Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 985: Mark Mastrov- Fitness Industry Empire Builder, NBA Owner & Original Mind Pump Mentor

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

Mark Mastrov is back in the Mind Pump Media studios to speak with Sal, Adam and Justin about his large scale projects in fitness, the NBA and Esports and the business philosophy that has led to his massive success. The fallout and response from their first podcast. (4:18) Does he think there will be a time when 24 Hour Fitness reaches back out to him to collaborate again? (6:02) What is the biggest challenge for running a big box gym today vs. 20 years ago? (7:09) Does he believe part of the formula for retaining members is by getting them into a nutrition program within the first 30 days? (9:42) Is a lot of the growth coming from ‘boutique’ gyms? (11:22) Why the key to the game is the referral network. (13:15) What is it that the gyms with the most usage do differently than others? (14:54) How big of a role do the sales or training staff play in terms of the success of the gym? (18:45) What makes him stay away from buying up Orangetheory’s or a region/area? (20:50) Where does he see the most exciting growth right now? (22:34) What does he think about the rise and decline of the US market for CrossFit? (25:12) What is the US doing wrong when it comes to being healthy? (26:42) His take on the rise of Esports and playing into the lack of activity. (29:50) What is his stake in the Esports market? How does he monetize it? Make a profit as an owner? (32:15) His take on ‘court vision’ and fans getting the in-game experience from the comfort of their own home. (36:04) What does it take to give him a business ‘boner’ today? (39:40) What percentages of memberships are being sold online now vs. in person? (43:15) His take on new media vs. old media marketing. (44:30) Does he see any current trends with gym equipment? (46:29) The controversy over a viral ‘alien’ billboard that said “when they come they will eat the fat ones first.” (47:57) What are some of the most successful campaigns that he has run? (51:06) Is there anybody in the fitness/gym industry that he just loved to just fuck with? (55:33) Are there any other CEO’s that impress him by the way they operate? (59:11) What does he think of one stop shop models, like Amazon, that can translate into the fitness industry? (1:04:19) What parallels does he see in building an NBA team vs. a gym one? (1:06:19) How does he focus his energy and mind space? (1:10:17) What does he attribute is leadership skills to? (1:13:56) What were some of his biggest turning points in terms of misses? (1:16:36) Does he have certain guys he calls when he has a problem? (1:18:32) Are there any investment opportunities that have been presented to him that he had a fear of missing out of? (1:20:52) Does he have a ‘checklist in life’ of how much he can support a business opportunity? (1:23:15) People Mentioned: Jason Khalipa (@jasonkhalipa)  Instagram Andy Miller (@amiller)  Twitter Alex Rodriguez (@arod)  Instagram Jennifer Lopez (@jlo)  Instagram Products Mentioned: March Promotion: MAPS Aesthetic is ½ off!! **Code “BLACK50” at checkout** Mind Pump Episode 842: The Steve Jobs of Fitness- Mark Mastrov Fitplan: Best Fitness Workout and Personal Trainer App 49ers Fit F45 Training: Life Changing Gym & Functional Team Training Mind Pump Episode 887: The Fastest Growing Sport in the World with NRG Esport Co-Founder Andy Miller Life expectancy in North America in 2018 | Statistic The Overwatch League NBA 2K League Future of sports viewing? Steve Ballmer and L.A. Clippers debut new augmented reality NBA experience Persons of heft protest health club's ad - SFGate Life Time Healthy Way of Life | Join Life Time LA Fitness | Exercise Your Options ® | Gyms and Health Clubs

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So we had Mark Massruff on the show again. And you know, this guy, he's, he's, he's a, he means a lot to, to, three of us. Before I get into that, let me tell you what this guy has achieved. One of the reasons why this guy is such a badass, okay? So he created 24-hour fitness. He's the founder of 24-hour fitness. He did this in 1983. In 2005, he sold that company for $1.6 billion. Remember,

at this time, when he sold it, 420 clubs, it was the biggest gym business in the world, the biggest gym chain. He's a CEO of fitness holdings worldwide currently, and now he's founded Planet Fitness in Russia, Germany's Miss Sporty, any V Australia. He owns the company that owns UFC gyms and Crunch gyms. He's founded Madonna's Hard Candy gyms. He also founded Energy E-Sports in 2015.

This is a company that I think is valued at something like how much does it come that space is is worth nine hundred million dollars and it's supposed to move into this year into the billion dollar space. So he got into esports a few years back back in 2015 and just what a smart move. I mean, I think he talks about the episode too or I think there's about I think he talks about the episode too, or I think he owns now 10 teams that are eSport teams. So just a smart guy, many sees things way ahead of the average person. So I love taking his brain around somebody. One of the owners of the Sacramento Kings,

I know online, if you look him up, it says his personal worth is valued over a quarter billion dollars. He is the Godfather of the gym industry. And of course, he started the company that, you know, Adam, Justin and myself all started our fitness careers in 24th Fitness and we learned a lot from the people that he trained, he hired, trained and developed.

And so, you know, he's got a special place in our heart, but he still continues to be a major player in the fitness industry, at least the gym part of the fitness industry. He is the one that pioneered a lot of the things that make gym successful today. And so we talked to him again today, and on this episode we talk about, of course, we talk about the gym industry,

we talk about eSports, we talk about the NBA and his role as the owner of the Sacramento Kings. If you work in fitness, you wanna to listen to Mark Mastroff. But, Shad, if you're somebody who's in business, he's one of those guys that I just love to throw questions out and just listen to him. I mean, none of us in here have a formal education in business, and I attribute at least 90% of the success

that I've had in business to this man, because of the blueprint that I've had in business to this man because of the the blueprint that he laid for us in my early 20s and it was such a great training ground for me and I've learned so much. So I love to sit down and just ask him any questions and he obviously has moved his way into many other markets besides just fitness. So man, even if you're not a fitness person, if you're an entrepreneur by heart, you're just interested in business,

this is one of the greatest business minds that I've ever personally met. Oh, absolutely. I'm with you Adam. I'd say a large chunk of what I know about business leadership, sales, promotions, all that stuff came directly or indirectly from the guy that you're about to listen to us,

have a great conversation with. Before we get into that episode though, I do wanna remind everybody, Maps aesthetic is still 50% off, it's half off all month long. Now remember, this is the program that was designed and inspired by body builders, physique competitors, and bikini competitors.

This is the program that you can use to shape and sculpt your body as you see fit. There's actually a component within Maps aesthetic that lets you pick Body parts that you want to place a special focus on and allows you to develop those body parts the way you see fit That's why it's called Maps aesthetic remember it's 50% off Here's what you do to get the program go to maps fitness products calm use the code black 50 BLA CK 504 that discount and we have other maps fitness programs on that site as well.

Some of them may suit you even better than maps aesthetic. Make sure you go check them out. But without any further ado, here we are talking to the great Mark Maastroff. Did you get a good response from your interview with us the last time? Yeah, a lot of people haven't talked to in a long time. Roughly any feathers? Came out of the woodworks. Yeah, I lot of people I haven't talked to in a long time. So, ruffle any feathers? Came out of the woodworks. Yeah, I say few. Really?

I actually, I've been making my rounds to 24 in the area just because I still have guys that I know that are running clubs. A couple guys actually just came back to their company. And I'm trying to, it's Sal's doing the same thing right now too. We're just trying to get back. We've been stuck in here so much, focusing on media and getting all over the world that it's kind of funny to me. Sometimes we'll fly into like LA or Texas or Seattle and we have more of a fan base outside of our own little city and it's just a testament to us needing to get back on the ground and go out and talk to people. So I was at 24 just last Friday and was speaking to all

their trainers and everybody has listened to that episode. Yeah, everybody, if you worked at 24, you're a trainer, it's gone viral in 24 fitness. Oh yeah, I know that. I'm sure you saw they had a CEO change since we did. Yes, they did. I was going to bring that out to you. I was wondering if they had something to do with that. It's very interesting. Yes, they just had a CEO change.

Who's a CEO now? The literally the last person that Mark was talking about, and this is just Mark right in the last 30 days, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So he's in. He's out. Yes.

Oh man. Yes. Did you get some hate mail after that? No. I got some. You're right, mail. Oh wow. It's even better though.

That's good. That's good. Interesting. Do you think at times going to come where you think they're going to reach back out and want to do something with you? No, I don't think so. I think the group that owns it will try and drive hard for the next two or three years and try and exit. Then the markets will speak based on where they are and how they've developed over the

last couple of years. But they're trying to find their way and they keep shifting back and forth and gone from probably one, two, three, four, five, six leaders now. And so I think it's really hard to get stability and continuity, especially in any business that alone are industry. Yeah. To go through six-liter changes and now have a new guy in who's gonna kind of drive it in his direction. You have to wait and see.

And the rumor I'm hearing, because I was just there, is, and when we were last, when we last hung out and talked, the guy that was there was trying to create the old school culture and be a little more sales driven and commissions and overrides and things like that. And then the latest I've heard is this guy is going back to the kind of carolever mentality where they're going to try and eliminate all the sales counselors and it be like a McDonald's or you come in and you just click on it and get a membership?

What do you think is the biggest challenge of running a big box gym today versus what it was like probably 20 years ago? It's just the competitive landscape, not only in brick and mortar, but in digital. So today, you see kids at home, like my daughter will be in her room saying, I gotta do an ab workout tonight, she'll pull up some app on apps today

for free and she'll do, you know, 20 minutes of ab work and core work in her room. And so people can go to digital and find a way to say, I exercise today and I feel good, versus having this agonist drive my ass down to the gym. And one is kind of solo ones community. So community always bring people to the gym,

they'll always do well. And then footprint and inconvenience where like a 24 has a lot of locations so you belong to one you get access to more. That always plays well. But I think the competitive landscape, especially from the low cost guys, like the planet Finances and crunches out there,

competing with 24 hour and L.A. Finis and those in the middle. And then you've got the incursion of boutique. There's tons and tons of boutiques out there in the space, whether it's a UFC gym, boxing boutique or whether it's a soul cycle or a flywheel or an orange theory. And then you've got digital, just compounding now where everybody's got the latest digital app. I've seen so many come in my office.

