.png)
The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
How AI and Leadership are Shaping the Future of Fitness
The boundary between technology and wellness is blurring, creating revolutionary opportunities for fitness professionals and businesses ready to evolve. Mike Hansen, a 25-year veteran of the fitness industry turned business incubator, shares his journey from gym operations to Wall Street and back to fitness entrepreneurship, revealing how passion and strategic thinking combine to create successful ventures in the wellness space.
Hansen provides a compelling roadmap for navigating the technological transformation sweeping through fitness. "There's two businesses in the future: the ones that use AI and the ones that are out of business," he states, while offering practical advice on creating an AI-driven culture that enhances rather than replaces human connection. His approach—"automate the grind, amplify the voice"—demonstrates how technology can free fitness professionals to focus on high-value activities while maintaining the personal touch that clients crave.
The conversation delves into why athletes make exceptional entrepreneurs, with Hansen observing that "100% will lose, 90% will fail, and 10% won't quit." This athletic DNA—characterized by perseverance through setbacks and delayed gratification—translates directly to business success. Similarly, the shift from "look good" to "feel good" as a primary consumer motivation reflects a more sustainable approach to wellness that prioritizes holistic wellbeing over pure aesthetics.
Perhaps most exciting is Hansen's work bridging the traditional gap between healthcare and fitness through ventures like Bridge Health, which enables fitness businesses to participate in insurance-supported care plans. This innovation creates win-win scenarios for consumers seeking preventative wellness, healthcare providers, and fitness businesses ready to expand their impact. Connect with Mike at MikeGHansen.com or find him on LinkedIn to learn more about these emerging opportunities.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://creatitive.com/fit-to-grit-cast/
AI can take in more data than a human technically can, and they can make various recommendations. They can be that first layer and then we somewhat become servants to what it suggested. There's two businesses in the future, right, there's the ones that use AI and the ones that are out of business.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. We talk through all those visionary ideas that come to us during our normal daily activity break. Today I have a special guest Mike. Mike, we've known each other for quite some time, actually. We actually met a couple of years ago and we're finally getting around to having you on the cast. So I look forward to hearing all of your ventures, everything that you're working on right now, and why don't you just start off by telling everyone a little bit about yourself, what you're doing now, and we can kind of go from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, happy to. So my story starts about 25 years ago. I got in the fitness industry in the gym side of the equation, held pretty much every operational role at 24 Hour. Fitness Did pretty well there. But one day I was like I got to get a real job. I can't wear sweatpants in the hat the rest of my life, so I left the industry, formally trained in education and finance, so I actually went into Wall Street healthcare specific hedge funds.
Speaker 1:The reason part of that story was super important is because when I left the industry I realized I left my passion and so I came back into the industry for a couple years there and I put my entrepreneurial hat on and I started to build companies. And my first company that I started was based on this whole mission of making fitness fun, because fitness back in the early 2000s and still probably to this day for some isn't fun. And so I introduced video games and how to use your body as a controller, pre-nintendo Wii, pre-the camera, early stages, top 100, browns for Magazine, a bunch of different accolades. When I exited that business which was my first sort of like real go at a business learned a lot of lessons but also got to take a break, and when I came back into the space, I got to come back into the healthcare side of the equation and innovation. So I got to do work within tons of different fortune 500 companies Merck, medtronic, pepsico, blue Cross, humana and what I really learned was I learned how innovation is actually handled, because the fitness industry was the last thing from innovative, and so what I did from that point on is I got into the business of building companies, and that's not really something they tell you as the career counselor. There is such a thing, but there is a thing. And so I actually got certified as a business incubation executive because I wanted to learn pre-Wyatt Combinator, pre all these things how businesses were still alive five years later at an 87% success rate, and I realized there was a system to this. I realized you could build a business like you could build a product, and so ever since then I have been building companies in the space, some of which I do for corporations, some of which I partner with entrepreneurs who are in really cool areas or have really cool technology, and some areas where nobody's doing it and I'm like I got to do it and so you can save that for the pod and talk about whatever ones we want, but ultimately that's what I've been doing over the past couple of years.
