EP#376| GUEST | The Sweat-Driven CEO Behind Hotworx: Steve Smith’s Fitness Empire - Deep Shallow Dive

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The following podcast is a deep shallow dive production.
And you're going to love it. OK, let's go.
All right, as I was telling you before I hit record, I literally
went for a run prior to this to sweat it out.

(00:23):
And this is going to be the theme of today's episode
everybody. All right, listen, this is this
could be the inaugural DSD into ACEO episode because we've got
something extra special today. Not only do we have ACEO Steve
Smith from Hot Works, but if youguys have not heard about Hot

(00:46):
Works, which maybe you haven't, which is, which is something
we're going to work to change. This guy has created a business
where he's got 700 plus locations already in the United
States. I think another 500 that are in
the pipeline coming. And for anybody that knows me

(01:06):
and that's listened to this podcast, you know how much I
love to sweat and I wear my crazy sauna suit when I run.
Well, my man Steve might like tosweat even more than I do
because he's created an awesome business called Hot Works where
I'll give my version and then I'll let him give his, you know,

(01:27):
think about a maybe a 10 by 10 infrared sauna that's absolutely
gorgeous by the way. And then inside of it you're
doing yoga, you're doing Pilates, you're doing an
isometric workout, you're doing a high intensity interval
training workout, anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.
And I will tell you, I went lastweek and did a 30 minute

(01:49):
isometric workout and I was dredged, brother, dredged.
Anyway, welcome Matt. How you doing?
Yeah, great, great, great to be here.
Yeah, that workout that you did,that's the original Hot ISO, our
very first workout that we created way back in the day.
OK, OK, well, then you know what?
Let's start right there. Like what?

(02:10):
What was the moment that you were like, Oh my God, I think
there's a business here. Like, have you always been into
sweating? I know you've got a athletic
background. Give us, give us that.
So I, you know, I've been in fitness all all my life, all my
career, started selling memberships at this little bitty
hell club in Mississippi when I was 18.

(02:32):
But the the path towards hot works began for me, you know,
and I'm my ex athlete. Still snow skies, still climb
mountains, but played football for a while.
And oh, it was when I decided toadd to my weight training and
begin doing Bikram yoga. So we're doing hot yoga and it,

(02:58):
it was really rough for a meathead like me in the
beginning to do yoga right? But I was determined after that
first session to get decent at it.
I got decent at it. And then, you know, being in
franchising and being an entrepreneur, I started to think
about hot yoga and then then just hot exercise in general and

(03:20):
as a business. And those thoughts led me to
yes, about the moment, I guess the moment of inspiration for
what can't. What eventually came to be Hot
Works was down in Jamaica on a Cliff with a with a rum drink
with a good friend who's also inin fitness and my business
partner's husband, Jerome. We were talking, I was telling

(03:44):
him I'm doing Bikram yoga and I'm using infrared saunas that
we had at Planet Beach at the time for recovery.
And in that moment, Jerome said something to the effect of,
dude, they should do yoga in a sauna.
And yoga. Yoga in the sauna.
Because Bikram. Bikram's the the guy.

(04:05):
I think there was some controversy with him, right?
Like, yeah. He has some serious character
issues, but that aside, the workout that he created was was
awesome. I mean, it was too long for me.
90 minutes. I only had 90.
Minutes as an executive, you know, hard, hard working
entrepreneur. So my thoughts were always,

(04:27):
well, how can we get this done faster?
And and then Jerome in that moment said, you know, they
should do yoga and a sauna. And when you said that, the
proverbial entrepreneurial lightbulb went off in my head,
literally. And I my response to Jerome was,
dude, I'm going back to New Orleans and design A sauna for
that purpose. And that's what happened.

(04:49):
And 10 months later, we had a prototype to the market.
What year is this? This was that very day was the
14th, 2014. OK, OK.
Wow. About a decade ago.
OK, you know, that's interesting.
And at the time, were you thinking what was infrared, the

(05:10):
big version of sauna? And then what's the difference
between an infrared sauna and then like, just like, you know,
the dry sauna that's at, you know, Planet Fitness or 24 Hour
Fitness or LA Fitness or those places?
Right. I would say that 10 years ago,
infrared saunas were just sort of barreling onto the scene.

(05:31):
OK. Most people remember, especially
my age would remember just saunas that you go into dry
saunas with the exception, you would throw water on these
rocks. That's right, an electric
heater. But it would heat up these rocks
and then you throw water on it to kind of create a little steam
effect. But you have to, to, to, to

(05:53):
sweat, you know, and, and you'renot going to sweat as profusely
in the traditional sauna, but toget to the sweat level, you need
to be, you got to be at like 180plus degrees or an infrared
sauna, that threshold is much lower, like let's say 125°.
So it's more tolerable, enables you to be able to actually work

(06:16):
out in a sauna. Then that's the, one of the
advantages of infrared. The other advantage of infrared
over the traditional convection heat saunas that just heat up
the air around you is infrared and you have to be close enough
to the heat source, which is a whole another topic about why
you have to train in the sauna if you want infrared workouts.

(06:40):
Infrared absorbs into your skin up to an inch and a half,
triggers your mitochondria to toburn energy more efficiently.
All kinds of good things happen to your metabolism and there are
many, many health benefits that are well documented all over the
Internet about the benefits of infrared sauna.
So you know my thoughts, why notcombine infrared energy with the

(07:06):
heat? Because you're going to heat up
the air too and and then use it,use the right type of exercise,
not just any form of exercise. And to me, of course, that's
yoga. And then but there are many
other ways to do isometrics and we created many other different
workout types based off of hot yoga.

