Ep 181 Wellness Revolution with Grant Ian Gamble 🙌

The one thing I would say on the marketing front, a lot of times we go for awareness. You know, we feel like marketing is awareness. It surely is, but marketing is also resonance and relevance. And I think that's really, really powerful in what we're talking about here is it's gotta resonate with people. You know, they've gotta be able to relate to it. And maybe at another time we'll talk more about the decondition and, you know, how to attract that market, but it's all about resonance and relevance.

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host, Richard Eternity, and in this episode, I've got a special guest on, Grant Ian Gamble. And I wanted to bring Grant on because he is a, you know, he is a master in when it comes to wellness, leadership, AI, and being around the space of fitness and wellness his entire life. And I've got a little bio I wanted to read, and I, it It's quite long. I'm gonna take the best bits out of it for you guys. But the thing that I love about this is, first of all, his bestselling book, The Affinity Principle, which I wanna touch on, and such an amazing book on leadership, talking about his leadership principles in business, as well as, you know, obviously a great author. He also is the He also is the CEO of Alliance Wellness Group and Total Fusion, and they're at the forefront of building some of the most innovative wellness campuses in the southern hemisphere, between 3,500 and 7,500 square meters of wellness space. Now, along with that, he's also developed some really cool AI-driven customer experience and team engagement management toolkit apps, which basically take the, the heavy lifting out of retention and is gonna reshape the future of fitness. And that's what I wanna talk about today. All things AI, all things wellness, and pretty much his background, because I love, I love, you know, having conversations with people who've been through different scenarios in the fitness industry. And it's a long way back when Grant was teaching his first aerobics class, I believe, at 23 in leotards. And that's That's covered all in his book too. Welcome to the show, Grant.

Thanks, Richard. And thank you very much. It's good to see you.

Mate, so good to see you here. I saw you last time you dropped over our house and you were camping with your family and you really live and breathe the concept of future and wellness and fitness. Just for those who haven't come across Grant and what you do, I'd just love maybe a recap of where you've come from and what's the most exciting thing happening in your world at the moment, Grant?

Oh goodness. Okay. I'll try and keep that short, Richard. Yeah. So look, I started in the industry actually straight out of the Navy and I was actually in my early 20s and migrated through the industry over time and was lucky enough to be in the industry when it was really full steam. Back in the late '90s, I really started to get aligned with the wellness movement. And so that was probably where my course went a little different to many. And that took me to the States. I was over there almost 20 years total. And, and most recently, I've moved back to Australia, which I'm really excited about, and working with Alliance Wellness, which is the Total Fusion Group. I mean, Alliance has a number of brands under it. including allied health, day spas, a whole bunch of different elements. And that's, you know, very exciting. The AffinityOS platform, which you mentioned, that's an AI platform I've been working on with a partner from the States for 3 years now. And that's come to market, which is really exciting to see the results of a lot of hard work there. And that's a really fun project. Probably pretty timely too, I guess.

Totally timely. So before ChatGPT, you had this going, Grant, that's for sure.

Yeah, a couple of years before, but I'm sure chat was in the works a long while too. So yeah, these instant successes are never really instant, are they? It's all a lot of building blocks.

Totally. And I love that, I mean, you mentioned AI there, you've mentioned early '80s in the industry. And the wellness at the moment, I mean, if we go back when you sort of started with wellness, I remember I had a corporate wellness company and the word wellness was very new. It was very like, are you on the bleeding edge or leading edge? You would've been on the bleeding edge back then, but when you said the wellness revolution, there was a lot of conversations back there like the wellness will be the next level. The wellness is going to be the future. Can you sort of maybe just dive in a little bit of how far we've come with this term wellness, please?

Yeah. It's great that you bring that up because wellness is touted a lot today. There's a thing called wellwashing where people wrap wellness around something because they think it's the hot ticket. A lot of that happening today. But back when I started in '97, in the States building the first, you know, sort of large wellness center. Um, it was, it was a tough road to hoe because we were trying to convince hospitals to integrate with us. We were trying to integrate physicians and bring the healthcare, you know, sector to the fitness sector. A lot of resistance to that because back then, you know, they looked at us, as you've sort of elucidated, as, you know, people in spandex And, you know, just bouncing around doing aerobics. And the industry was, you know, in and of itself maturing as well. But equally, we felt like when we were doing this project in the States that there was an opportunity, that it was time. And in the US, obviously we've seen that as a lead indicator, you know, in Australia.