Speaker 1:I've been trying to be a thought leader in the space around trends and what's coming next. I've done that many, many times. I've been way early, introduced recovery in 2015 into the industry with float tanks. Then I did the first recovery to studio in 2018. Obviously, it was on the GLP-1 train and started speaking about that a couple years ago and the impact it was going to have on our industry. And what's coming next, in my opinion, is we are in the midst of probably the biggest shift we'll have ever seen, when GLP helped that and that comes in around this whole world of engineered well-being, biohacking, longevity, recovery, precision medicine and everything that's going to happen with science and technology and how we approach helping people feel better, look better and perform better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. I think it's a. It's definitely the trend on where everything's going. The wellness side, right. I'm a very big component of trying to talk these studios into understanding the premise of the mental well-being compared to just the fitness well-being, right, and that's where the trend is going. You know, 2020 kind of put this whole situation in spectrum where everyone thought, oh, everyone wanted to work out from home, and I think that what actually ended up happening is the exact opposite started to happen, Like people started to have depression and being like I need to find a community, I need to go somewhere, and I don't just want to go somewhere where I can get physically fit, but I want to go somewhere where I can get mentally fit as well, and I think that it's a huge trend that's going to continue to rise as studios and all these companies.
Speaker 2:Now let's get into the technology side, because I work with a lot of marketing and I see this huge trend right now with AI in particular. With AI in particular, where everyone just wants AI to do everything for them, and so can you talk a little bit about. Can you talk a little bit about the technology side and how you feel it fitting in to the industry as a whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think you have to understand the pathway and the journey of the consumer that's going to go through here, and I think we're going to see things start. We're going to see things start first and foremost with the diagnostics, right. So diagnostics is obviously going to be the area that's going to allow us to get a personalization. So that's obviously a technology-enabled solution, right?
Speaker 1:Once somebody is diagnosed whether that's a blood panel, dna, microbiome, tons of different ways to look at this we're going to then move into this sort of like personalized prescription, right, and that prescription could be across nutrition, it could be exercise, could be sleep, could be tons of different things. Then we're going to move into this world of, obviously, the utilization, which is the consumption. Then we're going to monitor the consumption ie wearables, right. Then we're going to manage that solution in somewhat of a flywheel model that's going to have technology through the entire thing. Otherwise, we're going to be in these point solutions, but at the end of the day, it's a combination of those factors across what I think is six categories, and so you're going to see the technology within the product, you're going to see technology within the delivery, you're going to see technology within the management of that.
Speaker 2:And I think it's an interesting concept, because right now you're talking a lot about the business itself, from post-sale, pre-sale. On the other hand, we're seeing a lot of these AI companies. Basically, long story short let's write blog content, let's bring people through a pipeline, let's have AI run our ads, let's have AI do all of the stuff that brings people in. Ai run our ads, let's have AI do all of the stuff that brings people in. And I'm starting to feel me it could just be a personally to me, but I'm starting to feel like things are getting a little disconnected. People want to have that personalization, they want that human experience, and so how do you see the human integration playing a part of that technology integration?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're going to have some people that like to intersect with technology first and then move into the human part, so, and then some people that might be old school at purchase, technology scares them and they need to start with the human Right, and so it's just the funnel right at the end of the day, and I think you're going to have different points of intersection where there's going to be the human touch inside there. The way that I would say the future health system looks like and I'm going to use that as an example, because I know there's a lot of venture capital groups and things of that nature thinking this way is the home will start as the area of diagnostics. The home will become very connected. The home will be able to sense what's going on, things of this nature. We're going to think forward here for a bit. Once that takes place, then the first layer of intersection is actually most likely going to be AI. It's going to give a quick answer, it's going to give quick touch, but there's going to be a point where there's going to be a handoff and it's going to hand off to a healthcare practitioner, right, and that healthcare practitioner will then take that next level so they can see more people right and they can be more efficient with their time, and then from there, what happens is the hospitals and the different medical clinics become points of service, right, and so if you think that model plays out and you believe in that model, then that's ultimately where the human becomes involved.