(07:28):
So in the in the beginning our our motto was beyond hot yoga.
A motto now is more workout, less time.
More workout, less time, OK, Because the workouts are are
there's a 15 minute and a 30 minute is that is that it?
And nothing's longer than 30. Right, that's correct.

(07:49):
You have, you know, plus or minus a minute or two, around 28
to 32 minutes. Usually you'll have an isometric
workout. HIIT workouts run right at 13
minutes. You get a couple of minutes to,
to change out in between the workouts and they're very much
HIT. You know, you go from, from high

(08:11):
intensity, medium intensity, lowintensity and you toggle, you
know, back and forth with those intervals as you as you hit that
bike or, or the roar or, or the total body trainer that that we
use as well for the hit training, hit training 15 minute
sessions, the isometric we blockoff 45 minutes, but the but the

(08:33):
workouts themselves run, run about 32 minutes, let's say.
OK, OK. I want to get into the
franchising in a minute, but let's continue on the sweating a
little bit. So like, I mean, I honestly, I
think the only way to truly detox is to sweat.
I mean, you've absolutely got tosweat it out.
So I've talked a lot about, you know, people leveraging the dry

(08:55):
sauna at their gym or, you know,going for a run.
I, I don't think anybody's as big of a lunatic as me to wear
these dry sauna suits and go fora run.
But I really feel like what you've come up with in terms of
getting that work out in and then kind of the concept of what
did you, what did you call more,more workout, less time?

(09:16):
More workout, less time. More workout, less time.
I mean, that's an that's an awesome concept because
everybody is so crazy busy. And I'll tell you when I came
out of the session that I did, Imean again, I was drenched to
where I had to ring out my shirt, but in my mind I thought,
you know, wow, that was incredibly efficient.

(09:38):
Even when I go for my my sauna sweat runs, that's a 45 minute,
one hour process. I probably achieved almost that
same level of sweat, gosh, maybeeven that same level of sweat in
that 30 minutes. So that was incredibly
efficient. What do you personally like to
do in there? Do you like to do the yoga?

(09:58):
Do you like to do the rowing? Do you have any personal
preference? You want me to give you my week
routine? Yeah, that would be awesome,
actually, Yeah. My week, of course, I continue
to do weight training. So I'll go in the morning around
7:00 AM and each day, Monday through Friday is committed to a
body part, right? So Monday's plus Tuesday's back,

(10:21):
Wednesday's shoulders, Thursday's arms, Subs, triceps,
Friday's legs, lower body. So I'll do the weight training
then immediately we'll go into right after that weight training
hot cycle or or hot Thunder, which is the rowing or hot
blast, which is the total body trainer, 15 minute hit and then

(10:43):
three or four times a week come back, call it a 2 day workout
after five and do the hot stretch, which is a workout, but
it's a stretching routine. I love that.
Isometric as well, but it's, it's stretching that you might
remember from high school athletics and, and we, we have,

(11:05):
you know, stretching postures that we line up into a 30 minute
workout. You burn as many calories in, in
that hot stretch as you do hot yoga.
So, and you feel euphoric after that.
So I do that one once or twice aweek.
Then I'll do like last night we did hot yoga or I'll do hot
Pilates or any other one of the isometric workouts in the

(11:25):
evenings. And then one usually the Fridays
when I do legs, I also will run steps and this, these are steps
at my house, steps at my condo in Mississippi, wherever I have
steps on a Friday, I'll run those steps.
I find that routine right there is great for what I still do

(11:46):
athletic wise, which is climb mountains or snow ski.
And the other thing that I wouldsay is that I think is the most
important thing in fitness is for people to have a a vacation
line up, a vacate or a trip. Anything that involves a
movement endeavor or movement goal that you want to

(12:09):
accomplish, whether it's hiking,whether it's cycling out or what
running, whatever it is. Yeah, set that date and then you
got something to train for. There's so many that show up to
the gym and they don't have anything to train.
For yeah, yeah. And it's such a simple thing,

(12:29):
but it's such a powerful thing in my opinion.
I know it is because right now I'm I'm training for a trip to
Cabo in the next two weeks. We're going to round reach me
and my fiance. She's a big fitness competitor
back in the day. And so that's that's awesome.
Think about it every day, you know, And then the next thing

(12:51):
coming up is going to be climbing a mountain with one of
my good friends in December, so.Are you saying, are you saying
put a put a put a reward for yourself in terms of getting
your body to look a certain way?Or is it more maybe maybe that
and just just motivating yourself to work towards

(13:11):
something? I think it's a combination of
the two. You know, anybody that says they
don't want to look better is lying.
Yeah, totally. So there's that, but then
there's also that functional aspect of just, you want to be,
you want to have balance, you want to be able to dance, you
want to be able to do things even as you age.