Hmm.

there was a lot of talk about it, but not a lot of action. And we sort of started to put some rubber on the road and really picked up traction. But it really took a long time. It really was not something that just came instantly. I mean, in the end of the cycle of building this wellness group, which ended up being, you know, 12+ campuses up the Atlantic coast of the US, and these campuses range from like 4,500 square meters to 13,000 square meters on you know, large properties. Um, but we integrated, you know, with hospitals, and we got to a point where we had 1,500 physicians on the East Coast referring people to exercise. So instead of writing a prescription for a pharmaceutical, they're actually writing a prescription, you need to go exercise with us. And that was, to me, a huge breakthrough because it was the healthcare community, the medical community Well, really the sick care community, because that's what they're about, is sick care, actually looking at us in that fitness and wellness edge as being a responsible party that could actually help people get better. And that was sort of an amazing evolution. And now that's coming here and we're starting to work on that here, which is exciting.

And when you say it's coming here, right, In, you know, people that listen to this podcast, you know, we're fitness professionals, wellness professionals. Let's say a Pilates instructor, a yoga instructor, someone who's, who's come through, you know, group exercise models and starting to get things like saunas and, and, uh, and steam rooms, and, uh, they, they're integrating other things into their studio. What do you find, what do you find wellness is, um, from, from a fitness viewpoint? Someone who's very been involved in fitness the last 2, 3, 5, 20 years, what are the ways that they can start to understand how they would get into wellness if that's something they want to do? What would the first steps be?

Yeah, it's a great question, Richard. And one thing I would like to do, one caveat I'd like to say is it's not a factor of size. My first studio was relatively small, so it was like almost 600 square meters. So a relatively small studio. And I've worked with a lot of studios over the years. Size is not the precursor to this. What it is in many cases is partnering. So if you don't have the physical facilities,

Yes.

it's partnering with entities within the community. That's sort of how I fell into it back in the early '90s was my first club, which again was 600 square meters. I was part of a little shopping center and we happened to have a Chinese medical practitioner and a spa and, you know, all these little sort of wellness vendors around me and I just partnered with them and created relationships. And the next thing we became this, you know, wellness hub and I honestly fell into that. But then I realized there's some magic in this because everybody's business was flourishing. We're helping people be better.

You

know, in the fitness industry, I think we often don't give ourselves credit for the difference we make in people's lives when we are motivating people to move and exercise and, um, and, and potentially impact many aspects of their life beyond just, um, the, the fitness piece. A lot of times when people start moving more and they start feeling a bit better, they start treating themselves a bit better. And so we can be a catalyst for change And if we have those people in our studios or within our gravitational pull, again, if we've got partners, reliable partners that we like and know and trust that we can refer to, that referral becomes this two-way street and it becomes, it sort of floats, you know, all the participants up. And that's what I found to be the magic regardless of scale, was in partnering. And, you know, in the States, I ended up partnering with big hospitals like Johns Hopkins and, you know, like world-renowned entities. But that didn't come at the beginning, right? You know, it started really with these little relationships and proving ourselves to the medical community in, you know, in a macro level before that sort of stuff evolved. So, yeah, I would say that if you're in the fitness industry, if you have a studio or you're a trainer, personal trainer, or in any, any layer of the industry, you have the ability to provide wellness, both with what you deliver one-on-one or in the group situation or in the club situation. But the partnering is where the real opportunities come, I think.

Yeah, no, amazing. That's a good tip and a good takeaway that we can get started straight away and start to get our foot into this, uh, into this industry. There's a few worlds that you run in, Grant, which I love. And I think great entrepreneurs, great business operators, they're always looking out for what is happening while they're also doing something. And that's one of the most interesting things that I found about yourself, Grant, is that you've had such a wealth of industry experience and travel experience, but you're able to be in the now but also looking for the future as well. And I want to touch on a couple of things, right? You've got your book out, The Affinity Principle, and I think you can grab that on Amazon. It's an Amazon bestseller, which is awesome. Well done on that. Congratulations.