Speaker 1:I do think that there is an element where AI has the ability to step into the first position unfortunately, whether people want to hear that or not and that is that the AI can take in more data than a human technically can, and they can make various recommendations. They can be that first layer and then we somewhat become servants to what it suggested, and that's going to only get better over time, and that's probably the honest answer. There's also the world where you have people that like to work in highly specialized, personalized, $10,000 a month memberships. Those are human-based, yeah, yeah, that AI is supporting. But then you have the Planet Fitnesses of the world, which are utility-driven, price-driven. People are looking for value, value, value, and they're going to have to use technology. So I think it's market-driven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So it's really an audience. To me, what it sounds like is you're kind of specifying that the AI side is going to play a huge part into not just the diagnostics, but it's really going to separate out that customization, because I think I do agree with you. I think that's the hardest. That's really been the hardest challenge I've had with with my, with my business, is hey, the cuts. How do you leverage AI within the customization side of larger product projects for larger companies versus how do you focus on these? These smaller ones just want value and you don't have time to do the customization or it's a budget line.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I've had a lot of conversations about the gyms of the future, the businesses of the future and things of that nature, and I'm pretty straightforward with what I say to people about it. I say, basically, at this stage of the game, ai is pretty early and what you need to do is you need to focus on a culture shift first. So what I suggest is that you actually go meet with your team and you tell your team to go out and find as many AI tools that they can to find efficiency within 30% of the work they do. It's not replacing them. What that does is that gets those people to actually go out and do the work and not feel like they're getting replaced, but that feels like there's an enablement element happening. So you should find about 30 to 40% efficiencies with AI at this stage of the game in your business, as most businesses do, and then from there, what you've done is you've created an AI driven culture.
Speaker 1:Then you can move into product and then, once you've driven into product, then you can move into customer right, and so I don't think it's a question of whether you do it. I think it's a question of how you do it. It's just like most things right, and that's the strategic roadmap comes into play, and those are the things where the companies that are doing that right now which is over 50% of the fortune 500 companies are doing it are going to see success. I mean, I love that statement and I've used it many, many times and I'm not the originator of it, but there's two businesses in the future, right, there's the ones that use AI and the ones that are out of business. Yep, yeah, that's. That is a good one.
Speaker 2:That is a good one. I've been good one. I've been sitting here racking my head last year like, all right, what's the best way for me to bring in AI into the company without losing the human soul of the growth of the customization aspect of what we do? Because with what we do you kind of have to, there has to be a customization to it. I have to know the audience, I have to know who they are, and without necessarily talking to humans, it makes it very hard to create a customized plan right for them.
Speaker 2:But with what you're saying back to, you know it brings me back to your the beginning of this conversation, when you talked a lot about your first, your first company in the in the gamification side, the gaming stuff. You know you look at a lot of gaming companies right now and you see it all the time, like now the video, uh, and developers are not really just, they don't design like they used to. Now they have to know AI and they have to learn AI. So are you saying from, are you saying that we're falling through a trend where trainers and actually, um, the people that are operation through the studios need to just realize right now, like hey, like I know, I love being with people, but I need to start learning technology. I need to start knowing something here, because if I don't understand at least the basics of AI, then I could be cut out of the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am saying if you haven't done that, you're behind. This is the year of implementation of AI and agentic frameworks, where agents are getting involved now, right. So there's this world where AI was being played with and dabbled with, and now we're getting into this next level, what they call agent of frameworks, which is the agent side of the equation, right, and those are things that can work for you and with you, or they can work against you.
Speaker 1:So I would rather be in the sandbox working with them than letting them work against me, because they work 24 seven.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, so I do.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I think that, um, you know, it's safe to say as these trainers, um, as these trainers of these gyms or wherever whatever, uh, position you are at the gym.