(13:32):
And you know, like I want to still be able to ski when I'm
80, you know, I want to be able to continue to hike when I'm 80
and stuff like that. So I think about it in terms of
function, but of course aesthetics, that's always in
there as well. No, I'm with you, man.
I'm with you. Listen, we all want to look

(13:52):
good. Everybody wants to look good.
I'm I'm vain as hell when it comes to that.
Like I absolutely want to look good.
And you know, it's funny, a lot of it is for myself.
Like I just like, I like the wayI look when I look myself in the
mirror and I'm at the certain weight that I want to be at.
And, and it's not even that. It's just looking fit and, you

(14:13):
know, honestly feeling fit, feeling good, you know, not not
struggling to get out of bed, not struggling to do that.
I think you hit on three amazingthings. 1 is I do love the
stretching, by the way, like I'm, I'm terrible at stretching.
I really need to figure out how to incorporate that in my life.
And you know what, you're, you're motivating me to figure

(14:35):
that out to the concept of movement.
You know, I, I saw you had an Apple Watch on, I think that was
an Apple Watch. You know, do you measure your
steps on a daily basis? Is that a part of your routine
to like hit 10,000 or or a certain number?
I don't measure steps, Ray, I'llbe honest about that.
But I do measure calories religiously, OK.

(14:57):
To me, the measurement of how much energy you're burning in a
certain amount of time is the key to let me know how well my
workout is going. OK, Obviously I keep up with my
heart rate as well. You know, I want to make sure
that I get right at but don't don't over very often my heart
rate Max. So those are the two things that

(15:19):
I really pay attention to. OK, I got it.
What about diet? Let's talk about like, what do
you eat? Do you have a certain protocol
that you like to do in terms of food?
I make sure that every meal, even a snack is balanced, OK.
And I try to get a reasonable amount of protein and
carbohydrates, fats that make sense for me, that make me feel

(15:41):
good, that get me to my functionand aesthetic goals that I have.
So the macros I, I pay attentionto for every meal to make sure
those are balanced. And the other thing that I do
that, that, that works very wellthat I promote and when I blog
and so forth, is intermittent fasting, really even that, you

(16:06):
know, 8 hours on, 16 hours off. And, and if you can put the
seven hours on and then, you know, 17 hours off the, then I
think you're even better off. But and then the, I think the
other key to it is if you religiously do fasted training

(16:26):
in the morning, because they'll say you stop eating at 8:00 PM,
your body has, has metabolized everything out, you know, and it
starts to begin to use the fat to burn for fuel in that, in
that morning workout. And I think that that's a really

(16:49):
good, and I would say easier wayto quote diet then then
constantly worrying about the calories and this and that.
And that's important. Of course, that's important.
At the end of the day, if you taking more calories and you
burn off, then you're going to you're going to gain weight.
But the easier way to do it in my opinion is to is that

(17:12):
intermittent fasting. If you really want to burn off
some fat too, do the the fasted morning workouts.
The fasted morning workouts. OK, OK, that's interesting.
Because you know what? I, I, I don't, I go for walks in
the morning and I haven't eaten anything.
Well, I guess that's kind of it.Like I'll get up, I'll go for my
morning walk and then I'll come and have my coffee.

(17:34):
What you're saying is you could even crank out a whole workout,
but do it do it in the fasting process and then eat after that?
Yeah, I would get up. You know, I make coffee and I'm
drinking coffee during my workouts.
OK, OK. All right.
And then I don't eat the first meal until lunch.
OK. And so so you're really burning

(17:56):
the fat during that time from when you wake up to lunch.
OK. I mean that that makes sense.
That makes sense. OK.
And you supercharge it. You know your your body has to
get used to it, your mind has toget used to it.
But once it does, then it's no big deal.
You wake up in the morning, you don't eat until lunch.
It's not even a thing. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I think once you get into that process, that intermittent

(18:18):
fasting, I've, you know, I, I need to, I need to try it again.
I've tried it before and you know, I guess I need to
recalibrate my expectations fromit.
I didn't see necessarily any real results, but I think I was
measuring results strictly on the scale, you know, and maybe
that's not necessarily the way to do it.

(18:40):
I like how you hammer home the weight training too, because I
think that is important. I think with with everything
that is on the cardio side, including the movement, which
I'm a huge fan of. But I think you've got to really
do weight training and, and, andbuild that muscle.
And I know a lot of people, you know, as they get older, their
bodies, you know, kind of kind of fall apart because they

(19:03):
haven't built up that muscle over a lifetime.
So OK. So I throw in a very simple
thing to do every. Monday.
Amazing. Absolutely.
And the talking about weight training every Monday, yeah,
first set that I do is I drop down, I do 50 push ups with
without stopping. That's awesome.

(19:23):
And that lets me know right there how where my where my
strength is. OK, SO50 push ups, 50 push ups
every Monday without stopping and and then do you do push ups
the rest of the week too? Is that part of your?
50 and that's my first set of mychest workout.

(19:43):
OK. I'll be I'll be chest on Monday,
I'll do back on Tuesday, I'll doshoulders on Wednesday, biceps
and triceps on Thursday. I'll do thighs, glutes and
calves on Friday. OK, OK.
But in order to to let me measure my strength to start the
week, I'll do those 50 push ups and sometimes I bang them out so

(20:06):
fast and it surprises me sometimes the struggle.
If I had a big football weekend and one too many cocktails, I
will know it on that Monday withthe push ups.
So that's my sort of, I guess. Calibration or or OK?
Yeah, yeah. It's your, it's your gauge.