Thank you.

And I was lucky enough, you sent me a copy and you sent me a copy of actually all your books and you've got a travel book and you've also got a kids' book. So I appreciate in the mail and You was like, it was a book for the entire part of the family there, right? But, but I went through your book and, and got into it and I loved, and I want to probably start off with the book because the book is, is probably around the thing that I think people forget when they are talking about AI, when they are talking about future, when you are talking about, you know, can we work at home, all those kind of things. I'll just, I'll just read out the title, The Affinity Principle: People First Always. People First Always. And so the entire book is based around how you can grow. But a huge component of this is all around leadership, customer reviews, decreasing, you know, obscene and improving your team members. And I mean, you know, you've got so many things you can write on, but, but that that is the Infinity Principle in a nutshell. And you've got 12-step process on that. Can you sort of take us through, I guess, the book and the principles? I mean, this is Principles of Your Life. When someone writes a book, it's like, wow, this is a lot of principles over the years that you've used it for. Why the book and why that? I'd love to know a bit more about the Infinity Principle, the 12 steps.

Yeah. So, well, the Infinity Principle evolved. It actually was birthed during COVID I'd been wanting to write that book for years. I just never had time. I was running, you know, large wellness companies and just busy, busy, busy, busy with kids and family and just trying to juggle life. And then when COVID shut us down and we were locked down, my wife actually is a graphic designer. She has her own marketing and branding company and she was available to me as well because both of us were working remotely. Any of our clients were online the hour. we weren't traveling and I wasn't on a plane and, you know, anyway, life changed as we all know. So I got to write the book, which was amazing because I distilled the contents of that over the entirety of my business career. But more importantly, in, you know, the last 10 or 12 years prior to the book being written, I really, I think, had some learnings. which a lot of times is making mistakes and sort of progressing. Yeah. But within all of that, yeah, I just felt like there was an opportunity. So the book evolved. The basic premise of the book, Richard, is what you described, people first, always. I've always found, I didn't know what the magic was that happened within the clubs I worked within. And it wasn't me. What it was was the people. And when the people, and I mean the team, were having a really, really good day and enjoying their work and they were in their best place and doing their best work, you know, the members were happy. Like, you know, the club was singing. And it became clear to me that if I could create an atmosphere through leadership where my team members were really engaged and loved what they do. And I, you know, and that starts with hiring, right? Of course. But when we were allowing them to be their best self, they would flourish and the members would just gravitate. And that's what happened over time. This got repeated. What I had to learn very hard, the hard way, was how to do that in a scalable way. So not just where it surrounded me that I'm you know, out there with my pom-poms on and keeping everybody happy and focused and whatever. So the book was really evolution of that journey to get to the point where, well, how do you do this en masse? How do you do this in a chain of, you know, 3,500 team members and, you know, 200,000 members across, you know, multiple states? How do you do that? And so the book was the evolution of that. And And in simple terms, you know, even just if you look at the 12 elements of it, it all surrounds people. It is, we are a people-centric industry. I know we've mentioned AI a couple of times today. A lot of people are scared about AI that's gonna replace people's jobs and so on. One area I think is not gonna be heavily touched by it or will be benefited by AI but not impacted in a negative way so much is the fitness industry because we are a people industry. You know, we're about people.

Yep.

And it is what attracted me to the industry was the ability to help, you know, change lives literally. So anyway, to finish the, you know, the soundbite around the book, it evolved after many, many years of deliberation about, you know, how do I ensure that what I build remains? And if I do step away, it's gonna still have momentum. And the affinity principle was the upshot of that.

Yeah. Love it. The thing I love about it is that you mentioned a few things there, driving 3,500 team members, 200,000 members. There's a lot of— I think some people, I just love looking for the people that have been there and done that on scale. and then actually going, wow, it's all actually in here. And I always say the best work for people is in their book. So yeah, big shout out to you on the book. There's a lot of things there. And for anybody who doesn't like to read too much, there's some amazing pictures in there as well, I'm assuming from your wife.

