Brian Tietz - President Snap Fitness

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's another edition of CEOs you should know. I'm Adam
West here with Brian Teats, president of Snap Fitness America. Welcome, Hey,
thank you appreciate it. Tell me a little bit about
Snap Fitness and what you do.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, I'm the president of Stephanis America's division, so I
run all of us in Canada. We've got about five
hundred some plus locations across US and Canada. Our platforms
are generally anywhere from a four thousand to ten thousand
square foot location, twenty four hours a day car to access.
You can get in anytime you want to, and it
has all the things that you need to get your

(00:31):
fitness on.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
And how many are in Minnesota?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Minnesota is about seventy locations. Kind of started right here
in the Midwest, so one of the largest areas or
largest demographics that we have across the country. But yeah, good,
good sprinkling of clubs across the area.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Tell me a little bit about like contact lists, and
we don't really talk about that as much in terms
of COVID, but I think people sort of enjoy that.
I mean, you just kind of come and go as
you please. Can you join just sort of contact lists
as well, yeah, you got it.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
So you can go online join that way, you know,
enter the club anytime you need to.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
You get a.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Card or an access card or a code on your phone.
You can just hit the scanner and then you go.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Really easy.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Tell me a little bit about your journey from I
guess from your say, is your graduation at the University
of Wisconsin Stout Stout to UW River Falls, so like
almost yeah, almost the same to your current role as president. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So I've been in the industry for I don't want
to age myself, but well into thirty years. So I
started actually in the fitness industry when I was in college.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
I was starting to go to school.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Started at school at Stout as a hospitality and tourism
major and didn't internship my sophomore year and realized that
that's just not the path I wanted to go. Fitness
is really a big passion of mine. So I got
certified as a trainer while I was on an internship,
just because it was something that I wanted to try
to do. When I got back to school, and shifted
my gears at school as far as into a business

(01:51):
major and started a personal training business at while I
was at school, so did that my last year of
college and then what pond of graduation needed a job,
if you will. The training business was well, but had
to kind of decide what path I wanted to go.
And there was this company called Lifetime Fitness that was

(02:11):
really up and coming and people were talking about it,
you know, robustly, and said you got to check it out.
So I drove out to Woodbury, Minnesota and drove up
and was just blown away at the size and the
people is at three o'clock in the afternoon, it was
packed and they said, this is this is where I
got to be.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
So I started working there in college.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
My senior year, I trained clients at school, you know,
do my classes, drive out to Woodbury, Minnesota to train
clients at night until eight o'clock, and drive back to
UW stuff to do homework and start all over again
the next morning.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Man, how has that training business changed since then?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
You know, A lot of it is, some of it
is very similar. There's not a lot that's changed.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I mean, obviously in the industry with science and so forth,
there's different variations to things that have you know, changed
and or upgraded or improved.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
But you know, the grind is still the same. You know.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
It was really a great opportunity for me because it
taught me how to run a business.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
It was, you know, at Lifetime at that time was
full commission.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
You you have to get your clients and do your
work and and that's what we did and it was
very very fruitful, challenging, but fruitful because it taught me
how to run a business and that's what led me
into kind of where I am today.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, what keeps clients coming back? I guess because it's
super easy to say a f had enough of this,
January is over whatever, you know.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, you know, it's it's different for everybody.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know, I think the key for for any fitness
industry or any club out there is you have to
have something that's compelling that draws people in. And everybody's path,
everybody's story is very different, so you try to have
you have to try to find enough compelling nature of
why I want to be there, and the basics are crucial.
Having a great clean environment, great friendly staff, have the

(03:46):
amenities that people need. Now, you know, snap, we don't
have all the bells and whistles like you would see
at some of the traditional.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Big box clubs.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
But we have all the essentials that people really need
to really get that fitness workout going.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, and so I was thinking about training, but yeah,
stet fitness. So what else do you guys have that
really keeps people coming back?

