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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Can You Really Train the Uneducated Consumer: A Fitness Industry Debate
This episode highlights Brandon’s journey from aspiring NHL player to fitness entrepreneur after a career-ending injury. Listeners gain insights into transforming challenges into opportunities while navigating the fitness landscape.
• Early dreams of joining the NHL
• Transitioning from sports to personal training
• Exploring different fitness approaches and methodologies
• Establishing the Metabolic franchise model
• Core values: strength, consistency, and accountability
• The importance of educating the consumer
• Resistance to fleeting fitness trends
• Enhancing community relationships through fitness
• Movement as a foundational element for health
Don't forget to share, subscribe, and review our podcast! Your support helps us grow and bring actionable insights to your fitness journey.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Help the Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we have another great episode for all of you. So, without further ado, welcome to the show, brandon. Brandon, it's a pleasure to have you on today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Really excited. We did a lot of pre-talking for the show about a lot of fun stuff, so wide array of stuff to kind of dive into. We got a lot in common, so that gets me excited. But without further ado, tell us a little bit about how you kind of ended up in the health and fitness world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll open with saying I apologize to your guests. I'm a little sick today, so the voices I feel like I sound like a 13-year-old kid going through puberty right right now, so you might catch a few cracks here. But no, um, I fell into fitness, naturally. Um, I grew up in canada and I'll make this story short because I'm, uh, kind of get bored of telling your own story. But I chased that common canadian childhood dream to to play hockey in the National Hockey League. I got pretty close.
Speaker 2:Fitness was a big part of getting me there. The way I like to look at it, I was. You know, obviously I was a good hockey player, but once you get to the top levels everybody is good, and at that top level I would say I was kind of an average skill set player. So fitness became that equalizer that allowed me to remain relevant and I always treated those off seasons with the utmost importance and knew that the more I could control off the ice, the better chance I had once the puck dropped. So I started players that I played with and people that lived in the town I grew up in, that might've played on other teams or in other leagues, started noticing the type of conditioning that I was in, which was just different. And they started asking do you mind if we follow your program, brandon? And I said, yeah shit, I guess I've got to get certified so I can charge for this. And that's kind of how I fell into fitness. So my typical summers would be bartending at night to make some quick money and then I would train people in the day and myself and I would get ready for the next season and unfortunately, at the height of my career, while I was in training camp with the New York Islanders, I got a career-ending concussion and pretty much on that night my entire journey stopped and I had to think you know what is a kid living in the States with no real education do post career? So you know fitness. It made sense to give it a go. I can't say it was an easy thing to transition to, but it made sense right. I had a lot of good friendships in the city that I live in today because of the career. So I live in Charlotte, north Carolina. So I leveraged relationships. I leveraged I guess what you would call status at that point in the market and started training people locally, experimented with a few different concepts.
Speaker 2:I was a very early adopter of the CrossFit model. What I mean is long before it hit pop culture. So we're talking like mid-2000s, which is crazy when you think about it, um, but I also got to witness when it hit pop culture and kind of questioned not, is this a bad program? Uh, but should this be pushed at scale? Should this be something that you, uh, push on the entire population, or is this more of a sports specific thing for a period of time? And that led me and my co founder down a path of creating really something for us. You know it was a strength bias program that the way I would describe is for people past their sport. You know what I mean. There was nothing more to train for. I wasn't looking to win anything, but I wanted to be strong as I aged, I wanted to be athletic, still within reason, wanted to be athletic still within reason.
Speaker 2:So what we started experimenting with close to 15 years ago is a program that now is called Metabolic and we are a franchise system. So we franchise the model. Me and my partner control our growth and all of our program design and the on-ramping of all of our trainers and as of today you know, not to date the recording. We have just over 40 units open and I think we've got another three opening in the next 30 days and about six or seven planned for Q2. So for our growth cycle we'll hit that, you know, exciting 50, 50 units open sometime mid year 2025. And yeah, I'm super proud of my team. You know I'm lucky. I get to be the the voice for a powerhouse team that help our franchisees thrive. So, yeah, I always like to acknowledge that. You know I'm the lucky guy that gets to sit on the camera from time to time, but you know I'm supported by our house group of people that I'm all super proud of.
