From Local Ads to Global Brand: Crunch Fitness's Unique Growth Strategy with Founder, Doug Levine

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(06:27):
Welcome to Halo Talks Live Sid's Gym,
October 17, 2024. We've got
a great show for you today right before the pregame of the ALCS
and NLCS, which we hope that New York Yankees and the New York
Mets will come after this, and we'll do a postgame.
Now what we have tonight is 2 guests that are coming on. They're

(06:49):
gonna be representing the captain of Movement, which will be Sue
Hitsman coming in from MELT Method. The pleasure of having
Doug LaVine, who I call the king of branding in
the health club industry, will be with us today. This might be one of his
first interviews ever since he left Crunch. I don't know if that's
true, but we are gonna go with that. I use the term halo.

(07:12):
It stands for health, active lifestyle, outdoors. This is much
bigger than wellness. Wellness was started by a guy at the Mayo
Clinic to become the antonym of illness.
Illness is a disease. Wellness is a
lifestyle. I think halo is the evangelist movement
that we need to be a part of. So I refer to everything as the

(07:33):
halo sector, halo companies. And we're gonna
tell you how we are getting money into solving loneliness,
obesity, and diabetes by making sure that investment
groups, wealthy investors, and strategic partners know that the
halo sector is where you need to invest because that's where people are gonna be
spending their money and that is self care. So I wanna thank

(07:56):
Sid Ray Raymond here. Raman? Yes, sir. Exponential.
We're gonna talk about his virtual reality treadmill that is next
gen. You'll come down to the studio. Afterwards, we'll host you to a,
a workout. Roger Harvey and Ethan, cofounders of
Sids Gym here. We've got the AV crew. I wanna thank everyone there. My
partner, Dave Ganulin, on the marketing side, and some of

(08:19):
our sponsors, HigherDose on infrared products, melt
method, BFS. And, we
hopefully hopefully these this this conversation spawn some
really good ideas, which turn into action, which turn into results, which turn
into better lifestyles. So that's why we're here. Take a quick commercial break. Wanna
thank everyone for coming. We are in front of a live studio audience

(08:42):
at Sid's Gym. Take it away.
Welcome to experiential. We've reimagined the age old

(09:04):
treadmill into a novel simulator, Blending hardware, software,
and AI, we deliver movement experiences that are immersive
and fun. We've replaced buttons with gestures, which
empower and free the user to move naturally. From youth to seniors,
beginner to advanced, our adventurous scenes, proprietary games,
and virtual race courses offer a wide content library suitable for

(09:26):
all.

(10:11):
Now if you do what most people do when you have these symptoms, you pop
a pill to mask your symptoms, you're setting yourself up for more
problems down the road. If you think of your brain's pain response as the
smoke detector going off when your toaster's on fire, taking a pain
reliever is kinda like walking over to the smoke detector and pulling the batteries
out to stop the alarm, but the toaster is still on fire.

(10:40):
If you think of the fluid in fascia like a river, repetitive
postures and movements of daily living create sediment that alters the river's
natural flow causing excessive tension compression and
friction on the system which on a global level alters joint
stability and mobility. It's also the origin of many
symptoms like prolonged muscle soreness, poor balance and

(11:02):
flexibility, and low grade inflammation which causes your joints to
ache all the time.

(11:51):
treadmill into a novel simulator. Blending hardware, software
empower and free the user to move naturally. From youth to
seniors, beginner to advanced, our adventurous scenes,

(12:13):
proprietary games, and virtual race courses offer a wide content library
suitable for all.
And we are back at Sige Gym
experiential is the equipment. Pete Moore is the host,
and I'm a pleasure to have my good friend, Sue Hitchman here. Good to see

(12:34):
you again. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming.
Very, very, very tough woman to book on the show. Alright. Thank you for coming
here. You are welcome. So, so you were here back in the day from
1990 3 to 2006 in inside of Crunch.
We've got a Crunch thread moving through this whole Yeah. You know, podcast. So give
us a little background on how you got there and then what Crunch was

(12:57):
like for you. Yeah. I mean, I I started in fitness,
at 17 years old when Jazzercise was a thing.
Oh, good. And then I moved down to New York, and I started auditioning. I
landed a job at vertical club, and then one of the girls who was there
was like, dude, you gotta work at Crunch. It's the best club. It's
got such a great vibe. So I went and I

(13:19):
auditioned, and I think Donna Cyrus is the one who
hired me originally. Shout out to Donna who's here today. Pretty pretty sure.
And, it was a family. It was a
community, and I think that Doug really created
a community of amazing fitness pros.
And Roger pulled me into the office one time, and he

(13:42):
said, hey. We've got a new program that we wanna do. We want you to
get trained. And I didn't have any money at the time, so I said, I
can't afford it. And he's like, no. We're gonna pay for it. And I thought
I won an award. I I was like, wow. My, like, my my health
club is supporting my education. And so that's
really why I thought I was really a part of something new
and different than any of the other health clubs because they were supporting

(14:06):
education and trying new things. And by the time
the 2nd year I was working with them, I was doing step, sculpt, stretch,
hip hop, high impact aerobics. I taught everything there. Cycling when cycling.
Yeah. When you look back to to Tug and starting the business and building that
brand and then Roger coming in and a couple of the other, you know, key
people at the top, you know, work working with Roger, you know, one, maybe talk

