had you in the studio. You have done quite a bit. Now, I remember when we first met, instantly I feel like we pretty much headed off. There's, I think we have a lot in common. One of the things that right away I had so much respect for you is your

work ethic, man. And I remember you starting off the very first orange theory that you purchased that I was a part of when you got going over off of Lincoln Avenue. And I remember like thinking like, oh there's so many things that I would do differently. But then watching the way that you approached it and work was really cool because it's rare that I see somebody who will take something like that and put their head down. And I mean, I don't remember seeing you take a day off. I've seen you in a different state almost every every other day.

And to watch you build something your way was unbelievably impressive and I remember at the beginning I was like I would do this I would do that and because I have my own fitness you know being the fitness industry for as long as I have had my own opinions but I remember having so much respect and admiration for you because you did it your own way and to watch you succeed and and do it in such a short amount of time, so impressive. And I have to think that you, how you do anything is how you do everything.

And I feel like you probably have applied that method your entire life. Do you know where that stems from? When you first got that from? Yeah, I think as a young child, I was always an underdog. You know, like those people that always just are underdogs, no matter what you just know that you're gonna have to take the path less traveled, you know you're always gonna have to fight,

you're always gonna have to work. I'm never gonna win the lottery, but I could take something that's very mediocre and I could probably make it pretty good if I put a lot of time working effort into it. So I just remember being a kid just everything was always tough everything was always hard and that was kind of where I thrived. If it was easy then it probably wasn't for me. If it was going to be tough it was for me. So just

an example we grew up on welfare we grew up in the projects there was gangbaggers there was drug dealers I had friends murdered as a kid we had to stand in line I'd literally walk to school in Chicago in the cold. We carry our groceries home, probably just walk a mile. Your hands would be frozen by the time you got home. So yeah, it just, how did you group a poor kid? I always had to work hard. How did you look at it though when you were a kid? Now we're, because a lot of people can look at that and feel like, poor me, like a victim. Like I'm a victim of all this and there's nothing else I can do about it, and you know, fuck all these people, and fuck the whole thing, and whatever.

Obviously you look at it differently, or it turned you into who you are now. Yeah, I just thought that was life. So I just thought like, okay, this is what, it was survival. So this is what we need to do to survive. We have to go and get these groceries in the cold, we didn't have a car, and we had to get them back home,

and then we eat a nice meal that my mom would prepare, whatever, we had to avoid going down this street, because the drug dealers, the gang bangers are on this street or we can't walk up our stairs at this time because the gang bangers are in the hallway or the drug dealers in the hallway would have to wait it out. And that was just survival and that was the only way I saw it. I never complained. Whatever took the family to get it done. We got it done together.

So it's just the only way I knew life. No, I couldn't act a lot with that. But I also remember that there was a transition in my life where I piece that together that this wasn't normal, that this was something that I experienced and went through and then it's for me into who I am today. And then I figured out that it was a strength of mine. Do you remember like when you started to put it together

like oh shit, not everybody had it this rough? I'm almost grateful and thankful I did. And this is what's going to allow me to separate myself from everybody else. Do you remember that? Yeah, kind of the time I got to junior college, I started to see like, okay, there's a formula to life and there's a formula, there's a way to be successful.

If you do XYZ, you play the game, you're a little bit street smart, you're a little bit slick, you can go ahead and get beyond and go above and beyond and do better. So I'm going to junior college and doing all the things applying the street smarts, the hard work and all that stuff, eventually earning a scholarship to UCLA, I started to play the game

and I started to figure it out. There was a point in time where I kinda had a bad attitude or certain things kinda went work out my way, but once I understood I was in control of my own destiny, part of that being a young child that had to do things the hard road, and then that was just going to be my life going forward. I think I was just way ahead of the curve by the time I got to college and then going on and setting myself up for the rest of my life.

Now, I do, I did an interview recently and somebody asked me about what I thought was one of my weaknesses, and I thought it, mine, if you were to ask Katrina, would be empathy, because I went through all that stuff, because I struggled, because I overcame it, because it's become a strength of mine. Do you have that in common, too? Do you think that that's a weakness of yours, like where you don't have a lot of empathy for those that complain and whine and say, oh, it's so tough, so it's so hard? Yeah, I do, but you know, being an empathetic person, you want to try to help people get their results, but then also knowing like, hey, I always think if I can do it, you want to try to help people get their results.

But then also knowing like, hey, I always think if I can do it, you can do it, but that's not always the case either. But I think some of my other flaws are maybe just lack of patience. And maybe even the opposite of empathy is that lack of patience, because I think that there's a will, there's a way, I think you can get it done. But there's not all, you know, people can't always get things done and people are gonna get things done in different levels or people are gonna get things done Of what they're capable of doing and that might not be what you're capable of doing or it might be even more than what you're capable of So yeah, I think that I wish that I had as much patience as I have empathy I think I need to be a more patient person How big of an impact you think growing up the way you did had on you becoming the successful person and then how do you teach that to your kids who are growing up totally

different. They've got, you know, privilege and money and education and opportunity. Do you ever worry like, oh shit, my kids may grow up without the same kind of drive that I have? Man, I worry about that every single day. And I just call it the dog. Like, I had a dog in me. I have, it's a Chihuahua pit mix that I have inside of me. But my kids are like freaking poodles.

Nah, poodles are an awesome dog. They're like freaking, I don't know, they're like pugs. Yeah. Like, what is a pug? Is that even like, is that a dog? Is it a cat? Like, what is a pug? But yeah, that's what I worry about is just that drive

because I never had it. So I always had to earn it. Whereas like my kids, like I showed up in my house the other day and my wife's like, oh, those are the Nike's that I got on sale. And there was freaking seven boxes of Nike shoes sitting there. And the first thing I popped in my head,

I'm like, that's more shoes that you guys have there. And one day, then I had in a school year, or throughout my entire junior high school. That's more pairs of shoes right there between the two of you. So it kinda just boggles my mind while I want to give them everything, but I want them to know what hard work and value is as well. And I don't think they know that.

So that's something I definitely struggle with and I worry about that all the time. Is there anything that you try to do to instill that in them? Like, for example, for me growing up the way, I'm a first generation American, my parents were poor immigrants from Sicily, and it didn't really hit me because then my dad came here, worked real hard,

and I had a middle class life. And so, if you compared me to my father or my mom, I had a very privileged life. I didn't realize it until I was about 12. We went back to Sicily, and I saw how his family was and I saw some, and then it really hit me and I was like, okay, I do take a lot of things for granted. Do you do anything like that to help maybe show your kids?

Yeah, so I brought my kids back to the projects that I've grown up in Chicago. I've done that. My daughter's just 13 now, so when I brought her back there, she's probably seven or eight. The age that my son is now, but I try to bring them back to their roots, whether it's, my father was an immigrant as well.

So half of my family is, I'm first generation born in the United States, the other half is probably like fifth or sixth, Irish American, but I try to bring them back to their roots and connect them, whether it's Nigeria, whether it's growing up in Chicago and the projects. And I want to do that more, but I think something I did as of late with my daughter, she's

13. Some of the kids with the sports programs, they give their kids incentives and they pay them to do well. But for me, my incentive was success, was being the best was my incentive. You know, it wasn't monetary-based. So I heard some of the parents, you know, oh, if my son scores a goal, then he gets 20 bucks,

or if my daughter does this in tennis, she gets, you know, 20 or $30, whatever it is, you know? So when I do with my daughter as I started allowance, and I'm like, okay, these are your chores. And the first thing I started off with was respect, accountability, and things like that, which aren't necessarily, I mean, those are just things that you think that every kid should have for whatever reasons and these generations,

these kids are very different than we were, just to respect your elders. And I tell my daughter, even if you're wrong and it's an older person, understand that, or even if they're wrong and it's an older person, understand that they're older, just respect that. You don't have to say anything back. You can disagree inside your head, but don't make it a big deal. So we started with just respecting very simple things and then I built these incentive sports wise in there as well to pay her to do well,

which is I didn't have that as a kid. So I think incentivizing the children and really connecting them with them in a different way. And I'm trying to think outside of the box things that I didn't have things that I just grew up, you know, knowing and thinking that we would do, just respect and being on time and carrying yourself in a certain kind of way,

which are certain things that the kids lack today. And I just wanted to build in some of the basic principles of just success in life. And then I had to like monetize them or incentivize them, which was very hard for me to come to terms with, but I wanted to do it differently. And my way's not necessarily going to be the best way. I want to find the best way to do that.

So I'm just kind of playing with that and towing with that right now with my 13 year old, as far as my seven year old. I just keep everything very basic and vanilla with him. He's like, , I'm going to get money too. I'm like, no, when you're your daughter's age, you'll get money for doing certain things that you're supposed to be doing. But I don't think you should be paid to do things that you're supposed to be doing like when someone tells you

Oh, thank you for doing this like you don't have to tell me thank you for that That's just something I should be doing anyways But is it difficult for you to incentivize them to be physically active and go do things or be involved in sports or Is that something that kind of comes naturally to? No, I think that's just built into them, you know. I think kids they want to move around and they are active, but to incentivize them to do their best, which to me is just why wouldn't you do anything other than your best. Don't just go out there and half-ass it and lolly gag, but so yeah, then incentivize them to go the extra mile, which that's one of those things was kind of outside the box.