Speaker 1:And what makes it different? What do you think Metabolic is? Why does it stand out?
Speaker 2:What do you think metabolic is? Why does it stand out? So standing out is an interesting word, right, because that is an ongoing thing we're still trying to figure out. So I'll come back to how we do stand out. But you also have to peel back looking at what a general consumer sees. So we do hang out in the boutique space and educating the uneducated consumer is still a difficult thing. And when I say an educated consumer, right, I'm not saying a dumb person, I'm actually saying just an everyday person that didn't go to school for exercise science. And when they kind of look on a website or on a billboard or any type of advertisement, you know they'll see things like oh, here's a kettlebell here, I like this color scheme or this schedule looks nicer to you know, this schedule matches my schedule and I like this price point better than that price point, right. So that doesn't go away, that never goes away, and we still have to work on that educating the consumer and educating the market.
Speaker 2:How we stand out in the boutique fitness. So you will find a hundred pound dumbbells and a hundred pound kettlebells on our training floor. Um, we prioritize consistency versus variety, so we only have five movements a day, you know, not 18, not 30. Um, and we're always going to lead with strength and the second component of that is conditioning. So it's a hard thing to explain, but we really don't associate with what goes on in the boutique space. That is very boot camp leaning, very motivational in nature. Our trainers are here to train you, not entertain you, is kind of a tagline we use, and our focus is strength, structure and accountability. That kind of has become our core values. So strength is obviously the base of the pyramid. Our program design is very strength leaning. I think the structure is the fact that we do value doing good things. Often, you know, we do the same things. Often we repeat movement patterns and then the accountability piece is just like I said earlier, is like our trainers train you. They're not there to high-five you, they're there to make sure you are moving better every single day. So I think you know we've managed to create a culture of high performers and I think that really helps us.
Speaker 2:Right, because I don't have issues with the boutique industry, you know what I mean. Like the best program is the one that gets you out of bed. So if that's Orange Theory, if that's Pure Bar, if that's Solid Core, if that's Pure Bar, if that's Solid Core, if that's F45, and it's getting you in that gym four to five days a week, perfect, that is fantastic for you. I think my argument would be is it's very busy. It's a very similar offering, just with a different set of pantones. You know what I mean? And that's everything from a hot yoga class to a high-paced Pilates class to an F45. It's very similar. Who they are chasing? And I find us targeting the high performer that likes predictability and structure. It just works better for what we're we are trying to do.
Speaker 1:I love that you brought that up, because that was kind of leading into my next question anyway, which let's talk consumer standpoint. Right, I'm sitting there looking for a place to go and, okay, now I look up gyms near me and I'm going to get five big box gyms. I'm gonna get 15 different types of boutique type gyms, and I can see why, as a consumer, it's very overwhelming and it kind of puts information paralysis on that person. So what I mean by that is you're going to hop in because you said it's not being dumb, it's just being not. You don't know about exercise science. So you're looking up best gym to go to, like that's all you know, which is perfectly okay.
Speaker 1:I do that with shit all the time I don't know anything about, and then I get freeze and I'm like I don't understand this. So they just end up either a not joining anything or be hopping into the option that they think is the safest for them, even though it might not be the best option for them. Yeah, so how, as a company, and how can you talk directly to those consumers and help those people get over that information paralysis and lead them in the right direction? How do you go about doing that?
Speaker 2:yeah, there's, there's a wellness exhaustion right now. Uh, for poor people, I feel like, not for poor people, for people I feel bad for them. I mean, you know, and I will say this, and not popular, I don't think my industry is trending in a better direction. I can make a strong argument that the influencer driven online change has really cheapened some very strong concepts. The type of trainer that you have access to these days are less informed than 10 years ago. It's weird that the general public is more informed than ever, but the trainer you are seeing on Instagram is less technical and less educated than ever, and the problem with that is a lot of people put a lot of weight into these people that they enjoy following and half the time, they really just don't know what they are talking about.