Yeah, it's very infographic. That was an intentional thing because I'm very visual. A lot of people in our industry are very visual or tactile. So we wanted it to be very visual, but the audiobook comes out in a week or so, we've launched the audiobook. So that'll be available too for those people that, you know, they're not great at the reading bit, but—

Perfect. Well, that's perfect. We can definitely put that link in there. Let's talk about your other exciting project going on, AffinityOS. It's a focused AI-driven experience. And this is really interesting because by the sounds of it, you're taking the principles of your book, you're taking what's worked, and I'm assuming you're putting it all into AI. Can you touch on AI, artificial intelligence, for those who don't know what we're talking about here? And you're at the forefront of that as well, Grant. So I'm interested to hear more on that.

Well, I've had some really good partners, so I can't say I'm the guy that's you know, programming or writing all this. But, you know, AI, artificial intelligence is a platform that a lot of people hear about ChatGPT and so on. It's really a learning platform. So what it does, it aggregates information and can put it in context and can use it and grow a knowledge base around that. And so AI is an incredibly powerful tool. How we came to use it in this instance was, I described the affinity principle, and that is great leadership leads to great member experience— oh, team member experience, which leads to great member experience, which equals financial results. Well, the real challenging pieces in that are the team members, the level of engagement of team members, and measuring that. And then the members, how do we know that they're really happy and what's going on with them? And particularly when you get to scale, like, so let's say you have got 200,000 members and you want to sort of get a feel for what's going on both on a global level but also on a micro or macro level. And AI is really the only way to distill that information into some meaningful— I'm gonna say data, but really sentiments. That's what AI can do, which is really very different to just a database. It's not just pulling numbers out and creating, you know, datasets or dashboards.

Yep.

It's pulling sentiments out. That's really powerful. So when I've done this manually, so when Fred Reichheld came out with the NPS concept, the Net Promoter Score, back in the early 2000s, I embraced it immediately because I'm like, here's a really simple question we can ask our members. How likely are you to recommend the club to a friend or a family member? Really easy question to ask, one question and we can get a real gauge of, you know, how they're feeling. And also what Rykel proved was that this could be a lead indicator, not a lag indicator because all the indicators we have right now are lag indicators, you know, financials lag indicator, right? It's telling you how well you did. It's not telling you how well you're gonna do. You might hope that the trend remains or not. Whereas something like NPS actually is a lead indicator. It's giving you an indication of what's probably gonna happen. NPS score growing, indicating probably that your net profit is gonna continue to grow. NPS dropping, there's something wrong. And the beauty of that is you get a little bit of lead time to actually dial in and go, okay, what's going on? And based on that, what can we do about it? And, you know, you've got the travel book that my wife wrote. She actually wrote the book and, you know, in there we navigate, right? And you're always sort of plotting you know, where you want to go and you look at the weather and look at all these factors. But importantly, you want lead indicators. So the weather forecasts are really important. You really want to look out, you know, obviously you can't look at much more than 4 or 5 days, but you want to look out as far as you can to steer your ship in the right direction or your boat in the right direction. Well, that's what AffinityOS does. It's what the platform does, you know, it uses AI to help do that, but it really starts with the team members, the ENPS. And the eNPS is the Employee Net Promoter Score. So it's a derivation of the Net Promoter Score, which really gauges how members are doing. Are they happy? But the eNPS really gauges how team members are doing and are they happy. And that's even a greater lead indicator than how the members are doing because if your team's engaged and they're loving what they're doing and they're in flow, you know, I describe all this in the book, then there's a very, very high likelihood that the members are gonna have a great experience at the same time. So what we did, we used a SaaS platform. We actually licensed a platform from Medallia. So Medallia is the number one survey company in the world and that's, it gets that accolade most every year and they built this magnificent AI engine which we literally grabbed and utilized, but then we sort of broke it in 2 and did the ENPS and NPS and then we distilled it into one to go, here's your affinity index. We call it an index, not a score because we try not to get hung up on the numbers. What we do though is bubble to the top sentiments. And so let's say our sentiment is cleanliness, you know, this word comes up all the time and this is a growing sort of, in a word cloud sense, a growing visual. You can see this thing and it's surrounded by red, right? It's It's like, what's going on? And when you jump on the bubble, you can dig down and you can almost— or not almost, you can get right down to the individual comments of members, even if you've got 200,000 members. What is driving the concerns and complaints? And let's say it's one club, because this system works really well in one club. It works well en masse, but in one club, maybe there's a particular issue with the showers, you know, that we're not seeing because it's an issue in the morning at 5 o'clock in the morning when the manager's not there.