(14:28):
about that relationship and how, you know, that helped kinda build the culture. And then
knowing that that brand was always much bigger than it actually was in
number of units. How did it made you feel as an employee, you know, growing?
I think that's it is Crunch personified
this I it seems like a massive company.
But when you got in the internal workings of

(14:50):
Crunch, it was a community. The instructors knew one
another. We took each other's classes. We learned from one another.
And I just think that it was a health club that supported the
instructors and made them feel valuable. They
paid us very well, and they really took an investment
in the group exercise community, and

(15:13):
then we also did personal training. So we were on the floor and teaching
group classes and really growing a brand of
community. And I think that's why our classes were always packed.
People came back all of the time, and we always supported the other
instructors and told each other to take other people's classes.
Now if I'm correct, you were part of the the, best selling boot

(15:35):
camps? At at Crunch, there was some DVD actions. If anyone has
a DVD anymore I auditioned for the when Crunch became
an ESPN 2 show, and I auditioned for it. And I landed
I did I did a whole bunch of sculpt and strength and booty boot camp
where they made me wear really, really short shorts, which was very weird and self
conscious for me. And then I auditioned, and
I got the boot camp video. I did a

(16:00):
auditioned and I got the boot camp video. I did a crunch boot camp
video and, it became one of the best
sellers. It sold over a 1000000 copies worldwide, and it's still on
the top ten best list for, boot camp videos.
So you so you wrote a best seller as well. The sequel is is this
book here. Right? That's Melt Performance. I've got the sequel. You also

(16:22):
run a podcast called Anatomical Gangster. I do. Did I say it right? I
do Anatomical Gangster. I do. Talk talk about what you've built at the
melt melt method. And also talk about the areas that
it should be going into, but maybe there's more education that's needed to to
make it widespread. Yeah. I mean, I was a fitness pro. And in the late
nineties, I got myself into chronic pain. I woke up one day, the bottom of

(16:44):
my foot hurt me, and it kinda sent me into a tailspin
of body wide ache and fatigue. And I went down the road to try to
discover how to get myself out of pain, and I discovered this
emerging field of neuroscience and fascial research that was trying to
answer the same question. What's the relationship of fascia to our pain
symptoms? And I became a founding member of the Fascial Research

(17:06):
Society. I started bringing neuroscience and fascial research
into the health clubs and was trying to teach it. And
I came up with the idea of a term MELT, which at
first stood for myofascial energetic length technique, but it's kind of
outgrown its acronym. And it's just about taking a stiff body and turning it into
a more malleable hydrated body. And what

(17:28):
I discovered in fitness is that it it is kind of the dirty little secret
of fitness as most of the fitness professionals and people in fitness are injured.
So I approached the health club to say, hey. I wanna teach this as a
group class. It exploded. It became a real
phenomenon in the health clubs. And today, we've got 38100 instructors
in 28 countries. And, an app called

(17:50):
Melt on Demand where we share the self care methodology, and we infuse
it into fitness. And so we have a lot of health clubs that,
have it around the world. But, also, I think that
more health clubs need to engage in the restorative
mentality that there is a missing piece to diet and
exercise. Because, look, if diet and exercise were all that was

(18:12):
needed, everybody in fitness would be pain free. But, again, it's a dirty
little secret is that lots of people eat right and exercise and still
have persistent pain issues. So this is really a missing piece that needs to
be incorporated into fitness. The one of the trends now that I would say would
would be trying to capture what you're discussing is workout
recovery. But you referenced before that maybe workout recovery is not the

(18:34):
right terminology or not the way to think about it. So how should we think
about it? Yeah. So I just think the word recovery, you recover from an
injury. But what you wanna do is think proactive,
not reactive. So if you take a proactive approach,
then it's prepare, perform, restore, repeat. So if you prepare your
body for performance, you restore your body, you'll

(18:55):
spend a lot less time and money trying to recover from an injury later on.
And that's what MELT is founded on. Got it. So as an entrepreneur,
you're sitting on a a a program that works Mhmm.
That's been tested world wide. You know, when you take a look at we do
some work like SilverSneakers and like Medicare Advantage Plans. We've got health
clubs that have some group programming, but maybe you're shying away from

(19:18):
more depth of that because of cost or not knowing who the demo
is. And then you've also got, you you know, physical therapy, and
you've got groups that are, you know, doing competitions inside of corporate
wellness. So how do you how do you push this and not
maybe knock your head against the wall saying, like, you guys don't get it yet?
How is that from an entrepreneurial Yeah. Kind of lensing? How how do you get
through it? I'm first, I'm very ahead of the or a lens? How how do

(19:39):
you get through it? I'm first I'm very ahead of the curve. Right? I started
this in the late nineties. It's now 2024. People are still like, what's the
melt method? I'm like, I I've been maybe I'm hiding under a rock. But
Right. You know, person again, physical therapy,
we use physical therapy after we have a problem. So
this is really proactive, not reactive. People are reactive to

(20:00):
pain. So if we can educate people that
if you have this as a supplement, we have physical therapists
to use MELT so that people go home and do things on their
own so that when they come back, they're better so that you're not just
working on the same problem all of the time. So we really
MELT is very known in the physical therapy world,