Like, here's my concept, here's my idea, here's the money I'm raising, here's why I'm gonna be the winner at the end of the day and then you've got Peloton out there saying hey just write our bike. That's all you need. Yeah, you know how many of those actually are successful? Very few. Yeah very very few. It's very difficult and there's so much free out there that everybody wants free and so to spend $10 a, even though that's nothing in the scheme of things, people have a hard time mentally saying, I'm going to spend that 10 bucks. My kids will do it. Like my son's a pound in the waist right now. And so he showed up with some guys,

happy bought for $10. I bought this app for $10 and he's showing me how to do better squats and better deadlifts. I'm like, what? I could have shown you how to do better squats and better deadlifts. I'm like, well, I could've shown you how to do that. Because like, you don't know shit that I'm talking to me. This guy knows you shit, he's a bodybuilder. I'm okay son. He looks like it.

Yeah. And so, I mean, people are making a lot of money through the digital space right now. And I think someone may emerge eventually. There's a lot of people out there doing some cool things. There's a group out there called Fit Plan. I really like the work they've done. They've gone more through influencers.

I don't know if you've seen their app, but they have influencers that have tens of millions of followers that they bring their exercise into the Fit Plan program. And it's a very good software group out of Canada. I think they're doing pretty good work, but they got to get after it because there's so much competition there.

Well, one of the things that you used to talk a lot about, in fact, I believe you, one of the things that you used to talk a lot about, in fact, I believe you were one of the first people to do this research and hack the key to success in a big box gym was the ability to keep your members for a long time. And one of the things that you used to talk about is that getting them involved in like a nutritional type of a program within the first 30 days, would two, three X their lifetime in the gym. Do you still believe that's the formula, and do you think that a lot of people

are still missing that? Yeah, good question. I think it's part of the formula, so when we look at still today, one of the keys for all of us is how we ingest and how we eat, and now we've got food delivery coming to us in all kinds of ways. My wife is vegan, so she's got a delivery group that brings her food to the house with

her salads and beans. I tease her all the time. She has no protein coming in, but she's like, these beans have a lot of protein. I'm like, well, 4,000 of them do, but not 20. But you know, she'll throw some fish in and break out when she needs to. But I think that when you step back and look at the consumer, they need to educate themselves better on their eating habits and how they bring nutrition to their body. And there are some things coming into the market now that you can specifically do around

chem panel, you know, taking some blood and then maybe putting some saliva in there to get your biomarkers and then have custom nutrition brought to you so that your body is more in balance. But nutrition's key, how you ingest your food, when you exercise, and then I think, continue to motivate yourself in community. I think being around people that kind of are like you, that kind of get after it, get after it like you do,

and want to exercise like you do, I think kind of gets you prescribed to kind of do it two to three days a week, which is really what the key to success is. Do you see what the, because you brought up boutique gyms earlier in the podcast and I've seen that just explode. We're very little 15 years ago

and now you're seeing what seems to be a lot of the growth in gyms is these boutique facilities. Is that true? Is that where you're seeing a lot of the growth where they're getting more niche than kind of general big box, just your weights and cardio types.

Yeah, no good question. I think there's several components in boutique as one. There was a definite peak in boutique a few years ago and it's kind of come back a little bit. Okay. It's led by the big cities like New York and LA, Miami, places like that, Chicago, where there's urban settings with tons of people

that can come in. And New York's kind of been really the key. It's grown dramatically there, and then it's kind of come back a little bit from a success basis. And then trying to get that, it's a suburban market, it's kind of a hit or miss. But Boutique, you know, has been in the curve.

It was there in the 80s and the 90s, and then kind of came back a little bit, and early 2000s, it went out, now it's back in Vogue, and then, you know, when the economy slows a little bit, if it should, then Boutique kind of compresses a little bit, because for folks to come in, it's been $150, $250 a month that belong to a 5,000 square foot concept,

doesn't always pencil. And as they look at their wallet, they kind of come back to traditional fitness does everything under one roof. But the other piece is, on the other side of boutique is a low price, right? So plan and crunch, you know, those two groups now have close to

2,000 locations open between them. And they probably have north of five and a half million members. So, they're probably the biggest footprint out there. So, you show up with a $10 club and you show up with a $150 boutique and it kind of canvases both sides of the market. The boutiques are hitting the millennials. You know, they're kind of coming out saying, I like this kind of feel. And then, I think the $10 starting to hit a lot of the consumer markets where people couldn't afford to get into the boutiques or having to get kind of forward to 24 hours, they're kind of getting into that. You know, great fitness box for 10 bucks and enjoying the experience. What do you say to the criticism? Because we've heard this a lot and we've brought this

up in the past where the model seems to be in these big box low cost gems like Planet Fitness. It seems to be the model where we're trying to get as many people as possible to sign up, and then we want as many of them as possible to never come back and use the gem, because we don't have the capacity to even serve all of them. What do you say to those tiny, is that the model?

Is that the model these guys are going after? I don't think so. It could be deep inside, but our belief always has been that you want what I call walking billboard. You want people that walk around town, they go, hey, you look great, you lost weight, you're in shape, where are you working out? At Crunch, at USC Gym, at Planet, wherever it is.

You wanted to say that so that you bring their friends and referrals. And that's really the key of the game. I mean, most members come through the referral network as you guys know. And so I think everybody wants them to work out and you can serve some. A good box with 10,000 members should see 20%

of the people in the box a day. And a great one, I'll see 30%. So if you've got 10,000 members in the rare box, that's a lot of members. You'll have 2,000 workouts a day. And if you're open 25 hours a day, that's not hard to service. Does that formula scale to pretty much from small box all the way to a larger box?

It generally does. The larger boxes, if they have tennis and outdoor, can be higher penetration because you have a different clientele that comes in there. But almost everything I've seen in the industry and everyone I've talked to and all the work I've done is generally between 20 and 30 is kind of good to great. There's some that have 10% and you've gotta give them a poor grade. But a lot of times I come into a club and it's how many members you have and what's your workout traffic. And that tells me in 30 seconds everything I need to know. Really, okay, so here's a good question

because you said 10,000 members 20 to 30% should be using the gym. That's a big difference between 20 and 30% and you're talking about a 50% increase. What is it that the gyms that get the most usage do different than the ones that don't? Like what are the big keys? Yeah, good question.

And just to make sure I'm clarifying that, that's just on a daily basis. It doesn't mean those are the only members of train, hopefully 95% train every month. At some point, right? Yeah, but that's just a daily basis. And so the great ones are obviously parking lot, strange answer.

Really? Yeah, you gotta have car park. I mean, I went to a fitness connection to group out group out of Texas great company guys used to work for us, you know Bruce Nichol founded it um They have to probably 70,000 square feet for ten bucks Holy cow, right? But you get into a massive box. Yeah, you get into their parking lot. They got 400 car parks Oh, which is amazing But when you pull in 400 are used and you're waiting to get in there

Yeah, so at some point they hit capacity because the parking lot can't parks, which is amazing, but when you pull in 400 used and you're waiting to get in there. So at some point they hit capacity because the parking lot can't conform to let enough members come in and people start saying, I'm not going there because I can't find a place to park so paying the ass. So parking plays a key role. Then it gets into how the facility design and built, how much cardio do you have, how much strength do you have, you know, is your club, is your footprint exercise? At 24, we got to a point where we were designed the facilities at 40,000 square feet.

We had kids clubs, we had pools, we had basketball courts, we had juice bars, and pretty soon the footprint for exercise was down to like 12,000 of the 40. And you're like, shit, we can't get enough people in here to exercise. We get everybody in on the dance floor, stuff. They'll come have a smoothie. Yes, really, but you can't work out.

There's not enough free weights, there's not enough stuff in here. So we had to kind of reboot a little bit and change up the mix. And then we came into the low price. You take a 20,000 square foot crunch, and as much as 16 to 17,000 square feet is pure gym. It's got a small locker room, small lobby, and everything else is, you know, all equipment. So you can have 150 pieces of cardio, and you can have a giant free weight section and probably about

80 pieces of selectorized. So you can push through a lot of people in that box. 24, we could do 3000 workouts a day and that 40,000 square feet with 12,000 square feet of fitness. But when you get into these low price boxes, you can pound in, you know, a couple thousand people a day very comfortably. Oh, wow. So that's why you can sell so many memberships at low price boxes, you can pound in a couple thousand people a day very comfortably. Oh, wow. So that's why you can sell so many memberships at low price. So having more, you said the parking lot, having more of the gym be workout area, those two things contribute, is there anything else?

No, of course, all the basics, you know, friendliness, cleanliness, you know, creating community, good culture inside there, you know, you know, getting on top of everything, nothing's down. Yeah, we always had a philosophy that there's no piece of equipment that was down for more than a few minutes if it was, we took it off the floor. So we have maintenance text on staff and if stuff goes down, we try to wheel it out, repair it, and bring it back on.

So make the club feel special, great music, great lighting. Everybody's wearing headsets now and pods, but we still try to pump good music in there to create a good vibe. And if you like, you know, each community is a little different, but if you like your rock and roll, or if you like your soul, or like your hip hop, it's kind of going to play for you. And then I think the trainers, right, the people that touch everyone is a training staff.

So your training staff has to be top notch, not necessarily to train the people, but just to touch them and help them and point things out to better exercise. Yeah, I remember when I would manage gyms, you know, when I, I used to, I've been working out in gyms since I was 15 years, 14 or 15 years old. And I remember thinking, oh, the main thing that makes this gym successful

or gym successful is just how much awesome equipment it is, how great it looks. Then when I started managing gyms, I remember I'd walk into facilities and within the same month, you know, we would produce, you know a 20, 30% increase in revenue, just because of new staff. And then I started to realize how important the team was in the gym,

but I feel like a lot of companies, a lot of fitness companies don't necessarily understand that. They think people will come in and buy a membership, and they'll like it or they won't like it. How how big of a role does this is like for example a sales staff play or the training staff in terms of the success of the gym. Yeah good question. I mean great question. It just depends on the concept you have. Okay this is a good one. So depending on where you're going it, I think if you take a look at two four there's a period of time where they felt like look it's a field of dreams. Build it and they will come. Itill the box, it's beautiful, and people will come,

and they'll get a certain number of members. There's other concepts, you gotta go hustle. You gotta be all over the place, cause no one knows your brand. You open something new. Like we built 49ers fit out here in San Jose. Beautiful club, probably one of the nicest we've ever built, but no one knows the brand.

They don't know what's inside. They don't know it's 40,000 square feet with about 29,000 square feet of fitness. It's got more equipment in there you've ever seen. It's got a huge turf area. So you have to kind of create your brand. You've got to go hustle for that. You can advertise all you want, but you have to get after it.