(20:27):
It's your gauge. That's right.
OK, OK. What about do you weigh yourself
every day? I I literally never weigh
myself. Really.
OK, Interesting. Interesting.
I just rely on all right, do my genes still fit like I want to
or and also just my functionality, how well my body

(20:49):
is moving, really what I pay attention to.
OK, All right, that's fair. Everybody that listens to this
podcast knows I'm a freak about doing that because half the time
I, I mentioned my weight on on various episodes.
But yeah, I don't know. I do.
I do. I weigh myself every morning.
I find for me, it, it kind of helps me sort of stay

(21:11):
accountable throughout the day. You know, my biggest problem
with food is portion control. I just have a hard time with
portion control many a time. I mean, half the time I end up
eating a full meal as I'm preparing the meal.
So like I need to get out of that habit, get out of that
stuff. And it's those little things

(21:32):
like if you can fix your portioncontrol and you know, fix your,
your size of your plates and things like that, I think those
things go a long way. All right.
Any other tips on the food stuff?
I the, the portion control, I get that.
And I would say, you know, you can't, you go through these
phases and when you could drop back into the, the eating less

(21:56):
phase and, and be consistent with it, then it just kind of
becomes a habit and a way and a lifestyle.
Kind of like the same way of getting in that routine of of
intermittent fasting and and training on an empty stomach and
not eating until lunchtime. OK, OK, all right, so here's
some good tips. Training on an empty stomach,

(22:18):
intermittent fasting, not eatingtill lunchtime.
You're, it sounds like you're not necessarily like all protein
type, you know, you, you take incarbs or do things like that.
Water. What about water?
Is that is that an active part of your daily regimen or you're
just good at drinking water? So it's probably an area that I

(22:39):
need to improve. And I will tell you that I'm
very much dehydrating fanatic when I'm in that sauna.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. After we have AII like
electrolyte and amino together in a powder mixed with the water
while training in the sauna and and then drink tons of water

(23:00):
after. And, and, and I try to load up
on water before I get in that sauna, but throughout the day, I
probably need to drink more water, you know, and I'm, I'm
glad you bring that up because now you're motivating me to get,
get better with that. I love it.
I love it. You know what you know what's
awesome about this episode? This is like 2 for one.
This is like we're we're we're talking regular health, fitness

(23:23):
stuff, but now let's switch intothe business because honestly,
man, my, my hat is off to you asa fellow entrepreneur, you know,
I know how hard it is to scale abusiness.
You know, that's the most difficult thing.
I think people, everybody has ideas.
Seriously, everybody has ideas. Then it's like, can you bring

(23:46):
your idea to fruition and get itoff the ground?
That's Step 2. And then really step three.
I think that what what separates, you know, where the
rubber really meets the road is can you scale the idea.
So talk to us about how you scaled Hot Works and maybe let's
start off with why did you decide on the franchise model

(24:08):
and not necessarily just openingup, you know, corporate store
after corporate store after corporate store?
Yeah. Well, Ray, I I started out, you
know, open a gym when I was 23, independent gym.
But then about three years afterthat I sold that business, moved
to Jackson, Ms. and decided I wanted to open a Gold's Gym.

(24:30):
I became Bryson Z of Gold's Gym and at one point I had two more
in New Orleans. So I had three at one point.
So I was a multi unit operator of Gold's Gym.
That is where I began to fall inlove with the with the idea of
franchising and decided that oneday I would become a franchisor

(24:52):
which I did 1996 with Planet Beach.
So franchising is a method of expansion.
You know some companies do it 5050 like McDonald's has half of
their stores are corporate owned, half of them are are
franchised out and then you haveSubway largest number of units
of any franchise in the world that has no corporate stores and

(25:16):
they're all franchised for us. We have 4 corporate locations
and then all of the rest will will open our 800 store next in
next month. All the rest of them are
franchised out. It's definitely, you know, two
ways of operating, you know, when you own your own store or

(25:39):
when you're creating a system tobe able to duplicate through
franchising. I think franchising can be the
best way to scale as you mentioned.
But I will tell you this and any, any entrepreneurs out there
thinking about franchising theirbusiness, you need to in the
beginning with your very first location, document everything

(26:03):
down to the last paper clip and create a, an opening and then an
ongoing operational checklist for everything.
The old days of writing and operations manual, forget that,
that school school, you have to have checklist for everything.
Everything's digital, you know, and that, that's the way that

(26:28):
you can then scale the business and, and measure what's going
on. I mean, obviously you, you have
to have key performance indicators and that's always
evolving. You're going to have some things
that are basic and fundamental, but then you're going to want to
look at things differently as you get to different levels of
growth, right? Like, for example, we have a

(26:50):
development department and we'vedecided that we need to get more
efficient at the time it's takenfor us from a franchise
agreement getting signed to a franchise getting opened and do
that. I had the department head go
back and gather up all this datafrom day one, literally.

(27:11):
And now we're putting that data into AI to, to generate reports
for us. And it's enlightening.
That's awesome. You know, I love business.
I love scaling a business in thechallenge that that presents,
right? I mean, for us, we're at 800,
but we we feel like we're just getting started.

(27:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of locations though.
That's a lot of locations. That's incredibly impressive.
And you know, I think the fitness space in general is a
franchise oriented business model, right.
Like I know, I think Planet Fitness is franchised.
I know FF40 fives are franchised.