And

the beauty of this system is it's really polling members at all points of the day. So the AI is just to sort of wrap that up into a ball. The AI gives us the ability to actually get the information in very palatable form where you can actually look at it and go, okay, I can do something with this, right? Rather than looking at a massive spreadsheet of numbers and trying to work out, it really brings it into a very, very visual form. Then we have a lot of plays around that. So 2 of the things that we do that we really focus on, one's retention.

Yep.

Okay, so we want to keep members and, you know, keeping your members much cheaper than having to recruit a member. And one thing this system does do is increase retention and that's powerful. But the other one's referrals. When a member tells you, like, I'm giving you a 9 or a 10 out of 10 on an NPS score, they're telling you, I love you. They're an amazing referral source. We should be asking them for referrals. And it's a natural play to ask them, well, you know, glad you love the club. Really appreciate that cycle's your favorite activity. Hey, by the way, if you've got a friend that you would like to come in, you know, here's, here's an offer we'd like to make. You know, here's Voucher for you, voucher for them, you know, whatever you want to do. But what we do is leverage that opportunity to grab that referral source. So that has been probably the greatest value of the system in that it's a great management tool, it's a great strategic tool, it's a great, you know, team management tool, but it is more than anything a great retention and referral tool. So You know, using AI for something like that, I was beyond excited to have the ability to engage a system like that to do it. Yeah,

yeah. And

hopefully that—

and you mentioned it works well for larger facilities but also the individual studios and facilities.

Yeah, the way we work it, you know, not to do a plug but just to give you context, um, we charge 1 cent per member per day for the system. So if you're a studio of 300 people, Then, you know, really it's proportionately very little. It's $90 a month, as opposed to if you have somewhere that has, you know, 3,000 members, that's $900 a month. But what it brings in turn in terms of retention and referrals is a multiple of that. We're seeing a huge multiple of that, but we scale it so that even the smallest club or the biggest network will get proportionate benefit from it. Yeah.

1 cent. So you're the only person that accepts 1 cents anymore, Grant?

Well, it's really 30 cents over the course of the month,

right? So good for your money there. Amazing tool. And then you can go to affinityos.com.au and check more about that out. So that's, I mean, that's future or future is here, one of the two. And You know, in this industry, sometimes there is people that are here for the short term. Sometimes there's people here for a long haul. But it doesn't matter what you do. You always got to keep innovating this industry. And I mentioned, you know, before in your book, you've got a photo there of you teaching. What was it you were teaching? You were teaching something with leotards and it would've been aerobics, Grant, right?

Yeah. I was leading an aerobic competition. I was—

That's it. That's it. Yeah. I was trying to, I was trying to like, Try to zero in really close to the picture and sort of see, was that you wearing those, you know, those super tight things? And it's like, yes, it was.

It's pretty scary.

And I say that because, you know, there was— I mean, I even looked, I even was watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger Netflix documentary the other day. Don't know if you've seen that, but I look at people and I look at businesses. And, you know, there's life cycles of everything, as we know. There's a life cycle of business. And, um, you know, you started in that world, but now we're talking about AI, and you've, and you've had expand of industry for a long period of time where some people come to the fitness industry and they, they'll have one studio and they'll have their couple years and they'll change industries, right? I, I guess my question's a bit broader for you now, but, you know, what does it take for you to consistently remain in your why and remain in your flow? You mentioned that you got in here to help people and you're doing it in different ways now. I was sort of reminding myself when I got into fitness, I was 17 and got a studio and I've done different variations of it. But I guess I want to answer this question based on somebody who may be indecisive of where they're going at the moment or wanting to change But love helping people. How do you stay in an industry so long, Grant, and still love what you do? I mean, is it possible?

Well, I'd like to think it's possible, right? So I started out, geez, I wasn't even— I'd just turned 20, I guess, when I started out, and that was 4 decades ago. So I have remained in the industry at all times. I've shifted into other industries, but I've always had my foot in the industry.

Yep.