(20:23):
massage therapy, acupuncture. But in fitness, which is where I started
it, it's still something that people don't get
because we go to the gym apparently just to sweat
and work it out. But if you have emotional issues, if you're
unstable, then this is a missing piece is just quieting
the body down. It it's incorporated into anything. And, again, you can use

(20:45):
it in 1 on 1. You can use it in groups. Personal
trainers use it, and then people can go home and perform it on their own
with our tools that it is an at home self treatment technique that people can
do. It's simple. It's easy. It takes about 10 minutes a day. So there's a
lot of money right now since the beginning of the year being thrown in from
HSA and FSA accounts. Mhmm. And there's for the people that aren't

(21:07):
watching that are watching while I'm talking. Thank you. We accept
it. They they We use that. That money now could be used towards
fitness. Mhmm. So you get a letter of medical necessity. Maybe talk about
how impactful that is or how you think that might open up. Yeah. I mean,
we we we, enrolled in that as well. I mean, a lot of people
use those funds, to purchase the products. And the great thing about

(21:30):
the MELT tools is that you buy it once. It's not something that you have
to keep buying into. You start to learn the the
method, and it's simple to to use. So it's not
very costly. You go to a personal trainer, chiropractor, and
everything. That's expensive to always have to come back to that person.
But, again, for me, I was a manual therapist and getting people out of

(21:51):
my office and back into active living was the philosophy that I had. I didn't
want them to be in my office all the time. I don't wanna be somebody's
mom and be like, oh, let me take care of you all the time. So
giving them tools and techniques that that are easy
to adopt as a lifestyle change is the thing
that we need to do in all of health care is to empower

(22:12):
people to be their own best health care provider.
Self care is the best health care. So learning to engage in self care is
critical. Now post COVID, a lot of the online and
digital platforms, you know, saw a pretty traumatic decrease
in in in usage. From your standpoint, since you're basically about stability and fascia and
and more of, like, chronic management pain continuously. Right? Talk about how that's worked

(22:34):
and talk about are you still personally teaching
some of the live classes?
I do still teach. That's very nice. I love it. Found your You never
did. Camera we like. Yes. So I I started Melt on
Demand, which was a streaming platform before streaming platforms were a thing. So

(22:55):
this is 2016 going on 2017. So I was already pretty
well established in the online culture, and
I already had online trainings where we where we were using
the online world to prepare people for trainings. So when COVID
happened and everybody sat around waiting for
it to end, I locked myself in my studio and thought I'm just gonna

(23:18):
move everything online and get people to keep moving
while this pandemic is happening. They've gotta keep going. And I
put 5 levels of instructor training online. I shot about
300 videos over the course of a year, and
our platform grew from about 3,000 followers to
10,000 followers, and we've retained almost all of them. So

(23:41):
we've had a really great run with,
building a ecosystem and a lifestyle
community where people are working together to thrive in their bodies, and
we're very active. We talk to them. We have community members, and that's the one
thing I would pass along to anybody who runs any business.

(24:10):
But if you really go at it where you really wanna transform
lives, I think that's authentic. And I came from an authentic place,
and I just love teaching people. And it just never gets
old to transform somebody's life who thinks that they're never gonna get well
and suddenly they're well again. Yep. That's great. And in closing, if
there was one area of the community that

(24:32):
you say a year from now, I definitely need to be here. This is where
the biggest impact is. And I think about my parents, 55 and
over community in Wellington, Florida. And there's no one like you, and there's no
one talking about the MELT method, and they need to be. But what's an area?
Is it that? Is it nursing homes? Is it No. That's just it is
the the 50 50 and over is my wheelhouse. Yep.

(24:53):
There's more women who have pain than men. Chronic pain happens to women more than
men, and that has everything to do with your hormone dysregulation. And what
people need to know is that fascia, the stuff that
MELT is working on, has a significant relationship to
your immune function, your hormone balance, your gut regulation,
and your basic metabolic state. So if I had to

(25:16):
say who I would like to see MELT more are the
20 30 year olds because what I'm seeing in my studio
are people in their twenties with hormonal dysregulation
that shouldn't happen until your perimenopause or menopause, and
that's not right. So something's happening in our culture because we're too
sedentary. We're eating a lousy diet. We aren't

(25:38):
interacting with people. I think there's a lot of emotional issues that are going on
for people because community is what's cracking in our industry and
and especially in the fitness world. So I think we need to
come together and figure out how to get 20 30 year
olds to engage in self care and let them know that they're the
ones that are gonna transform the rest of the world. We just need to support

(25:59):
them more. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on today. It's been great to have you.
Thank you. And,
check her check her out. So so I wanna say it
again. Anatomical gangster. It is badass.
And you can find it on YouTube, anatomical gangster. If you guys would follow it,
I'd love for everybody to follow this. I just launched it, and I just talked

(26:21):
to really brilliant people who can break complicated stuff
down into simple terms so that people can live a better life. So I hope
you guys follow it. You're kidding me. Thank you.
Awesome. Cut to
commercial.

(26:49):
treadmill into a novel simulator, Blending hardware, software,
beginner to advanced, our adventurous scenes, proprietary

(27:11):
games and virtual race courses offer a wide content library suitable for
all.

(27:53):
a pill to mask your symptoms, you're setting yourself up for more problems
down the road. If you think of your brain's pain response as the smoke
detector going off when your toaster's on fire, taking a pain reliever
is kinda like walking over to the smoke detector and pulling the batteries out to
stop the alarm, but the toaster's still on fire.