(27:54):
A lot of, you know, Pilates is is gotten huge.
I know places like Club Pilates and some of the bigger Pilates
studios are franchise. OK, so it seems like it's really
a model that seems to work in the in the fitness space.
Do all of your locations for themost part look the same?

(28:14):
Like the look and feel, I guess similar to McDonald's?
You guys make sure at a corporate level, you know,
everything sort of looks the same.
Do they have to buy maybe the the the look and feel from you
guys? How does that part work?
Yeah, it's all part of the package, right from the logo to
the to the design to the color palette to everything.

(28:37):
Got it, Got it. It's super important to maintain
that design, that look and that feel so that our core customer
base that the culture of customers that we attract come
in off of the advertising and the ways that they've heard
about the brand. And sure enough, they come in
and they see that this place matches what they thought in

(28:59):
their head that it would be. And if you can have that
relevance, you know, and and youhave to have it at every
location with the consistency, then then you'll be more
successful with building your membership base.
OK, OK. That makes total sense.
And then consumers when they sign up, I think you guys have

(29:19):
two different types of, I guess membership, maybe membership
just for the one facility. If let's say they live in a area
and they know they're not going to necessarily be going or is
there the ability to like use all the facilities?
There is we we sell 2 memberships. 1 is a sweat basic
and that gets you use of the facility that that you purchased

(29:43):
a membership at only. And there is what we call Sweat
Elite that gets you use of all the facilities out there.
And then, you know, also access to other digital tools that we
have like diet tracks, we call it free tracking of your
nutrition. Soon to have something on on the

(30:04):
training side of the equation that I can't talk about right
now. But you know, we're always
innovating and trying to create and add more value to the Sweat
Elite membership and sweat basic.
But you know, there's just the two and and the basic difference
is what you said, right? You can train it one or you can
train it all of them. OK, OK, I got it, I got it.

(30:26):
You know, it's like, man, it's competitive out there.
It's competitive out there. And really I feel like, and, and
when I went and visited a year one facility, I was talking to
the franchise owner and I said, you know, God, it's really
you're competing for my time more than anything.
You know, it's like if I'm somebody that has one hour a
week or I'm sorry, way more thanone hour a week, one hour a day

(30:48):
to dedicate to my fitness, you know, hopefully people can have
more, but realistically, I'd sayif people have one hour a day to
dedicate to their fitness, what are they going to dedicate that
to? Is it going to be going to yoga,
Pilates, just going to the gym and doing it on their own?
I will tell you, I, I mean, I love the sweating.

(31:09):
I I've told you this several Times Now.
I think that is just magic, man.It is absolutely magic.
Like I feel even even right now,I went for a run prior to
recording. I feel amazing right now, like I
feel really great. So I think you're, you're
competitive. It competitive advantage on the
sweating is there. And then like you said, you

(31:30):
know, man, you're getting the real workout in 30 minutes.
That's pretty solid. That's pretty solid.
What do you find, I guess are you competing for franchisees
out there? Like are you guys, do you have
people that come and say, hey, I'm, I'm deciding between F45
and you guys? Like, do you ever get into those

(31:52):
those battles, I guess? That's a great question.
And, and I'm very fortunate to report that most of our
franchisees come through organicmeans, meaning that I hear the
same story all the time. One or two times a week we have
orientation for new franchisees and, and they tell the story

(32:15):
about how they heard about how it works.
And I hear the same story all the time, right.
Well, my friend invited me to come work out with them and how
it works and I went with her. I tried it.
I fell in love with, I became obsessed with it.
And then I, I found out you guyswere a franchise and decided
that I wanted to open one up. And I hear that story over and

(32:38):
over and over. And that's beautiful.
And it's, it says a lot about the product for one.
But now every now and then we doget a franchise that comes in
and say, you know, it was between you guys and Chick-fil-A

(32:58):
or guys and whoever, right? And so you do get that that
sometime, but it's not very often.
And usually, I would say 90% of the time it's because they join,
they became a member, they love the product and then they wanted
to buy the franchise. I love it.
I love it. That's funny.
Between you, between Hot Works and Chick-fil-A, all the sudden

(33:21):
that reminded me of a a Seinfeldepisode where Kramer Kramer
started washing his vegetables in the shower.
He was like multitasking all of a sudden in my mind.
I was like, oh, I wonder if we can do a Hot Works.
And then you're eating Chick-fil-A in the in the house.
I love it, dude. I really love it.

(33:43):
I genuinely do. I think there's just, there's a,
there's a real magic to this concept.
OK, let me ask you a funny question.
So for everybody out there, by the way, Hot Works is spelled
HOTWORX. It's with an X which I love that
but did somebody own the.com because I know the website
is.net. We they did, I'll tell you the

(34:06):
story real quick. So we got the the trademark OK
through the US Patent Office gotit very rapidly because of the
relevance. But when it came to get the URL
entity and own the.com. And so I was like, I, I don't

(34:29):
really care. We'll justdo.net and and keep on
trucking. And that's what we did.
And it hasn't affected our ability to attract traffic to
our website at all. OK, OK.
Did you ever reach out to those guys to to to try to buy it?
You know, it was so like amorphous.
It was like we couldn't really figure out who owned it, but

(34:51):
some in China and so but it it didn't, it didn't set us back at
all. We're just that's fine.
This is my outwards.net and and go from there and that's.
What we OK, Yeah, it it it is weird.
I'm really good at figuring thatstuff out.
So when I went to the page the.com and I landed there, it

(35:12):
doesn't even give you the traditional landing page where,
you know, there's companies out there that have, man, they, they
probably were such early adopters.
They bought millions of URLs. And then their business is
literally to set up a landing page.
They put Google ads on it and they wait for somebody to want
to make a offer on that landing page.

