HALO Talks

"Stay true to who your customers are. You also have to be ok not being appealable to everyone out there," states Andrew Hirsekorn, Principal & Founding Member of Eagle Merchant Partners. Eagle is a private equity firm and one of the owners of the largest Planet Fitness franchisees. Listen now to this wide ranging discussion touching on ideas around Planet's place in the sector, thoughts about member attrition, the importance of unit economics, pros and cons of taking on private equity and more.  

"We wanted to find a way for health and wellness professionals to sell something that they were more confident in," states CEO Brett Maloley. Their team interviewed approximately 22,000 members, 11,000 trainers, and 1,000 physicians in the research phase. Ladder has ~65,00 users nearly 10,000 of whom are coaches and the rest are clients. "We need to not start with the technology, but rather what we're trying to solve for," he continues. Listen to this wide ranging discussion of current technology and how that applies (or not!) to the HALO sector.

"When times were tough, the Mission and Vision of our club kept us going. It would have been very easy to slash our values for the sake of the dollar," stated Stephanie Coulon of Stone Creek Club & Spa in Louisiana. She and Larry Connor helped build this award-winning, high end facility from the ground up 10 years ago and it's been going strong since. They opened in a down time, and in a saturated market where 40% of the market already belonged to a club. Listen now to learn more about how they did it!

Mike Morris worked in specialty retail for nearly 25 years and helped scale national brands like J. Crew, The Vitamin Shoppe, and others. He specializes in retail & supply chain operations, software, and data management. After going through 4 private equity sales, he became a full time advisor in the PE world 12 years ago and currently works in both the fitness and retail side. Mike's wealth of experience in both sectors is a must listen for any entrepreneur who may be looking to scale. 

Peerfit began with 8 employees and now has 100+ spread across the country. Their mission is ambitious! "It's to refine corporate wellness," states Chris Patton. He continues, "The value add is that we're doing something that it's hard for gyms to do, which is make that connection to the insurance carriers. Gyms and studios are good at what they do, but dealing with insurance probably isn't in the top 5 of that list!" he jokes. Peerfit's model is an idea whose time has come and is a win for all parties. Listen now to learn how your organization can get involved.

Texas Capital Bank is a 30 billion dollar publicly traded company. (They do business nationally, not just in Texas!) The group just celebrated their 20th anniversary and have nearly 175 million invested in the HALO sector. "We're significantly different in that we talk about 'selecting partners' versus 'collecting clients,'" states Charles Adams. Listen now to learn more about the process of applying for a loan, factors considered in company valuation, concerns of lending into the space and more.

"I look at private equity as a movie. You're walking into the theater halfway through, and there's all this action going on before you got there. If you don't try to understand how the plot has developed, where the players are, and what's going on, you're going to make mistakes. Our job is to figure that out!" states finance industry veteran, Peter Brockway. This comprehensive discussion touches on the history, benefits, risk/return of PE for entrepreneurs, why PE groups may (or may not) invest and much more!

Physmodo is a software that, at its core,". . .measures human movement," states Andrew Menter, CEO. It's a 30 second screening using an infrared camera and proprietary technology which addresses some of the the negatives of the Functional Movement Screen. It also, ". . .helps with front desk engagement. It really grabs people's attention. It kind of looks like a video game!" laughs Tyler Nicholson. The technology is found all across the country as well as in the military to help increase the number of soldiers who are deployable. Listen now to learn more about this incredible, new advancement in movement science.  

Mark began in the HALO sector in 1990 as a Personal Trainer and has worked with Merritt for 19 years. "You do the right thing, you take care of people, and the business takes care of itself," he states. With 9 locations plus 4 corporate, Merritt positions themselves in the upper middle market tier. Listen now to learn more about why they, "...decided to try and stop competing with everyone else in the industry," and how they continue to distinguish themselves in an extremely competitive part of the country.

Robert began his career in the HALO sector as a trainer in the Bay Area. He later dove in and learned sales with the teams at 24 Hour Fitness. After opening up his two current clubs and waiting (for years!) for a company to solve his data frustrations, he decided to do it himself. Fitness BI is an extremely comprehensive analytics platform that--in 3 short years years--counts ~1,400 clubs as customers. Listen to learn more about how (and why) they scaled so quickly and where they're going next!