(28:21):
symptoms like prolonged muscle soreness, poor balance and flexibility,

(28:44):
and low grade inflammation which causes your joints to ache all the
time.

(29:46):
treadmill into a novel simulator. Blending hardware, software,
empower and free the user to move naturally. From youth to

(30:08):
proprietary games, and virtual race courses offer a wide content
library suitable for all.

(30:46):
problems down the road. If you think of your brain's pain response as the
smoke detector going off when your toaster's on fire, taking a pain
out to stop the alarm, but the toaster's still on fire.

(31:15):
natural flow causing excessive tension, compression, and

(31:37):
time.
treadmill into a novel simulator, blending hardware, software,
and AI, we deliver movement experiences that are

(31:58):
immersive and fun. We've replaced buttons with gestures,
which empower and free the user to move naturally. From youth to
proprietary games, and virtual race courses offer a wide content library
suitable for all.

(32:19):
This is Pete Moore. Welcome back to Halo Talks. We are at Sids
Gym experiential. I am staring at one of these awesome
virtual reality treadmills as well as staring at my good friend, Roger
Harvey. Thanks for coming in today. Alright. Well, in the second half of the show,
I have the pleasure of having a friend that I've known since 2000. One
of your original members, I think, of your 13th Street, Jim. Sure. You had my

(32:40):
credit card then. Hopefully, you don't have it now. Welcome to the
show, Doug LaVine.
So, Doug, everyone loves the Crunch brand. I don't think there's anyone that says, hey.
I can make that better. So tell us how when you started, how did you
come up with that brand, and were there any cease and desist letters

(33:02):
that followed the Crunch brand? There were no cease and
desist letters. The idea behind Crunch was
that gyms were sort of rote,
and they were only about, hey, look
better. You wanna look better? Come here. We sort
of had this philosophy, we're gonna make you feel better. We're gonna

(33:24):
make you part of a community. And we sought out to do
that and that's exactly, what we did. Crunch
is a sit up, and a a Domino
Crunch. We came up with a name. We did get a
trademark issue, at one time with
Nestle's Crunch out of France. Okay. Okay. But that kinda went away.

(33:46):
Gotcha. You know, as you thought about the
the Crunch brand standing for, you know, no judgments and
and trying to pull in other parts of the population. You you really start with
a membership model. So it was kind of a new concept that
you're laying out in addition to a new brand. So how was
that from from the beginning? And We originally started as a as

(34:09):
an aerobic studio, akin to Jeff Martin and Molly
Fox, and evolved ultimately
to a membership model as we move locations into
bigger facilities. And initially, you could
largely take it as a 5, 10, 20 class
punch thing. Then it sort of became a paid in

(34:31):
full model. And sort of 2 or 3 years into it, we
look to raise money, and everybody was
interested. They said it's not bankable. It needs to
be recurring revenue. And so the game plan
was over a 2 to 3 year period to sell less
paid in full memberships and to convert it

(34:53):
to a monthly membership, which is akin to what most people are
doing today. So when you started the company, I think it was a
much higher risk venture than people maybe, you know, could appreciate looking
back. Sure. You know, whether it's signing leases, whether it's, you know, putting all the
legal. When did you start to hire people around you? When did you bring
Roger in? When did you bring some of the other, you know, guys over there

(35:15):
for 30 years? Roger was my, best tire, one of
my earliest tires, and really helped shape Crunch
from almost inception into,
company it is today and helped us grow from
nothing to a major force,
and was instrumental in sort of institutionalizing

(35:39):
it, but not as a traditional business. Institutionalizing
it in a unique mold breaking
way that that was crunch. My perception
of you has always been you might look at some data, but you're gonna
trust your gut and you're gonna trust your creativity and intuition.
Back in the day, there weren't many KPIs, you know. Hey. Let's look at the

(36:02):
key key performance indicators. What what did you look at, and what still
kinda guide your view of what you know is is working? Maybe not
just looking at some metrics. Well, we were always
on on the marketing side, we were
very creative. I'll never forget, we had
this gym, in the West Village. It was tiny.

(36:25):
And we got I got a call one day from Time Warner. They
were only selling, at the time,
MTV, VH 1, USA, all of
the cable networks were only selling national ads.
And they, for the first time, were gonna sell New York
City ads separately from national ads. So if

(36:48):
the commercial break I'm making up was 2 minutes,
a minute and a half would be national ads, and 30 seconds would
be local ads. And
nobody you know, the the Time Warner guy says, we'll produce
an ad for you. You'll commit to
spending $10,000. We'll produce the ad for free.

(37:10):
And I thought about it and I said, let's do it. And I went
back to the gym and I told everybody in the West Village, hey, we're gonna
have a TV ad. And everybody goes,
are you an idiot? I said, no. What what do you
mean? They said, you you know, 2 thirds of your customers
work in advertising. And they're bored

(37:34):
out of their mind with working on Pond's cold
cream or Johnson, baby
oil, and they would love to do this in their off
hours for free. And I said, no
way. And so we there were people live
early days of Crunch and subsequent all through the years

(37:56):
fighting to do Crunch ads for free. Wow. And they would go
I remember going to Ogilvy and Mather at 11 o'clock at
night when, you know, nobody that was working there was working
on a paid client, and we would produce ads until 4,
5, 6 the next morning that you got to know, and we
won all kinds of Adi awards and so on and so forth. So we

(38:19):
gotta talk about the bunny the penguin, which are probably the
best content, and I'm assuming they never ask for a raise because
you probably put somebody back into each one of those suits. And to for people
that don't know, those bunnies used to run around the city. They used to run
around the subway, and they used to run around Union Square, which at the time
used to have chains around it when it got dark. It was unsafe.