On the component too that I skipped a little bit is fitness is great, but then group X, right? Classes. So you have to have an amazing group X program so that you draw in a lot of women and then some men who like to take the classes and you have to have a little bit of everything inside there and you got to be able to change that out based on trends and what's going on today. I was just saying that's what really allows you to combat with the small boxes. That's what I see happening right now. Like a really good large box will offer a lot of what these you know, Cross CrossFit Orange theories are within the box. I would think that would be a major

strategy to hang with all them. Yeah, no, I think, I think, you know, Orange theory is on a great job with technology and they've drawn in, you know, good footprint on their franchise basis and they're rolling pretty well right now. Again, it's as well as ones where after you filter through a community and you've enrolled everybody, you have a stable base, you're great, but if you've rolled everybody, there's not enough people to churn through again. You had a little bit of a wall on all the kind of boutiques, but some crush

it. Some do amazing jobs. I think, you know, if you take a look at Soul Cycle, I love, you know, what they've been able to do and how they've grown their footprint. They have amazing numbers on all their sites. And they've got a competitive landscape now with so many cycling studios opening up. You know, they're probably the pre-eminent one, but there's at least another six or seven below them in each community. Now, you say nice things about that, but I know you're an investor, and this is your wheelhouse. What makes you stay away from not going and buying up 20 orange theories or a whole region

or an area? You know, it's passionate about what you want to do and how you want to get after it. And I think building all those is not easy. You have to have a dedicated, amazing team. And so I think that each group you look at has had, you know, a fortunate amount of come back to your question on people. And so if you have great leaders and you've got a good team that can get after it and I think you go, but you can only do so much.

I actually think the US is over penetrated and as much fun as we have here, we can continue to perform at a high level. But the rest of the globe, when you compare it to the US, it's just starting. And so I like outside the US personally as an investor. Other than the spaces that we're competing in now, I like what we're seeing with low cost. I think that's going to continue to grow in a big way. And I think that some of the niche players that are getting after it. And I like what we're doing at UFC Gym because it's so different than everybody else

when you get inside that box because you have again, anywhere from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Muay Thai to kickboxing, and then you get into all the traditional training and then all the new wave training as well, functional, et cetera. The daily ultimate training classes, they do, they're crazy. So you get a different clientele that's unique to the space. And so I think you have to find a way to kind of differentiate yourself.

Yeah, I mean, and this is, I'm not kissing your butt here. I think that the UFC gyms I've seen are the best equipped gym chains I've ever been in. For someone who likes to work out. Sure. I love working out. And so I know good equipment and I know what's fun and what's not. And they're extremely well equipped,

better than any other chain, I've seen individual gyms that were very well equipped, but not chains. You were talking about international markets. What's the most exciting, where do you see the most exciting growth right now overseas? Wow, it's everywhere. Depending on what you're trying to do,

the whole world's exploding when it comes to fitness and groups like Earth and others have done a great job in promoting health and wellness. But if you look at every continent, probably other than the African nations which are slowly starting to kind of get after it, the rest of the globe's just exploding. And it's moving penetration levels.

I think the Scandinavian markets now are ahead of the US and penetration penetration I saw in the last week, really, around 22%. We went into Scandinavia in the late 90s and built that big chain, Sats out there. So we, within three years, went from zero to 160 locations. We acquired Sats at a small footprint.

We acquired a group in Sweden. Now Sweden and Norway are the top two penetrated markets. They love fitness there, the Norwegians and the Swedes work out like maniacs. So each market is a little different. I love Australia. It's like California. It's a coastal community. Everybody there gets after it really hard.

They train. Everybody's working hard because they're going out to the beach. They got to look good. So they really are very into fitness. Asia is growing and booming. We did a lot of work out there, continues to grow. If you look at China, Indonesia, Singapore, all those countries are booming when it comes

to health and fitness. Big time, the Middle East is growing. I was just down there in November and I was shocked. I went into a club and quaked of all places. Oxygen? Yeah, no, it wasn't oxygen. It was a bodybuilding club and itwait of all places. Oxygen? Yeah. No, it wasn't oxygen. It was a bodybuilding club and it was like oxygen. Oh, yeah.

And they took me in. It was four levels, probably 100,000 square feet, 25,000 level. Their nutrition room was probably twice the size of this stacked with everything you could think of. And it had the biggest human beings I've ever seen in one place in my life. I mean, they were pound in the weights. When I went to the leg floor, they have a floor just legs,

probably 25,000 square feet of legs. It had probably 300 guys in their pound in it. Every floor was packed. And it was like the Golds Gym venison a day. Bodybuilders galore, people training hard, six, five, 300 pound kids down to, you know, 5,000, 150 pound kids trying to get big. And it was amazing.

So wherever you go, finishes really starting to boom in a bunch of different ways. Not so much on the boutique side, on the international, in some countries it is. F-45 came out of Australia. It's kind of coming here to the US

and doing good work. But if you look at most countries, there is traditional big box and then some low cost starting a little bit. Yeah, what do you think of the rise and now what seems to be the flattening out and maybe even the decline a little bit of the US market for CrossFit? Like, what do you think of that business model and what they've done? Because I'm looking at it now and it seems like they've kind of plateaued a little bit and might even be declining a little bit in the US.

Yeah, I mean, they changed the landscape, right? So those guys did amazing work. But there are others that are kind of fingering off of those guys like Jason Calipa here in the Bay Area. He's done really good work with his North Cal kind of CrossFit group and the way he's kind of digitizing it. You know, I'm a big fan of him and what the work he's doing. And CrossFit's booming outside the US,

so they may be plateauing here because they've hit all the markets, but they're booming outside. But remember CrossFit's model was, in my opinion, CrossFit model wasn't necessarily a franchise model, of course, or even a licensed model, it was a training model, where they went after certifying their trainers

to be CrossFit trainers. And then they allowed you to buy the franchise for low dollars, and then you could open up next to another CrossFit, or block away, or five blocks away. You could have 10 and within a mile. There was really no barrier to entry. And so they've created a competitive landscape among themselves.

That was their approach. And it seemed to work really well, and I think it's working pretty well internationally but I know that it gets tough when you build a studio in a brand and you get after it somebody comes across the street to compete with you in the same brand that can't be a good feeling. Yeah, it's been interesting to watch for sure. It feels like they came out of nowhere and then exploded and completely changed the way people even worked out which brings me to my next question. you know, I just saw some statistics recently

that showed that the US life expectancy is now declined like the second time in a row. And they're showing that a lot of it has to do with suicides which have been up, it's opiate overdoses. But it seems like our overall health hasn't improved and has still continued to get worse. But we have more gyms, more people, you know, working out, or at least

more people aware of working out. What are we doing wrong? Why are we not able to tackle this problem? And is people like you who, obviously, we consider you the godfather of the gym industry, do you think about that? How can I make a big impact? How can we, besides selling memberships, how can we get people actually, you know, get healthy? Yeah, I mean, it's spent so much time on it

till you're blue in the face. And, you know, part of it is, I think, building more product. So a lot of markets are still underserved, especially lower economic communities. So it's tough to find retail spaces in those communities and spaces you can develop. Part of it is a discipline for people where, you know, it's just hard to go exercise. It's hard to walk. It's hard to do things. Parvade is to take the easy road out.

You know, I just sit at home and I can pull my app up now and I can say I worked out for an hour. I can close my three rings on my Apple Watch, which is amazing, you know. But I got a walk and do some things to kind of crush it every day and I get after it set my clerk burn I love my apple watch But I really think at the end of the day that whenever you walk around like my wife and I are constantly looking at people and saying that you know We are just such an obese society and it's the way that we ingest our food and it's the fast food You know, it's the chips and the sodas and all the things that we're trying to curb. That basically going inside your body, you don't realize the damage it's doing and how hard it's to overcome. And then when you get to a certain point where you're 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight,

it's a lot of work to get that off. I mean, it's a tremendous amount of work. And people get after it for a little bit and they see how hard it is and they just pull back. So I think it's the point where you reach that point of no return in your mind and eventually a call to actual happen. The doctor will say you're about to have a heart attack. The doctor will say you have diabetes and you're going to lose, you know, a limb in your body unless you make a change in your lifestyle quickly. It could be that, you know, a friend of mine once told me his son looked at him and said, Daddy, are you pregnant? It could be all those types of things that there's an impetus that kind of gets you back into health and fitness.

But a lot of us that come through the fitness industry, we kind of get an idea of what it's about because we work there and everybody see that's been in the gym business. We're all in pretty good shape, right? You guys are all shredded, you're all in phenomenal condition right now. So what I tell everybody is go work in a gym

for six months or a year. Get a job there, work out every day, learn how to get your body in great condition, get inspired by the industry. And maybe that'll help change your life a little bit. But this country is obese, it's just the way it is. And the cardiovascular diseases that are coming this way is bringing the average life down

and where they've talked about your children won't live as long as their parents. Right. Let's talk about inactivity a little bit. I kind of want to get into the eSports and the surge of the popularity of this is just baffling to me. And seeing all these acquisitions happening through the MBA,

and just because, you know, we're trying to address this problem of obesity and yet we're seeing this huge rise in popularity in, like, these types of things that where it's just promoting more in activity, it seems. Yeah, no, we always call it head down. Right, wherever you go, everybody's heads down. So I was teased, everybody that can walk through a room and nobody knows I was there because everybody's heads down. So I was teased everybody that can walk through a room and nobody knows I was there

because everybody's heads down in their phone, streaming, watching, listening, viewing, texting, typing, whatever it might be. Esports is interesting because you do burn a ton of calories because of the stress around the way you're playing. My 14 year old will play as much as we let him and he'll stand to play and he jumps up and down He runs you can hear him jumping in the room. You know, he's a 210 pound 14 year old monster and he'll pound the floor

I'll be yawning at him. You're gonna break the roof But he loves his esports and he's very active around it It works his mind quite a bit the interesting by-product is though that they get used to losing Because if you play Fortnite to be a champion of 100, you know, if you're playing on a single basis, it's not very easy. You might win, you know, one of every 20. So you lose 19 times, just click and go at it again.

So these are gonna be kids that are okay with a no. Oh, that's interesting. That's what I was thinking about. What a positive spin on what we're seeing, because we're seeing the opposite in kids that are playing sports that are getting trophies for last breaks, whatever like that. I never thought about that.