Speaker 2:Back to what you said with the culture shift side of things that they possibly just need to embrace the fact that, hey, AI is going to be a part of what they're going to be doing, technology is going to be continued adaptation of what they're going to do, and they're probably going to have to get through some of that resistance on, hey, some of the things that I used to do customized before are probably going to have to shift a little bit so I can focus more time on the higher level tasks that actually the diagnostics and the planning of helping these individuals, like you said, with their health and with physical activity.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing a lot of apps come out right now, too, with the AI and particular to the studios itself, where they're like, hey, come out and have them come out with your, your customized, your customized workout routines and stuff like that that you can start giving to your customers and your members, and I'm like, leverage it but, like you said, it's implementation right, so take it and be able to know how. Can I put my own twist on this, based off of the type of studio that we're at? Don't just take the AI and let it rip out something and then just say here you go, this is what you're going to do.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've seen. So I think there's a pretty strong message that you can think about, whether it's for trainers or whether it's for car washers or whatever the case may be, and that and I've seen this messaging by another company. I thought it was brilliant. They basically said automate the grind, amplify the voice right, and for them it was obviously a marketing company. But it really is that automate the grind, right. You have to.
Speaker 1:You have three things that you should do with a task list, in my opinion and I tell people this all the time which is you can automate, you can delegate and you should eliminate right. And so if you can't delegate it, it's on your list, should it be on your list. If it shouldn't be eliminated right. And then you've got the automate side and eventually, what happens in that task list is you get to the tasks that are probably most important for you, the highest value, and when you work on high value things, your value becomes higher. Yeah, it's a good way to-. So what happens is you are saying I'm going to charge a customer $100 an hour and then you're sitting there inputting stuff into a CRM. Nobody pays $100 to anybody to input stuff into a CRM. So change the shift in the mindset. Take that simple thing and write all your tasks down automate, delegate, eliminate and then focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I'm actually in the process of rereading um, buy back your time and using that same delegation list that you're talking about, the chart there to delegate the efficiency of, okay, what is the things that I need to start, cause that's going to be an ongoing thing. Right, as studios and as these fitness associations, they evolve, you, as the business owner, need to learn to like hey, you need to start delegating your time higher, higher and higher, as you continue to try to make it to the next level of what you're at, because owning a million dollar business is a little bit. You're going to have a little bit of different tasks than owning a 10 million or a you know, knock on wood a hundred million dollar business.
Speaker 1:For sure, but I think it's an important thing you can do in anything. You can do that in life, you can do that in business, you can do that anywhere.
Speaker 2:So, going back to going back to what you do a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about you growing businesses. So what are some trends that you have seen in the fitness industry? For we'll just say, just be straight, like you've worked with you've probably worked with a lot of businesses, a lot of startups what are the things that you see that help people succeed compared to, compared to? You know they're going to fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean it is true that the jockey is obviously the thing that you're probably placing the bet on right, and there's a little bit of an intuitive side.
Speaker 1:Obviously the guy who's going in at the second or third time honestly is a little bit better than the guy going out the first time.
Speaker 1:The way that I look at this is which comes back to the athlete and I'm going to be bringing this full circle in one second and that is that I tend to work with people that are athletes, and the reason why is because in business, a hundred percent will lose, 90% will fail and 10% won't quit.
Speaker 1:100% will lose, 90% will fail and 10% won't quit. So most success happens after the second or third major failure in the business. So if you can't get to that point and there's charts that show where people get their exits, where people get the highest value, what the success rate is there's people that do this research, but what I see because I'm not looking at it from pure data perspective is that it's getting through those points of failure. Most athletes can set a goal in a championship and go through losing seasons, lose games, and keep training and keep playing and delay that gratification, and so I would say that is what I look for and what I think is the number one thing is the athletic DNA within a person does not mean if you didn't go to college and play sports, you could be an athlete now because technically people would do fitness nonstop lifestyles. Commitment, commitment, commitment, commitment, right, like that's what.
Speaker 2:I look for it's that perseverance, right, and that's kind of why I've grown my business the way I have too, because I live off those similar values when it comes to hiring my employees. Because, you're right, you have an athlete that comes in. They persevere. They spend 20 plus years trying to make it into a professional sport, not knowing if they're going to make it, not knowing if they're going to make it. They spend that long just to hit that first real hurdle and go through the smaller failures along the way. And then the same can be said about business right. The same can be said about the hurdles.