(35:33):
But hotworks.com doesn't even have that.
It's it literally has nothing. You can't track anything.
That's wild. That's wild, just to see if we
can see if we can figure out a back door to see who's got that
and then offer, offer them, offer them like a complimentary
session and see if we can get that for you.

(35:54):
All right, let me see. Let me see if I have any more
business scale. So what's next?
What's next for you? What's, what's the road map
ahead for? You know, do you think about it
as the next 12 months? Are you the type of guy that
thinks about it as like the nextfive years, The next 10 years?
What? How do you do that?
Yeah, let's talk about the next 10 years.

(36:15):
Where we would like to land is by far the largest and the most
effective and the best boutique fitness chain in North America.
OK, We, we, we feel that with the white space that we've
identified, we can have 3000 units in the United States.
It sounds like a lot, but when you look at the published

(36:36):
aspirations of Planet Fitness, Big Box Gym wants to have 5000
in the US Anytime Fitness has 2425 hundred units in the US
alone. So then it doesn't become far
fetched at all. And then we've done all of the
research on the towns and the, and the markets and everything
and we know we can get that donewithout, without having negative

(36:59):
impact to any other location. You know, just building on the
brand really must do that to reach out and to obtain the full
potential of the brand. But we are as we speak
developing in Canada. Our strategy is selling direct
into the English speaking provinces.

(37:22):
We did, we're fortunate to have a franchise in California that
reached out and wanted to becomethe master franchise of Quebec.
So the speaking province, we have a French speaking partner
and in a master franchise for Quebec and we are scheduled to
close the deal on our master franchise E for Mexico on

(37:46):
October 15th. So that's coming up and she is
absolutely outstanding operator based in Laredo, TX.
And so we're very, very fortunate for that as well.
And then and then that kind of sets it up and tease it up for
what it is that we want to accomplish over the next 10
years, which is like what I said, become the premier

(38:08):
boutique fitness Center for North America.
Gotcha. I gotcha.
To understand this is super coollearning about the franchise
model because I think when it comes to business most people
probably understand a corporate model much better.
People don't really understand the insurance and outs of the
franchise model. So when you say you're signing a
master franchise for Mexico and let's say for the province of

(38:31):
Quebec, then is that person responsible or that entity for
like carving up Quebec and then they sell maybe 30 franchises in
Quebec or in Mexico? Gosh, I would hope she would
sell, you know, a couple 100. Is that how it works?
Like she carves up the the the the geography.

(38:52):
Ray, I'm impressed because you're you're almost spot on to
those two numbers. Seriously.
Oh, Quebec is 42, Mexico's 200. That's hilarious.
That's awesome, but yes you're exactly right, they are sub
franchisor. OK.
They basically do, you know, or they partner with us to then

(39:13):
become the franchisor of that country for our brand.
OK, got it, got it, got it. Very cool, very cool.
And then here in the United States, do you, when it comes to
carving up this geography, is itbased off of mileage?
Like if somebody wants to open up a franchise, do they get an
exclusivity for a 30 mile radiusor something along those lines?

(39:37):
It's up to A2 mile radius. Two.
Yeah, yeah, and. And it also depends on
population. OK, got it.
Got it. We like to see around 30,000 in
population within a protected radius and that that ensures
that, that as the crow flies, asthey would say, a location would

(39:59):
be at least 4 miles away. And that's, that's a lot of
space and a lot longer in terms of driving to get to that next
spot. So it's worked very well thus
far for us for development. I love it.
I love it. No, and you're absolutely right.
You know, it's funny now that you mention it, 2 miles or 4
miles close. You know one thing I I've always

(40:20):
realized with myself is proximity of where I want to do
my fitness. It really matters.
It really matters because the closer it is to you, the more
motivated you are to go. My current gym is walking
distance, so I have no excuse not to go to it because I can
literally walk there. I can get my steps in, and I

(40:42):
think that plays in what you're doing too.
And just so important, especially in fitness.
Absolutely. It's one of the, the things that
we that we have to consider whenwe're advertising.
Is it convenient for the folks that we're reaching in
psychographic wise? We're looking for people who
want to discover their inner warrior.

(41:02):
Our, our businesses, 85% female,15% guys.
Oh. OK, OK, interesting. 85 female,
15 guys. Oh wow, that's interesting.
I wonder why that is it that youthink it's that because of the
workouts you provide? Like women are more into yoga,
Pilates. They are, you know, we are so,

(41:23):
you know, heavily concentrated in, in the isometric area and,
and, and also we have an offering that's sort of semi
private in terms of the work only up to three people per
sauna and go in funny story. I never, I, I didn't expect this

(41:44):
when we opened the first location in Oxford, Ms. and I
was back in February of 2017. After about a week, I, I would
come in and I'm noticing everybody's working out and the
sauna's in the dark. Before that, I would always just
go in, turn on the light and work out.
Yeah. But in then of course you know

(42:05):
it's 90% female in the store in Oxford and they just like to
work out with the lights off andthen more private saunas.
And so it's very appealing to I think the female demographic,
our marketing is built around the female demographic that 25

(42:28):
to 40 year old core customer base that we have.
Yeah, well. Which is kind of the core in the
bullseye of the fitness industry, as we all know.
OK, interesting. Interesting.
That first store you opened up in, where'd you say in
Mississippi? Oxford, Ms. Home of the Ole Miss
Rebels who are That's right, delay waste to the LSU Tigers.