It's objective. Yeah, I know it's, I have a 10 year old as well. And so last year he was playing in a basketball tournament. And I remember they lost the game and all the kids were kind of okay. And they shook the hands of the team. They lost like the championship game. They walked off the court. The coach was like, I'm used to kids crying and they shook the hands of the other team. They lost like the championship game. They walked off the court, and the coach was like, I'm used to kids crying when they lose the game like this.

I'm like, that doesn't happen anymore. These guys are used to losing Fortnite every day, 100 times. They don't really care. They just play as hard as they can, and if they lose, they lose on their own terms. So it's a change in society a little bit. I think it's really interesting, and you can see it emanating all over the place.

It's like, okay, I lost. I busted my ass the best I I can but I'm not gonna cry over it because I'll play again tomorrow That's a very interesting way to look at it. I have to say I agree with you That's actually quite I didn't even think of it that way now you're invested in the esport market, right? Yes, I'm going over kind of what that looks like for you or what that is. Yeah, so we, I think you guys had Andy Miller on your cast and Andy and I, again, he's a partner of mine in the Kings, up in Sacramento and we sit together at games and figures back. We started talking about how our kids are playing a lot of eSports and then,

Andy's like this maniac sports brilliant guy. And so he went, this and research came back, like I think we should buy eSports team, have some fun. So that led to buying one, buying two, now we've got like 10 and competing all over the world and all these different types of eSports gaming. And it's been really interesting because it's not tens of millions, it's hundreds of millions and billions of people playing eSports right now. And it's growing like crazy.

So you have Fortnite come out that takes over the world and Epic Games makes $3 billion last year. And it's like second year of operations. And then you have Apex come out this year right through their development. And there are already 50 million people in like 30 days playing their game. And they're crushing it right now. And kids are similar, but kids like it better than Fortnite in some ways and they're like Fortnite better in other ways. And so you've got that going on. Then you've got Overwatch, which has these professional teams. We own the Bay Area Overwatch team called the San Francisco Shock. And those guys are, you know, we're top two or three in the world playing teams all over

the world now. They've set this league up where we're playing teams out of China and Korea, out of London and Paris, I mean, Middle East are going everywhere. They'll have a 50 teams around the world you're competing with for national, international trophies. And so all these kids are making a ton of money through their streaming. And so these guys are having people watch them 30, 40, 50,000 people at night watching them stream, getting paid.

Now, how do you monetize that? How are you as an owner making profits off of that? Yeah, good question. So we kind of make it through our streaming and in our shared streaming, through some of the tournaments where we take a small share that we let the kids take the vast majority, they probably get almost all of it. And then sponsorships really where it is. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then some of these leagues now that are coming up, so like we own the rights, as I said earlier, to the Bay Area, kind of Northern California for overwatching. So we bought that team for a 20 million bucks. And so we own that.

And then there's, it's like the NBA now, they'll be revshared that'll come in as the business continues to grow globally through their sponsorships and things they do. And so hopefully you grow it up like an NBA team or an NFL team or a major league baseball team. And this is your market that you're competing with for many years to come.

Now I looked and I thought, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, that they were also like investing in teams for like NBA 2K or something along those lines to where the New York NX or whoever has like a team that represents like the New York NX through NBA 2K then they're going to compete. Yeah, so the NBA saw that and Adam's Super smart and he said look there's the millennials are playing eSports we got a you know you know kind of get into the sports game and there's always been NBA you know 2K out there all my kids have played it you know they knew every shot every move in the world and so they created leagues where the teams could kind of buy and then play against each other. I don't think that footprints done finally well yet they're're gonna have to grow it over the years to come.

But each team, and a lot of the teams, not all of them, but mostly NBA teams bought their rights, like the Kings, bought ours, and Shaqille and Niels are our general manager that oversees it, and they compete and they have people watching play. And then it'll grow, it'll be interesting, but it's not gonna be as popular as these other games where League of Legends has 500 million people following it.

You're just not going to get into that realm. But I think as it grows, and esports continues to grow, there'll be an overlap. And especially now is everything's heading towards betting, right? And gambling. So esports is going to have that come, I'm sure. Oh man, that'll all have games. It'll be crazy. So that's the future for all of sport.

Well, I was going to ask you, and I'm kind of getting towards that because I can see that, you know, they're looking at all these, you know, popular trends coming in and seeing how they can sort of get their foothold in. And I saw that the LA Clippers actually had this is called court vision. And I was wondering if you had seen that experience did like your thoughts about that. Yeah. So we have in the Kings, we have a lot of tech guys. So we've got, you know, Vivek, who came out of TIPCO and then Jacob's family, right, who come out of Qualcomm. And so we had the Oculus glasses before anybody did,

like in 13, when you, we were in construction on our arena, you could put the Oculus glasses on and actually walk to your seat. Oh, see. So we were way ahead of everybody in some respects. So those guys had set all that up. And then we had even gone with Google Glass when they came out for that period of time

before they kind of decided to pull back on that where you could have Google Glass and you could see from the vantage point of someone seeing on the floor seats. So you can see the game from that seat. So I think all that's coming and it will continue to come. Whether people like that experience or not,

we have to wait to see how the jury verdict is there. But I think that there'll be more and more tech coming into the game and statistics and information if you like that. You just don't want to get to the experience where your head is down and you're not really seeing the game, you're seeing the statistics. So I kind of worry a little bit about that

because I enjoy the purity of the game and the things that happen. Like we played Boston last night and there's times in the game where it gets pretty heated and shit happens and F-bombs get dropped and you kinda wanna see all that and experience all that in the game within the game. And I think if fans could kinda see a little bit more of that

and be maybe to the point where the players are miked. Oh, that would be awesome. Where you could kinda hear exactly what people were thinking to the point where I've always felt like at the end of the game, if there's eight seconds left and you go into the huddle and the coach has three plays, you could put it out to the fan sing. Here's our three plays, which one do you want us to run? Oh, wow. And then let the fans vote. Okay, we're running play two. Well, I wanted to do I wanted to do that in preseason.

And then have the fans vote to and have it work and go fans are right ahead. You guys screwed up. Now we didn't even get the ball in back. I'm speculated we're going to have and because we have the tech is there. So I think it's only a matter of time before every player is Mike and Cameradup. Yep. And I will have the ability might me and my best friend are watching the Super Bowl. And I'm going to be I'm going to see through Tom Brady's perspective. And he's going to see through some lineman's perspective, right? Donald's and he's gonna see through some Lyman's perspective, Donalds, and we're gonna be able to watch the game

and experience it from their perspective. That's what I think we're going with that. No, there's streaming services now or you can buy and just watch one player. So there's stuff that's coming now where if you just wanna watch LeBron, the whole game, that's all you'll see. Oh, wow.

I think that's starting to be the next level and the teams will start selling those rights So it can get to wherever you want to get to and I think as as kids get better now And everything they want to do you know, they just go to an app So I remember a few years ago my son had a school dance So it had to be eighth grade so it's three years ago and he says I'm gonna go to eighth grade dance He'd never been a dance his life. I'm like dude, what are you gonna do there? You're gonna dance? Oh, yeah, I'm gonna dance.

I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. So, he goes to the dance. I don't think anything about it. The next day, I see some mom who was shopper on the dance. So, your son's like the most amazing dancer I've ever seen. I'm like, we talked about it. He can't dance at all.

He has no rhythm. And so, he comes back from school that day. I'm like, yeah, I hear you dance really well. At the dance last night, I go, who told you that? I go, one of the moms said she saw you. How the hell that happened? He goes, oh, well, before I went to the dance for three days, I hear you dance really well at the dance last night. I go, who told you that? I go, one of the moms says she saw you. How the hell that happened? He goes, oh, well, before I went to dance for three days, I got this dance app, I practiced in my room every move.

No, oh, yeah. So when I got there, I was ready. I was ready. That's so great. Mark, you have your, I mean, you've got your hands in so many businesses that the last time I think we talked, you said, I don't even know if I could rename them all. What does it take to give you a business boner today? What does it take to get you excited about something like where you get like a little kid

and giddy about something? I think it's doing something really different. You know, it's like something that's never been done before. I think those things are really cool. Get to places you've never been and never thought you would be. Give me an example of like the last year that the last thing that you came home and we're excited to tell your wife about something you were proud of or that you screamed out loud. Yeah, so without giving away too many keys to the kingdom, we, you know, there's a couple things I think that were really interesting. So I'm really good friends and partners with Alex Rodriguez.

And so Alex, of course, is dating one of the most amazing people I've ever met my life, Jennifer Lopez. And so we spent a bunch of time with them, my wife and I, and get a kick out of it. But sometimes you sit and listen to the things that Jennifer is doing that blows your mind. Really? Because she'll be in the middle of something where she could probably build a billion-dollar Sometimes you'll sit and listen to the things that Jennifer is doing that blows your mind. Really, because she'll be in the middle of something where she could probably build a billion dollar business an hour if she wants to and may elect to or not elect to do it. And Alex at the same time is now with his ESPN and baseball.

He's a savant. He's one of the few people I've met in my life is that whatever you tell him, it's in his head, he memorizes it's in there for life. He can bring conversations up from three years ago and repeat them verbatim. He can tell you every pitch he hit from every pitch and every game no matter what it is. You say what happened in that game against the against the Boston in 2012? He'll tell you every it back. Wow. He just got a photogenic memory. And you sit with those guys and sometimes they'll bring things that they're doing that will, you know,

let's say we're gonna make a movie and here's what what's gonna be and here's how we're gonna do it And you listen to that and you just go oh that's unbelievable and then they pull it off and you're like holy shit You know that world just is just crazy to me and the two of them are just phenomenal All that they do On my side house my little world doesn't even compare theirs You know you look at what's really interesting. And we took the UFC gym concept, and we said, look, I think it's a really interesting concept,

globally, the brand's huge, Dana Weitz, done amazing work and gone all over the world, lay these fights down, there's fighters from all over the world. Let's go out and sell the rights and franchise in a master away all over the country. And so Adam Sedlack, kind of the president, gets out there, he's got Tamerl Gundy,lak, kind of the president, gets out there. He's got Tamer El-Gundi, who's kind of the head of international sales. Those guys start marching. And two

years later, they're in 30 countries right now. And Adam's sitting about halfway around the world right now, trying to finish another deal to do three more countries. And I've just been blown away what they've been able to accomplish in a short period of time. And then these boxes are opening up at all these countries. And you just can't believe the number of people enrolling because it's such a different concept. And you're like, you know, you get pretty excited by taking something from nothing to where now you're sitting at 30 countries heading to 40. And people opening gyms, like 20 gyms in Australia, gyms are going to Oman, they're going into Dubai,

they're going to Egypt, the guys out there just open their first or about to open their second, 70,000 square feet. There's a guy opening a gym in Pakistan under the UFC gym brand, it knows even seen what? 150,000 square feet. Wow.