Interesting for me. When did you get your first orange theory location? buys them to go the extra mile, which that's one of those things was kind of outside the box. Interesting. For me, when did you get your first orange theory location? How did you get into that business? Because at the time, when you first got it, the company was nowhere near where it is now. What introduced you to that market? What made you think I'm going to start this, you know, I'm going to buy one of these locations and take it from there? Yes, so at the time when I got in, I think there was 50 locations in just a handful of states,

which for a franchise, you think for a brand new franchise. So all you have 50, that's actually pretty good, right? Now there's over 1,000, they're approaching 1,100 in 25 countries, so at the time when I saw the fitness concept and what they were doing, I was like, wow, this is amazing. So that was 2013. It was actually my first orange theory class was February 6th. And that was three days after we won the Super Bowl.

I mean, I tell this story all the time, my wife drugged me and I was like, man, I'm not doing shit for at least two weeks. That's right, I'm sure. Oh, you're life brought you to class. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not doing shit for two weeks on the lane. It's bad.

I'm gonna be a Super Bowl champion. But of course, like any champion just never stops, right? So at that time, I was in business school and we had just won the Super Bowl. And when the Super Bowl was in the middle of business school, I think I had one more semester to go and be school. I went into orange theory. I was forced.

My wife said she was gonna take away one of the most important things that we had. And that was food. I was gonna have to wife said she was going to take one of the most important things that we had. And that was food. I was going to have to make my own food. It would have been a lot of microwaving and eggs. So once she threatened me with that, I said, okay, I got to go work out. So I went in, I thought it was an amazing, amazing, amazing workout. I got on a water roller, no impact, and just got moving and grooving.

And, you know, how popular rowing is right now. Everybody's rowing C2, water roller. But it got my body in a non-impactful kind of way. Got me moving, was working on my mobility as well in the rower, a lot of flexion. When you come back to the water and whatnot, so I got a nod, got loosened up and I didn't hurt and I felt good and the treadmill's about good,

so I'm like, wow, this is interesting. I took a picture and I posted on my Instagram immediately, so I always go back to February 6th, 2013 on my Instagram, just to look at that picture, which is what, you know, almost what, six years ago now. So I went in coincidentally, it was the first studio that it ever been built, is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was living there for my days with the dolphins

and upstairs was their corporate headquarters. So after I was a member, I went up to their corporate headquarters and they welcomed me with open arms. I was able to secure the South Bay area to Northern California and then eventually was able to secure with my partner Los Angeles as well. I mean, I had no idea what we're gonna do,

but yeah, so. The foresight on that. Yeah. That's why I was gonna ask you. That's why I asked you, because was that the first business that you had owned? Because up into that point, your career was football, professional football.

Right. So as your first business, your first big investment, were you scared, were you looking back, were you totally naive? Oh, I was, yeah, it's kind of one of those things where like you talk to a 10-year-old kid and they're like, oh, I'm gonna be a superstar. I'm

going to play basketball half the year and then the other half the year I'm going to be a professional singer. That's what I'm going to do when I grow up. So yeah, for me, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do Orange Deer. I'm going to open up all over California. We love to hate Adam. I'm going to find this guy and we're just going to go take over. You know, and I just became friends with him on Instagram and we had a mutual friend and we're going to do this thing, right? So yeah, I think I was naive,

but actually own a yogurt shop prior to that. You know, it was a miserable fail. I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a miserable fail. Like I was in there, you know, you know, I'm a guy I played, you know, 13 years of professional football, and I'd be in the yogurt shop serving,

you know, yogurt sin. Families would come in, and I'd see a family that I was familiar with, and I'd see them pop in on the video camera, I'd like, oh, this family's, I love that family. I'd drive down to the yogurt shop and I'd catch him and say hi. And you got to think like the average ticket's five bucks. How much, how many yogurts do you have to serve just to pay your rent at five bucks ahead,

you know? So I was incredibly naive with the yogurt shop as well, but incredibly enough, it was a very expensive lesson. And I knew that I was never gonna do anything mom and pop ever again, I was gonna go the franchise and ratify owned a business. So this wasn't a franchise? It was not a franchise, we opted not to do the franchise rat.

I didn't wanna pay royalties or any of that stuff. We wanted to have organic yogurts and high end flavors and high quality products. And you really couldn't do that going the franchise route. And so it was a boutique yogurt shop. It was really cool, but it was a learning experience,

man, it was way too much work for nothing. When you first started the first orange theory that you started, what were some of the learning curves there? Like when you first jumped in, did it just make money right out the gates? Or were there times and periods we had to figure some stuff out?

Yeah, well, I think it did both. So an enormous learning curve is just the processes you have to do to open up a business, you know, registering everything, creating the entity, so entity creation, doing that with the state and federal and all that. And then once you have all that in order, your contractors, your leases, and just having everything in a preferential way. So you're not fully liable for everything. And that came later on after we did several studios,

but at first you had to be the guarantor, you had to sign for everything, but just that whole learning curve and going through that experience and that process was pretty amazing. And now to think like, oh, my name's on every lease or my name, I was liable for everything whereas now the company is, because we're so big now that we can do that.

But just going from mom and pop to actually turning into a big corporation was a huge learning lesson. And then just the people you partner with, so my initial partner actually had some mental issues. It had some mental sickness and we almost lost everything in terms of orange theory when you went through his issues, and then I went through a bunch of legalities, and I was able to negotiate everything.

It was paying a lot of money for lawyers to do it, but I ultimately ended up doing all the negotiating and then pulled the company out of almost losing it all, and then going on this massive run, but we even had to shut it down and we'll go Glenn for a little while, before we got it open, and people are like, oh, what's going on? Are they going to close? Are they going to open?

But we figured out so you have to partner with the right people as well. And then once we got open, the money just started coming, but the business really skyrocketed and we did really really start. Now you were pretty hands on right out the gates, right? You were in the location meeting people, meeting members. How important do you think that is for somebody who starts a business like that? Do you think it's real important that they get in there and meet people and be a part of it,

or just kind of step aside and have other people do it for them? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends what type of business you're trying to run. Early on, we were trying to run a business of, you know, even though it was a franchise, we wanted to feel like it was locally ran and operated. And so I wanted to be there. I wanted to be present.

I went through the training with Adam and all of our other staff. And then I would fly into town, you know, probably every couple of weeks to make sure that my face wasn't around, but my business partner was local as well. But I think it's important, but as you scale, you also know that eventually you're gonna be divided

from one to two to three, to eventually, you know, a hundred locations to wherever we're going that you're going to be divided by that, whereas I could spend more time early on, but that was kind of the culture and the atmosphere that we wanted to have is that everyone was touchable. Now, these locations, Orange Theory Clubs, they are very similar from box to box, right? When it went with franchise, one of the benefits is you walk in and you get the same feel in each location. Like if I go to Starbucks, I should get a coffee

that tastes the same as a coffee. I'm gonna get in a different Starbucks. But obviously not all locations produce the same amount of revenue. And one thing that I noticed about fitness and I don't know if this is true with orange theory was the staff made the biggest difference. Like, I remember I'd be able to walk into a gym and, you know, increase the revenue by

50% within the first month without changing equipment or changing too many other things other than the staff and the attitude within the facility. What are some of the biggest differences between the locations you had that were producing more than the other locations? Was it that or was it just location? Yeah, so I think all of them produced. We had kind of top of class in all of our units. Yeah, you're one of the number one producers.

Yeah, we're the first two million dollar orange, three fitness studio ever. And now there's studios doing 2.5 approaching three, which we don't think we'll be able to do just because our locations aren't big enough. But there's some units that are that are really producing way above and beyond, whereas the average, I would say in the companies, maybe 1.1, we did a two million dollar studio. I think our average is 1.6 AUV, so average unit volume. But we do really well. I think it is about the people though. Ultimately, you want that experience and people say, you know, when they go to our locations,

it just feels like a higher level experience than when they go to some of the other ones. But we're still always trying to raise the bar not just with what we do, but with all the locations across the nation. I think our company understands where West Coast Fitness now. We understand that people are coming to Los Angeles, people are coming to the Bay Area,

and it has a huge effect on the rest of of the ecosystem of Orange Theory in general. For those that are entrepreneurs, what are, I would love to ask you some more numbers type questions like how much money do I need to start one? Once it gets going, like what's the typical overhead as far as staffing, you know, lease this and I know there's obviously what it costs you to be here in San Jose. Well, it's probably completely different than across the country. Right.

Avertizing. Well, I think the franchise probably completely different than across the country. Right. Avertising. Yeah. Well, I think the franchise probably takes care a lot of that, right? But what do you need to get into it? And then what do you expect as far as your kind of month to month overhead? Right. So every franchise is different, but you need to kind of need to know the expenses in the budget that's going to take when you do your research.

A lot of franchises, the franchisers, they're not necessarily allowed to tell you what the revenue is going to be, what they do is they have valuation calls where other franchises can tell you what the revenue is because they don't want you to be biased. You know, they don't want to say, hey, you're going to make a million dollars, but your expenses are going to be $500,000. So you're working at a huge margin there. So they wanna give you accurate information from other franchisees.