(38:41):
So were there any incidences with the bunny and the penguin? And how
did they come about? It's a great question, Pete.
Somebody produced a movie that
they submitted for the Long Island Film Festival. I can't
remember his name. Showed his movie at the Long Island Film
Festival. The movie didn't do particularly well. A friend of

(39:04):
ours said, can we cut and edit this movie
into Crunch ads by putting a voice over over it?
He said, please, I'd love it to live on. And that's the story of
how the bunny became the mascot for
Crunch. And then in subsequent years, we needed him to
interact with somebody, so we we introduced the Penguin. Gotcha.

(39:28):
And and when when did it ever get cost prohibitive
to do the TV ads? Or is that something you did until, you know, the
sale to to Valley? That's a great question. So we
had nobody knows this, but we had a
a Time Warner didn't like
running people's ads,

(39:50):
local ads. Local ads, when they introduced it into New
York, were largely Midas muffler shops, Jiffy
Loops. They were franchises that had ads produced
by corporate and they could afford ads. But our deal
with Time Warner was that we would get because they love
the creativity of Crunch's ad, we would get almost

(40:12):
all of their unsold inventory. Okay. So,
basically, we would spend $10,000 a month and
get a half a $1,000,000 worth of ads, or
or whatever their unsold inventory was for many, many years.
Wow. And then in 20,021,000 and
one, there was the dotcom boom, ultimately, the dotcom

(40:35):
bust. Every little Internet startup company had a
huge ad budget. And Time Warner said, hey, there's no
excess inventory. Everybody's paying full rate, and we sort of had
to pivot. Gotcha. One of the things you did do with the pivot, if
I recall properly correctly is I went to Las
Vegas one time and I saw a Las Vegas magazine that they had like the

(40:58):
Mirage. And I was flipping through it and I've had like a full page Crunch
ad. And I said I called Roger. I said, hey. Crunch is nowhere near here.
Like, what is Doug's, like, marketing what what's going on with
the Maestro that he thinks, like, advertising in this magazine is somehow
gonna do something to help 19 clubs? Listen.
The the idea we did in our heyday

(41:20):
sell, men's apparel at
Foot Locker, Nordstrom's, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Dick's
Sporting Goods For us, Sports Authority, the same thing with women's apparel.
We license bags. We license hats.
There was a whole series of crunch apparel
and related products that we sold, you know, throughout the

(41:42):
world. So the the brand was bigger than 19
health clubs, and that was a big part of the
thinking. You know, when when you think about today and
what you could have done if you were at the helm right now and social
media was where it was at its inception, you
know, what kind of crazy things do you think you would be doing right now?

(42:04):
Or, you know, how quickly would it be you you be to get to market
that that would excite you to say, hey. Let me test this. Let me test
this. I think that that some of the stuff that we did, some
of the avant garde classes, a lot of,
you know, putting classes online so people could take them

(42:25):
in all throughout the world would be something we do. I think that the
brand would have, you know, big far reaching, breath,
which it does today. And
I think we'd have a lot of fun with, with new trends
and and and new types of of program.
So a lot of people here are from New York, so they were, indoctrinated

(42:48):
into interesting new group exercise programs back in the day.
Sure. Whether from the activity or from the name of it. I believe there
was a, you know, drag queen classes, there were stripper pole classes,
aerial yoga, you know, maybe without all the the waivers and the
consents. Zumba obviously got started
through Donna in, in Crunch. Sure. What are some of the

(43:11):
things that you kinda latched on to and said this is on
brand, this is off brand, this isn't racy or or trendy
enough? How do you think about that? Obviously, we're going back,
you know, into a different paradigm of what political correctness
and, you know, pronouns are, but go from there.
We love to foster creativity.

(43:33):
We love to be known as an innovative company.
We were very receptive to new trends.
And so the idea was we wanted everybody
to to to come with us to come to us with new ideas. And
Donna was instrumental in sort of creating
programming out of these new creative ideas, and it was very

(43:56):
effective for Crunch. It was a very effective part of our
marketing strategy, which was, you know, back
then, very PR driven. So
people would find out about the brand through Elle, The New York
Times, Vogue, so on and so forth. So this was sort of the
lifeblood of of

(44:18):
of PR in those days, which was a big part of the engine for the
brand. You know, it definitely allowed you to have
something new and exciting that didn't necessarily have a capital
expenditure next to it. I feel like a lot of clubs today have
their set of classes, but don't use the class as, like, the new as
a hook. So how do you see that happening with all the different

(44:40):
boutiques that are out there? You know, some of them you probably look at like
I do and say this doesn't have a chance, you know, then there's something interesting
and innovative that has, you know, the right equipment, the right, you
know, modality at the right time with the right instructor.
You know, you've got HIIT workouts that have that have gone well and then kinda
tailed off. SoulCycle obviously did great. You know,