(42:52):
All right, there you go. You're an Ole Miss guy, right?
You play football there. No, no, I I played two years of
junior college ball and then I transferred to Ole Miss for my
last two years of undergrad and I started bodybuilding.
OK. Oh wow.
In that time, yeah. Like like competitive
bodybuilding? I did.

(43:13):
Holy mackerel man, that is a that is a whole nother level of
discipline it. Really is.
Yeah, I'll tell you'll, you'll, you'll love this.
But in in one of my past lives, business wise, I was in business
with Lou Ferrigno. Yeah, Lou Lou Lou Ferrigno and
his entire family, actually. So we created a television show

(43:37):
called the Incredible Ferrigno'sand they were basically going
going town to town, transformingfamilies.
And then we created a whole lineof merchandise behind it called
Ferrigno. And it was all about, you know,
getting, getting the family fit.It was an amazing, it was an
amazing overall program. We ran with it for for a few

(43:59):
years, It kind of fell apart fora variety of reasons.
But one day Lou was like, hey, let's go work out.
And, and I had a business partner.
His name's Rich. He's like, let's go.
I'm going to take you guys to work out.
So he took us to Gold's Gym in Venice, you know, which is the
Mecca, I mean, you know that place, you know.
And so we walk in Arnold's there, you know, tons of tons

(44:22):
of, you know, just bodybuilders and celebrities and Lou Lou
obviously like Arnold. I mean, those are the two names
when it comes to bodybuilding. I mean, he's he's a legend.
And then he's also just just like an idol when he walks in
there. Yeah, I I walked in there.
I saw him doing leg extensions one time.

(44:43):
I go to California to train for,specifically to train at that
Gold's Gym in Venice. Yeah, yeah, just.
Because it's unbelievable. Yeah, everything.
Cool. But what I was going to say was,
so he put us through that workout, man, I was sore for
like 3 weeks I think after that like it was and, and I'll tell

(45:05):
you my biggest learning and actually I want your opinion on
this. My biggest learning when it came
to working out with him in my mind, I thought, Oh my God, he's
going to make me lift so heavy and I'm not going to be able to
do it. It wasn't that at all.
Everything was form. Everything was about form and it
was wild man. He would go so slow with so many

(45:29):
of his movements, but everythingfelt like it was maximizing the
exact area of the muscle that hewanted to target.
Is that, is that kind of one of the keys of bodybuilding that
helps you? Because, man, your body goes to
a whole different level. Absolutely.
I think that it's so important to maintain a discipline.

(45:52):
Yeah, proper form and every exercise that you do right from
from push ups to dumbbell flies,whatever you're doing, it's so
important to maintain that that proper form.
Yeah, no, it absolutely is. You know, when you guys are
getting ready for competition, do you dehydrate your body?

(46:12):
Like, like do you? And what's that process?
So the last time I competed was in the late 80s but but I still
remember what I went through right?
You'll stop drinking anything usually Friday morning and if
you're you're prejudging competition is Saturday morning

(46:33):
so you're going 24 hours withoutdrinking a drop of anything.
A drop of anything, nothing. Wow.
And then do you take a diuretic or anything to drain?
You. I never took the diuretics.
I knew of competitors that did they it would have cramps and
not cause all kind of issues, but I never did the diuretics.

(46:54):
OK, OK, wow, man, this has been like 5-5 podcasts in one.
Now we're talking about the bodyand I love it.
All right, listen, man, I've really enjoyed this.
I'd love to kind of end with maybe two things from you.
One is, you know, any advice foreveryday health?
Any any additional thing you want people to maybe just take

(47:16):
away for again everyday health? I would I would say it's it's
super important to cross train between very defined and
consistent workout types. OK.
You know, like if you you can gobetween yoga and Pilates to
weight training, but make sure you have the discipline of

(47:39):
consistency with those differentworkouts.
OK, OK. Get your variety from the cross
training, not from trying to change up a workout type every
time you do it. OK.
OK. And is that just to mix it up
because to confuse the muscles and all that and to not get, I
guess, stagnant? I think it's to help a client,

(48:00):
you know, overcome boredom. OK, OK.
At the same time, they need to understand that the only way
you're going to measure your performance, meaning your your
gains, is through consistency ofa workout type.
Like, you know, if you're doing planks, then don't try to just
change up from and not do planksanymore.