China just got signed for a massive deal. So you're seeing this happen in front of your eyes in a short period of time and you see there's demand for something unique and different in the great offering and you got a great team executing on it. I get you pretty excited in the morning. Yeah, that's right. What do you see?

What percentage of memberships are being sold online now versus in person? I mean, when I had left the big box gyms, we weren't selling really any online, but I can imagine now quite a few now, or coming through that way. Good question. I think in the high value low price,

they're probably at north of 30%. Wow, that much. Yeah, because it's a $10 decision for a lot of people. So people's going online and buy. Yeah, you go, hey, crunch 10 bucks, I mean, it's not a big deal. I think you get to the higher prices, it's very low, it could be three to five percent.

I think guys like 24 are probably doing pretty good work because people have been in there before, they've seen the box, and if they discount it, because sometimes you find you walk into 2-4, and you say, I want to buy a membership in the guy whispers, but you're better off going online, because you say $5 a month. And you go, I appreciate that, and you just go online, you say $5. Oh my god, I would do that. Or you go to Costco because they give free there. So, you know, they used to be, I would never sell a Costco. I'd like, well, I would do that.

You know, you show them the Costco and you can buy two years for $228. And you're like, I just left the gym at 40 a month. What's going on here? $1,000 on one side, two 20, and you know, they'll just take this to $28. So, depending on your strategy, if you look hard enough, there's ways to buy online

that cheapens the price. But the high end brands, the social cycles, the world, that type, they're not gonna discount too much on mine, so you just buy it as an insturge. Now with marketing for gyms, I know that's changed a lot, and now we're seeing the growth of an explosion of new media and influencers from new media versus

the old way, which was TV, radio, newspaper, and then your traditional celebrities. Are you guys looking in that new media route? Like, okay, YouTube channel, podcasts, influencers promoting our stuff versus an athlete? Are you guys looking at that kind of stuff? Yeah, we've been doing that forever and ever, and it's hit myths and how it works, and I think that a lot of people

are marking on a digital basis. And then you take Facebook and others, they change the algorithms all the time. So you're not sure, you know, even third party agencies are how to buy. So I think it's traditional old school isn't as popular as it once was, direct mail, print, TV, radio.

They're still there, but not as great as they were one time. So a lot of people kind of spend money in digital social influencers, which we've done a lot of work with. And it's, you know, again, it's to me back to the facility it is, how good is it? As you mentioned earlier, like the UFC gyms and others, you know, Mike Fini does our boxes. Mike's probably a legend in the industry. He did all the 24s with me. He's been buying equipment since he's a little boy. He's been designing building clubs since he's a little boy. He's just phenomenal at it. He's kind of kid that works out every day, trains like a maniac. So, he'll go to Ersa, and he won't go for the, that Ersa's our industry show, if you don't know, but he'll go to

Ersa, not the day it opens, he'll go the day before, because he wants to all, watch all the equipment get built. He's one of those guys like, I want to see how you build it, how durable it is, how hard it is to build, how hard it is to maintain. So, he's really into the weeds, but he's got all the equipment get built. He's one of those guys. I want to see how you build it, how durable it is, how hard it is to build, how hard it is to maintain. So he's really into the weeds, but he's got all the lace and grace toys. He always puts them in the facility. So when he builds a box, it's always kick-ass. Like, if you go see the 24 hour, because he built that, I mean, excuse me, a 24 hour that he built back in the day, and you see a UFC gym that he built. And if you go down and see, like, take 49ers and how he's kind of grown everything, it's pretty interesting what it looks like today versus the 24th he built 10 years ago. Do you see any current trends with fitness equipment? I remember when ellipticals came in and that became a big thing and hammer strength became

a big thing. Do you see any new equipment manufacturers or new types of equipment that are coming through? There's always new stuff that comes out, but the gym industry is moving more to functional. As you know, there's more open space. That's the big trend. Yeah, we can bring in all kinds of toys. You can bring in your Ninja Warrior training if you want. You can bring in your Bulgarian bags, your kettlebells,

your ropes, your plow boxes, and everything else to kind of create that functional class. But then traditional is still there. There's a lot of cardio and then a lot of strength that everybody's still pounding it. And then platforms have become big because obviously you look at the work that You know CrossFit did and platforms are in the facilities now in a big way. So maybe you had two Now you got five some clubs are going to ten and people are coming and lifting hard and it's a lot of women

I mean women are phenomenal shape coming out of that CrossFit concept into the traditional gyms now, and they stay after it. And so it's fun to watch how hard the women are pounding there as well as the young kids in the men. Yeah, I mean, what a huge difference that was from when I was in these big boxes, squat racks where like you had like one or two in a huge facility, and we didn't have a cage and let alone a platform. Now you're seeing bumper plates

and platforms and these and these are in the in the mainstream big box shims that we're starting to see that. Yeah, they have to have it to compete. You have to have it. It's like no brain or so. It's been fun to watch. You know, something I wanted to ask you. I'm so glad I just popped in my mind that it didn't get a chance to ask you a long time ago. It was something that happened. It was a controversy way back when I think it was, I want to say it was in late 90s or maybe early 2000s when 24 hour fitness put up a big billboard and it said, and I know you know what you know what I'm talking about, it had a picture of an alien and it had the flying saucer and it said when they come delete the

fat ones first. You guys remember that? That's great marketing. And then it got like really bad publicity and bad press and then how did that work out? I think it gave you guys more attention than good attention than bad. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a long time ago when we did it.

And a young kid in the ad agency came to us and so I have this idea, it's a little crazy. And I just loved it. And I can't remember his name, I felt bad, I'll have to look it up. But he, it was his idea, gave him all the credit. And I said to hell of an idea, let's do it. And it was gonna be like a ad chemist.

And now let's just put on a big ass billboard on the Samsters Go Bay Bridge. And let's just go for it. So we bought this big ass billboard, and we stuck it up there. And you know, I went up there for like a day, and then there was some gal who came out of nowhere who was with a group of overweight people feeling that we were

You know being negative towards them and next I know I'm on the today show and she's on one side I'm on the other Matt Lauer's interviewing me. I didn't know that I didn't know you were on their debate So you had to debate or just debate and I felt like a crusher And I said look we're not picking on fat people. We're just saying that if they come they're gonna be hungry They're looking for people a little more plump. And we had this big controversy. It just went viral at that time.

If today's world would have been 10X that, but it went all over the place that people got a kick out of it. And we created a big campaign around it. And then a few days later, I remember everybody got behind it and thought, you know, this is a way to kind of just put it out front around, at that time talking about the obesity epidemic, which was probably nothing compared to what it is today. And we got just, you know, infamous amount of love mail and hate mail. Let's put it that way for a period of time. But it was it was impactful.

Yeah, would talked about it, no matter where. They still talk about it. I actually have a home up in the mountains and I have one of the shirts that I had made back in the day and it sits in the closet every once in a while. Look, I just crack up. I have a little shirt.

I lost it though, David. Have you tried to recreate that? Like other ideas like that that are kind of, you know, you're gonna get some bad pub. We did that similar campaign all over the world in different markets. Like we went to China, we did it. The Chinese did it in their way.

It was a massive, you know, media success out there. We did it in Russia, we were in Russia, where we talked about things we'd done successfully and people kind of piloted it out there and installed it and enrolled with it. So in Russia, people got a kick out of it. They thought it was funny as hell, they didn't really care. Maybe you'll be offended. There wasn't a lot of obesity in Russia. The Russian people were pretty damn good shape. We went to China. There's not a lot of

obesity out there. They thought it was very, very funny and very clever and it went all over the place. And so we did a bunch of you didn't Singapore. I remember in the Singaporeans got a kick out of it. So just a pen drawer we dropped it, but we did roll it out several other times over the years. What are some other, I guess, successful campaigns you've run in the past? What are some of the most successful ones that you've run where? Does that remember you guys at one point?

We looked better naked, was it big deal? That one, did you guys invent that term? Cause I hear it all the time, but I remember it being an old, you know, I don't know that we invented it because other industries had used it. Okay. But I don't know that was used in because other industries had used it. Okay. But I don't know that was used in the gym space before we used it.

So it's hard to say. Campains were depending on where you went and what you did were different. The guys in Vegas, Todd Smith and Chad, those guys, Rudy Smith, who was an industry legend, came up with a campaign where women joined free and so can the men and it's basically a no enrollment campaign. And so Todd was with me at 2-4 for a long time. Todd's one of the best, one of the grace of all time. And then I stole that from him.

They said I could use it. We took it out to Asian. I remember we brought it into Singapore and we said, women could join free and a small print and say, so good man. So we didn't get anybody upset. And I remember that the phones rang so heavy that day, that the whole system crashed in every club we had. Wow. They had, I think, over 5,000 tours in one day off that

campaign. What? So depending on where you take things, they kind of land in different places and hit people in different ways. But that, I remember that was really interesting campaign that we ran. And then here we, we kind of, you know, was really funny is in the very, very early days. And I don't know if I talked to, I don't know if I told about the story about last time,

about Arthur Jones at all. No, a little bit about Arthur Jones. So, yeah, so I'll tell you a quick story. So Arthur Jones created an all-esquit, right? Very famous. And when I first worked in the industry, I was a trainer and the manager came over to me and said, okay, you're gonna train on all-esquit, right, very famous. And when I first worked in the industry, I was a trainer. And the manager came over to me and said, okay, you're going to train on all-esquit,

and that's all we have. Here's your book to learn how to do an all-es. And I read the book like that night. And now I'm a trainer. I'm sure I blew four or five hundred people's backs out over the next couple of years. Not know what the hell I was doing. So I went in there and we did it. And six months later, I become the manager and become a partner in the gym.

And I'm sitting there one day, and one of my guys says, we got a grand opening anniversary coming up. Who should we have come here? And I'm like, well, our two Jones has, he's like 60 years old, he has this 25-year-old wife named Terry. And she's got this picture in the string bikini. Let's call her.