Speaker 2:I've tended to start to see myself within the studio perspective and being in marketing and understanding the whole marketing and branding side, the levels, the levels myself of all right, you're between $250, between 250 and $500,000. You need a mindset shift. You're no longer a trainer Like. You need to start doing some of those higher level tasks. You know a million is is all about hey, now how do you start building those systems and those teams, that the culture around those systems? And then, of course, you get the seven to the 10 and then it's all right. Now it it's expansion. Start building that consistency amongst multiple locations like. So I've started to see that same trend when it comes, and unfortunately I have to turn a lot of people down because they're just not at that shift. They're just not at that shift yet where they don't understand, like, hey, it's not necessarily about you're stuck in validation mode, my friend, you need them, you need to move on to the next phase here of your business growth. Um, and it it's like you earlier.
Speaker 2:I think it happens in every business. Of course, every business has different levels of when that those, those points, hit, or the valley of death periods, as you probably know they're called. But I think that there there is a huge mindset shift that I think athletes in particular have to get past. I think their biggest hurdle to get past is all right, I'm no longer grinding myself. I'm no longer grinding myself. I now have, like you said, I now have to delegate, become a leader and start to build culture and systems for other people to do, and I have to start holding other people accountable. And I think that's why it makes it so hard for an athlete, because they're so used to having a coach or having someone do that stuff for them that they have to make that shift. They have to make that shift and for some it's a real struggle.
Speaker 1:No, 100%. Business has stages and phases, just like athletes go through novice, amateur, semi-pro, pro, right and so same thing. So the problem is with that is you really got to be able to especially as a coach or anybody who's doing consultees you got to be able to understand the phase they're in. You've got to understand the mindset they're at, because the decision you're telling them and the decision and choice, whether it's in a you're in the grind phase, you're in the product market fit phase, you're in the process phase, you're in the channel market fit, you're in the growth phase, whatever the decision is different for the activity. And I think that's where it's super important to work with people, because if you haven't gone through that, then how do you know when to shift Right? And I think the next level that I really am starting to embrace and enjoy is that I'm embracing the fact of like let's not focus on the business, let's focus on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do you become high performance, not the business?
Speaker 1:Because of your high performance the car goes faster, and I'm a big, big fan of the corporate athlete model in the book that was put out about that, and what I took from that is there's this model of oscillation that gets spoken about, which is energy expenditure followed by energy renewal. We kind of go through our days like this and I've embraced it quite a bit which has a lot to do with like biohacking and cold plunging and working out and resting and grounding and all this type of different stuff and making sure your body's right. And the premise of it is it's not the amount of time you put it into it, it's the energy that's in that time. Many people just grind through that but, like for me, if I'm getting tired, I go take a nap, I just do Right, I lay on my mat, I take a break, right. And so I've realized that is more important to accelerate and do more things than it is to put more time into things, and I think that's also embraced by most athlete mindsets.
Speaker 2:I think it's. I think it comes back to the I mean to put it simple like work smart, not hard, type situation. You know it's, and I've been really embracing that mind, that mindset myself. I think it's a huge struggle, especially for um startups. And, uh, when you're in the first, let's just say you're at your first bit and you're, you're in your first business and you're kind of hitting that mindset shift.
Speaker 2:It's such a hard thing to wrap your head around, cause I've been doing stuff very similar. You know I'm like, all right, I'm going to start dedicating my mornings to, you know, doing the stuff that I love working out, building, I love to build. So do stuff like that. That I'm like. But your mind, the old mindset, sits there and it says shouldn't you be in the office doing stuff right now? Shouldn't you be in the office? And you're like, no, this is actually going to be the stuff that's going to allow the creativity and the visionary stuff to come about, for you to start, you know, thinking differently, for you to start working on those higher level tasks. And I think that it's. I think it's a huge shift that you know. And then you look at you know, you look at other people. I'll just use my wife, for example, who's still in the corporate world. She's used to doing the grind every day. She's like what? You're spending two hours, you know, doing cold plunges and working out in the morning. Like, like, how is that making you money?