Rachel has been with Peake Media (the parent company of Club Solutions magazine) for over 7 years. Peake also publishes Box Pro, Mindful Studio, Campus Rec, and Community Rec Magazine, each with highly specific B2B audiences in the HALO sector. Their Mission? "Educate and empower fitness pros in a variety of niches," says Zabonick. Listen to this IHRSA 2019 interview and learn what trends Rachel is seeing, future plans for Peake Media, and more! 

Jared has been in the HALO sector for over 10 years. He's a native Houstonian and scaled Dynamic Fitness to 3, full service locations ranging from 30-35,000 sq feet. "It was a whole lot harder than what I thought it would be. Overwhelming would be an understatement!" he joked. "It's about learning from each mistake that's made and continuing to move forward." Listen to learn more about Dynamic's model and how they continue to set themselves apart in one of the most competitive cities in the country.   

The National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) is, by a large margin, the industry leader when it comes to educating top tier strength coaches who--many times--later go on to work with colleges, universities, and teams nationwide. They've educated over 30,000 professionals so far and operate as a non-profit. "We want to stay at the principle level and make sure that everything we're sharing is evidence based and backed by science," states Nick Clayton, the PT Program Manager.  Listen now to learn more.  

A 30+ year veteran in the fitness industry, Dr. Kevin Steele earned his Ph.D at Pepperdine and had a personal training business even before there was even a term for it! Dr. Steele taught and coached at the university, and continued in the HALO sector with the legendary Don Wildman, Founder of the Health & Tennis Corporation of America. Dr. Steele later went on to research and scale the first national platform for personal training to 370 health clubs nationwide. Listen now to learn more from this industry pro! 

As the Executive Vice President of the American Council on Exercise (ACE), Graham has been in the HALO sector since 1991. As a former competitive cyclist with a BS in Athletic Training, he notes, "Our Mission, really simply stated, is to get people moving." With over 90,000 certified professionals in 100 different countries thus far, ACE continues to make its mark. As a non-profit, ACE is also self-funded with no external grants--and that puts them in a very unique position in an industry whose educational requirements has changed quite a bit over the years. Listen now to learn more.  

"The industry is now embracing and accepting the space between medicine and fitness," states Lisa Dougherty, Founder of the MedFit network and--clearly--a woman on a mission! Like many of the best businesses, MedFit Network evolved organically from (an extremely important!) need that had yet to be met. It is now the largest directory of fitness professionals on the Internet who work with special populations. Last year, Lisa took this on the road and started the Medical Fitness Tour and was acknowledged by the Obama administration as a "Champion of Change." Listen to learn more about this incredibly worthy cause and how your club can get involved. 

"I wanted to become the greatest we could become in one town and through influence, be able to affect the world," says Joe Cirulli. . .and he's done exactly that. Everyone in the HALO sector knows Joe's name. He's been a trusted Mentor, adviser and friend to many of the top people in the industry and is highly respected across the board. He worked for 6 clubs that all went bankrupt before borrowing $1,700 to get his start. Gainesville is now ~80,000 sq feet with over 28,000 members and 500 employees. This should be required listening for absolutely everyone in the HALO sector.

Chuze Fitness currently has 25 locations with 8 under construction and is one of the foremost brands in the San Diego area. Started by two families, Nick and Cory's parents were business partners in the hospitality space who parlayed that into the HVLP sector. This highly experienced team only decided to take on private equity on their 14th location. They operate off the maxim, "We want to be the best, we don't want to be the biggest." Learn more about this great brand has firmly secured their position in one of the most competitive fitness markets in the country. 

Club Insider has become the "gatekeeper of the industry's history," says President Justin Cates. . . and anyone who truly knows the HALO space knows he's not exaggerating! If you haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting Justin's Dad, Norm. . .perhaps you haven't been around long enough and you're missing out! Industry icon, Norm Cates, is one of the Founders of IHRSA with 44 years under his belt and began Club Insider in 1993 from the ground up. Justin spent the past 11 years working with his Dad to take things to the next level and by all accounts, they have succeeded! Listen now to learn more about this great team, Club Insider, the history of IHRSA, and some thoughts on the cyclical nature of the fitness world.    

"Selling fitness has always been incredibly intangible, you're kind of buying it on faith. . .we made it tangible. You can see the vision of your future self," says Daron Allen, CEO of Visual Fitness Planner. Selling memberships used to be "incredibly unprofessional" and has changed significantly from what it was 10 years ago. VFP has been at the forefront of this, with everything now being "API first." It's not uncommon for a facility to have a tech stack of 6-10 companies! Listen to learn more about where this trend-setting company is headed, how they can help you get more members. . .and keep them coming back!