Speaker 2:So, to go back to the question, how do you speak to the uneducated consumer? Well, I don't know, anthony, we've been trying to figure that out for 10 years. If you have any, if you have any tips, it's it's an ongoing battle, I think. I think the asset we have is the person we are chasing is a little bit more informed. Um, if that makes sense. So a lot of the big players that we would all know in our space that either have an insane amount of units from a gross side of things or maybe they are backed by a certain level of celebrity that gets eyes on them.
Speaker 2:We don't lose people to those types of competitors. You know we often benefit from them being a gateway drug into fitness and then eventually they find uh, metabolic, because you know communities talk and even though you may be enjoying a community over here, it's it's common for someone to say, hey, have you ever tried out that metabolic gym down the street? They really know their stuff, type thing. But I don't think there's a simple answer and I think it's tougher than ever, anthony, because there's so much noise um, not just in fitness right, just the world's noisy right now and it's uh, it's very tough to. It's very tough to cut through that noise. If you're able to hire the right people that have the right presence and the right following in each unit and each market, they become that expert in the market that can steer them towards you. But but traditional advertising, in my opinion, is about as tricky as it's ever been and it's changing every day of what you should do, how to do it, how to speak, how to target. It's a constant battle. It really is.
Speaker 1:I mean, you nailed it on the head and I have so many opinions surrounding all of that because I'm in the same boat you are, but I really want to get it from you directly. I think the first question to start is you mentioned that trainers are less educated than they have been before, but the consumer is the more educated than they ever have been before. I agree with you. How do you fix that? Is there a fixable solution, or is that something you just kind of let the market decide?
Speaker 2:So we look at the business in a pretty simplistic way. Right, you have three main components of the client's journey, the lead's journey. You have attraction, you have conversion and you have retention right, I think what we are talking about here. The tricky point is attraction, like that's the most difficult because, at least in my experience, conversion and retention is experience driven, meaning you are delivering on, you are delivering what you say you deliver and that speaks to that consumer and you keep delivering it. So that's the conversion is you're delivering what you say you're going to do. And then retention is you continually deliver the experience you promised early on, right. If someone doesn't convert, in our eyes two things happen they are not your type of consumer or we didn't do experience well, right. So that thing, I think, is a lot easier to control and fix and tweak when it's not done right. But attraction to your point is getting extremely difficult, cutting through the noise. How we try to do this it starts early, right. So it starts with franchising with the right person that can speak to the right consumer and if it's more of an absentee investor, we make a point early on to let them know. You know you will not be the face and we need to find that for you to be the face, because the trickle down effect of the owner to hire the right GM to the GM to hire the right trainers, it can all fall apart right there, because those local celebrities let's call them local influencers they need to have the pulse on that market Because, in my opinion, if you are completely relying on meta or Google ads, you know you're in trouble. Now to your point, anthony. When someone Googles strength and conditioning Long Island, yeah, you want to pop up. Of course you've got to play a portion of that game and in our world that's at best 20%. But the other 80% is more of a grassroots ground game of being relevant in your market and having a pulse on your community and type of consumers. And the last thing I will say is we use psychographics to kind of look at the type of sites we want to go into.
Speaker 2:And there's two ways that I find this can work. And I like to use where I grew up as an example. Right, so you can pick a great city that has the type of client that will gravitate towards your product. So we do very, very well with 25 to 45 year old like young professionals right. So we want to, most of the time, put ourselves in markets that support that type of clientele. The other option, though that does work well too, is in a smaller market.