They can kinda give you an idea through the FDD, the franchise disclosure documents of kind of what the expenses are gonna be, but they're not gonna tell you necessarily how much money you're gonna make cause that's kind of a conflict of interest, right? So, with Orange Theory, we see that, you know, our units are producing,

let's just say on average 1.6, we're averaging at a 30 to 40% margin, does every location is just different because you can imagine some of the rents in the Bay Area more than some of the rents in LA, the rent in New York's probably gonna be more than all of it. The rent in San Francisco might be comparable, but if you're in Oklahoma,

the rent's gonna be way down, right? So we average, you know, we do about 1.6 in, and San Francisco might be comparable, but if you're in Oklahoma, there's gonna be way down. Right. So we average, you know, we do about 1.6 in in gross revenue. We average it about a 30 to 40% margin. So, you know, you can anticipate that the expenses might be around, you know, even a million dollars.

So you shrink that number down as that 90 grand a month. So on and so forth, but your biggest cost is always going to be opening. Getting that box open, getting all the equipment in it, going through your training, your marketing expenses, like Justin mentioned. There's different tiers of marketing. There's hyper-local, which is tier three, then there's county-wide, tier two, and then national marketing, which would be tier one.

The company takes care of tier one, but you have to pay for tier two and tier three. Oh, I didn't know that. And then how did you decide how much that you would infuse and into that? Did you write out the gates go, I'm gonna go heavy on advertising? That's actually the, before you even called me,

I got a flyer and I believe you were on the flyer. I was gonna ask you about that. How much of an advantage that was like kind of being the face of these boxes and having the background of being a professional athlete. Yeah, you know, I don't know how much of an advantage it was, but it is an advantage. Now, how to put a number on that,

I don't necessarily know, but to say, oh, Brendan, I'm Badadio, Super Bowl Champion, grew up in the Bay Area, or UCLA Product in LA, it definitely gave me an advantage being in markets where people kind of a little bit know who I am and even like even in Baltimore when franchisees were coming up in Baltimore like yeah, can we use your marketing materials?

I'm like absolutely, go ahead and use them. So I think it does definitely give you an advantage. I'm pretty sure you did. You made these little postcard things. I'm pretty sure I got it at Gold's gym on my windshield. And I remember, I'll never forget, I remember taking it off my window and I'm like, Who is this guy I think he's gonna get into this? I really remember thinking like that yeah, but think about how different fitness is now then just just 2013 2014

It's such a different space now. Yeah. Yeah. How many clubs you guys do you have now? So right now how many do we have open we have about we have 12 open, but we have like eight in progress. So we have a build out right now going on in Santa Clara and Monticello, we have a couple of leases we're closing out on in Santa Clara as well. In LA, we have seven units open, but we have three in building. We have two being built in Melbourne, Australia,

and one open in Melbourne. So I think you need to explain to these guys to the owner, because when you bought the rights to LA and Northern California, anybody who decides, that decides to open up in this location, you make a cut of all those, don't you? Yeah, well, I decide if they get to open up or not. Oh, you even get, you can say, you can cock block even.

Yeah, I get to cock block. Wow. So yeah, I wouldn't even say as that, what we call it as you just, you know, it's called the area developer. So I bought the rights to the area or NLA, you know, me and my partner brought the rights to the area, me and Amy bought the rights to the area in the Bay.

But now we're one big group. So we collectively and with Casanet, our capital partners, we all own, you know, the Bay Area in LA. Well, South Bay Area, Santa Clara County, Santa Cruz County. So what you do is you buy the rights to the area. So now if a franchise opens, I'm awarding a franchise as somebody.

So I have a queue of 1,000 people that want franchises in the Bay Area and 1,000 people that want them in LA. We're not awarding any more franchises. Early on we did that. If I could go back to 2015 when we started awarding franchises, I would award a single one. I really do it myself. Yeah, because you get a royalty and perpetuity, but really the value of the company is that ability

to have that white space to open up new locations. We couldn't do it too fast early on, because we just didn't have them enough money, we didn't have enough foundation, we didn't have enough human resources or human capital to do it early on. But now we have all stuff and we're trying to you know through mergers and acquisitions We're trying to get back all of our space and even acquire oh Franchise these areas now. Yeah, we're requiring now. Yeah, non-organic

M&A deals. Yeah. Oh no shit I didn't I remember that went on the phone with you one of the first times we talked that you told me that my goal was to have You know 54 of these locations in this area. And I'm gonna, this guy's fucking crazy. Yeah. But so you guys are now going back. So you went, you basically built up yourself

or you and Amy, right? You guys built up to what? Like 15 locations, then you sold. When you sold to Huygin, it was the... Castanet. Castanet? Yeah, Castanet. Okay, so you sell to them, but then you also remain

like a partner on the board, how does that work? Yeah, so we're still partners, we're still, you know, we all have our own different equity splits in the company. So Amy still a partner, my partner Paul Marcus is a partner and then of course myself, and then Castanet has the major chunk. So we have about 25% of the company

between the three of us. Yeah. But what it did was a huge capital injection. And so now we're this big robust company and then we can go out and- So now you go, yeah, now you can go look at locations, go, okay, this area, they're performing well. Let's go throw this much money at them, let's buy them up.

Yeah, or you can say, hey, this location, they're performing bad. And we're- Yeah, and we can fix it. So the value though is that you're gonna have to pay a lot more now, but if you have that white space, which we have it, we're able to open up locations rapidly and we don't have to worry about any money anymore.

Now, what is the strategy for you right now? Are you actually flying around, checking out locations and then like going in and going like, oh, this is not being operated very well. Like this is an opportunity for us. Are you doing that? Yeah, or some of them are being operated really well. And then we just know that we want to be able to sustain.

But we kind of want to control a market. But we're looking at different markets, looking at different areas. And there's a gentleman by the name of Jamie Weeks from Honors Group. He's about a year ahead of us. And he's done everything that we've done. So we went and spent time with him in Atlanta with his team. And his team come this time with us here in LA. And we see how he's doing. He has about 54 locations open now.

He's the biggest single franchisee in the network and he's crushing. He's in like five states and he's doing his thing. So we try to spend some time with him and see how they're doing everything but we're in the process of some sensitive information but we have some mergers and acquisitions so we're going to double up the amount of units that we have. We're going to increase our white space, but we're going to do a lot of big things in 2019, and then we have our own, all of our things in the development pipeline that are going to be. Now, I thought for sure, when I saw you sell and we talked, I thought for sure, I was going to see you back off the throttle and kind of cruise a little bit. I mean, I think you earned that and I think you have the financial flexibility to do that if you want to. But you don't look like you've done that, are you still throttling down?

Yeah, because the idea is that there's a lot of food on the table, you know? And while I took some of the food off the table and we de-risked, there's still a huge piece of pie that's on the table that we can go get and we can go attack. And the company would be bigger. Might even get a bigger hit this next round than we did on the first round if we do it, right? And we execute right.

So my goal is to turn this company to a $200 million, $250 million company. And then that'll be a big piece of the pie that will come back and will attack. So there's no time to back off. Well, you could back off and just say, hey, I just made a lot of money. I'm doing really well. You guys can go around the company.

It's like, you know, I think you know any person that's a, I don't know if the words a champion or if it's a go getter or someone who's just really focused or you're just never going to stop working. If you just kind of have that mentality, that mindset, you're just gonna stay on the throttle and keep attacking. I think the value comes from not getting to the destination, but the process of getting to the destination. So it's not fun when you're there.

It's much more fun going there. And so once you're there, yeah, once you're there, like, okay, let's go do something else. Now, I remember in the 90s and in the early 2000s, there was another gym franchise or fitness franchise that exploded and grew incredibly fast and then crumbled under its own weight. And some of the mistakes that they made were allowing people to open up locations that had no business running fitness facilities. These were people who looked at them purely as investments, who never worked out. And it just crumbled.

And I'm referring to curves, curves just completely blew up on the scene. And at one point, I think something like, was like 10,000 locations and now has less than maybe 500 and something. I guess it's really crazy growth. And then just drop. Are there any fears that you guys are going to grow too fast? Or are you guys really paying attention to the quality of how things grow? Yeah, we really pay attention to everything and through research, we get a lot of different information.

So while there's, we're approaching 850, 900 locations in the United States, we think we can get to 1500 or so in the United States. So we're just past the halfway point and And then worldwide, you know, we have, whether it's 150, 200 locations worldwide, we really think we can do even more units worldwide and get to 3,500. So if you think 3,500 plus, you know, 1,500, that puts you at 5,000.

And we're just at 11, 1100 units now. We're just 20% of the way there. I would think that's where most of your focus would be or should be right now is out of the country because that's one of the benefits of being in the United States, being in fitness. We tend to be about five years or so ahead of the rest of the world in fitness.

Like I see, like, I see Australia and companies like that. They're just now kind of finding mine. We have a big listenership out there, but that just started happening like a year ago, and the information that I see coming out of there is about three to five years behind us. So is that where a lot of you guys' attention is, is outside of the United States,

or do you think more of it's here? Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. So for the franchise, or it is, a lot of their attention is international. For us, I think we're just looking, you're growing domestically, and there's a huge opportunity here, but if you look at it, franchises that are successful, this is kind of what you want to happen. You want a bunch of individual franchises that

go to the dirty work, get their locations open. And then you want those people that you talked about, Sal, that are looking at it purely as an investment. You want them eventually to get bought out by operators like us. And then that's when you see franchises take off. Because if I'm running, you're running one unit, two units, three units, and I'm running 50 units, I'm probably gonna be running those 50 units at a higher level than you're gonna be running those threes, fours, and fives.