Speaker 1:And I'm like it's allowed, it's allowing me to have the power to focus on my authenticity and focus on what I want to focus on, you know there's research on that, so they call it the fit CEO and they looked at fit CEOs and they have a definition of fit CEO which, in essence, lives the lifestyle and the enterprise value of business was 10% higher. Yeah, ceo which, in essence, lives the lifestyle and the enterprise value of business was 10% higher. Yeah, 10% enterprise value If you're talking a hundred million dollar companies that's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh heck, yeah. And that let's not even talk about the burnout part of it too, like you, just it's so easy to get burnout when you're not focusing on yourself, and so I think you put it, you said it greatly, that like, yeah, like the personal, how much the personal development actually helps you, helps you grow your business. You know, he said I said by 10%, that's a shit load of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a time for grinding hustle. I'm a huge hustle guy, like you know. I know that's a bad word for some people nowadays, but I'm a hustle guy, right, I hire hustle, I don't care what people think, but it's. There's a point where you can hustle to a point where you just hit blocks and you do burn out Right Um, where you need to go back and so, like, the more that I've incorporated that, the better I feel. And that kind of brings up the whole point of where I think this whole world and society is moving, which is we.
Speaker 1:I believe we shifted from a look good to a feel good society and we want to feel good first and the look good comes with that. Right, but also, at the same time, if you think about, like I'm going to go back 20 years when it came to points of like looking good, it didn't feel great where my macros were and some of the crazy stuff I was doing to try to get my body and try to get a six pack and all that type of stuff, right Now I'm like a little more, like that's fine, if I got it, I got it. If I don't, I don't Right, but I feel great, so let's go with it.
Speaker 2:I actually call that fake healthy. I remember when I was going to that phase myself where I was focusing on the macros and I was like, eating just to get my 350 grams of carbs in, I'd be like, oh, I guess I have to have wheat spaghetti tonight and eat a shitload of it. So you get your grams of carbs in. Or you know you'd you'd sneak in that cookie. Oh, I won't eat vegetables, I'm not, you know, I'm not, it's not going to give me any of my macros. Like it's the micros, right, it's the micro stuff, those little incremental things. And so I remember when I was there, man, I was in the same boat and now I'm.
Speaker 2:Now I'm much more like, hey, I just want to feel good, like I'm not going to go in and and try to ground, pound and do what people say of like, try to hit your max. I'm like, why do I need to hit a max? Like I'm here to feel good, not necessarily, you know, try to lift 400 pounds. Yep, completely understand. Let's talk about some of the businesses you're working on right now. I know both of us are going to be at the HFA conference next week and so I love to. I'd love to hear a little bit more on what you're working on right now and how you're trying to bring it forth in the world today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm pretty focused on two things. So, number one what I've been working on is I've been working on trying to, first off, define what this new industry is going to be called the biohacking and longevity precision medicine and I've been working on what this sort of market map looks like and trying to find a common factor between all of it. Right, and what I've come to land on is I've come to land on that most consumers that participate in these things whether it's wearables, precision medicine, whatever we're all hacking our health. So I call them health hackers. So I've been focused on understanding health hackers. There's people who hack health for feeling good. There's people who do it to look good. There's people who do it to perform better, whatever it may be. And within that, then, I've sort of defined the businesses that exist within that, which is telemedicine, diagnostics, supplement manufacturing, wellness resorts, everything across the board. And so I work with a variety of businesses in those specific spaces in all honesty, and I actually just got back last week when I went to Costa Rica because I'm actually working on a resort in Costa Rica oh nice, understanding the end result, understanding that basically the person who goes through and likes to enjoy these things. They eventually go do wellness retreats, and I did my first wellness retreat in the cloud forest no TVs, completely off the grid, disconnected, super, super, super interesting. I didn't know what to expect, right, I knew the partners, I knew the people who owned the property, all that type of stuff. So I got to go down and experience that and by day two, when I was there, I was like, oh, I get it, now it makes sense. I got to do cloud forest bathing. Clouds are rolling by you, completely disconnected. There's like 400 birds, there's monkeys, there's pumas, there's all this crazy stuff, right, that you can go milk a cow, all the food is right there, amazing food, right, and I was like interesting. So I what I do is I understand that I'm like, as technology goes deeper and we're going to want these sort of yin and yang experiences, right. So that's obviously one area I'm planning Um. Recently I just was announced the chief growth officer of sweat works. I don't know if you know who sweat works is, but they're the largest um digital innovation within the health and fitness industry. So we obviously do product and technology build solutions and so getting ready to go HFA to meet with all the clients there.