Speaker 2:You can bet on an individual over a market, meaning you know. Anthony, if I went into Long Island and I know your reach and you think Metabolic would do there, I could bet on you based on who you are, because you might be Mr Long Island. That knows all the right people to make this happen. Same as me, I grew up in a small town in canada 130 000 people. There's little to no opportunity for a young professional there unless you have a family business. But if I went home and wanted to open a metabolic, I know the 300 and 350 people to make this thing thrive. What you don't want to do is put an absentee investor into a sleepy market with no reach. That's the kiss of death. So you just got to kind of weigh those two things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned the attractiveness side being the difficult side, because I've had this conversation with hundreds of gym owners and you don't always get the same response. I've seen it the flip side, where they have lack of retention, and retention has always been mind-boggling to me about how you have high turnover in your company, which kind of proves your point. Why are they leaving? Where are they going? Do they feel like you're not delivering on the value that you promised the person? Because that's what's going to make somebody get up and leave, like as an example for us. We have clients that look outside. This has happened a lot. I'm not just saying that they will literally go try it in another gym, try it in the trainer, and three days later they'll come knocking back. Hey, sorry, can I restart? Yeah, it's all because you're showing how you over-deliver and it's just people that are new to market that don't understand about the quality of service they're getting, how much value they're actually getting for what they're spending. Those are the ones that will branch out after a little bit, but they seem to always come back and that has a lot to do with your brand as individual, something we've got pretty locked down.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about the attractiveness side of it, that marketing blows my mind. I, I'm a gym person, I'm a face-to-face person. Uh, marketing, it's just a whole nother language to me. Like our marketing company that helps us out, the ads they put out that convert, I would never think of putting out in a million years. To me, it's here's education, here's a whole bunch of science. This is why you need this. This is why you should come to us, because we know this. This is why and that bombs that doesn't do well at all. They're like looking for 15 people on Long Island to get in shape and then we get 100 leads and it's like fuck. So it's just crazy how you see the difference.
Speaker 2:And I also think that type of strategy is going to really hurt your retention strategy. So they can help for attractiveness and you know, if you place some urgency on it might help with conversion, but you know, will they stick long. You know, I think you talked about how we stand out, um, in the market and I think you'd find, like some of these stats kind of interesting. So it's it's kind of commonly known and these are some blanket statements, guys. So I realize there's some great companies doing things outside of these blanket statements, but in the boutique industry it's, you know, it's commonly known that top selling memberships are the four sessions a month or eight sessions a month, so like one one day a week or two days a week, and that represents 80 to 90% of some companies offering. We also know that a lot of these companies lose 30% of their clientele every three to six months, which puts them in a kind of like a guerrilla marketing type cycle. And you know what's weird? They're very good at it, right, they put the so many people in per month they convert at this because they know they're losing at this and it becomes this it's almost like this hamster wheel that they're very good at. So I'm not saying it can't be done, but that's like a very common industry standard. But that's like a very common industry standard.
Speaker 2:Um, the I think I just saw this stat recently at a conference in new york, but I think the average attrition rate in boutique right now is nine percent a month. Um, as of this month, ours is four um and that's about as high as it's been, and I think some of that is because we've opened so many new units recently. So, like, founding members do fall off more than mature members. It's just the nature of presale. The 4% is over 70% of our members system-wide are on an unlimited contract, so they're coming three to four days a week and our average tenureship is one to two years. So I'd like, I just think that I feel very comfortable targeting this kind of this. This could sound rude, but I mean more committed type A consumer. It just fits what we're doing and I think that's another reason.
Speaker 1:Which I think is mind blowing, and I really want the general public to know anyway, what do you think the average gym owner I'm talking about across the us makes as a salary?
Speaker 2:I mean, I would say, probably under 60 way under.
Speaker 1:Keep going. 30, 20 000, really, yeah, crazy. That's why a lot of people always talk about you know, I had joined a gym and it was there for a couple of years, and especially boutique. It disappears the company because-.
Speaker 2:Well, listen to this. The same conference I went to it was the Athletic News CEO summit, and there was a lot of data analytics companies speaking at it, so I thought this was completely fascinating. So, since COVID, the wellness wallet so what people spend on themselves per month, it's the biggest it's ever been. We are now. We have surpassed visits, so we're doing better in boutique than we were in 2019. Here's the craziest thing there's less places to go. So what that's telling us is the strong are getting stronger.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of consolidation happening and this is not a great thing, but we are not finding new clients. Clients are spending more on themselves at multiple places, which I find super interesting. So, like it's very common, when you're like running around the conference circuit, for people to say you know, only 25% of Americans belong to a gym, how do we go chase that other 75%? Well, no one's making a dent in that other 75%. The 25% are just spending more and more on themselves and there's less places for them to go because, to your point, the passion project gym of the past that made me $20,000, they're going away. It's too exhausting to run a gym as a passion project and collect no money, and anyone that's been in the industry knows this. Like what we do is not easy. It is a very enjoyable job, but it's a not it's not an easy job.