(45:01):
now you've got solid core and some of these other modalities that are that are
trending. Do you see where would you invest or where would you
say here's the best opportunities that that you'd be
excited about today if you looked at the different categories? It's
big broad trends, okay, is how I view the
fitness industry. But within it, you know,

(45:23):
people are fickle. So, you know, Sue Hitsman was
talking about Jazzercise. Okay, and and step that
she taught and so on and so forth. Those things don't exist
today. You couldn't get a spin bike for many,
many years. Now the people move on. So
the industry is such that people are always looking

(45:45):
for new and different things. You just can't be different for the
sake of being different. There has to be a reason that
your programming is bringing a new fresh approach,
you know, to the market. So when when Valley made the
approach, and I'm sure they approached you every year sequentially for years

(46:05):
to to try and buy Crunch to to basically help them jump start
their business, can you talk about emotionally
as an entrepreneur to say, I'm gonna give my brand regardless of the
dollar amount? Like, this is kind of an asset, but it's also your
baby. Yeah. It's it's you're
very conflicted because this was started, you know, at my kitchen

(46:28):
table, the the whole genesis of the brand,
everything about it. And it was it is it
was very emotional politically say that. And then and then subsequently,

(46:49):
there was a sale of Crunch Yes. That was done that that we worked
on to Integra Square with Angelo Gordon. I know you had a little bit of
an angle in there. Is that something you can disclose and, you know, what
maybe kinda brought you back to say, hey. Maybe I wanna take a second
bite here. You know, I was friendly with the Angelo Gordon guys. We
looked at doing a joint venture with,

(47:12):
in China. So we went to China together.
The, to do crunch in China. The issue there, what
when we looked, which was probably, I don't know,
15 years ago, really
only expats were working out at in in
China. And so the model, they were

(47:34):
building these giant, 25, 30 story
apartment buildings with beautiful gyms in them, and they wanted
us to sort of take them over. But the only you
really couldn't get customers beyond the little
expat enclave, that lived in those buildings. So it
wasn't really a sustainable business, so we passed.

(47:56):
And, you know, I've looked at,
I've looked at different fitness concepts,
subsequently and just not really, gotten back
in that. Yeah. If you take a look at
what concepts you think have have the staying power or

(48:19):
brands that you say, hey, I could get behind these brands because
they're they're an authority. They're saying something to me. What what brands and
maybe just outside of fitness, but what brands kinda engender
your kind of loyalty? You know, we
fulfill the need. We basically said you
don't have to look like Barbie and Ken. You can be

(48:41):
comfortable coming to Crunch. You can be yourself coming to
Crunch. We we will take you if you're old, you're
young, you're fit, you're not fit. You can become part of this
community. The world was
beginning this exercise adventure when we started,
and we took a different approach. Our approach was, you don't have to

(49:04):
be perfect. We're not gonna judge you, and we are gonna
create this diverse environment that everybody's gonna feel welcome. And that was the ethos of
our brand. Okay? Today, you would say, what's
happening in the world? Okay. Where can you
apply that?
World the population is aging. Okay. How are people

(49:27):
gonna retire? Where are they gonna live? What
lifestyle are they looking for? Who's gonna differentiate themselves
within that? You know, there's a a million
things that need to be done better, that need
to be thought of, in a in a way
that makes sense for big broad pause

(49:50):
people are traveling. The world wants to travel. Mhmm.
Okay? I, you know, spent a lot of time traveling in the in the last
people are traveling from all of Asia. I mean, you go to the
Acropolis, you go to the Louvre in Paris, the number
of of of visitors are amazing. I grew up in
New York City. When I went to the Metropolitan Museum as a

(50:12):
kid, there were 20 people in the Metropolitan Museum, this
giant museum. Now you go, it's a rock. It's like a rock concert.
You you've gotta get tickets. It's a whole thing. So these are
big, broad trends. And how are people gonna,
you know, treat people that are as they as they age? And and
what are the housing, the activities, the health care, so

(50:36):
on and so forth. How is that done? Same thing is true that people
wanna travel more. Big trend now is that
people can't afford housing. Right? Homes
are and apartments are ridiculously expensive. How is that
gonna how is that gonna work out? Is it is it gonna be some
is it gonna be living at home in a different way? Is it gonna be

(50:58):
4 or 5 people in a in an apartment that's
shared? Is it gonna be you know, how are we gonna solve
these problems? And we did that for Crunch,
you know, in the late eighties when the world was
was, sort of discovering fitness
and was very engaged in their jobs

(51:21):
from day 1. It was not you know, with the advent of of
of computers, people had real
responsibility at work, not after year 2 or
3, but sort of right, you know, in the beginning of 19 nineties. We
were very, very driven. People needed an outlet
to to to unwind and to to get rid of stress. We

(51:43):
provided that outlet for a whole host of different
kinds of people. But when you saw when you see people today
wearing the Crunch shirt, what does that what does that evoke to you?
It brings back wonderful memories, you know, of a brand
that was, you know, very cool, very
exciting, that was edgy,

(52:06):
that were was in a lot of different markets,
and with an amazing staff, people like
Donna, Roger, Sue, people
that, that worked incredibly hard, were incredibly
driven, amazing diverse customer grant,