So the evolution of franchises that are younger like ours, we started in 2010, is to eventually be bought out by higher level operating operators to go in there and to get the brand and the consistency and to get everything going. So it feels like every Starbucks you go into is that same experience. Now is it killing it so much that we don't see any owners really failing or how often do you actually see an owner fail?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one, the franchise or went let a unit fail, but a single unit has never failed. Wow. So we got to 500 units faster than a lot of different companies. I'll just say we got there faster than McDonald's, but that's kind of a loaded statement because McDonald's pioneered franchising, but we did it that fast, right? But there's some other newer franchises that we got there faster than them, to 500, but with almost 1100 units to market, not a single one's ever closed down. That's, holy cow, that's incredible numbers.

Yeah, because I hear you guys talk, and I don't wanna talk all about me, I definitely wanna give you guys some appreciation. So give me some time, at some point, to just praise you guys a little bit, but I hear you guys talking, and all the different things that you guys are talking about with fitness and all the different things,

and the best way to do group fitness, whether it's one on one, or group, and all these different things. And I'm like, man, sometimes I wish I could just share the economics with you guys. And if this is proof is in the putting on how things work and maybe physically it's not the best thing for you to do right here right now, but you put it into a group setting

and you add different benchmarks and markers. This is where people feel like they can excel and they can really grow if you do it the right way. So sometimes I'm like, man, I hear you, I'm listening to you guys talking and doing your thing. I'm like, man, I need to show them some of these numbers. Well, let's have that discussion. I think that's a great discussion to have

because I think I rubbed a bunch of people the wrong way. Recently, when I say group fitness should die. So I do get a lot of statement. I got a lot of backlash on that. And that doesn't mean that there's not a potential company out there that has a really good way of doing it. The things that I see in group training that were,

I mean, it was even when I was teaching there. And I remember that I started to do things differently as a coach and it was great because I had someone like you who gave me the autonomy that allowed me to kind of run the class. Well, you know, to the, I mean, I follow the template to somewhat, but then you gave me a lot of room and flexibility to add my own flavor on there.

And the first thing that I thought of as being a coach for as long as I have that, man, there's just not a lot of emphasis put on mobility. And when you take a lot of these bodies that are the ages of four, because I'm sure your average clientele is somewhere between 35 and 45 would be my guess. When you take those bodies that sit at desk all day long,

that have all these imbalances, and then you run them on a treadmill for 30 minutes, you actually end up making a lot of those issues worse and helping. You may solve some of the fat that they have on their body, but then you end up exaggerating the aches and pains that they have because there's just not a lot of energy and focus put on mobility. And so I would teach at the end of the class, every class, I would give bits of knowledge and information around this. I would teach a mobility exercise.

I would tell my class in those final 10 minutes, hey, if you're noticing when you run on the treadmill that you're getting knee pain, here are some of the things that it could possibly be. And then I would say, do this before you guys get on my treadmills, or hey, some of you that are feeling this way, I know we teach here at Orange Theory to run and do this, but I'm gonna tell you, you should walk,

and that would be better for you. And so, what do you think they're gonna do to counter that, or what do you have to say to that? Yeah, well, I think that for me, I have an advantage because I'm a professional athlete. I know how to prime my body, I know how to cool down my body, and then there's all these different things I do in between time as well, whether it's cryo,

or whether it's injections, or I'm just gonna eat a shit ton of turmeric, or different things homeopathically to get inflammation out of my body, and I've access to so many different things and people to work on my body, right? I like to look at orange theory, and I just like to look at fitness through a longevity sense.

So when you mentioned that, I heard you said that on the podcast the other day, it's like, yeah, it's better for you just to walk. You're absolutely right, because you don't wanna exacerbate other things, but you also wanna get your body moving, and what doesn't get used is ultimately gonna atrophy, so you gotta use it or lose it basically.

So I think there's a fine line between that. But a lot of the different things that the company is doing, it's not about, you know, say you had 10 all-outs on the day and we call all-outs at Orange Theory. We say, oh, empty your tank. The first all-out, you're not going to say, hey, go empty your gas tank on your very first sprint of 10. You know, so we're more conscious about those things. And I'm like, man, there's a lot of things I want to share with Adam that the company does differently now,

that we didn't necessarily do or emphasize to do early on. But we have, we have cardiologists on the company now that are full-time staff cardiologists. We have our own Vio2 max in the company that we test and do things. We have the largest database of heart rate interval training in the world. So a lot of interesting technology, we're going to start publishing medical journals very soon.

We have a full-time physical therapist on staff. We have exercise scientists on staff. So a lot of people that we didn't have initially back then, we have them on. So we're looking at better ways to prime and numb up the body. When I hear of being patterns as well. When I hear that though, the first thing, and I'm just playing devil's advocate with you, I know there's a good conversation, I think of that, it's like what CrossFit does, which is they produce their own information to support what they're selling, right? This is, we're trying to

tell you that this is the best form of exercise, this is what you should do, we have all these intelligent people that are on staff, their job is to break down the science and support the claims that the company or the franchise makes so that they can continue to be successful. So when I hear that, that's what I think of. Because being somebody who's trained individually and in group settings for much of my career, there's so many individual variances in people that it's really hard to give them what they ideally need for their body. And unfortunately, the people that tend to gravitate towards these types of classes, they

tend to be the type A personality go getters. Now, like yourself, which is okay because like you preface by saying that, you know, I have an athlete, I understand how to prime my body, understand how to do all those things. Well, unfortunately, you're not the majority. You know, you're the minority. Most people are one, don't have the knowledge and information specifically for their body on how they should prime it and get it ready.

And then two, I have the discipline to do that. They just wanna get after it because that's what gives them that endorphin rush and makes them feel good and feel accomplished afterwards. But in reality, those personalities are probably the ones that need that form of exercise the least. And so that's the concern that I always had. And I remember when we first met, I was constantly like, Brandon, I hope you see the end

and you did. You did exactly what I think was the most, but I mean, you were so smart by selling, but then still keeping your hand, because you've just now wedged your bed against anything that I say. If I'm wrong and you're right in this situation, you make out. If I'm right, you're wrong, you still make out

because you were smart and you made back X amount of dollars back from your investment. You've protected yourself, but then you've also leveraged yourself that Adam may not be that smart. This could be the next best thing ever, but what I see is I see a trend like we saw in curves, like we see in CrossFit,

that eventually it will level off and then eventually we'll see a deep, do I think it'll die completely? I don't know if I think it'll die. I think it's one of the best things out there. I think that you guys are making the right decisions to probably combat a lot of things that I'm saying, but I don't know if group training will ever be the answer for people. I really don't.

I think it feeds into our insecurities of why we go. We've most people go to group settings because they need that environment to get them motivated to get in. And the argument that someone could have with me with that is that, well, okay, well, if this person would not work out whatsoever, don't you think it's better

that we offer something like this to get them involved and aren't they better moving than not moving at all? And okay, I can concede to that, but I don't think that it's a superior form of exercise for the majority at all. In fact, I think it's really, really a very small niche of people that it's ideal for. Yeah, I think it's actually the superior form

of exercise for the masses. I think that we're pack animals and we wanna work out, we wanna do things impact, want to do things in pack. We want to do things together. Whether that makes us feel better psychologically, or we get to compete or certain other things. I think, you know, Sal was kind of the voice of a reason that brought up a lot of the difference

that the devil's advocate stuff. That's your talking about. But also, there's just something about working out in a group. And then when you were saying this, I was listening to everything that you said, I thought about, you know, okay, me as a professional athlete, how do I train?

Who do I train with? Who am I around? I'm with the 1% of other, the 0.001% of other people that are professional athletes have, always trained in a group. But I think there's all different types of personality types. There's people that wanna work out with people next to them that push them, there's people that just wanna be in a program, they just wanna feel the energy, there's people that want to work out with people next to them that push them, there's people that just want to be in a program,

they just want to feel the energy, there's people that feel like they need to be in a group setting because maybe they don't want to be seen, but then there's also the time, the time value of it, meaning that you get in for an hour, and then you get out, whether it's different forms of group fitness, and then there's also the value proposition

of how much less you're gonna spend. Yeah, my argument was always, you can't separate the psychological from the physical when it comes to exercise. And if you look at big box gyms, which is where the fitness industry, the brick and mortar business kind of started, they really took off because you would go into a gym

and this is before people were wearing headphones and were in their own space, and it became a community. And this is what actually made Jim's explode. Now it's not a coincidence that the, as soon as people started plugging in and stopped paying attention to everybody else, that big box Jim started to decline and you saw the rise of Jim's like CrossFit,

where it's again, that community atmosphere. CrossFit, for example, would not have done nearly what they did if it wasn't for, and I'm sure anybody in this room, none of you guys will disagree with me. It's that community feeling. You ask anybody who just Crossfit, that's why they do it.

Forget the workout, because everyone's together. Same reason why curves succeeded, same reason why, any other gym chain succeeds. And so I think it's important we pay attention to that because there's a key to look at. Like one of the big problems with getting the mainstream fit and healthy is proper exercise,

but the other big problem is just fucking getting them to do something and there's a key there, which is people like to do things together. If orange theory was an individual thing where you worked out by yourself, there's no way it would be as successful as it is now. So is it an ideal form of, I don't think group exercise will never be able to compete with individualized training. Obviously, but it's definitely tapping into something that gyms have tapped into forever that shows that the people like to do things together.