Speaker 1:I mean, your typical job is nine to five, right, even if you own the business. Typical it's wake up, get to work by nine, get it at five. That's most industries, our industry. You get in at four and you're there until 8, 8.30 PM, seven days a week.
Speaker 2:Well, thank, thank God I've gravitated past those hours at this point, but I remember them very, very well.
Speaker 1:I remember three months, 85 hours a week, no sleep working. I am so happy that's gone.
Speaker 2:I will say this from my vantage point, which is kind of cool. There is a shift happening in the industry, meaning we are now starting to see some more classically trained C-suite people at the boutique level. So in in the past, like a lot of scale had happened with someone like myself, of no real background, that grew and fell into a role. But now you're starting to see some of the powerhouses arm themselves with very, very good business people and I think that's great for the industry. I really do. I you, I don't want it to. You know, take away the soul of the business. You know I don't want that, but from what I'm seeing and what is coming, it's a much more elevated experience. And I think where we're seeing this the most right now and I think this is great for the industry is big box gyms are finally getting really fucking good. I think over the next five years.
Speaker 2:The standalone products that don't really own a specific niche are in trouble and one of the examples I use is we all know recovery is super hot right now, right, say, like a sauna or sauna cold tub, contrast kind of concept. That's at scale. I don't know where they're going to be in three years when every lifetime YMCA and Planet Fitness who has the money to do it puts them in their locker rooms. Do you remember when Planet Fitness put tanning beds in their locker rooms and people just got Planet Fitness memberships so they could tan? I know I'm dating myself here, but like that that was a thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I can tell you this like every crunch, every planet, every, every big box gym, for your under 30 buck a month membership, will have a sauna and a cold tub in it within the next five years. So, like, I think this shift is going to be super unique because we've watched this in the uk for about five years and overseas, like their gyms over there, their big box gyms are absolutely beautiful and we're just starting to see the lifetimes, the equinoxes, what they kind of owned before. Now you're starting to see this in the everyday gym and I think that's fantastic for the industry because it just elevates fitness in general. But someone in my shoes, we better be pretty damn good at what we do, because when you go to say, like a lifetime fitness, their strength class is pretty good, their cycle class is not too bad and for one membership that's starting to get a lot more attractive and I think it's a fantastic thing for the industry in general more attractive and I think it's a fantastic thing for um the industry in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've also I've noticed a conglomerate wow butchered that word. But basically just to give an example for long island, because I know this market very well and I don't really know outside of here, I can tell you la fitness is becoming that powerhouse right. So you're seeing them. They exploded onto the market by having more offerings than the other big boxers and then what happened? La bought up Bally's right. No more Bally's existed. Covid hit 24-hour fitness bankrupt, put them out of business. Then what happened? Export Fitness sold out to LA Fitness for something at the tune of like $150 million. That's a huge company that's now gone just because LA decided to eat them all up.
Speaker 1:So there's becoming less offerings in the big box world. I mean around me which I think is the most populated for big box, is Planet Crunch. La Retro is hanging in there, but I see locations closing where they see them opening, so I can see them being next of kind of being devour, because they don't have those kind of offerings. They're in that mid-market. But it's very interesting about how that's all working and it's tied that into the boutique model, what you said, the boutique gyms which try to target and go after the big box so meaning they try to have basic gym memberships, they try to have offerings inside of them are going to get destroyed. People are becoming more polar, meaning they want a gym that has everything like soup to nuts. I want to go in, pay a hundred bucks a month, get everything I need, like soup to nuts. I want to go in, pay a hundred bucks a month, get everything I need. Or I want to do this super specific niche thing because I know this is for me. That's where you come in, that's where I come in and I think that boutique side of that has been exploding. We see it in our company. I know you see it in yours. So it's very interesting to how the market's trending and then to tie that into.
Speaker 1:You mentioned people chasing the 75% of people that don't go to gyms. I agree it's more those that the 25% that put money into health and fitness are spending money Way more than they ever had before because they want that super specific niche thing, because they know this is what works for them. And those people are generally the higher performer peoples. They're doctors, they're C-suite people, they're executives. Those are the ones that want, like the super specific things.
