“How could I address this, increase retention, increase my profitability, and just entrench myself as an operator, and that's initially how the idea for GroeFit started.”

“So this would allow me to get the data I needed on all those problems I just mentioned, like, who's using what? What equipment is getting used? What equipment is not valuable to me as a gym operator? Who is doing what activities, and how can I use that to, both my staff and I, create a more personalized, engaging experience?”

“So the members benefit from having that layer of accountability if they are working with a trainer. And if not just more broadly, the gyms, being able to know what they're doing and when they are going to get a new piece of equipment that aligns with them, or they're going to implement a new training program instead of getting them bombarded with a marketing campaign that doesn't apply to them, you can get really specific, and you're more likely to get aligned to the people that you care about.”

“So adherence, accountability, community, I think, are essential to boosting retention and getting the other, what, 80% of Americans into a healthy and fit lifestyle.”

“The company's ultimate vision is to create a city wellness program where cities subsidize the gym memberships for low income families, and by being able to track this verified activity, there's a pathway for health insurers and providers and funding mechanisms for that.”

“Accessibility is really a complicated question, because you look at marginalized or underserved communities and maybe they can't go to the gym. So that's kind of where I view the city wellness program coming into play by subsidizing this and creating a pathway where the person can go to the gym. It doesn't really cost them or it's highly subsidized, and because of the health savings the city gets from the verified activity, that should be like more than enough.”

“The data needs to be relevant and actionable, and you know, that's kind of where we're in the process right now is trying to establish these comm channels with those providers to figure out, like, what that does look like for them, and how we can model this out to make sense financially for everyone.”

“And on the federal side, the Army has a new program, Holistic Health and Fitness, and they recently released results from their preliminary launch of this program. And I believe it was like for every dollar spent on their program, it was $7 or $8 in health savings.”

“San Antonio is a pretty big city, and there was only two climbing gyms at the time, so I was actually going to open a climbing gym, and then through that process, pivoted to a regular gym, and through that process, pivoted to Groe and, you know, typical entrepreneur, just been pivoting my way around.”

“And to be fair, I think it was a problem that really wasn't solvable until recently, with the advent of AI, and not like, I know there's like, so much hype around AI, and I'm not really about that hype, but the cost, like the cost decreasing, the access to the tools and the innovation that can come from that access of those tools, like what we're doing right now with computer vision, would not have been possible 567 years ago. It would have been too costly.”

“And it's really no different for fitness, like, you really have to get out in the trenches, show people you know something about them, make them feel connected, and remove those obstacles, and wins so that they do develop, develop that winner mentality, you know?”

“I have what I call mega phase two. This is so essentially, if we get there, it's like a phone with a deployable drone camera, and it runs our software on it, of course. So that way it gets, increases that accessibility factor.”

Boosting Member Retention with Adherence, Accountability and Community [Podcast Series]

Adding Breath to the Exercise as Medicine Movement [Podcast Series]