HALO Talks: Elevating Wellness

As a very active kid, Bryan Clay (Founder of the fast-growing franchise Eat The Frog Fitness and 2008 Olympic decathlon gold medalist), found himself with an ultimateum by his Mom: Track and field or swimming . . . and he chose track and field because, "There was no way I was going to wear a Speedo!" he jokes. Clearly, it turned out to be the right choice. "The track became my sanctuary," he states. Clay went on to gain a Fulbright scholarship, compete in the 2004 Olympics, won the gold in 2008 in Beijing, and has been at the top of his game in the athletic world. How then, do you go from that-where every part of your life is controlled and revolves around your fitness-to the craziness that is entrepreneurship?

It's not easy! Clay continues, "One of the hardest things about going from professional athlete to entrepreneurship is that when you're a professional athlete, everything revolves around you. If I need to get better, I have to put in the time. I fix it, I become obsessive about it until I have it perfectly. There's a certain intensity that you train with . . . a certain amount of grit, tenacity, drive and focus that you have to have."

"When I moved into entrepreneurship, it was the complete opposite! In the beginning, me or my business partner could do it all, but as you grow, you can't. You have to bring on team members that can help you. And that was a new world for me. It's still kind of a new world that I have to learn. It's personalities and people and all kinds of stuff. The hardest thing was realizing that people don't operate the same way I do, or the same way I did," he states.

Bryan and his team (the "Frog Squad!") call their workout "honest." In other words. . .it's not one-size-fits all. (Something Bryan saw when he first entered the industry which upset him quite a bit.) It's programmed and progressive. It's not fancy, but it gets results! Clay dug in and learned to become an an operator at the grass roots level, but he learned the balance of wearing the CEO/Founder hat when the time came to deal with other matters.

As someone who dealt with the highest levels of competition his entire life in athletics, when it comes to business he says, "There are people who try to find shortcuts, or find ways to try to work the system. When you see that as an athlete, you have to be confident enough in your system, in your training and what you do and why it works, so that when you look at the others you just think of it as noise . . . as distractions."

This is the same mentality he and his team have about EFT. They are a company who cares about results. They care about giving an honest and safe workout. They care about their employees and not going back on their values to make money. This is a group to pay close attention to and to learn from.

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Daniel Tobon is a self-described "hard 48." He joined the military at age 17 immediately after high school and served for 7.5 years. Due to a serious back injury, he later went on to get the, "most boring job I could" and became a lawyer. (Ha!)

Tobon currently heads up iVIK Holdings. iVIK is a 100% USDA and EU certified organic cannabis production facility. They're also white-label, vertically integrated, and run a highly successful direct-to-consumer brand, Relevium.

After selling his prior company to private equity, Tobon (also a duel citizen with Colombia) realized the incredible opportunity presenting itself in cannabis. He "had a front seat on the war on drugs" growing up in Colombia (one of the reasons he came to American initially) and saw the incredible effects of the plant on many levels, but especially for veterans suffering from PTSD.

"We collect more tax revenues from cannabis than alcohol," he states. "But it's critically important to get the cost down to commodity levels. A dry gram costs around $1.25, which is what it costs you to grow it a big greenhouse in North America versus somewhere around 3 cents in Colombia."

He continues, "The second I saw South American countries were going to start issuing licenses, I thought, 'This is it!' This solves for that issue because you are not going to change usage patterns until you get that commodity pricing. People are not going to be paying $7 a dose, no matter how well it works. It doesn't matter how high it gets you. If you're going to put this in PowerAid for example to help with recovery, you need to get it down to manageable prices."

Tobon continues to discuss the incredible benefits of CBD, how you can ensure you're getting a legitimate product, how they're slowly navigating the changing political climate as (certain parts) of the USA become more favorable to cannabis and CBD, how this can be a substantial revenue stream for gyms, and more.

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Alessandro Biggi & Francesco Brachetti are best friends since college and grew up in Italy. They started Avocaderia- the buzzy new restaurant (now with 4 locations.)