(48:23):
Do planks and see how well you do them each time you do them
you know and and how you form gets better, how your your
strength and how long you hold it gets better.
Stuff like that. Not I did planks last week.
I'm not going to do planks this week.
OK. You have to remain consistent
with your workout type, but get your variety from cross training

(48:46):
in between workout types. I think, I think that's hugely
important. OK, got it, Perfect.
OK, before I get to my last question, I did want to ask you
what about recovery? Like are you, are you, do you
rest on Sundays? Where do you net out on giving
the body rest? Yeah.
So we like to call our workouts recovery workouts because

(49:08):
isometric you're definitely recovering in between sets of
the postures. OK.
And if you're inside of an infrared sauna, that's being
accelerated, right? Normally in a traditional
workout method, you do your workout and then you go to the
sauna, right? Well, for the kind of workout

(49:29):
that we do, you're in the sauna while you work out.
You know which all part of saving the time for the client.
It's very true, very true. Active recovery during that
workout. But of course there is recovery
beyond that workout as well. And I mean I would say find

(49:50):
yourself a a really great cave of a bedroom to get great sleep.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm a kind of a freak
about that. I want where I sleep to be very
comfortable and like, I like it cold, so whatever.
However you like your sleep environment into it to make sure

(50:12):
you get great sleep. OK, OK.
I love it. I love it.
I'm a huge believer in sleep as well.
I'm a huge believer in sleep as well.
I track it on my Fitbit and my Apple Watch.
I'm the only dummy that wears a Fitbit and an Apple Watch.
Yeah, this is an Apple Watch I've had for a few years.
I like it. I got to get it.
I get you've got, you've got a nice orange band.
It matched and it matches the deep shallow dive.

(50:34):
I got to get a get myself an orange band.
All right, last question, man, aspiring entrepreneurs, there's
a lot of, there's a lot of them out there.
And, you know, I think that coming out of COVID, honestly, I
think a lot of people, especially in, in sort of our
collective age range, let's say anything over the age of 40, you
know, I think a lot of people are like, like questioning, not

(50:56):
even questioning their lives, but like they want more of a
purpose to their life, you know,and that applies to their work.
Plus, I think a lot of people got a taste of working from home
having, you know, maybe a littlebit more of a balanced
lifestyle. And so I know a lot of my
personal friends are like, man, I want to figure out a way to

(51:16):
launch a business so I can be myown boss.
I'm tired of the 9:00 to 5:00. And I think that that really got
exasperated during COVID. Any advice to its aspiring
entrepreneurs? Well, I I would say think really
hard and think, think it all theway through until you get that
aha moment, until you feel like it.

(51:37):
This is it. You feel it in your gut.
OK. Once you get that feeling about,
about an idea, then I'm a, I'm abig Tony Robbins fan.
He will say, take massive action.
You got to take the massive freaking action after that.
And, and if you have a great product and then you, you build

(51:58):
the right people onto your team and the next thing you have to
do is create and have a great process.
You know, that's the operationalside of it that, that I live
for. I love it.
You know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a manager.
I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a manager too, though.
And, and you got to, you got to love it.

(52:20):
Nick Saban would say you got to fall in love with discipline or
you're going to have disappointment in life.
Wait a second. Are you as an Ole Miss guy?
Are you even allowed to quote Nick Saban?
Well, I'm an Ole Miss guy, and Irealized that our head coach
used to be the opposite coordinator from Nick Saban, and
Nick Saban ran Alabama, but he was the best in the business.

(52:43):
Yeah, yeah, he was. Even though he wasn't my coach
and my team, I like to try to learn from and get mentored by
the very best at what they do. In franchising and probably in
any business, if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to
have to coach people. And if.
You can learn how to coach like Nick Saban knows how to coach a

(53:05):
football team. I think you know why not, man.
I mean, he's a master at at motivating individuals to
perform at their very best. And that's really what you do.
If you create the right system around a great product, then you
got to motivate the people to take it to the next level.
I love it, man. I love it.
All right, listen, everybody. Steve Smith, CEO, Founder,

(53:31):
hotworkshotworx.net everybodynot.com You go to
the.com, there's going to be nowhere land, but I'm going to
figure that out for you. By the way, hotworks.net 700
plus locations around the UnitedStates.
Honestly, everybody, I truly recommend it.
And by the way, this is super cool.

(53:51):
You guys offer a free class to everybody that goes to sign.
Honestly go look on your local go go on his website.
Go to hotworks.net find a location that's near you.
If there is one, it's, it's worth driving 30 miles if that's
what it takes, but go check out a class.
I, I really recommend this. I actually told my brother about

(54:12):
it who lives in San Diego and he's going to go check it out.
I truly, it takes a lot to impress me, especially on the
fitness related stuff. I think there's so many gimmicky
stuff out there. But man, when I came out of that
class at the hot Works in LaderaRanch and talked to Sharon, the
franchise owner, I, I loved it. I really loved it and I really

(54:33):
enjoyed it and, and I got a lot out of it, you know what I mean?
And I felt great. I sweat, I felt it the next day
I was a little bit sore in termsof the workout.
So I know it works. So anybody, everybody check it
out. hotworks.net, Steve, I really appreciate it, man.
Hang on the line. Thank you so much.
I'll let you. I'll let you have the last word.

(54:55):
Look man, I enjoyed talking withyou today.
You got a lot of energy and I love that, you know, fitness is
a passion of mine and I I want to thank you for the
opportunity. It's my pleasure.
It's my pleasure. All right, hang on the line.
All right, everybody, call a spade a spade.
Call your parents and sign up for a free hot works class.
All right, talk to you soon. This episode was brought to you

(55:19):
by the new book Deep Shallow Dive into You, available now on
Amazon and Barnes and Noble in hardcover and paperback.
Don't forget to sign up for our new mailing list on our website
at deepshallowdive.com.

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EP#376| GUEST | The Sweat-Driven CEO Behind Hotworx: Steve Smith’s Fitness Empire

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