Speaker 1:I've been partnered with Mo for a long time four or five years specifically around sort of trading business back and forth. We co-founded a company called Bridge Health together, which is actually in order to bridge the gap between health services and fitness using insurance. So we're enabling fitness brands with customers that qualify to utilize their insurance for supplementary support around physician-guided coaching, and what happens is we're able to use their insurance to give them more service and the fitness brand is able to participate in that care plan which allows us to pay them to go ahead and service that customer. There's no codes that exist specifically around the gym for that, but we have a model and a system that allows us to provide more services and the gym make more money. It's actually pretty revolutionary because there's been this huge gap between the market for a long long time and there always will be, because health care because healthcare get paid when they're sick and fitness, technically we get paid when people are healthy, because they're continuously coming, because if they're sick or got a broken leg, they're probably not coming or they may cancel, and so I'm working across the spectrum in a variety of areas, but it's all focused around what's next and what's coming, or what's right for our market to continue forward.
Speaker 1:I've had this weird thing where I felt like I think it was in 2010 when I first was like we need to break down the four walls of these gyms. The gym should not be a service center or be a destination. It needs to be a service right. And so I've always had this weird mindset of like, how do we do better as an industry? And part of that, what I've realized is it's not what do we want the industry to do. It's taking into effect of like what should the industry do? What do we want it to do? And then also there's this market and media side of the equation, which have tailwinds, and what I've tried to do before is like this is the right thing to do, but that's not what the media or the market was saying. That's a tough, that's a tough road to go down. So it's like you got to accept these things almost like a Venn diagram, and then be like okay, where's the opportunity?
Speaker 2:So I feel, on that one, it's, it's I've. I've hit that wall myself, talking a lot about, especially with the digital marketing and the in the marketing side, and how studios need to focus much more on the community aspect, like you said, the community aspect of the mental well-being, and stop focusing so much on just the traction. Let's just call 80 people in our area and try to get people into our studio, because I feel like it's pointless. I'm like you're just wasting money, you're wasting time. You're not a sales rep, you're an owner Like you don't need that Build advocacy. I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing with this insurance plan. Is there any way you could talk a little bit more about that, how it works, how studios can eventually start taking advantage of this insurance?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'll kind of talk about the macro and then get into the sort of the studio side of the application. So approximately 65% of the population has commercial insurance, yeah, and within that insurance, when services are provided, they're provided via what's called CPT codes, which are billing codes, right, and so you go to a doctor and the doctor is going to do a wellness check on you or they're going to, you know, do something they're going to bill against the code. What we were able to do is we were to table these existing codes and package them together in such a way that allows us to provide service and somewhat, it's a 26 week what we call metabolic care plan and it's physician guided, with health coaching, all delivered via telemedicine, leveraging these codes right, and so we are the package together. In order for somebody to participate in that, the insurance requires this person to have 27 BMI plus two weight-related health conditions or have a 30 BMI, right, it's the same qualifications for GLP-1s and semiglutides and trizepatide and all these type of things, right?