Speaker 1:I just think the trend, though, is, if you look at a chart of the population, I don't think the average consumer anymore is set in a standard deviation curve, meaning I don't think the average person goes to the gym once a month, twice a month kind of deal, if he's no standard. I think you're seeing a shift this way. So you have, at one end, coming four days a week, super invested into fitness, huge dip off in the middle, and then you have doing absolutely nothing, or going for walks or kind of like just pretending they're getting involved. So I don't know if you're noticing that same like dynamic split that I'm seeing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know here's. The weird thing is like people can dress it up all they want, but I don't think there's been much of a shift in 10 years. Dedicated people that go to the gym go to the gym, and I don't want to say undedicated but people that don't go to the gym don't go to the gym't go to the gym the thing that I think is interesting is a lot of people talk about see this, think about this other 75 percent, right.
Speaker 2:The common thing to say is we need more inclusive options for this 75 to get them to the gym. I think it's the complete opposite. We need more exclusive. And when I mean exclusive, I'm not saying expensive and elitist, I'm saying specific to move the needle right. Because when you say we need more inclusive offerings to get these people in the gym, there's a 999 Planet Fitness on every fucking block. That's about as inclusive as you can get. I guess it's now 15.99, so that exists.
Speaker 2:But if you want to move the needle and get new people doing things, um, think of rogue ideas like I don't know, like a pilates concept for men. You, you know, target men, move the needle here. Glp ones has the opportunity to do this. I just think they're doing it the wrong way. If I was wrapped into GLP ones, by the way, I don't have an issue with them for that part of the population that just cannot figure it out. If it's a kickstart, I'm okay with with trying this the right way. I have an issue with the red carpet version of the GLP-1 who doesn't need it. But in going back to like, creating an opportunity, I don't get why some boutique concepts are offering GLP-1 in a young population platform. In my opinion, you want an opportunity.
Speaker 2:Launch a GLP-1 strength training standalone product. Don't wrap it into something else. Don't try to pretend that this works in a metabolic or an F45. It doesn't. There's a very specific way you're going to have to train these individuals that are taking off an extreme amount of weight, losing connective tissue, lean muscle mass. You can't throw them into a group fitness class. You need to put them in a very basic starting strength type program. So, like again, it's popular to say we need to be more inclusive, when I think you move the needle by being more specific. Create a new category. The categories that we are staring at today are the same category as we were looking at 10 years ago. You know some of them are just flashier. You know the person working out on the Peloton today was the person doing Taibo in their living room.
Speaker 1:20 years ago, the ballet's step classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I don't think things are that different and I think moving the needle, looking at specificity, could really help creating new categories, creating just different offerings that attract a small few, that hopefully create bigger ripples. People always talk about how do we get the other 75% in the gym? My argument would be can metabolic go find 1% more people? Can lifetime find 5% more people? Can the YMCA find 5% more people? If we could move the needle to 65-35, the world's a different place. But we're talking about chasing 75%. It's it's it's the concept of trying to save the rainforest versus planting a few trees to get started, and I think we could just look at it in a more logical way. So a lot of people are leading with their hearts, which is a good thing, but I think like we need to lead with intelligent, logical decisions to move the needle.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I was nodding my head. Yes, for those not watching video the entire time. I really think I really believe, just to kind of start wrapping this up that I really think I really believe, just to kind of start wrapping this up that, like I mentioned on my January 1st podcast, I came out for predictions of this year. This year you're going to see one of the biggest shifts into that 75 and cut that number down. Then I think we've seen in the last 20 years and the reason being as much as I we don't like, as we don't talk about politics on this show, it's all political.
Speaker 1:You look at the election that happened in November and you see the way that people shifted extremely onto one side, record numbers that you haven't seen in a decade, record numbers that you haven't seen in a decade.