And I think the, the draw for me is what draws a lot of people to fitness, is, is that opportunity to help people and change lives. It really is primary driver for me. It's an intrinsic purpose that I, that I have. Um, but your question's a great one because I don't, I don't like sitting still, right? I don't like of just hanging my hat and going, okay, I'm just gonna, you know, stay with this forever, or, you know, jump all over the place. I do love variety, but the key for me, Richard, has really been trying to stay not just contemporary, but, but even ahead of the curve. Like this whole wellness thing, as much as it's, it's blossomed recently, as I said, you know, back in the '90s, I sort of fell into it and loved it, but it's such a broad sphere and there's so many elements to it. So I think one of the things we need to acknowledge is if we are in a studio and we've got limited, you know, capacity by just virtue of, let's say, the physical precinct that we exist in, there's so many opportunities again to partner and to grow relationships and to develop, you know, I'm gonna say the club without walls that There, there should be never a point when we can't be saying that we're evolving or thinking about evolving. I'll give you an example. In the States, when I was running that large group, I started a program called Discover Programs. Discover Programs were where we invited people to come and do an activity that they had thought about doing, whether that be walking, jogging, running, kayaking, rock climbing. It could have been hiking, you know, any sort of activity that was generally accessible. Mountain biking, great, great example. And we invited people to do that, not to join the club, but just to get moving. And we ran those programs outside of the club. We charged access fees for those, so we made money on the programs. It wasn't a big money spinner. But what was interesting, I used to do the mountain biking program because I love mountain biking and I'd take 20 people away mountain biking at this amazing set of trails, and those people would end up saying, well, how do I maintain my— oh, well, you know, do a cycle class. And the next thing, they're in the club. And so that integration sort of happens sort of fairly seamlessly. So if there's areas of passion that people have in the fitness industry that, that maybe overlap outside, you know, you can integrate those. And, um, like, we opened a climbing wall, uh, indoor rock climbing wall. Mm-hmm. as an adjunct to the club. And we did it because, um, we had a lot of people who were interested in climbing. But again, it created this great synergy between people that were climbers that now started to go to the fitness club to be stronger, and they'd be doing their pull-ups and doing, you know, things, strength exercises and so on. So I guess what I'm trying to say, Richard, is the sky's the limit as far as I can see in terms of fitness and wellness and how to integrate that into our lives and how to embrace you know, the opportunities that come up. I do think one other sort of element of this is just being unwilling to let homeostasis take us over, you know, so being unwilling to be static. If we continue to move and we continue to, you know, look out there, you know, and that's going to conferences, it's talking to people, it's going and looking at other industries. I've learned so much from other industries that I've brought back to the fitness and wellness realm that have helped me. I've learned a lot of what not to do. For example, in the healthcare industry, I learned a lot about healthcare industry. We set up massive physical therapy or physiotherapy clinics and doctors' campuses and all this, you know, really cool stuff. And they taught me a lot about what you shouldn't do, you know, if we want to really help people. And, um, so my point is, if we're— if we have a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for growth, a thirst for, you know, if we have the fitness ethic internally, there's a lot of ways to apply, a lot of ways to embrace it.

Yeah, uh, so such great insights. And I think this industry, uh, naturally, we, we are naturally, uh, driven down that way. And I think I've, you know, just the last couple weeks spoken to so many of our clients and other, um, you know, people in the industry. And, you know, especially after COVID, I think we're we're really starting to all realize that we can't go back to business the way it was. It's a new era. And I think the ones that have just, okay, clicked on that are really leading that way and leading the charge and thinking about what else we can do. And it is such an exciting time once we get sort of like lick our wounds up if something didn't work or we had some big struggles through COVID and we're still paying back our rent maybe, and we just got to get back to where our members were. And essentially, what I'm loving here is that all those things that we love to do, those maybe random activities or projects or hobbies and things like that, what you are saying is, does it interlink? Can that be used for keeping our growth happening as well as our business's growth happening? Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's really interesting. And yeah, I think that's an important key point when you're saying, how do you stay in the industry for a long period of time?