So I call Orlando and I get to the office. I say, I want to talk to Terry Jones. I'm thinking I'm going to get some secretary somebody to leave a message, whatever, get a hold of this. So just a minute. And then they buzz me through and I get this girl and stuff on and it's her. And I'm like, hey, you know, I'm this club called

Malice Hellsposs, my first gym. It's 5,000 square feet. I'm in San Leandro, California. You know, would you be interested in coming out and helping us with our anniversary party? She's like, I'd love to. Let me talk to Arthur. So I give her my phone number.

It's called you back next day. Arthur and I are gonna fly out. Wow. So Arthur Jones is her fly out. I step this whole party. And she had this picture where she's in this like a bowderek type bikini at the time. Bowderek was the big girl. I remember.

And so I dropped that picture in the paper and I say she's coming. We had maybe 8,000 people in line to say, Holy shit! Because she's in a bikini. I never own a bikini yet. For the rest of my life, every time I ran that ad, the phones would ring off the hooks to the point where, you're not, you know, she's in a bikini, it's not right.

You shouldn't advertise that way. This is like in the 80s and 90s, I'm like, I mean, bikinis aren't that big of a deal. I'm not lingerie, I'm not doing, you know, they're very secret or anything. It's not that big a thing. But Terry Jones and Arthur come out. I meet Arthur. Arthur tells me, okay, I'm gonna leave her with you. Make sure she's home by 10. I don't want her partying.

She's me all these rules. And I got a machine gun. You know, and I'm like, okay. So Arthur leaves. She ends up doing this whole night. We crush it. We have a lot of fun. At 10 o'clock, she's like, I want to go out partying.

I'm like, no, Arthur said you can't. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. I'm gonna go partying. Okay, so Arthur leaves, she ends up doing this whole night. We crush it, we have a lot of fun. At 10 o'clock, she's like, I wanna go out partying. I'm like, no Arthur said you can't. I'm gonna go partying, I don't give a shit, Arthur says.

So I'm like, oh my God, I better take her, because she gets kidnapped, I'm gonna get shot by Arthur Jones. And if you ever read about Arthur Jones, I mean, he was about, he was a loot of things. He was crazy, he was about bigger crocodiles, faster airplanes and ammunition. And so anyway, we went out with Terry Jones. I think we went out to like two in the morning

and I brought her back to her hotel and dropped her off just praying Arthur wasn't awake and to shoot my ass. And we said the successful opening, but that picture we had of Terry, I heard just saying there on her knees in a bikini, wasn't that risque in any way, shape or form, used to, whatever we ran, just to somehow resonate with people and a disc would, phone would ring off the hook, good, bad, and indifferent. We would just flood the club with members back in the early days of the industry.

Also, is there anybody in the industry, in the gym or fitness industry that you just, you loved to just fuck with. You loved to just, if they open a club, I wanna fuck with them, or you see them do something, like I just wanna take them down. You can't get it to take down anymore, but back in the early days,

we used to have a lot of fun with that, because guys would come in trying to encroach in your area. But there's a lot of friends I have in the industry that have a lot of fun with. I love Brahmach Rady from Lifetime. Okay. So if you know Brahm, Brahm's built probably the Bahimuth in the industry right now

that nobody ever talks about. He's got this company called Lifetime Fitness. They build 150, 200,000 square foot. Beautiful. Patryon's so beautiful. He's actually building the first one in the Bay Area in Walnut Creek. He's doing a $100 million dollar forced story

in downtown Walnut Creek. And I've been giving him shit about it because I said, man, I live close to there. It's a tough place to drive to. I don't think I'd even drive the five miles to go there at night. This, the traffic on 680, 24 is a problem. It's a tough place to drive to. I don't think I'd even drive the five miles to go there at night This the traffic on 680 24 is a problem But he's gonna drop a hundred million dollar box there and and try and get after it So I get him shit about that

But he's he's phenomenal at what he does and he and I kind of grew up with nothing both of us started at the same time We almost actually worked together, but he went off on his path and built these big boxes 30 40 million dollars a box Slowly but surely has grown that thing into the behemoth now. And he's a lot of fun to mess with. And he likes to mess with me. So I'm always like, build your box. I'm gonna put 10 around it. You got the big gunship.

I got a bunch of PT boats. And we're gonna have some fun. So, you know, we'll tease each other. And then there's other guys. I mean, I like Chiny at LA Fitness. Those guys are a lot of fun to play with because they started after us and they kind of, I think, copy a little bit what we did

and they've had a lot of success. I think they've done phenomenally well. And they've become actually the probably the biggest in industry now, they're bigger than everybody. Oh, are they really? Yeah, they're a phenomenal company that has, by far, probably the most revenue, is most cash flow, by far far on top of everybody out there.

They've got some, they've got some year old guys there, right? So a lot of, a lot of our guys are there. Now it sounds like everybody seems to be pretty good sports. Like even though you guys are in the same market and could be or consider competitive, nobody's an asshole, nobody rubs you the wrong way. There's, there's guys at times that get a little ego driven that come in

and you know, they think like their shit doesn't stink and they're the best that ever come and I I'm create pre humble pre quiet. I don't really care but I'm very strategic so if they want to come in and mess then we just kind of go out in a different way. Yeah. We see who's standing at the end of the day. But you know generally everybody's pretty good. The one thing about our industry in the early days and not so much as today this little different a little different is that we're all friends. So it didn't matter. Bromock, he could build a big company right next to me and chin the, he could open up LA fitness.

We just felt like there's plenty of room for all of us and we would talk to each other and compete against each other, but we didn't cry about anything. We all did well and we never damaged each other. We didn't try and steal staff from each other. If we did, I'd just say, look, I'll steal your staff. You steal mine. It doesn't get us anywhere. So we were pretty good about it.

Today, a lot of the guys come outside the industry and I remember like even when a Carl Lieber showed up, he's like, you can't talk to the competition. Like so it's kind of like saying, you mean, NBA coach can't talk to another NBA coach. A GM can't talk to another GM. It doesn't make sense to me. A college coach can't talk to another college coach.

We all are friends. We don't mind talking about shop and stuff. I'm scared to be blind to that right there. Yeah, I used to say anyone can come in or come in anytime soon what we're doing because executing is a different gig. I remember Mark Smith and the whole team from TSI in New York came out and spent like a week at 24,

going through our IT, our sales systems, everything. We were like, hey, come take a look. And then they went back there and they didn't execute on any of it, none of it worked for them. But we would be happy to share. It didn't matter, it was no secrets. Are there any other CEOs, and this can be in other spaces, other than yours, that you follow that you're impressed

by the more Cubans of the industry and people like that, are there people you watch and you're very impressed with the way they operate? Well, I think like everybody, you're really interested in how Jeff Bezos kind of gets after it with the way they operate. Well, I think like everybody, you're really interested in how Jeff Bezos, you know, kind of gets after it in the way that he does. You take a look at Elon Musk and his vision and how he executes in places that he shouldn't. You know, it's just how the hell does he pull that stuff off?

How does he create SpaceX and actually get that to work? How does he build a company that doesn't make any money and get it worth billions of dollars? You know, so you kind of shake your head at that. And then you see companies that have been around forever, how they sustain. You know, I think there was a great quote that came out. And I think Bezos said it best recently where it's like every great company ends at some point, you know, and I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to transcend those end points by continuing to evolve and change.

And I think that's the same thing we look within our industry. Like you look at ballies, which was a monster at once. That's right. And Don Wildman, who passed away last year and was a good friend, and I think a living legend. Don left and it went through an amassuration of different leaders and eventually it succumbed and didn't make it.

And so that thing went down and it got bought up by LA Fitness and I think 24 bucks, some of his boxes and I'm not going't make it. And so that thing went down and it got bought up by LA Fitness and I think 24 bought some of his boxes and I'm not going to make it. But at some point, you know, leadership, you know, and the way you finance a company and the way it's structured can lead to success or failure. And you got to be really cautious about that. It's kind of like when we talked last time,

I made a comment about Ray Wilson, where I said, you know, Ray would constantly talk to me about bankruptcies because he'd been through so many. I think people was interpreted that I meant Ray personally, when I didn't mean Ray personally at all, Ray had been in the industry since the 50s and so many gym chains that he competed with went under that he had to defend himself.

Like when when Bally's goes bankrupt, God bless that company, it hurts us all because I'm seeing in rooms talking about Bally's, why did it go bankrupt? What happened? What's gonna stop you from going bankrupt? Why should I loan you money. Why did it go bankrupt? What happened? What's gonna stop you from going bankrupt? Why should I loan you money? Why should I buy you your constant money?

And so Ray went through all these periods of so many companies he saw that went bankrupt. I think people, even he's like, they interpreted my words being that Ray went bankrupt. Ray never went bankrupt. Ray survived. He's a survivor and he's, God bless me. 91 right now, he's building a massive chain in Mexico.

He's still getting after it. Really? That's bad ass. You gotta get him on your show one day. He would crack you guys up. Oh, I was amazing. He's amazing. So, Ray's built this massive company over and over again.

And when we bought family fitness from him, it was the second largest gym chain in the country at the time. And we merged, we became the second because he was already there. And then we grew it from there and he sat on a board for a long time. He constantly said, don't tell me, make sure you don't make these mistakes, make sure you don't put too much leverage on your company, make sure you do this, make sure you do that. He was always in my ear.

And Ray built so many companies that came, he came, he came, he kept track of them, but he's probably the most storied and trepidure in our industry, in the history of the fitness business. But you look at these living legends, and you kind of look at him and and Dan Wom and Rudy Smith and all these guys that are out there, they kind of paid the way for us and then what changed the industry was monthly dues. Right. That would be how to recurring revenue base. And you look at the global markets and some have that and some are all cash. Like China is all cash. Oh really? Yes all cash. So they don't do, they don't do the month to month EFT? No, so they're, they're, so they're going through that period where club chains,

threes and fives and tens are not making it and they're crashing and burning because they aren't finance properly and others are kind of starting to get up there to 50s, 75 to 100. But it's all cash every month, you gotta start over. Where a lot of the other countries, if you go to Hong Kong, Singapore,

you've got monthly dues because we build those programs. They weren't there until we got there. So if we've been there, we would go to the country and, you know, see what the banking institutions have put in place. Like, we went to Santiago, Chile, they didn't have monthly dues. So we went and met the banking institutions,

and after a year we got them to buy off on it, we put it in place, and we created electronic funds transfers. Oh, interesting. Now, why doesn't China do that? Is it because there's regulations around doing that, or their banking system doesn't allow it? Part of the app, they don't have credit cards.