(52:26):
base. I mean, Anthony truly is here. We had
a whole host of of people,
and it was a very cool brand. But we had
this sort of mantra that you could we
had a drag queen named Hetaletis
who worked at at Hetaletis. Hetaletis, who had, like,

(52:50):
14 inch platform heels that worked at our front desk.
And and I thought it was wonderful, but the
the instructions were, you speak to our
members in a universal language, not in
slang. So people love that we're diverse, They love that they're
all different kinds of people working out here and working here,

(53:13):
but nobody's to feel old because they don't know contemporary
slang. And that is how we created
a very special, place to work out and
a very special place to work. And if you look today at where people
are that worked at Crunch in the early days in terms
of marketing jobs or owning, fitness

(53:35):
brands or wellness brands, I mean, I'm that's the thing I'm
most proud of. I mean, people have succeeded, and people came to
Crunch in the early days very, very young. And we
asked them to do things that nobody else was doing. And
so they got amazing experience,
probably 10 years before they would of anywhere else in their work

(53:58):
life. Mhmm. And I'm extremely proud of that. Yeah.
The the list of, of executives that used to work for you that now run
other changes, start other changes kind of like, I think the Cleveland
Browns or like Bella Chick and Parcells and, you know, like, the a
laundry list of of some of the best coaches Sure. You know, came out of
there. So came out of crunch. You know, a question for you related

(54:20):
to the word results. You know, a lot of people tether
onto that to say we help people get results. Planet Fitness
doesn't really say that because they're basically giving you
access for you for yourself to get results. But they still
use the no judgments in in a particular way that maybe, you know,
should be allowed. However, you know, as you take a look at the personal

(54:42):
training that you guys used to do, which was which was pretty, you
know, a pretty big portion of your of your your
your business. A large about a about a 3rd. Yeah. And and I felt like
there was, like, a DNA of, like, you're not just coming in here, do your
own thing, do do all of our cool classes. We want you to actually get
results, and that was part of the culture. You know, is that hard

(55:03):
harder to do now to get people that care? Or do you find those people
that care and then get them into whatever business that you're that
you're running? It's a it's a it's a great question. And, you know, as
Crunch is franchised and become sort of
a a a 10 or $20 a
month model, plus or minus, there's been a lot of

(55:24):
pros and cons. A great pro is
it's accessible to a huge number of people.
Another pro, I went to a Crunch,
2, 3 months ago in Tampa at 11 in the morning, and there
were people there from all walks of life. The gym was packed at
11 o'clock in the and

(55:48):
there was a sense of community. It was clean. It was terrific. Was
it performance driven and high results driven? I think
it was more self directed when the gym is at that
price point. We were company owned. The
the price point was a higher. It was, as you said, Pete, a
a large portion of our people trained, and I think it was

(56:11):
more results driven and more more self driven today
and more, directed driven back in the day.
Gotcha. So so in closing here, any, any any
funny stories that you could share with us maybe you've, gotten past, you
know, statutes of limitations or, you know, getting getting
permitting in New York City or, you know, having to open up and maybe it's

(56:34):
like a prohibition club back in the day? Or
Look. We were aggressive in our build outs. We built clubs
sometimes without finalized permits. And,
and, and, at the end of the day, it all
worked out. And I'm I'm I'm it was it was a wonderful

(56:54):
experience. Yeah. Let's take a quick commercial break here, and we'll, we'll
finish up with Doug and the rest of the Halo talks from Sige. Jim,
thank
you. Welcome to experiential.

(57:17):
We've reimagined the age old treadmill into a novel simulator.
Blending hardware, software, and AI, we deliver movement
experiences that are immersive and fun. We've replaced
buttons with gestures, which empower and free the user to move
naturally. From youth to seniors, beginner to advanced,
our adventurous scenes, proprietary games, and virtual race

(57:39):
courses offer a wide content library suitable for all.
treadmill into a novel simulator. Blending hardware,
software and AI, we deliver movement experiences that are

(57:59):
immersive and fun. We've replaced buttons with gestures,
which empower and free the user to move naturally. From youth to
proprietary games, and virtual race courses offer a wide content
library suitable for
all.

(58:56):
a pill to mask your symptoms, you're setting yourself up for more problems
down the road. If you think of your brain's pain response as the
smoke going off when your toaster's on fire, taking a pain
out to stop the alarm, but the toaster's still on fire.

(59:28):

(59:51):
and low grade inflammation, which causes your joints to ache all the
time.

(01:00:54):
treadmill into a novel simulator. Blending hardware, software,
beginner to advanced, our adventurous scenes, proprietary

(01:01:16):
games, and virtual race courses offer a wide content library suitable
for all.