Speaker 1:They're calling for a change and you see that change based upon how RFK pulled when he was independent to now being pulled into the HHC, which, at this time this episode comes out, I'm sure he'll be confirmed, but I think that it's going to be a rude awakening. I think people are realizing the cost, not just with our wallets but with our health and our lifespan, of the role that obesity is taking a toll, the role that type 2 diabetes is taking a toll and all these preventable diseases and I say preventable that we're just adding to ourselves, that we need to switch and get rid of and you're going to see a change. And the quickest changes are going to be inside the food industry, which I just hope and pray that even just he gets confirmed, Even if it's not banned, companies are like hey, you know, we make money in Europe selling Heinz tomato ketchup. That's less ingredients. Why not just sell the same thing here in the US and not add all this bullshit crap to it that we needed? It's the same markets.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in Canada I mentioned that earlier Right, so very similar to Europe. There's a lot of products that you know we sell here in the states that are not allowed in Canada. From you know much I shouldn't say better access, but what you get in your daily supermarket is a lot cleaner in Canada. So I think that's a good thing. But my only challenge to that is and I've said this on a podcast the other day I was, I was talking with Kelly and Juliet Starrett about youth, our youth. So I think another problem I have with this moving the needle is everybody is trying to fix the aging population and it's, you know, it's a noble cause. I get it and it's going to cost us a lot of money as this takes shape. But I'm also a believer that a lot of that it's too late. I really just I believe it's too late. You know, if someone hasn't taken care of themselves at 70 years old, it's going to be tough to move that needle.
Speaker 1:I'll give an argument to this, because I know exactly where this is going and I want you to go look this up. Yeah, I want everyone to go there. Well, hold on, I want to look at alcohol, look at the non, look at the youth, the high schoolersers, college age kids. Obviously high schools are doing it legal illegally but they're turning to drinking less and the rate that's going into non-alcoholic products is a rate we've never seen anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the problem is is that gonna counteract loneliness, them being behind their screens playing Fortnite and not being able to associate with people. I get how alcohol is poisonous and not good for you, but our youth isn't even going out. They can't have conversations with people in public. They're stuck behind screens all day. They're as lonely as ever, as depressed as ever. Alcohol, as painful as it was, was a social lubricant to get people outdoors, to get people in communities, to get people. Now it's a controversial topic, but my biggest rub here is not alcohol, it's not, it's movement, it's not nutrition, because here's the thing I always tell everybody I grew up in a pretty healthy household, like my parents, led by example, right, um, but at that time they only knew what they knew. So, like we were the bagel generation, you know, we grew up having oh, you got to have your whole wheat bagel because that's, that's the good thing, holy bagel you got your, you know your, your low-fat Pop-T and my parents are doing what they knew.
Speaker 2:So I ate Cheerios, I ate Pop-Tarts, I ate bagels, I ate shitty food. Yet we all walked around lean, we all walked around active, we all walked around different. And you know what the problem is. And I have kids in schools right now no recess, no PE, very little movement. Sit behind a desk, look at a screen. There's no play anymore.
Speaker 2:So in my opinion, we have a movement problem well before a nutrition problem in this country. It like it's amazing what movement can do to your nutrition habits. I think we can hide a lot of nutrition problems with more movement. And what I am seeing in my kids in school right now and what I'm seeing with young adults they're indoors behind screens, not interacting in tribes, not moving. So I think, yeah, we can talk about the 75%, that how we approach that. But in my opinion, if we would you know, to your support of RFK if we can do something at the school level to get kids moving again recess every day, level, to get kids moving again recess every day, pe every day, get the fucking kids in motion that will fix a lot of shit in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did an entire hour and a half episode on the child, the obesity epidemic, so I totally agree. And it is way more bureaucratical bullshit. That's intertwined with that because companies like the pelican group think they fucking know better than parents that that kid like how we treat our kids in schools, like nutritionally, health, fitness it's such bullshit. And we talked about grades in schools, not to beat a dead horse. But a huge study came out like 15 years ago at this point you want to improve your kid's math score. Let's say they're struggling in math. It's their worst fucking subject. Put PE right before it. Yep, 40% increases. No extra studying, no extra like here's more homework, my kids slow, it's not true. Your kids just bored, they're sitting down all day and then pe becomes. When I I was going for pe so I'm very passionate about this I was two years into my master's degree, which I said fuck this and I left.