They have far from the "typical" background of hospitality entrepreneurs. Both studied and worked in the finance world but eventually, Alesandro came to the idea of,"Healthy comfort food that's good for you but enriched with healthy fats which could be cheese, almonds and so on. I realized that it was really hard to find healthy food. . . so I started playing with the idea of creating delicious avocado based salads and dishes. I shared that with Francesco who was living in Mexico, in the country of avocados!"

The two self-funded their first two locations and not having any background in hospitality turned out to be a positive. In finance parlance, they aimed to create an MVP ("minimum viable product") and did exactly that using, among other things, Instagram to create community and assess demand!

"In our case, we didn't know anything, so we just did it. Now that we know a lot more, it's actually a lot harder," quips Bragetti. It was their first experience taking an Excel model and turning into reality--something most in finance never have done, or will do, and have no idea how difficult it is. The pair worked 14 hours a day, nearly year round when they first started. COVID hit, but they did more than just survive-they thrived!

Alessandro and Francesco chat more about what success means for them, the differences in work-life balance in Italy versus NYC (Italy, once again came out on top last year,) where they're going in the future, and more! These guys are putting a different spin on the hospitality model and are a group to keep your eye on. Definitely stop in and check them out (or order online!)

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"Remedy Place is the world's first social wellness club," states Dr. Jonathan Leary, Founder. There is an incredible amount of buzz around this company, and for good reason! Leary has been working on this concept for a solid 10 years, and their new location in New York City's Flatiron district just recently opened. (Their first is in West Hollywood, CA.)

"It's a whole entire club that's centered around holistic self-care, but it's made to enhance your health and your social life at the same time. So it's not like a spa where you go and isolate yourself in each room. Although everything in the club you can do by yourself, we'd rather you do it with others," he continued.

Leary and Pete discuss the (now very popular) workout recovery space and where it's going, sourcing talent and building out a staff, the common (but wrong!) perception of "oh, you're skinny so you must be healthy," creating authentic relationships with customers and patients, (lead by example!) the long term plans for Remedy Place, Jonathan's main motivation for building it out, and much more.

Leary has carved out a rather unique niche in the HALO sector that is clearly resonating with a good number of people. Be sure to check them out if you're in NY or CA!

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Jeff Riney is currently the COO of the beautiful new St. James Club and has been in the industry since 1995. He got into the HALO sector, "By chance. . .and to avoid your classic 9-5 job. I started with selling memberships." Years later, the flagship St. James Club is a monster, 450,000 square feet facility with literally everything under one roof. It's a hybrid member/non-member model with all branded concepts developed in-house.

"From a branding standpoint, Crunch and Equinox were really the first big brands in the industry to help understand the relevance of a customer's relationship with a brand versus a commodity. We've all seen, in the last decade or so, this bifurcation of the industry from the HVLP sector up to the high touch, high price point. What I've learned is it's hard to play at the higher price point! That's why there's less consumers there, but there's also less players because it's much harder to deliver on."

Jeff discusses the differences he's experienced management-wise over the years. (Something to note? Neither one of the two CO-CEO's come from the HALO sector.) How they go about recruiting, and the current thinking around children's sports and how they manage that as well. (Is "not keeping score," a good idea, or a not-so-good idea?)

Riney concludes with a bit of a teaser for where the St. James Club is headed. This is certainly a group to keep your eye on.

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After playing Gaelic games professionally for nearly 15 years, JP and Dermot started Gaelic Performance, a firm which sold equipment into the highly niched Gaelic sports market. Sandbags and other products didn't really hold up and they ended up developing a much more sturdy and versatile product called the RAM and started RAMfit (Recycle And Move.)

There's a heavily green ethos to the company and the product is made from recycled tires (which are heavily regulated in Europe) and steel from companies based in Ireland.

"Looking back on it now, we were that entrepreneur who thought we can go our own way. One big thing we learned from the Spartan Race partnership was that, yes, while we have a very good product, at the end of the day, we're not going to revolutionize the world of fitness with it. So what benefits us is actually going out there and seeking these partnerships. That's what has accelerated our growth and which will help our growth in the future," states McArdle.

JP and Dermot discuss their fantastic partnerships with Yancy Culp, the Spartan Race, how they survived post-COVID, their new partnership with Camp Gladiator, the benefits of going "deep" instead of "wide" so you can own your market, and more!