The average person, I should say, I don't need that shit, I could work out by myself and have a great time, but I am the average person, I haven't stopped working out since I was 14 years old. So I think it's important to pay attention to that. Now, in my opinion, the key to maintaining the success of something like CrossFit is more on the staff than it is anything else. One thing that I see that you guys are doing

that I think is brilliant is you guys, it seems like you guys pay attention to having really good trainers. You guys actually pay your trainers. I don't know of any other group exercise type business that pays their instructors as much as you guys do. I just don't. Most group instructors just don't.

Is that still the same? What does that look like? Yes, it's actually going up. And as soon as I'm done here, we have a huge meeting with our staff here in San Jose and everyone's going to get a little bit of a pay raise. Oh, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, if you meet a certain threshold, you're going to qualify for benefits. So health insurance, 401K, a little life insurance, term life insurance.

So we're presenting that actually later today. So that's going to be really cool to present. And that's just it. Like if you get really, really good individualized for individual trainers to do a good job and they're making, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 bucks an hour on average, to get them to teach group training unless they own their own class and they can charge. They're not going to do it because most classes around most group classes here, you're going to make 15 to 25 bucks an hour max. Wow. That's just how much they pay. Like you go teach a robust class as you go to, you're not gonna do it because most classes around, most group classes here, you're gonna make 15 to 25 bucks an hour max. That's just how much they pay. You go teach a robust class, you go to,

you're not making that much money. They can make a hundred bucks a class for us. I know that, and that's what I'm saying. You're gonna make as much teaching a class that the people show up because there's all this advertising that you guys put out. You gotta do a good job, of course.

You can't teach a shitty class. You make a fucking hundred bucks an hour as a personal trainer. You're gonna make more than a lot of trainers make one on one, which wasn't like that before. So that's where I see a lot of the positive. So, I know we knock on group training a lot,

but I think you guys are, it's interesting to me. I still feel like it needs to be challenged. And I think that's our job. Everything needs to be challenged. And so, just from our own personal experience, like training one on one and just knowing all the variables people present

and how diverse it is coming in, and seeing now this progress and seeing how these recruitment patterns really lead into problematic lifestyle things that they're gonna encounter later on, right? So because of the way that I've prepared my body and move and train my body to do things, it now is presenting a new problem where I might have aches, pains, I might have arthritis that may not have occurred, say I basically got to the root of it first, addressed it, and then went in and really understood

the process of it and internalized it as an individual. And I think that the message of mind pump is always trying to kind of extract a lot of the ideas out there, bring it back into like the root of like the most empowering thing is to learn the process yourself. And that's really, and that's like from a purity standpoint, not knocking the fact that there's value in groups in terms of, I train and it's something that's benefiting my body and I'm working with other people and there's motivation in that and there's accountability in that and there's lots of these things that we can actually draw attention to and we can pull people out of a dark place in terms of health.

Yeah, and I have a question on that because where I fully agree and I know where Adam's coming from is, I'm talking about, we got to look at why that's such an attractive thing for people to work out together, capitalize on it, because it seems to be one of the most effective ways to get the average person to work out. There's no doubt about that. But there's a dark side, like everything, there's a dark side to that, which is this

intensity-based model. And so where I was going with the paying trainers a lot and having good trainers is, is there any, the question I have for you, is there any focus on giving some more autonomy to these trainers? For example, Adam teaching a class, like he said, he would tell people,

no, you need to walk or let's do mobility. Which I think, I mean, if you have trainers who pay $100 an hour, who are really good, who understand that kind of stuff, that could solve the dark side of group training, which tends to be drive intensity at all class and then people hurt themselves. Yeah, so I think where we like to siphon ourselves

often put ourselves in our own silos we're heart rate based interval training. It's not intensity based even though it is a sub category of hit training, but we'll never say that we're hit training. We always say we're heart rate based interval training. When we tell you to go, we want you to get uncomfortable, whatever that is for you.

That's just putting a skirt on a pig. So, but uncomfortable is different for everybody. That's just putting a skirt on a pig. So, but uncomfortable is different for everybody. So I can't say, oh, I know, I know you like to power walk, right? So Adam get uncomfortable power walking, whatever that takes. For me, if it's a sprint, then get uncomfortable sprinting. So it looks different. We don't want you to go to a place where you're out of control.

We want you to stay in control. And that's what Adam always did really well. And that's finding, you know, if you have a yoga background, if you have a functional training background and athletic background, whatever it is, we want you to apply that professionalism to when you're training, when you're coaching our members. And I wish we had more coaches that scale people back

and say, hey, I don't think you should be sprinting today. You should be walking. You should be doing XYZ. And so when I watch you doing all your Justin doing all of his functional movement or when Adam's going deep on squats certain days, like I can appreciate it and I understand where you guys are coming from when you go to that background. Real quick about the community aspect of things. This is an untangible. So why did I sit Shiva with one of our members, which means one of their family members passed away and

they invited me and my family to sit Shiva after one of their parents passed away. That's the community. What does that be? What's, I don't know. It's in the Jewish religion when someone passes away a few nights after they pass away, you sit Shiva. I think that's the correct term. But it's like, you're not just gonna invite random people

to that, it's basically what I'm saying. Your dad passed away and then you want me and my family to come and eat with your family. And so I experienced that in Orange Theory. I went to a wedding of a member at Orange Theory. Dude, I worked out a Gold Gym Santa Cruz my whole life. Didn't go to a single wedding from a person I met there. Didn't sit, Shiva. Didn't do a lot of different things

that I'm doing at Orange Thierry because that's the intangible, that's the community. So I think when you add some of those psychological aspects to it, it trumps the lack of catching somebody, maybe doing a bad squad or somebody sprinting when they should be power walking. But at the end of the day, we wanna have such professional trainers and coaches in there

where they're catching that stuff But the the programs are like crazy designed right now. They're good. That's one either way. It's where so much better than they've ever been Well, I did try the medical advisor board. They were good before but they're so much better now than they've ever been and it's crazy So we added all these different benchmarks So when you come in it's like, okay, what's your 200 meter row? What's your 500 meter row? What's your 2k row? What do you run a mile in? What's your 13 minute run time? And then we build upon those as you go and you know those treadmills are like butter when you're in there. So you can't tell me even if somebody's running perfectly outside and you're running mediocre

inside on our treadmill, I know the wear and tear is going to be way more outside, paint pounding pavement than it's going to be on a soft treadmill. That's neither here nor there at the end of the day. The coaches need to catch when people are moving and their biomechanics are off. Then you can catch that. How much flexibility does a franchise owner have to changing, programming, or modifying classes and stuff like that for their members, and how much autonomy or trainers typically given? Yes, we're talking about putting a skirt on a pig. We never will say modify. We'll always say options. And so we'll give people the option to change some of the movements, but really to progress or digress a movement.

So there's autonomy there, but in terms of the program, there's not autonomy to change the program. The way that the programs are designed is we have a month, and we'll look at the previous month, we'll look at the month ahead. It takes a thousand man hours to create one month of templates, one month of workouts, a thousand man hours, right? So then from there, we look a week forward and a week backwards. So you're not repeating movements or movements that you are repeating, they're designed for a reason. There's benchmarks inserted in there. We're doing benchmarks, and we have these other workouts that we repeat as well, because we want to know what your performances and how you're getting better within yourself.

And that's some of the improvement that we wanna see is how you're improving. It's not about just stepping on a scale. It's not about how much weight that you lost. It's about the way that you look, the way that you feel that you look, how your performance is and how you feel overall. Yeah, I'm just curious.

So I know you guys are a heart rate based. Do you take that outside of the gym as well with HRV and kind of take a look at their overall stress? Yeah, so I mean, there's variable heart rates. And I think from us, we're coming up with our own formula for max heart rate, which is proprietary and it's actually being in the works now. So instead of just giving the American Heart Association

to 25 minus your age or carbonated method or whatever it is, we're eventually gonna come up with our own max heart association, heart association, 225, minus your age or carbonated method or whatever it is, we're eventually gonna come up with our own Max Heartrate, which is really cool. What's the reason, why did you guys decide to do that? Do because you know that everybody's heart rates are so different, how old are you, so? 39.

You're their nine shit, I'm older than you, but you have more grades than me, so I figured I'd ask. So you know like our heart rates are gonna be so different, right? But, you know, if you do American Heart Rate Association, our heart rates, Max Heart rates are gonna be the same. Right. So people's heart rates are just so different. And while I mentioned earlier, we like to coach you

to how you feel, it is orange theory. So in theory, when you're in the orange zone, you're supposed to be uncomfortable, but not everybody's uncomfortable when they're in the orange zone. And sometimes people are in the lower zones, and they're uncomfortable meaning their heart rate is just lower, some people's heart rates are higher, so you just can't assume because you see, oh, on the heart rate monitor, they go into a certain zone that they're truly uncomfortable, or that they're not in a certain zone, that they're not uncomfortable.