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So we've gone through a little bit of a metamorphosis
over the last number of years. When we first started,
it was well over twenty years ago. It was a
smaller platform, very basic you know equipment as far as
resistance equipment, cardio, that type of thing, and the industry
has just changed even since COVID was wildly different. After
COVID and we went through a bit of a remodel,
a rebranding of the organization, kind of modernize ourselves. And

(04:29):
one of the big things that really has changed throughout
that time is we go You went from things like
selectorized equipment, which is like your plate loaded or sea
of your pinloaded kind of equipment, things that machines, if
you will, and that was really all you had in
the club besides Cardio two you've got you know, bumper
plates with rigs and platforms and you know free weights that.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Go up to one hundred plus, you know, one hundred plus.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Pounds, so really catering to a little bit more demographic
that people are looking for. They're looking for a little
bit more of that variety. So we started making those
changes a number of years ago. Now we're really moving
into the wellness side of things that that recovery and
and you know, helping people recover from workouts. So we've
got saunas and massage beds and cryo beds and all

(05:11):
this sort of cool things like that that people need
for recovery after workouts.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
You guys have tanning.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
I noticed we did it one time, so that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, that was one of the changes is we had
tanning at one time and while it was.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Good, it just the business has shifted.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
So a lot of that space that we used to
have now lives with infrared saunas or massage beds, that
type of thing.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
So a lot of the clubs have that.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Showers, Some do, some don't, depends on the size, but
the primary yes, the ones that generally speaking that you'll
see are going to have some showers.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
All yeah, definitely, Yeah that's good. When I'm driving home
with my wife, Yes, it's good too. Always good to
do that. Definitely tell US about Snap Fitness is as
a global brand.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're definitely global.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
We're thirteen hundred plus locations across the globe. You know,
We've we've really expanded pretty rapidly and all of those
different markets. US is really where it first started, and
then we moved into our Asia, pac and then UK
markets and those have expanded very very rapidly. Our size
has increased, so what was a three or four thousand
square foot location, we now have clubs that are in

(06:14):
the ten thousand plus lost size locations. So it's really
been kind of neat to see how the brand has
changed over time, even since I've been with the brand.
I've been with the brand for about five years now,
almost coming up to six, and even since when I started,
things have changed to where we're just really catering to
the market more effectively.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
What makes net Fitness special in Minnesota?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, there's so many brands in
Minnesota that are our fitness, right, So it's I don't
know why, it's just it's in the water, if you will.
But what makes Minnesota special for Snap anyways, is this
is the fact that you've got so many variety of
clubs in this area.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
It's one of our heaviest demographics.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
You've got you know, your rural clubs, your urban clubs,
suburban clubs, and you get access to all of them.
So you get to be able to bounce around and
try different clubs that have different amenities.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
How do you I noticed this when I when I
go to the gym, sometimes I'm pretty much there to
use the treadmill, maybe do some of the what you
call the pin yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
The pin selectorized yeah, pieces, yeah, and there's some other
stuff in there.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Now that's so intimidating. How do you keep people?

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Because it kind of pushes me away a little bit,
I say, everybody else doing that? You know, how do
you get people interested? And yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:22):
And coming back with that, you look at it and
you're like, gosh, I don't know what this stuff is?
How do I use it?

Speaker 2 (07:26):
And so that was a big model change that for
the America's business. Really we started to shift in where
traditionally the model was you you set it up and
you just go in, it does its thing. You don't
really have very much staff fair limited staffing, and that's
starting to change now that's just the industry requires where
members want to have that interaction with people, They want