You know, it's not a debit card. There's a different system there. And so a lot of people don't have that credit industry that we have here. It hasn't been built to the level it's built here. And then the financing institutions don't have it yet. It could be coming. I could be speaking out of tune and out of turn here

because maybe the last six months something's happened. But a six months ago, my last visit still wasn't there. It's funny because so many of our bills now are done electronically, just automatically deducted. The fitness industry kind of, I mean, pioneered it. I don't know if they were the first ones, but they definitely got people used to it. Yeah, you know, I would say that that's probably Jim's. That was the first member, the first thing I ever paid electronically was, was a Jim membership. Yeah, there's a company called CheckFree that kind of started this.

And I think I told you when I first started in the business, I got invited to a seminar by CheckFree. I went to it and they talked about taking money out of your checking account and your credit card to pay for things. And I just like, I signed up immediately. And we put it in place, took us years to kind of get consumers behind it.

And they had a hard time with it. But CheckFree was kind of the foundation, and I remember Peter's got it ran it and he sold it eventually for billions of dollars. I mean, he did a phenomenal job, but he's a kind of guy that pioneered all that and opened up that industry, then the banking industry got in behind it.

What do you think about, and there's a term for this, I don't know what I forget what it's called, where I see this more today than ever, where you combine forces with like multiple companies or different things and and wrap it all in Amazon's a good example. That's right. You pay your Amazon Prime and you get all these other services built in with that. Have you thought about that in the fitness space? Like when we talk about nutrition and food delivery and it being like almost like this,

hey, you get a membership and within the membership, you get all these other services. Have you thought about that? Yeah, we've done that and you know, and we still kind of have that if you want it, but it's interesting that consumers, I think are overwhelmed right now. I mean, a lot of times I stay with people, I say let me see your phone, how many apps do you have on it?

And you can turn like pages and it's like 400 apps on a phone and so I think that when you bring a one-stop shop, it's like, well, I like it, but I like this food service better and I really like this gym app better. I like the fit plan app, but I don't like the fit star app. And you get into a little bit of that on there. But I think eventually, I'll always felt that you need a trusted source. So let's say you guys become the trusted source. And you say, we're going to recommend these are the five things you need to do. This is the best food service.

This is the best workout app. This is the best gym. This is the best clothing. Louis Lemon holds your butt up. It looks great. Wear that. You know, whatever it is, you put those five things in and your trusted source people will follow you.

And then that kind of becomes the mantra because a lot of times people look at, we put it out, they think, others try to make money off of us. And they don't buy into the factor. Well, we're just trying to push the ball up the court and let you guys have a chance to see what success can be like. So it's a lot around being trusted and believed in, I think. No, that's our model.

That's exactly what we're trying to build, is we are trying to just, we try to provide so much value for our audience to create that for ourselves that we're now kind of an authority in the space that if we point people in a direction like, hey, try these guys out or go listen to this or go watch that, we have that. And then that, the intern gives us the power

and the ability to attract advertisers and marketing. That's really interesting. So you, what do you see in, and I know we talk a lot about the gym industry with you, because that's where it's all of our babies and what we're into, but I mean, you're obviously are deep in the, in the gaming, you're deep in building an MBA team. What, what parallels are you seeing in building an MBA team

with building like a fitness team? Yeah, great question. You know, you go through this period where you, you buy an MBA team, you got a bunch of owners in there, you've got a general partner who kind of has to make the decisions because the NBA wants one general partner and you're not always all on the same page. So it really blows down to the leader's vision

of what they want to build. And I think part of like Vivek and I had a little bit of a difference of opinion in the early days. I felt we should go young and that we should build through the draft. And I think Vivek felt, I want to win now and I want to bring in some season guys and get after it. And so which one was right or wrong, who knows?

He went down the season path. I like going down the draft path. We ended up now we were in the draft path because we didn't win, we didn't unfortunately perform well. And so we ended up with some high draft picks and a couple of them didn't pan out, but the last couple have. I mean, Deer and Fox is a star in the making, and he'll hopefully be a pretty lost star.

The guys as fast as anybody I've ever seen play the game. And then you've got Marvin Bagley coming in, and Marvin is phenomenal at what he does. He got young guys like Harry Giles, that we took who came off an ACL injury, and we were patient, sat in his whole year. And if you've watched him play last night every night, he's athletic as anybody out there,

and he's gonna be phenomenal. And then you got guys that can shoot the ball, like Buddy Heal, who's one of the top three, three point shooters in the NBA. So we've got a good nucleus of young kids on the bench and we're developing and then, we'll have another year to pick up a free agent or two and settle in and you've got Vlady Divak,

who's been there, done that with Pasia. So, I think that it just varies to the vision and I think you have to hand it off. So I think if a Vex done a good job, it's saying, okay, I'm out of this. Vladi, it's your gig. And let's make it happen. And Vladi's working hard to kind of build our nucleus

and kind of bring us back to what the kings were in his era. And if you look at the personnel he's brought in, I think it looks pretty damn good for the future. Do you, have you been in it long enough now to where you see other organizations and you see thing you can point out like just like you can in the gym. We talk to the gym, right?

You can walk in a gym and be like, they're missing here, they're missing there, they're missing there. Do you feel like you've got that yet in the NBA world, that landscape? Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think you think that. Right, you're like, damn, I can figure this shit out. And then you, I think it's a good question. I think you think that, right? You're like, damn, I can figure this shit out.

And then you get there and it's not so easy. It's a lot of difficulty around the small thing. It's like, if you look at the Celtics as an example, I mean, they have all the talent in the world, people pick them to be the team this year, kind of rolling in and they've struggled a little bit. And you saw them come in and crush the Warriors two nights ago, then it came in last night and they beat us by two and we probably should have won the game

But what they said was as an example they had a long flight out to Play the Warriors and that five six hour plane ride got a little bit tighter And they went to the game and they played really well and what you see is that the NBA player today that Comerotter you need that team kind of feel isn't as what it used to be, because there's so much going on with social media. A lot of kids are busy with their other things going on in life. And the things are trying to do off the court that they're not as tisly once were.

It's just a different kind of mindset you have to have to really play at a high level. So I think the teams that are hungry and that haven't had success that have been slided like the Milwaukee Bucks, no one thinks the Bucks are good. They got Giannis, they got the Greek Freak. Those guys are pissed off and they're hungry. They play hard every night and they want to win. And the Warriors have been there done that and can they turn it on? They probably say, yeah, we can turn on any time. I don't know if it's that easy, but we'll see. So you sit back and you think you know all these things, but it's so hard, it's so complicated,

it's so difficult that you're just glad you got something like a lot of diva who's doing it all, because you know what to do with. Oh, I was just gonna ask you. I can't imagine with all these things you have your hands in, like, how do you organize your mind? Like, where is your energy at? Are you more focused on one business more than the other right now

Like how do you disperse your time? Yeah, no good question I think that you have great teams and all your businesses and you're just available if they need you and some teams need more of you right now in Different periods of time than others So if you look at the crunch team They've got two phenomenal leaders and Ben Mijli and Keith Wertz and then Jim Jim Rolie oversees that. And I don't have to spend a lot of time, those guys are the best at the best. I mean, Jim's been my partner forever and he ran half a 24.

So X Marine, you don't get in his way, he just gets it done. Yeah, I remember sitting down with Jim Rolie one day, and this was when they actually had rolled out the fitness game binder. And I had found, I didn't know that he was behind it and creating it. It was him. It was him. Adam. It was him. Derek Gallup and Adam said, like, I think we're sitting me down. And at that time, I was one of the top performing fitness managers and they wanted to come in and talk to me about what I thought about

the fitness game plan binder that I never fucking filled out. And I said to him, he asked me, what do you think about the binder? And I go, well, do you want the answer that I'm supposed to say to you? Or do you want the truth? No, no, I want to know your truth. And I said, well, it's really not for me. I said, I've been doing this for a really long time. And if anything, I feel like what's what I'm having to, I'm having to report to my DM all the time. And I find myself more stressed out about making sure I filled out my fitness game planer than getting out and touching my members and touching my trainers

and doing what I do best. So I could see value in it for somebody who's brand new. But personally, I think it sucks. I didn't know that he was a man behind it at that time. And I don't know how he took that. I still to this day don't know if he respected me more for that or he fucking didn't like you. No one jimmy respected you more for it. Okay. Good. I hope so. But I think you get into the leadership. So like you mentioned a couple of names there. So if you take a look at UFC, so Adam is the president overseeing that Mike apples in there. You remember Mike?

Yeah. He's run domestic franchise Derek Alps and run the fitness. You know, Derek was a chairman of versa for the last couple of years. And then you got a great team around those guys. Tamer O'Gundy who came over to us out of the golds international groups running international. So they got killer guys there. So I hope I need to help and they've got good people and finance Mike Pilates and then Sean Pence runs legal and everything there. So they have a really great team there that executes. And then you look at the Kings, you know,

you got a great team there and you got young guys are playing hard every night that want to prove themselves and they're hungry and they want that respect from their peers. And then you've got a group of guys up top, like Vlotti and Pasia, who are very, very focused on, you know, making us relevant again in the near tournament. It was nice to see Brad Stevens, a coach to Boston,

said some really good words about us, you know, before the game last night, he talked about, hey, looking at the team and how young they're how they're playing. He goes, this is a tough place to play. Everybody leagues talking about it's hard to get a win here. Hopefully we'll get a win tonight, but these guys are really good.

They spank the Warriors by 35 and they come in. They squeak one out from us from two. We played the Warriors four times this year. I think we said NBA record four times. The total points were lost all four by total 12 points, no four games between any two teams that's been that close before ever. We're getting better, but I think every business has, you have to have great leaders, you have to have faith in those leaders, you have to let them run,

you gotta be there to support them, you just wanna keep the guardrails there so they don't go too far off. You say that so easily, but I really, this is one of the things that I think I've always respected you so much for, and then I think it's a very rare trait to find, and we just threw out a bunch of names that obviously a lot of listeners probably have no clue

who they all are. I know who most of them are. And most of them have been close to you for a very long time. And that speaks volumes about you as a leader that you have this ability to go into other spaces, other businesses, and then you've been able to attract these brilliant, intelligent, incredible leaders

themselves to follow you almost anywhere. What do you attribute that to? Yeah, I've been able to talk to a lot of people over the years. I think part of it is that I let people fail and succeed on their own terms. I'm just there to support them. I'll constantly give them advice. I used to always say that, look, I'll tell you a couple of times, and if you fail each time in the third time, I'll probably be able to do it hard on you fail each time in the third time, I'll probably be a little bit hard on you.