So with that being said, when you're able to have your own personalized heart rate, that's going to totally change the game. So we're innovating so crazy. The treadmill is gonna turn your heart rate monitor on the treadmill is now an odometer. You can see your lifetime amount of miles that you've tracked on a treadmill and on a roller. Instead of looking up at the screen,

it'll be right on the treadmill in front of you with zone you're in. If you rent a mile, you know, your first week with us, it's gonna know and log what your mile is. And then when you rent a mile, your six month or your six year with us, it's gonna know and log what your mile is. And then when you run a mile, you're six month or you're six year with us, you'll have that lifetime of where you've been proved on your mile.

So much cool stuff in innovation coming, but fitness is just so fascinating. Well, I think honestly, that's the edge. You guys really have set the tone in terms of like adopting technology, really incorporating that in a usable form which I feel like is, you know, in a usable form, which I feel like is, you know, being a tech geek like myself, like I do like to pay attention to these things, but the problem has always been you get like really cool data

and you get analytics. Now how do you translate that? And how do you present that in a way where like your average type of a person, like what do I do with this? Like how am I using this? And so, you know, constructed in a way where like your average type of a person, like what do I do with this? Like how am I using this? And so, you know, constructed in a class, I thought that was a clever way to present that.

And also to just the risk of verse, you know, if you're gonna weigh apples to apples, another sort of group training, you know, it's definitely, you know, ahead of that. Oh, it's hands down. And I know I was the one bagging on the group training and saying that it should die. Right, I'm trying to bring it back. I mean, yeah, you know, hands down and I will I was the one bagging on the group training and saying that it should die. Right, I'm trying to bring it back.

Yeah, hands down and I will 100% concede this. I would have not been involved in it if I didn't think it's the best out there. Yeah. So if someone were to come to me and say, Adam, I refuse to go by myself, I have to have a group of people that are being, I know it's not best for me. I don't fucking care where would you recommend? Should I do CrossFit? Should I do this Zumba class?

Should I do 100% I would say Orange Theory. I think that is the argument that you can win all day on me is that is it the most superior group training out there? Yes, I think the things that you guys are doing, I mean just from a programming standpoint, I remember bringing these guys over the first time I said, hey man, these guys are actually, they've actually thought about phasing the programs,

they've taken to consideration what the workout was the day before, like, I've never seen a group class do that. I mean, everywhere else you go, it's just day by day. Yeah, it's day by day and it's whatever, and it's 100% in teensy based. These guys actually take into consideration. We did X, Y, and Z on Monday. Therefore, we know that there's so many people in here from Monday's class that are taking Wednesdays. We should X, Y, and Z on Monday. Therefore, we know that there's so many people

in here from Monday's class that are taking Wednesdays. We should do these XYZ movements. Like, that to me was already ahead of the game. And then you took in the heart rate, like Justin says, and you're using tech. So, you know, I'll concede all day that it's the most superior group type training out there. Now, where I knew that mine pump would succeed

and why I knew it would blow up is not, I knew we were gonna be terrible on these mics. It took us fuckin' 900 episodes, Steven. And lots of booze. Right, yeah, right. So I knew we weren't talented here, but we took a page out of the group training. We've created a community,

and we've created this feel of people that come in every day to listen to the podcast and what we have to talk about every day and a private forum of people that are all going to the gym individually, but yet they kind of feel like they're in a group because they're going through the same journey with these other people and that's how I knew we would dominate because we took the best of why people love to be in a group and like that feeling of not feeling alone and feeling like a community like CrossFit did, like Orange Theory, but then we're trying to tell people, listen, you need to learn though what's best for you because you are an individual and I don't care if you're the same age as your friend Suzy and you both need to lose exactly 30 pounds, you actually both should be training differently. Bottom line. And I don't even know who the fuck you are and I can tell you that.

I can tell you that for certainty that being the same age, same goals still should train differently, and you need to learn as an individual what is best for your body, and that's what we're here for. We're here to help you find it. By no means do I have the answer, by no means do I think that my maps and a ball of program is for every single person. No, it's, here's some guidance, and that's why even in the way we created the programs, they were designed as more of a teaching tool than they were a follow this program. It's the best program on the market. Like, we're not naive. I know that. And

we, we've encouraged that with the form and we tell people, listen, you know, here's a program, understand the nuts and bolts of it. But then we've created these other tools like maps prime and maps prime pro which are these assessment tools where we're teaching people how to assess their Accessor bodies when you go to squat and your heels come off the ground and you're an average, you know person training You don't know why that is you have no idea and getting on a treadmill and and running because you still need to lose 30 pounds is not the answer for you The answer is to address the reason why you can't do something fundamentally that a two-year-old can do, and you are a 35-year-old male or female that no longer can do that. You need to figure that out. Now, could you go the

rest of your life and not figure it out? Absolutely. But guess what you're going to end up dealing with? Chronic pain. And that is something that when you've trained thousands of people, you realize that above all things, as we all wanna look a certain way and sex sells, but even before that or what trumps all of that is moving better and feeling better and not having chronic pain. And eventually you will come to there.

So even if you find a great modality that gets you an incredible shape and you feel amazing, eventually I know you're coming to me. Eventually, I know you're, I'm going to get you because eventually that shit will catch up. And that is where group training, even the best group training, I think it fails. It just fails to be able to do that. And it's not a knock on it. It's just impossible.

Right. You know, it's impossible. And I'm not angry at it because it left, it opened up an opportunity for us to do what we do today and it's why the show is so successful is not because we're talented at all it's because we've just got a lot of experience in this and we're trying to help people extrapolate that like yeah. What do you what do you want one interesting metric to look at is the how often the average member uses your classes and then their retention, how long they stay,

cause I brought up curves earlier, and one thing that curves did really well is it got people in who'd never worked out before, but then they would leave. And the ones that stayed working out ended up going to gyms, and then a lot of other people dropped off. And that right there was like a tail tail,

like, oh, this isn't gonna be sustainable. Do you know what those numbers look like? Like how often the average person uses it and how long they stay for? Yeah, you know, we average about two workouts a week with our membership. On average, you know, we're doing 7,000 workouts a month. Oh, wow.

You know, if you look at all of our units, 7,000, some units, well, our lens done over 10,000 in a month. Wow, wow, wow. And it's just crazy to think, you know, like, on any given morning, I get to touch 100 people. And that's really my goal and fitness to be able to touch as many people as I can and then bring my unique side of things. And everything I do is all mobility based anyway.

So yesterday was a burpee day. And I was really thinking about you guys a lot and just the mobility of, you know, being able to get your hands down to the ground, sit down into a squat. And a lot of the members on my here, let's use a Bosu. Let's use a Bosu trainer. Hey, let's use a bench because we can't get all the way down to the ground without going on our toes. So keeping those feet anchored down or even being able to turn the foot into a tripod. Like I call it, I'm pulling your arches off the ground when you sit, but all

of you guys have influenced me in your own individual ways and all kinds of different things just in general. I'm in life and sometimes I bring those things into the studios and because I don't have some of the mobility background that some of our other coaches have like Justin Greens got a huge. Are you familiar with Justin? Yeah, I worked with it. Yeah, I was. We've got a huge mobility background and so like we're always learning and we're always doing that.

But as far as usage, obviously the the health year our members are the more they're going to use it. So we see that our average member at last eight months but we've had members last five years ever since we've been open just over four years. So average eight, that's not bad. It's almost identical to Jim. Seven was the Jim. Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah, you get in a month. What's the average use the gin in a box, Jim? So an average an average member signs up they sign up for a gym membership. They use it for three months. They keep paying for an additional four, and that's when they cancel.

So the longevity, if as a business, they make the money for seven months. The actual usage of the member is on average three months. Now of course, and then there's exceptions to that rule. There's stats that show that any member that actually were to get a trainer who coaches them and teaches them the life expectancy of that member now turns into three years. And there's always acceptance to rule those that stay on forever.

But I would actually imagine that someone who joined an orange theory and didn't use it is going to probably quit sooner than someone who's got more expensive than a box. Yeah. So I would assume that the usage is probably more consistent during that eight month period, which is why I said that's not bad, because I would, you know, I know that the gyms are six to seven months, at least the ones we ran were about seven months. But if you look at our membership mix,

the biggest mix in our pool, so you have a few different pools, people that work out once a week, people that work out once a week, twice a week, and then more than that. So we sell like a reoccurring EFT for four sessions, so that's once a week, so four sessions a month, eight sessions a month, which is twice a week and then unlimited. The, in our membership mix, the majority of that pie is unlimited sessions.

So when you add the whole mix, it averages to two uses a week with all the different pool of people that are with their different amounts of time to their journey. So pretty interesting to look at. Yeah, I really do think because you guys pay trainers so much, you can get the best trainers, or at least you have the money to get the best trainers,

that if you give them some of that autonomy to do what Adam did in his classes, I think you'll circumvent some of not all, but some of the issues that you find with group training. Like you said, there was, we would just say Justin Greene, I think, as much. Mobility guy, if he's got some autonomy to do some of that stuff in the class, that's going to, I know what I wanted to do.