Speaker 1:But watching, you know we take written tests now in PE, so we do a lot less moving. We play for about five minutes and then we go and we study because parents want to see not even parents, sorry. Schools want to see improvement and the only way to show improvement is through written tests. I'm like what? They're like, yeah, we don't move anymore. And then the kids if they don't want to change, we're not allowed to get them in trouble anymore. So we get written up as the teachers. If we get on the kids about, oh, they say they don't feel good. We're like oh, okay, it's fine. I remember when I was in school you don't feel good, screw you, you're going to fail PE. And then if the teacher did fail you in PE, the parents would get involved. The principal would get involved and say, fuck you. Like why did you film my kid? It's like your kid didn't move, didn't change ones to go out. Oh, that's a p is pathetic.
Speaker 2:Like well, I think that was changed I think part of that conversation I referenced um, which I think is important because it's very easy, um, for us to get colorful here, me, me included and one of the arguments that the Starretts made was, you know, we got so exhausted fighting the system that we had to take more of a neighborhood approach and one of the things they were doing, like within their family, was they called it a walking school bus. So, like, their neighborhood started as parents and kids walking to school a mile and from school every day, forcing those steps. They have a rule within their family that is like, movement is not an option. You get to choose your movement, but for this next hour, go choose your movement. You're moving for an hour because, like movement, you're moving for an hour Because, like, trust me, like I think unraveling what the American public school system looks like today is a pretty big lift and, and to your point, failing or not failing, I just just force movement, give kids the opportunity to move. You know, like you said, I think I think my, my co-founder, I think his son I don't want to be misquoted here, but I think his son was one of the schools that went through that Play 60 NFL football program and essentially I think it was that there were 60 minutes of movement prior to class every day for a year and then they evaluated like the test scores, and they did nothing different from a teaching mechanism and all the students did better that year just by introducing play prior to education.
Speaker 2:So I know I, you know I don't want to get off topic here too, too much. But but my biggest thing is, and I'll try to summarize this all together the industry is saying how do we get the other 75 percent of people moving? I'm saying it may be a little bit too late. Let's apply a new category with these GOP ones for people that are so deconditioned that might need to start and have something specific there. Maybe we can create a new category. But rather than chasing this 75%, maybe we can make little divots by adding a percent here and there. And then I agree, nutrition is fucked up right now in this country. I think we need to do our best to control it in our schools and in our homes and I think our best bet is not chasing today's 75%. I think it's educating the next generation.
Speaker 2:Movement first, nutrition second. And I know a lot of people, I know all you nutrition. People will say you know nutrition is this. You know I, I get it. Trust me, this is what I do. For me, I have seen movement lead to better nutrition goals more than I've seen changing someone's nutrition to get them moving. That is my own personal experience. I will always say lead with movement first, because nutrition to me is like pushing a religion on someone. It is tough to get them to come to the other side Movement.
Speaker 1:I have found more success with I was going to ask you to summarize this episode, but I really like that movement first, nutrition second. I agree it's a lot easier, but I do want to wrap this up, Brandon. So the second question is how can people find you, get ahold of you, learn more.
Speaker 2:So the second question is how can people find you, get a hold of you, learn more? Yeah, I've kept my business voice pretty consistent to one place. I love to interact with people on LinkedIn, so I'll be pretty easy to find. It's just Brandon Cullen, my name, I think. My handle is Playing Guilty, so that's my podcast and kind of like this kind of side passion project, but either one, you're going to find me pretty easily. But, honestly, shoot me a DM. I put a lot of content out there too. So if you like to engage and see I hate the word disruptive, but just giving a different look at the industry. You know, I promise to always speak nonpolitical. I'm not going to say the popular thing. I'm going to say what I truly believe and hopefully, as we talked about little percentage points and creating minor ripples that hopefully do something. Hopefully my voice just gives you another way to look at the industry we live in.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I love that. Thank you, brandon Brandon, thank you for coming on. Thank you, guys. This is this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, share, subscribe. It's the only way this show grows. If you want to learn more, reach out to me. You can follow me on any social media. Thank you, guys. Don't forget, fitness is medicine. Until next time, outro Music.