But if you're right and I'm wrong, you get a little bit more rope. And I think that you find good people. And my dad used to always say that, you know, one of the keys to success and leaders is being able to choose good people. Not even find them, but just choose them. And so a lot of times you get into organizations and you see people like, I remember when I went down and started working with the UFC group. I saw this guy I met her name is Britta Phelps and I spent a little bit of time with her

and I said, come here, you're moving in. I moved over to a role and to another role and now she's kind of lead a bunch of stuff down there. Super smart. I went to law school. Great story. She took her bar exam the first two days, crushed it. The third day she got everything done on a computer. I want to turn in her computer crash just blew up and

She went the bar bar groups is what we need your stuff. You got to go fix it So she went to like an encryption place. They couldn't recover it So she got pissed off. I said well, maybe I'm not supposed to be a lawyer and so she went off and work for an NFL agency group That manages a bunch of players and then we picked her up and now she's making a ton for an NFL agency group that manages a bunch of players. And then we picked her up and now she's making a ton of dough, running a ton of things and helping all of the place. And she's as bright as anybody I've ever met. But she's just sitting there making a little bit of money

kind of in the corner and I'm like, you know, spend an hour with and right way I could see. She's super bright, super intelligent, super passionate. Everybody touches her, it's just amazed. So it's like you guys, right, you get together and you find the right cadence and you find the fact that you're all very bright and very passionate and you work together well and you form a team and you get rolling. And I I just believe that you just meet people and sometimes you put them in the right place to succeed and you

give them a runway to get after it and learn and fail and they appreciate that and then they know you got your back. Pay them well, support them well. They want to take a couple of days off. Who cares? Take it off. There's no big deal. Whatever you need, I'm here for. And then when I really need you and I call, generally, you're there and you're on it and you produce and it's like, all good.

Awesome. Yeah, from the outside, you look like you've succeeded at everything you've ever tried, but I'm sure that's not true, right? I'm sure you've had some hard failures along the way. What were some of the most difficult ones for you? What were some of the biggest turning points in terms of misses? Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's a hard question to answer because I don't look back like hey I screwed up what what could I do? But I do evaluate a lot like okay, what could I've done better there? You know, there's been some places we've entered in markets where it just didn't work.

Like, we went into Korea, we performed really well, we made a lot of money, did great there, but it does a very tough cultural mix between the folks there and our team, we just couldn't get it right, so we decided to bail out of Korea and just sold the business and moved on, just didn't work right.

And it just wasn't good for us. And then in life sometimes, it really isn't necessary, the businesses that fail, I can't point to too many businesses, I go back and say, shit, man, I think it was a mess, I didn't good for us. And then in life sometimes it really isn't necessary. The businesses that fail, I can't point to too many businesses. I go back and say shit man, I think it was a mess. I didn't do it right. I think most of them were pretty good. It's really people. And a lot of times it's the change of guard.

So like at 24-example, we had a phenomenal company just rolling and we had a change of the guard. You know, the early investors wanted to get out. I'm willing to roll with any new buyer. One crazy guy shows up and says, I don't need you, I can run it without you. And you basically say, okay, well, that's your business. You know, I'm shocked, but what the hell, go ahead.

He buys the business and then he changes the guard. And the guard comes in and it's just like you brought Trump in, you know, and he's just gonna change everything, not knowing what hell he's doing. Just wing it, hoping that his personality will survive, and it doesn't really work with everybody. And he upsets the apple cart and the business goes into kind of a little bit of shock for a while

until it merries, merges into whatever it's gonna be. So to me, it's really people. And if you have the consistency of people in relationship, you generally can work through everything. If you have good people that willing to work with you and listen, but if you have a change, you just never know what you're gonna get. And that's when I think it really gets hard.

Do you have certain guys that like you call for a certain thing, they for example, like you got a headache going on in the NBA side of your house? And it's like, I think this is the move, but I have my guy that I'm gonna call and run that by. And then you have one for your, do you have one for each kind of space that you're in? Yeah, good question. Yes, to a certain extent lots I just I'll go home and bitch to my wife

You know if she listen to me she might put her pods and I won't get anything in but but yeah, there's there's guys in the MBI Trust I really respect and I can pick up a phone call say what do you hear what you think and they'll give you good advice Honest advice and they've proven to do that over and over again I've got relationships with former players and guys I trust, and I can reach out and talk to and they'll give me feedback. In the business world in our industry,

at times there's people you can definitely call and say, hey, what do you think and what do you recommend? And there's board of directors types of level folks you can get into and talk to. But a lot of times, you know, it's kind of a little bit of fake news. It's like I was watching yesterday yesterday they were talking about Tyler Murray, maybe going first to the NFL draft, and then some guy came out who said that he'd heard through two general

managers that, you know, he didn't test well, he's a luth, and that he didn't do the exonose wells at the combine. And my immediate reaction was that whoever told them that was full of shit and wanted his draft stock to go down so they could probably pick them. Right? Right? Because there's just no way that kid is that kid, right? It's just not possible.

Yeah. He's a heist and trophy winner. He's phenomenal. He gave him a first round pick and everywhere you've ever heard him talk, he's entailed as hell. So you knew that was just a bunch of shit. So sometimes you gotta be really careful he talked to you too, because you don't always get

the right answers, you have to listen to your, intercom bus on what you really believe. But if you're looking for a yes, you'll always find that yes. I have a lot of times I'm looking for the nose. So someone says, hey, I've had a long-term partner in Leonard Schlam who's as brilliant as they come. He's another guy he should have on the show one day.

He's freaking brilliant phenomenal. He's been with me since the 80s, and he runs a bunch of businesses up in Canada now, but he's been around the health of Finishing Street forever. He's a very solid compass at any time he talked to him. He's very grounded, Harvard MBA in finance, super smart, and he just tells you like it is. He doesn't hold back.

That's the people I feel like I reach out to. I rarely seek out somebody who I think is going to agree. I'm like, I want the guy who's definitely gonna argue with me because then that will make me think about it more. For sure. Are there any investment opportunities that have been presented to you that you regret now as far as like,

or just have like a fear of missing out in terms of it like blowing up and it was presented right to you and you just let it go. A good question. I mean, I could have got it into Peloton early on and that thing's crushing it now. Here it's going to come out about a $8 billion valuation. Oh, they're really. Yeah. Holy cow. So they're killing it. I did something instead that hopefully does the same. So I don't feel like

but they're doing a good work. I really thought maybe was that worth investing at the time? It was a big valuation at the time, so it wasn't really. In a fitness space and health and wellness, I mean, there's so much stuff that's flown by. We've kind of gotten into some of the good ones. I'd say some have it kind of gone to the level I like to see them get to. But nothing I'm super disappointed about

that I would say, should I or shouldn't I have done it? Because it's just time management really. You know, definitely writing a checks nice, you don't have to do anything, you know, you put money in. Hey, here you go, here's $X dollars and come back when you sell it, hopefully you made a ton of money and I do well too. But the ones you have to put your sleeves up on,

the key is can you help drive that thing to X plus Y or is it gonna go X plus Z? And that's really kind of where it boils down to. There's stuff I wish I hadn't done at times where I said, look, that was a lot more energy and effort than it was worth. And I see those, I go back and like, I probably shouldn't have done that,

put too much energy in that. Sometimes my wife says, I put too much energy in my kids' sports. She's like, just peel back a little bit there, but I'm all in one of those guys. If my son says, I wanna do this, I'm all in for him. My daughter says, I wanna do that, I'm all in for her. My wife says, sometimes I should peel back a little bit there, but I'm all in one of those guys. If my son says I want to do this, I'm all in for him. My daughter says I want to do that. I'm all in for her.

Sometimes I should peel back a little bit, but really it's around moving forward. I've enjoyed the ride and I've enjoyed the fun, the camaraderie that we've had. The difficulty now is what's next as you guys were talking earlier. What's really coming next? And I've kind of tried to slow down, not do too much. Just kind of wind down what we have and kind of grind it out and bring some success. I think you'll see some things,

hit the press in next a few months, that you'll smile at. But as you go forward, you know, the probably the big one you look at is 24 because our whole team was prepared to stay with the buyer and somebody came in and just decided to pick up a tablecloth and try and whip it and have all the plates stay on the table and unfortunately they just don't, they don't stay.

So, in terms of the process of like evaluating some of these investment opportunities, do you have kind of like a checklist and like where you're at in life and like how much time you actually have that you can devote to these things. Yeah, for sure. I get calls all the time like I want you to do this. Help us with that. I'm like, you know, guys, it's how much time are you looking for? We want four board means a year, a call every month.

You have to fly here. Okay. Well, what you want me to do for that? You know, what are you going to give me? How's it working? Well, we'll give you one percent of the company. Like, well, what's your company going to be worth one day? We hope $100 million. I said, okay, well, $1 million is nice, but unfortunately for me, how's it work? Well, we'll give you 1% of the company. Like, well, what's your company going to be worth one day? We hope $100 million.

I said, okay, well, $1 million is nice, but unfortunately for me, that's not going to work. That's the premise you get there, which is probably not going to happen. And then I'm not going to give you all this time and energy. It's just not going to work. So I'd say most of, I just say no to. I don't see really on any boards.

I just have fun with my family and spend time doing this with you guys and hang out with the businesses and just stay very focused. And as Alex and Rodriguez and I talk all the time, I'm really believe in narrow and deep versus shallow and wide. I just don't want to be in 100 things on the surface level. I'd rather be in three or four things, get really deep and really after it and do it extremely well and be proud about it. So I don't sprinkle. I'm just not not a guy put sprinkles on top of it

No, that's I just posted a quote and I'm gonna mask her because I can't remember I'll talk about my head exactly how it went But the the idea of it is that the difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful People say no to most of everything and have that ability to do that like you just did so I think that's so important Man, I tell you more I I really appreciate you coming down. We always have such a good time hanging out and talking to you, man. Love it, love having it. Time with you guys again and love being here.

Keep rocking. I will. I'll keep shouting your name and you guys will be, I'll be a little fish in the frying pan one day and you guys are just launching all over the world. I hope it's fun to watch your success. Keep going. We appreciate it and you got to make a phone here if you ever want over the world. I hope it's fun to watch your success. Keep going. We appreciate it and you got a mega phone here if you ever want to use it.

I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Thank you for listening 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 MindPump Media dot com. Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

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