Speaker 1:So once they qualify, we're able to accept them into this service, right, and then we service them over 26 weeks via telemedicine with physicians, nurse practitioners, health coaches, rds, things of this nature and what happens is then we're able to then go to the gym or the studio and have them participate with us, because there's certain services or products that they may have that we could utilize to help that customer get better results or achieve their compliance right. We can purchase those from the studio, we can purchase those from the club to then participate with that client or member or patient, whatever that is anticipate with a client or member or patient, whatever that is, and so we're able to service their customer better service right, because technically, with physician, health, coaching, behavioral sort of modification, then they make more money when we buy their services, and so it's a win, win, win for everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that, it definitely is. It helps the consumer, it helps the studio and it just really helps people. Preemptive is. You know what I say. I don't know if you and I ever had this conversation, had this conversation in the past when we talked. But my wife has MS and when she first got diagnosed with MS it was, you know, they did the whole hey, we have to take shots every day, you have to do this. You know, that was during my time of of really, really down in my macros and uh, I was like, no, let's just, let's just start having you eat healthy. You know, let's just see what happens. And it was night and day, night and day. My wife hasn't had an episode since she started eating healthy. And it just goes to show you how the preemptive of for your human body holds so much weight over. Let's just wait until you go into the hospital and you get sick. Well, let's just probably not to get sick, right, right?
Speaker 1:right, yeah, no, I think what's going to happen here is people have to realize that this whole bridging of the gap between healthcare and fitness is just not going to happen. So I was at the healthcare specific hedge fund when CMS for the first time redefined obesity to be covered. It was 2004. And they covered a bariatric surgery for the first time, because back in the day obesity wasn't disease, right, it had to be classified as disease for coverage. And so at that point I left that industry to come back into fitness, because number one I was passionate about, but number two I was like oh, a bridge is going to form between the two, right, so I'm going to go into preventative versus reactive care. Well, obviously, 20 years later, that bridge still has not formed. It must be a really long bridge or the bridge will never be built. Right, it's never going to be built. Right, it's never going to be built. That's the point.
Speaker 1:Because when you're sick, you make money in healthcare, or when the patient's sick, the customer right and over in fitness. Technically, you make more money when somebody is healthy, right, even though you're helping sick people become healthy. You get my point. In the middle is this preventative world. The problem with preventative is that the average employment is around two and a half years, so most employers are not incentivized to make you healthy for the next guy that's gonna hire you, because we live in this hopping society of employment. So nobody owns preventative and that's why a majority of the wearables and all these things that you might think about on self-care and preventative are not covered by anybody, and it has to be a cash-based self-paying market.
Speaker 1:Well, within insurance there are specific things. Some people have insurance. They get massages, and massages could help with you're sick, but for me it would be preventative, right? My thought process and what I said is imagine if we could walk into a gym or any fitness service provider and just here's my insurance card. Can you tell me what services I qualify for that might help me with this goal of preventative self-care? There's things within there that exist and most people don't know what those are. Right, so this is product number one. But what I envision is I envision a world where we'll be able to utilize our insurance to potentially have additional ancillary wraparound services in addition to the fitness workout right. Will the gym be covered? Tbd, who knows? Right? Hsa, fsa, pre-tax dollars, yes, but it's still dollars coming out of the consumer's wallet. What I'm talking about is truly supplemental. Your insurance is helping with it and doesn't require you more money outside of maybe a copay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I can totally see how. I can totally see how that could that could play benefit into the whole situation. It seems like you definitely do your research. You have to if you build all these businesses right. So why don't we kind of cut it there for today? I know you and I are going to probably meet up again at HFA, but for the time being, for anyone who's listening to this podcast that would like to get to know a little bit more about you or get to know about your insurance plan, how can they find you? Yeah, so me personally.
Speaker 1:I have a website. It's MikeGHansen H-A-N-S-E-Ncom and my email is Mike at MikeGHansencom. And then, if you're looking at that on the company side, the other company is Bridge Health and that's mybridgehealthio. You can look that up there and so, but it's usually just easy to also just find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty constant on LinkedIn. I do a lot of content there, so let's hook up with me there and we can go from there.
Speaker 2:LinkedIn's my gem as well, man, so we'll keep in contact through that as well and I'll make sure that this gets out and you'll be able to share it with some people. But you'll be able to share it with some people. But again, I really appreciate you coming on, mike. It was a pleasure. I know we haven't talked in a while, so it was really great to catch up. This is another episode of the 50 Group Cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and I hope everyone has a good rest of their day.