I had my own, like, when I, being someone who's been in it and knowing what I know, what I wanted done, and I know that the company won't do this because it would hurt them financially, because they get paid by this usage, right? They need people using the gym. I think there should be a dedicated day of the seven days that is purely mobility. And as a trainer, I should be able to see somebody and go, you don't belong in here. You belong on Tuesdays, where all we do is address

mobility issues and we teach you, and we help you address those things, and then you come back. And so that's what I wanted to create something like that, where we would be able as trainers assess the way you're running on a treadmill, assess the way you're squatting inside the weight room area and with my expertise be able to, because as good of a coach as I am, I remember, and I remember getting shit wet, and I worked out well again from some of the trainers, it'd be like sometimes Adam, for as advanced as you are, you're like

the worst coach ever, because you don't go over and you know fix it. I said, well, that's because I know I can't fix that. I know I can't go over and tell somebody who has extremely tight calves and or that their heels are coming off or they have extremely rounded shoulders. I could come over there and show them a perfect squat a hundred times, but until I correct their imbalances on their body, they're never going to them a perfect squat, a hundred times, but until I correct their imbalances on their body, they're never gonna do a perfect squat. Right. Exactly. The real answer is that is that they shouldn't squat.

So I always saw like, man, what I would do if this was mine was I would have definitely classes that you have to progress to get to in order to teach this. And that's just improving on. I already think it's a superior group training to advance it even further. I think that there should be a day that, address that, shit, I still,

I always keep one client, right? So I have one client that's been training with me. And she's an orange steering member. And I know she does that. And I modify when she goes there. I tell her, you know, I don't fucking listen to them, don't be running, I want you walking, I want you doing these things.

And when they get to the squat portion, I want you doing shit like this. So, you know, it's possible to do this, but it would, it would, it would, it would force the company to be okay with potentially making less money, potentially upsetting some people initially. And that's the hard part about being a multi-million dollar, or a billion dollar probably industry or space, and say, okay, this is probably what's best for people, but we know that we're gonna make more money doing this.

And that's- Well, at least in the short term, because the reality is in the long term, if you do it right, you're gonna make more money. It should be a value idea. Absolutely. The biggest thing I tell people to do is I say, you need to add yoga to your routine.

Like, oh, what else should I do? I do orange theory two or three times a week. What else should I be doing? Usually it's the best supplement is gonna be for you to add yoga to your routine. Like, oh, what else should I do? I do orange theory two or three times a week. What else should I be doing? Usually it's the best supplement is gonna be for you to do yoga. And then if you're already moving perfectly fine, then it's one day of just pure weight training. It's like, why not build that into the franchise?

In my opinion, that's like, why send them off somewhere else? I think there's space to do it, but you gotta think like how segment, how segmented is society right now? Everything is specialized, right? And even if you look at doctors, or if you start to look at fitness,

or you look at fucking parachutes, like everything is just so segmented and specialized, and we don't wanna be the Starbucks of fitness, where I'm going to Starbucks, and I'm like, oh, I wanna get that Atlanta Smart Set CD on sale, it's Starbucks. Like, damn, what's going on? You're trying to do coffee, you're trying to do frickin' CDs.

So, but one thing we did at as we added a dynamic warmup to the beginning of 3G classes. So I know you could appreciate that. And so I love actually love the dynamic warmup brings you back to my football days. But the company is always improving and getting better. I think that would be a good thing is maybe add one class a day.

Not even one day that's mobility. It's like one class a day and maybe it's on a weekend. So everyone has access to it, it's just a mobility. No, that's functional movement. That's how I would do it that way until it fills up. Do it every damn guy tell him to go do yoga. It's like every check knows how to squat and then the pushups are a little suspect and all the guys they don't fucking know how to squat and the girls have the guys know

how to do the pushups. I think that's a great way to start to imp. And then what you would see is the people that actually, because it's the same thing I do right now, what's beautiful about mobility and teaching people to prime their body right is that once you do it and you experience it, I will show you the difference in your first workout.

Like you will feel that, like let me prime your body correctly for you, get you moving correctly, then go do a squat and tell me how different it fills then if you had you not done that. So once people feel that, they'll then see the value. You tell someone right now like, oh, sorry, we're not going to let you run on the treadmill, you can't take this orange theory class, you should go to our mobility class, they're going to grumble at first. But once I get it, get you in there and I teach you and I show you what you need to do and then

you go back and then you train and go, oh, fuck, I feel way better. Then I can start to add more classes, right? So you start off with one, you fill it up, you change those 30 people's lives, they go on, they start telling all the other people in classes that are, you know, running next to them on a treadmill, like, fuck, my knees hurt today.

You know, like, well, have you taken Adam's mobility class on Tuesdays? Oh, you haven't. Oh, you have to do that. Makes a world of a difference, you know? Like, that to me would be a great way to add value to solve some of the major problems that I saw in there. And I remember we toyed around before I left, and we were talking about doing this.

I just didn't, I didn't have the time because of what we were building, what we were doing. But I remember telling the staff, like, you know, if I was you guys, I would create a Saturday or Sunday thing on when you don't have a class in here and make offer it, have a trainer teach him mobility thing. The funny thing is, as Swole as Adam was when he was coaching our classes because he was doing all this competing,

he had the best fucking stretching routine after class this dude would get you into like Zen and you'd be stretching and cooling down and like, man, that guy's the best stretcher ever. I just wanna see him stretch. I give you all the soccer moms they love me. And then at that end, I would teach like a nutritional tip. Like, that's what I used to do.

Like, so that was my thing. It was like, I would teach like one mobility drill that I thought would make a difference, like a 90, 90 move or something. And then I would ride on the board out there. I don't know if people do that or they allow that or not. But, you know, I had like a tip of the day that I would teach every single class that I taught.

And it was normally nutritionally related where I would try and educate my members every single time that came in. And so- And but you know, nutrition's a step-re-stop as well. You know, like we were alluding to earlier where some foods can be good for some people. Some foods are not as good. Like my wife had to take spinach out of her diet because for whatever whatever was in her gut, you know, the spinach would turn the bacteria in her gut, the spinach would turn, the bacteria in her gut, the spinach would turn toxic and then make her sick in turn. So I think one thing we didn't want to get away

was from anything that I did. This is so very specific. It's a each person. No, you have to be careful. I mean, what I normally do was I would debunk the mist that we're out there, like, oh, fast, bad for you. No, it's not. And I would educate like that, but no way would I,

you remember? Yeah, I would definitely not do specific stuff. Speaking of your wife, what would she say is the biggest pain in the ass with you? Oh man, I'm a Virgo, dude. So it's like, it's hard, like I'm so stubborn. And I think everything has a place, and everything belongs a certain way,

and it's hard for me to budge from that. So are you the neat freak at home? Is that what I'm neat? Not super duper neat, but I home? Is that what I'm neat? Not super duper neat, but I'm like, why are these socks here? Why are these shoes here? Why is this here?

It just belongs over there. So the second I get in the house, I'm like, oh, hey, I love you, hi, how's everybody doing? It's not hugs and kisses. It's like shoes, towel, walk the dog. So I need to kind of check my ego or check that part of me kind of at the door and do just the pleasantries first.

And then I can, instead of the first thing I do is I don't ask how your day was. I think I'd get a lot further in my house if I did that. So I think that's the biggest problem. I'm kind of stiff sometimes. I need to be more valuable. Yeah. Do you have, logically?

Do you have anything that, like, so I talk on the show a lot about my personal growth with my relationship and trying to become more self-aware of things like that? Is there practices that you try and put in place to be a better husband, to be a better father, a better man that you know those are your weaknesses? And so I do X, Y, and Z to try and combat that.

Or the other thing. Yeah, I think sometimes it's just the simplest of things. It's not even a big thing that makes a big difference in their day and in the families day. So if I'm just driving home, hey, is there something I can grab on my way home? Or if I'm grabbing food for me, it's so innate for her to say,

oh, do you want food? But it's not innate for me to say, hey, can I grab you food? So, oh, do you want me to grab you a salad? Do you want me to grab you something if I'm grabbing food? If I'm driving home, oh, do you want me to grab you a salad? Do you want me to grab you something if I'm grabbing food? If I'm driving home, oh, do you want me to pick up a kid so you don't have to do double?

So it's just little things are just being a little bit more considerate, things that's built into them, but not necessarily built into me. And then sometimes it's just a simple, like how are you feeling or how's your day? Or just, you know, like we're so busy in the rat race, so just moving and we just need to check on those. I'm the same way, man.

I was listening to Jordan Peterson one time and he made this, this fucking statement. That was so powerful to me. And he was just talking about all the things that we get so excited for like this trip that we're going up to Europe and there's preparation for what you're going to do and planning where you're going to go and like hours and hours are spent into this trip that you're going to take one time in your life maybe. And there's a, you come home every single day to your life, every single day. And when you add up those minutes over the over years and years and years, that's months and possibly years worth of time that you don't even put it into any practice that will, how you execute that.

And simply just taking a moment before you walk through that door and, and being thoughtful of that. Like, can I shut down my energy in the way what I was going through right before I walk in this door and, and execute these first five minutes when I see her more than anything else. And it was like, my blowing for for me and it's been a practice now that I and I just I by no means am I good at this like I still suck at it like but it's an active practice that when I when I pull in the garage I don't just shut the car off get off the phone and then walk in I stopped for a second catch my breath close like okay I need to stop thinking about what I'm thinking about. I'm about to walk in and see Katrina

and how I greet her and what I ask her in those first five minutes are so powerful, potentially for her. And I think we take that type of stuff for granted. That's been a major practice that, again, like I said, I suck at it, but I think it's something to tell them. There's one being in my house that does it right.