(07:46):
to know how to use these things. And the reality
is that we don't want it to be an intimidating environment.
We want people to feel like they have an understanding
of how to change their body in a different way
than just the traditional you know types of equipment.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
So we have more staffing. You've got trainers in the clubs.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Now, it's very you know, inclusive, designed to where you
don't feel like you're a number, You're really part of
that community, which is important.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Do you guys have peaks, I mean besides January or
their peak times of year, peak times of.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Day, you know, Yeah, it's the traditional I think it's
similar to you know, really all kind of finished clubs.
You're going to need to be really in early in
the morning. You'll have maybe a mid morning rush, and
then your evenings are going to be your biggest you know,
flow of traffic for twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Twenty four hours, how early do you see people? Yeah, yeah,
when does that climb start.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
It starts really around that four to five am, and
we'll continue to probably about nine and then it starts
to taper a little bit. But yeah, you know, it's people.
We got some early.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Birds in there for sure.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Your clubs are locally owned and operated, so being part
of a community and giving back. How does that work
with with all of them? Are they franchise ease, yes, franchisees.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, it's a franchise system, so we've got single club owners,
multi club owners, you know, with with snap or really
try to have a very philanthropic kind of mindset for
our our franchise ease and into our members as well.
So we do a lot of challenges throughout the year,
raise money for big organizations, Noami, American Cancer, all that
sort of stuff. But we really encourage the local franchises

(09:12):
to do things in their communities and specifically because that's
it is owner operated, right, That's a big part of
our of our brand as we really lean into that
that we want people from within the community to own
these businesses and connect with their community.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
It's really important for the for the club.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
You touched a little bit un wellness. That's a big initiative.
I don't know if there's specific things that you do
and don't remember how much we talked about, but kind
of what's the next step with for net fitness.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, what's really hot in the industry is recovery, right,
So you've got things from the guns to infrared saunas
to we don't do the cold plunge, but we have
a cryo bad that does a very similar component to
that where you don't have to get wet and you know,
you know, dive into or get into a thirty degree
you know, tub of water.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
It's it.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
It gives you the same cooling effect for recovery and massage.
So we've we've created this zone, this recovery zone in
our clubs where you can come in. It's all part
of the membership, so you don't have to necessarily pay extra.
There might be some things here and there, but generally speaking,
it's it's part of your membership that you get and
you get to, you know, use these facilities.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
To be able to recover from your workout.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Rather than just always beating your body up and then
I'm always sore or I can't recover fast enough from
my workouts. Those are huge opportunities to do that.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's awesome. So those things you mentioned all except for
the massage bed. You can figure out what that's going
to do for me. But yeah, because this is again
one of those things. It's a little bit intimidating. What
do those things do? What does that mean? What is
the theara gun?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, so theair gun is a mild fascial technique where
it's a it's a big basically looks like a gun
with a big circle at the end that vibrates and
it's it gets the fashion tissue in your muscles and
the the lubrication between those tissues to to you know,
release so that way that you can move more functionally.
H we all have that. Your body if you're not
taking a lot of liquids in you have a lot

(10:59):
of damage, your body starts to just kind of tighten
up and that that that technique helps release those muscles,
good for stretching, flexibility. Then fred sauna is very similar,
gets your body sweating to get the toxins out. You
have infrared on that that's great for recovery. And then
if you go into the massage. Massages maybe generally speaking
to their guns, when you use them, they always don't

(11:20):
maybe feel the best. There's some pain that's involved in it, right,
so you know, but you feel great after, but during
sometimes it's not the best.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
You don't love it. The massage beds are designed to.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Do a little bit of the opposite to that, where
you get that relaxation kind of effect, right, you can
you can set them to do different things. You've got
foot therapy on there. I mean, you sit in these
things and you don't want to get out.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
They're amazing. You feel refreshed afterwards. Really cool.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
So what about owning a fitness Yeah, definitely, you know,
we we really want to look for people that have
that fitness mind behind them and a little bit of
that business aspect. So what we find is our members,
current members are great avenues to to find people that
want to own a club because they have that your
insa are ready. But for someone that wants to get
into the fitness industry, they want to you know, really