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In this episode, we're pleased to present an informative and enlightening interview with Ben Ludwig, a growth pastor, and a fitness coach with a rather unique background.

"If you ask most people that are in ministry, that was never their original plan. For me, fitness was always my 100% go to. I started as a person trainer back in the day and worked my way up just through my passion for helping people. That's what I thought my career was going to be forever," states Ludwig.

Ben and Pete discuss parallels between his career in the ministry and fitness, the growth of F45 in the United States and how the brand will continue to evolve, (despite it's most recent troubles,) Ben's thoughts on growth, mindset, and business, and more.

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Who doesn't love good, healthy food? Better still, who doesn't love the option to have it delivered while also knowing that the restaurant (not Big Tech!) is getting their fare share of the profits.

Today's episode of HALO Talks is made livelier and healthier by Josh Morgan, the founder of Sesame Order, a new marketplace created by a restaurant veteran squarely with other restaurant professionals in mind. Currently in approximately 250 restaurants in the NYC area, Sesame is still in beta and testing carefully, but by all signs, reception from both the restaurants and the consumers has been very positive.

"Sesame came about in a post-COVID world. We started to think about how fundamentally challenging being in the restaurant business is. And even when times are good, it's hard--but in the face of things like COVID we came to the realization that we needed to make some changes. Sesame was a response to the challenges that we've had as restaurant operators fighting against the aggregators in Silicon valley and big tech monopolizing our off-premise business," states Morgan.

With honesty and transparency baked into their core values, Josh and his team plan on disrupting the status quo of the food industry for the sake of all stakeholders and to promote the betterment of the industry. Not an easy task to be sure, but they're well on their way.

We're big fans of what Sesame is trying to do. It's certainly a company to keep an eye on, and we encourage you to check them out if you're in the NYC area.

Check us out here for more episodes you might have missed.

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A former college athlete who moved into a fitness career (and became a pro MMA fighter!) industry veteran Emre Ozgur is now the Founder and CEO of a buzzy new brand with an extremely unique concept, Safe Sweat.

"When we started really working on this, initially it was a concept for the pandemic, but the reason we decided to push forward is because there is a very large demographic of underserved people that have been saying for years, 'I don't want to work out in the social environment. I don't want to do a class. I would rather work out on my own. And that's how we got to the safe sweat concept.'" states Ozgur.

The numbers bear this out. Currently based in Vancouver with aggressive plans for growth, they're seeing an average of $188 per unit with the lowest price of $150. "It is clear that people will people will pay a premium to have their own, private space with high end equipment, as well as digital content," he states.

Their unique concept is first to market, highly profitable, and easy to run. But as any entrepreneur is well aware, getting a new venture off the ground is anything but easy! Ozgur talks all about the in's and outs of getting and SBA loan, bootstrapping, talking to your significant other (and living to tell the tale!) about starting a new business, meeting with bankers, getting an SBA loan, putting in 17 hour days, and more. Entrepreneurs at any stage of growth will be able to commiserate! Great takeaways here and a brand to watch out for.

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Recorded in NYC at the Boutique Fitness Solutions Summit in April 2022, Katy Richardson, Founder of Neighborhood Barre, a (barre studio franchisor) talks with Pete Moore about her (briskly growing) portfolio of 23 studios, which still remain self-funded. Katy was also the recipient of the highly regarded Pinnacle Business Award in the Young Entrepreneur category in Knoxville, TN.

As a former cheerleader who suffered a severe accident, Katy got into yoga and other lower-impact modalities to aid in her recovery. She did not have an extensive barre background. "I didn't want to be influenced by what someone else was doing necessarily. I wanted to find the style of barre that connected the most with me and then research it. I had that yoga teacher training background and started to build my own program without too much outside influence . . . you definitely don't have to have everything figured out before you get started," she states.

She talks about what she did to get through COVID and some of the lessons learned. (They're currently back to "less clients but at a higher value who stay longer"), how they're maintaining success on the retail side with branded apparel, ways to test out retail without a big upfront investment, and other lessons learned. ("A big one? It's definitely not true that if you build it they will come!") she jokes.

Franchisor, franchisee or not . . . Katy gives us a great number of takeaways and value relevant to any entrepreneur looking to scale in the HALO space.

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