There's one. And they do it right every single time. It's my dog. The dog. The dog. So you can learn so much. Like, man, my dog greets me, dude, I feel like Holy, like he jumps on me.

He licks me, smells my ass, smells my balls. And he jumps on me, like damn, that was amazing. So like, yeah, cause if I could make every person feel that good. And then even when I leave, like the dogs want to leave with you as well So I think you know you can learn something from anybody I'm but I love when I see Sal you know I see you with your family and doing all those things and you're posting with your family We're waiting for you to start posting with your family. I like to keep on under

But um how does the success of what you've done with your business compared to success in football? Is it the same or which one is more more? So what I've done so I kind of not to stroke my own self That feels good too, but yeah, not here at least Please or we could all do it together Like we did in high school circle on yeah, but um, you know, I'm a Super Bowl champion I'm accomplished almost everything I could accomplish in the realm of the NFL, going from a kid

that watched the Bears win the Super Bowl in 85, growing up in Chicago, to wanting to be one of those guys, to playing on Soldier Field, and being a Super Bowl champion, playing in probals, and accomplishing almost everything you could accomplish in the NFL. What I've done in the business world, it trumps what I did.

Yeah, as a professional football champion. Now, did you know that right away, you could accomplish in the NFL, what I've done in the business world, it trumps what I did. Oh wow. Yeah, as a professional footballer. Now did you know, did you know that right away or did you take a minute to connect that? Like was it like holy fuck that feeling? I gotta think, when in the Super Bowl has gotta be up there with one of the greatest emotional highs that you've ever had.

I mean, when you talked to me on the phone, I guess like you got me giddy when you called me and you told me what you had done and you'd sold the business, I mean, I'm sure that's times 10 for you since I actually went into your bank account. So was that that much higher than like when in the Super Bowl or?

Well, I think, you know, both of the journeys were amazing. So it's not necessarily the Super Bowl was the peak even though that was kind of the climax. It was just getting there and all the, everything that I had been through and just looking back at life. But I think at this stage, some of the beautiful things

were seeing employees have kids, by homes, getting married, buying cars, proposing stuff like that. And so just the kind of the difference is that I was considered myself a revenue consumer when I was in the league. I was helping someone else, even though I was accomplishing my dreams, I was making an owner, you know, a Super Bowl champion. Someone taking a franchise to a Super Bowl champion. First is the other way around.

Yeah, now it's the other way around. Like our employees took us, you know, to being franchise Super Bowl champions. And now, you know, I'm able to funnel that money back down. Now I'm a revenue generator, and there's a whole ecosystem around this revenue that we're generating. So it's affecting a lot more people in a more profound way.

And then we're going to continue to do that even more than we're doing it now. So I think the sum of the two, the entrepreneurship and that victory, even though we're just halfway there, I think it's been more profound. You know, to be a black business owner, to influence other kids and people in business. You know, I speak at schools, I speak at companies. A lot of it doesn't really even have to do with football. I think football kind of got me in the door, but kind of just my views on equality,

what I've done in business has a lot more bite to it, and it's a lot more substantial than, oh, you played football. A lot of people have played football, but who are you as a person? What's in your core? What makes your heart beat? How do you contribute to society?

How do you make the world a better place? Much more responsibility. You got all the staff now underneath you, relying on you to put together something that's gonna help them succeed. Well, I also see as a great example for these athletes to look towards the future and really plan for that. And I know that I think on the other podcast you might have brought up as far as to look towards the future and really plan for that.

And I know that I think on the other podcast you might have brought up as far as some of the programs they have within the NFL to pursue furthering their education and learning about business. And where do you see, have you any sort of mentorship, have you ever gone back to that to kind of help other athletes pursue sort of a plan of how they can exit? Yeah, you know, I always wanted to be a sounding board for guys. I think, you know, you look at the NFL and you just think of more so the big names and

those are the guys that are going to be fine. The guys that made a hundred million dollars, they're going to be fine. Fine, even if you lose half of it or you turn that hundred million to a billion, you're going to be fine. But I was more like the the journeyman. The average guy makes a million bucks after taxes, you know, California, at least you're looking at 500,000. And that's not even the younger guys. That's on your second contract, right? So, um, guys aren't walking away from the game with a lot of money there. And then your whole life

has been dedicated to football. You've been in one lane like, who really, who are you? Really life starts after football, like they say, love starts after marriage, you know? So the guys got to figure out who they are. And I've always wanted to be a sounding board and made myself available in March. I'm gonna be doing something with the NFL PA and the NFL retired players. And I'm gonna be speaking on a panel

and a lot of retired guys are gonna be there. I think I, you know, I think there's more that I can do, but it's just kind of just getting it out there. So I dedicate my time, feeling thropically, to a lot of different things, but I don't dive too deep into one thing. I think, as I continue to grow and go on this path, there's gonna be something that I'm gonna have to dive

a little bit deeper into. Well, I think you're doing the greatest thing, which has been an example. I mean, I think there's nothing, I mean, anybody can get in there and fucking, you know, talk all day long about shit, but I mean, I think you're a great example of that, because what is the stat on that be?

It's like 75 or 80% end up going broke after the NFL. It's a, it's really good. But I'm not surprised, because you figure, you know, you're coming into X amount of money. It's different for every guy, right? But you're coming into X amount of money. Let's just say you start at 22, but the average guy last three, three or three and a half years.

So you're done by the time you're 26. Think about who you are and what you're doing at 26. But all you've been focusing all your time on is the specific silo. And that's being a professional athlete where you know, you kind of can't wander too far to the right or to the left because you need to focus on this line and make this money while you can make it I think one of the answers though is going back to college football and Giving these guys some type of stipend or you know if Nick Saban's making ten million dollars and you're just getting a college scholarship In Alabama's worth a billion dollars just a football program. It's like that's your highest opportunity to make income for most of these guys Cuz you figure there's a hundred guys on a team and Bama, maybe 10% go pro, but in the league,

you know, 1% of the college guys go pro, but there should be something more setting them up, whether it's grad school or money going into a fund. Maybe it's a hundred grand a year, 150 a year, that they get after they graduate, and that can go towards building who they are and building their career as young men and going forward.

I think that's a cool way to do. We were just talking on the show the other day with somebody who's worked in Stanford and deals with college athletes. How many of them do you think on a team are getting paid under the table anyways? You know, I would never know because I never saw anything.

So you didn't get money? Even as a guy, those are all Pack 10 player and projected to go to the league, did everything by the book. And I never saw it, even though I'm like, mm-hmm, how's that guy living? And a $5,000 apartment in college, but I never saw anything.

So it's kinda odd that, I don't know, for is different as a guy, as I've always been, kind of marched to the beat of my own drum. I always stuck to the straight and narrow in terms of compliance and doing things the right way. You've always been that way. You're a rare guy.

That's why we love you, bro. Yeah, but I mean, you guys have taught me so much in the time I've been listening to you guys. I think one of the biggest things that you guys collectively got me to do was to try CBD and THC. You know, ethically it was a hard hurdle for me to get over just because I told you a little bit about how I grew up and seeing drug dealers and gang bangers and whatnot. So just thinking that I could allow myself to do that

when it just has a bad rap. It's actually not a drug at all. It's actually something that's gonna heal your body, can make you think better, can make you heal faster, can prevent cancer. There's so many things that marijuana can do to enhance you. And I think you guys got me over that hurdle to try. So just, I don't know, it was last year sometime.

I took my first hit on a... What did you think? I didn't, honestly, I didn't feel anything. But, you know, me and my wife, we did do the sensual or whatever it was. We went home and did the sensual. We had a really good night. No off-shrink was reduced.

Yeah. But now I see it as a supplement in part of my supplementation and it's something that I think everybody needs to add. So whether it's pain, I had a minor knee surgery earlier in the year instead of taking opioids. I maybe took it the first day. I had my pens ready to go, my pain pens, and I used the pain pens. I was on the verge of taking the opioids, but I thought I was going to have a more profound effect, but maybe it just wasn't the right one for me, but you guys actually opened up

my eyes to see that and to do that. So I want to thank you guys for that. But there's a shit ton of other things that you guys got me to just think a different way. So I mean, if you can get a guy that's a stubbornness me to think a different way, I know you guys are making a huge profound impact on your guys as listeners. I just want to super duper thank you guys. You guys are doing some really good things, super excited for where you guys are going.

Awesome. Yeah, there's some there's some research showing that cannabinoids can really help, especially athletes who get a lot of a lot of impact to the brain right ahead. Right. So to prevent some of the problems. TBI. Yeah. I was seeing that.

So, but I've never been thanked for getting someone to smoke with you. So first really where I tripped out is where Adam you guys were talking about gel and you're like oh what's in the gel how's it made or what's the what are the I use in that gel about okay it's not as good as I thought it was I don't I don't remember what show that was like this dude's fucking so vaunt right here you know so much about so many different things so it's really just cool like when you guys dive in to the things that you're passionate about, um, the group intelligence, like you guys are really smart to sign your own,

but the group intelligence, the IQ is just far and above and beyond. Thank you. That's a huge compliment coming from you. We've got a lot of love and respect for you, Dan. And you're always welcome on here. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout nutrients in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a 430-day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mindbomb.