(12:05):
help others, serve others.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's who we look for.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Those are the types of franchise owners that we really
try to engage with because it really you've got to
have that in your DNA. You really want to help
others reach their goals. We can help you with the
business side of the fence. That's that's what we're here for.
That's what franchises are there for. So it's really important
for if you if you want to help and serve,
and but you want to be able to own a

(12:28):
business or you've you know, maybe you're nine to five,
is just not your passion anymore. That's where we fit
in and we can help you know, come make that
passion of reality.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
And you I mean, it's not owning a business, even
a franchise. You guys are helping. It's not easy, per se, right,
I mean, but you guys think it pretty turnkey.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
I would imagine for sure, the finness industry is one
of the easiest hardest jobs you could probably have. Right,
So if you look at it and go, it should
be very basic, but it can become very complex, from
marketing to sales to your operations of the club. There's
a lot that you have to unpack with it. So
in franchising, that's what it's designed for. We encourage people
to look at franchises like that, especially with Snap, because

(13:07):
we're very engaged with our owners. We want to help
them take them through the process. A lot of our
coaches that we have for franchisees are Snap owners. They
also own locations. So really a huge opportunity for us
in that regard where you're not talking to someone who's
just theoretically helping you about business. They actually own a
snap and can tell you from their own experience how

(13:29):
to do it the right way.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
You talked about a range of sizes of clubs. What's
the average to get started?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Average is probably about a five thousand square foot in location.
Real estate obviously is a big impactor, so finding the
right real estate is important. We have a team that
helps you do that, so you don't have to sit and.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Figure out where's a good location. How do I know?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
We actually find locations for you, review those with you,
make sure that you're understanding what the differences are, and
really help you understand where the best place to put
a club is and size, how much you spend for rent,
all the things we have you unpacket.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Man, that's great. Yeah, and if if I wanted to
do that? How how easy is it to get a
hold of you? Super easy?

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Just go again right onto the website staff and it's
dot com and there's a section on there where to
ask you if you want to be a franchise e.
Click on that button and it takes you through the
whole portal on what that entails and information about it yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
I'll probably put this in a different section. I don't
know if people are still wanting to work out literally
in the middle of the night. I mean you're there, yep,
people whatever, So going into Snap Fitness location, is it?
Is it safe to do that? Is it? What do
you guys do?

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
So we actually have some great technology that's deployed within
the club. So we have live cameras running all the time.
Those are connected to a security system as well, so
if there's something that happens in the club, we have
actually a piece of units in the.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Club that people can wear.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
So let's say, if I'm in the middle of the
night and I'm by myself and I don't feel safe
for whatever, I can wear this unit. It's it's kind
of like a clicker button, and if something happens, I
can click it immediately, you know, activates the security if
you will, the health professionals that type of thing. We
also then all have a tailgating system that's called which

(15:08):
means that let's say, for example, I'm in the club
and I swipe my card, but I'm trying to bring
somebody in with me who's not a member. It actually
catches that through facial recognition, and we can see who's
bringing members in that aren't members. Again, for safety mechanisms,
so that people aren't just opening the door wide open
and letting people come in. We can catch that through
the system and make sure that if you remember you're

(15:30):
a member.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
So will you talk about snap fitness for Snap or
snapt fitness?

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Step fitness is either one to say snap or step fitness.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, so when you talk about snap fitness, you know,
if you do the elevator pitch or whatever, and people
talk about the competition, Yeah, what does that look like?

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (15:45):
So who are who is our competition type of thing? Right, Yeah,
it's it's interesting. There's there's really kind of three you know,
demographics or categories in the industry of where clubs live,
right or or fitness facilities. So you've got your high volume,
you know, low price kind of people there, so you're
you're paying a lower barrier of entry. They've got a
lot of volume in those locations. That sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
You've got.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Then your opposite side, which is more of your say,
your luxury brands, which are going to be very expensive,
but they have all the bells and whistles, right, they're
really designed to be a one stop shop for multiple
things within your life, and so that's one side. We
kind of live right in the middle. We've created our
brand to where at one point we were kind of
down in that lower price point, but we've changed that