(01:02:34):
natural flow causing excessive tension, compression, and
friction on the system, which on a global level alters joint

(01:02:57):
time.
We are back at SIDS gym experiential
virtual reality. I have a pleasure of still having Doug
LaVine next to me as we close out this podcast

(01:03:20):
live. We're
gonna focus on a couple more questions related to franchising
versus corporate owned stores. Sure. Obviously, a lot of
entrepreneurs come in. They say, hey. I got this awesome box. I'd like
500 people to pay me to run it. And then they actually run into some
problems with actually continuing to modify the the

(01:03:42):
play and modify the special sauce. So talk about how you
didn't do franchising and why, and then we can go from there.
Well, franchising wasn't a big thing when we were doing crunch,
a. B, the federal government
in, you know, had a program
early on that subsidized home mortgages for people. It

(01:04:06):
was a big thing, in the 1990s
about owning homes. And and they created,
ultimately, the housing bubble. But, ultimately, a lot of people
owned homes. It was fantastic. The same federal government had
this idea that everybody should own a business. And

(01:04:26):
they the SBA was very aggressive and, to
this day, is very aggressive in, in
lending people money to own franchises.
So that wasn't available in the 19 nineties,
as it is were it's wasn't as prevalent as as it is
today, a. B,

(01:04:49):
you know, franchising comes with peril. You
have a dedicated group of
people that ate, slept, and breathe crunch
from every aspect of it, from
the programming, the design, the marketing, the personal
training, every aspect of it, to a high standard

(01:05:12):
and a high level of creativity. And when you franchise,
it's very difficult to deliver that,
in a geographic area where
you're not, from an owner that's not part of that
culture. And so there are pros and cons.
And so I don't look at it today where Crunch is largely a

(01:05:35):
franchise model. Mhmm. I think it's fantastic, and I think there are many
pros like we talked about before the break. It's a
lower price point model. People love it. There are
people there from all different walks of life. And I
and I when I was in the 1 2 2 months ago, I was very
proud that I created it, but it's a different experience. You You know, you

(01:05:57):
obviously have the systems, you've got pricing, you've got SEO, so
there's definitely a lot of benefits. The franchising, someone said to me
once, you live and die by your first 10
franchisees. They either get the program and they're bought in and
they actually run the play or you're basically probably
in lawsuits and this thing's never gonna turn into what it should

(01:06:19):
be. Have you seen concepts without naming names that, you know, it
looks like they've got a good business. It's something that they should get paid for
someone to run their playbook, yet they just way outgrew their skis. Someone to run
their playbook, yet they just way outgrew their skis on where they should be focused
on. Absolutely. It's very, very, very difficult skill to start a brand
from scratch.

(01:06:41):
Most people are left brained or right brained. Right. To
be able to come up with a concept that makes sense
and to execute on all the different aspects
from branding, naming it, creating
the concept, the pricing model, the whole brand
as the real estate decisions, the HR decisions, the back

(01:07:03):
office, the maintenance, the construction. There are very few
individuals that can come and do the whole gamut
on a start up basis with limited funds.
When somebody has sort of cracked that code
and creates

(01:07:34):
you know, if you know, if the the people that are franchising the
brands are of the same mindset, and
don't and really buy into it. And if it if
it is tightly controlled and the people
that are running the company look at it from both points of
view, what's in it for the franchisee, what's

(01:07:56):
it's in it for the franchise or and everybody's on the same page.
You know, it's interesting. You know, some companies at the franchisor
level will parachute people in from corporate, you know, to basically live
at the club. You know, Roger has been working with us. We did a New
York Sports Club turnaround, and now he's been inside of a couple of Crunch
locations helping out and basically trying to bring that DNA

(01:08:18):
from where you guys were back in the day and kind of infuse it. So,
like, this is how we ran the playbook. So, like, bringing people
back and mentoring could be a really interesting way for a lot of brands to
do it. Roger was front and center. Roger was a huge part
of Crunch. So now that he's consulting for for Crunch
franchise is very I mean, there couldn't be a better

(01:08:39):
resource, period. I mean, he he was in Saturday meetings
when the whole team was there working on Crunch,
and he was running a large part of it. So Yeah. We've we've had
Donna come in and do some, group exercise programming with
us inside and outside, the clubs as well,
and and Terry Blachik, one of your other, you know, underlings.

(01:09:02):
Let's pivot over to one more subject that a lot of people are talking about.
I'm not sure if it's really there there in the industry, but everyone talks
about artificial intelligence. I like to say that you can't have artificial
intelligence until you have intelligence. So let's get information on the
member, and then you can actually have somebody analytically figure
out what might be the next move or what you should be doing or what

(01:09:23):
kind of interactions you should have. So how do you feel about when someone talks
about AI? Is that meaningful to you? Is that like, okay.
Great idea, but you really don't have the the machinations of it?
You know, do I think that things that are
that people do online, I think the data will be much quicker

(01:09:43):
to AI where people are going to a gym
and, you know, you can track if they're taking classes or doing
free weights, but your data is very sort of limited at this point in
time. It's hard for AI to create a program
as it is today. Right. Ultimately, that will change and become
very, very useful. But right now, I think that

(01:10:06):
the early adapters where it's gonna be useful is in, you know,
where you're searching, what's your passions are, that sort of
thing. Gotcha. Well, it's been great having you on. I'm glad
we had this opportunity. It's a lovely couch and chair. I love it, Pete. We
gotta do we gotta do it again next year. We'll just turn it off. Let's
hang out here. Thank you.

(01:10:29):
What The experiential is a place for you to enjoy
exercise. Adventures in nature, gaming, and
virtual races are all available now. We call
this excitainment.

(01:11:18):
problems down the road. If you think of your brain's pain response is
the smoke detector going off when your toaster's on fire, taking a
pain reliever is kinda like walking over to the smoke detector and pulling the
batteries out to stop the alarm, but the toaster's still on

(01:11:39):
fire.

(01:12:01):
symptoms like poor muscle soreness, poor balance,
flexibility, and low grade inflammation, which causes your joints to
ache all the time.

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