(16:29):
because there is where our belief is is there's members,
there's consumers out there that are looking for that higher,
more premium brand but not have those crazy luxury prices.
But then also don't want to just be a number,
meaning that I go in and I've got you know,
hundreds and hundreds of people there and I don't know
who to connect with. Right that's our model. Our model

(16:51):
is to be really kind of in that mid section.
We're going to be a premier price, so you know,
forty to maybe seventy dollars a month depending upon the club.
Some clubs are large and have more manities than others.
But it's really designed to be a catered, you know,
smaller membership base, but yet an ability to where we
can offer some of those higher end services and give
that higher end experience that you would see in.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
A luxury brand and get in and out.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
And get in out.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah that's nice too, Yeah, exactly, get in and out easy.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Tell me a little bit about the cleanliness of sef Fannis.
I'm sure that's a concern for people. Probably, you guys
have a solution. It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's it's probably the number one reason why people join
health clubs, right when you When they come into the club,
that's the first thing they look at is the cleanliness
of it, especially the bathrooms and that sort of thing.
So for for us, you know, our model is designed
to where you have a lot less barriers there, whereas
if you're in a big box kind of platform, you've
got so much more square footage to have to take
care of. That's that's less of an issue for us.

(17:47):
We have cleaning crews in our clubs. We've got, like
I said, the staff in there. So and then the
fact that it's easier to also sounds kind of funny
train the members to do the same. It was a
conversation I had just last week with a potential interested
franchise e that came to our headquarters office and they said, so,
how do you do all the cleanliness stuff?

Speaker 3 (18:06):
And I said, to be honest with you, it's.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Easier now that we've revitalized this club, when we've brought
it up to the new standard of what our brand
is to clean it than what it was before because
the members value it more.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
They see the investment.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
It's fresh, it's new, it's clean, and they help keeping
a clean even more so than they did before. So
that's really a big part of that premium mindset around
our brand is people want to take care for things
that are nice. What else should people know about stet fitness,
you know, I think the biggest thing with Snap you know,
step fitness is we're really our mantras about for the feeling.
We really want people to connect on the results that

(18:42):
they want to be able to get, and connect with
the club and the people within it. So it's important
that when you come into a Snap get involved in
the community, you know, talk to the members there, talk
to the staff, and we want to be able to
be part of a solution for you. And I think
that's what makes us different. You're not just a number
where you come in and you know, you fall into

(19:02):
the woodwork and nobody really knows what you're doing. We
want to try to be engaged with you to help
you on your finished journey. I think that's really important
for our brand as.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Far as results. So you guys are pretty active with that, right,
you help set goals and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, so we try to kill yes, Yeah, we try
to connect with where people are at. And let's be honest,
you know where we're at is generally through technology, our
phones and so forth. So we have a stap app
that is really a great tool for us to engage
with our members both within the club and external from
the club. We have you know, virtual workouts that you
can do while you're at the club, so if there's
something you want to do and you're not sure, you

(19:35):
can use your phone for that. You also have content
within the club that's playing that allows you to show
you how to do workouts. But then if you're at
home and you just can't get to the gym today's
time is tight. You still connect with the club through
the app. We've got nutrition information in their challenges where
it's gamification, you can you can do things that way,

(19:55):
so it's really encompassing.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
So that way it keeps you motivated and wanting to
come back.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
It's fun. Yeah, and then joining just go to the website, right.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Go to the website, go to the club, join online,
join in person, really easy. You have said, yes, yeah,
go to snap dot com and you're off off to
the race of Steph Finish dot com.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Ryan Tetz, President of step Fitness America. Or are you
guys hiring? By the way, we're.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Always looking for good people, right, who isn't so Ya
dot com?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Right?

Speaker 1 (20:19):
You got it all right, Brian, thanks so much for
stopping by.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Thank you, I appreciate it.