Well, it's hard, I think, for boutique studios and small studios. It's hard to retain members firstly because you've got limited offering. And it's also hard to stay the course with that after 5 years, 10 years. It can become in some ways it could become monotonous. But again, if we can really think creatively about how do we leverage and go outside of the walls, and, you know, how do we leverage the asset we do bring to the table. And again, the partnering is a critical thing, like the healthcare community. I would like to see us, and I'm already working, you know, at Alliance Wellness Group, we're working on this, but to have a physician referral program here in Australia. where we encourage physicians to write a prescription to exercise. And what I'll tell you is when somebody goes from maybe comorbidities, like so they've got multiple chronic health issues, they start moving and they get healthier, there's a degree of, to some degree, indebtedness, but there's definitely a degree of stickiness with those people with the studio that changed their life. And what I know is that there's so much opportunity in that space to embrace people. This is sort of a bigger conversation around, you know, the interested deconditioned or the uninitiated believer, which is— I'm really passionate about. It's— that's over 60% of the market fit in those categories. We fish currently in 20% of the market, which is crazy, right? We're all fighting over the, the people that are fit or the people that would be happy to go to a health club or already go to a health club. But I'm saying there's 60% of people, more than 60%, out there that are saying Every morning they're getting up and going, man, I need to move more. I need to do something, but I just don't know what to do. And they feel intimidated by us oftentimes. So that in and of itself is a whole nother opportunity for studios, no matter how big or small you are.

Yeah, outstanding. Um, and, and you've touched on— I just want to now maybe, you know, the last part of this podcast, I do want to touch on, um, the other role that you have, which is CEO of, uh, Total Fusion Alliance Wellness Group. And I think that, I mean, and if you're watching this on YouTube, there is an image behind you, Grant, and maybe you can kind of take us through, for those who haven't heard of Alliance Waters Group and Total Fusion, what you're actually creating here, because it's pretty outstanding and it's unheard of with the sizing and what you're actually creating here.

Yeah. So I wouldn't say I'm creating it. I'm a part of the team that's creating it. Um, Alliance Wellness Group— pardon me, sorry— have a number of, um, brands under, under their portfolio, and among those brands is Total Fusion. And Total Fusion 1.0 was a group exercise studio model, but an amazing boutique offering multiple studios in one facility, but still, you know, focus in the group act space. And then What we've expanded to, and and we opened our first of what will be many of these facilities at the beginning of this year, is a what I call Total Fusion 2.0, where we actually bring in everything from recovery, allied health, day spa, obviously the gym elements, and and a lot of the elements that would come with a normal facility. But those facilities, the one at Springfield, for example, is in partnership with. the Brisbane Lions. And so it's called Total Fusion Lions Brisbane, you know, Total Fusion Lions. Um, and the Total Fusion, um, or Total Fusion Brisbane Lions facility is 3,500 square meters and has an outdoor 25-meter pool. It's got an amazing recovery area with everything from, you know, your infrared saunas and your plunge pools through to Normatec boots that the Lions players themselves use for recovery. Then Morningside, which is our next tier, and that one is about 4,500 square meters. Amazing facility and just breathtaking when you walk in and, you know, beautiful green wall and a vestibule that, you know, is how I was doing things in the States where you want to walk into it and feel like I'm just walking into a really nice hotel. It sort of feels like that. And it's a beautiful cafe and the coffee's first rate and the smoothies are really well thought out. They're adaptogenic, they've got mushrooms in them. You know, they're just like, everything is on point for wellness. It's not well washed. It truly is integrated in that wellness space. And we do, you know, we have a cryotherapy unit there, for example, double chamber. But then moved to the facility behind me at Newstead and that opens in November.

Yeah.

Uh, that facility is 7,500 square meters, which will be adjunct to a 1,700 square meter Group X studio we already have. So it'll be the 2 combined, well over almost 9,000 square meters. But it has a rooftop magnesium pool, rooftop gardens, it has a snow room, it has an 8-person hyperbaric chamber. I mean, I did some hyperbaric clinic work over in the States but always worked with mono chambers, so one person per chamber. You can have you know half a football team in this chamber, and I'm sure the Brisbane Lions will take advantage of it for recovery. But the stuff we're doing there is just out of this world. You know, you said the Southern Hemisphere, Richard. That's no exaggeration. That facility in and of itself will be the finest wellness center, I believe, in the Southern Hemisphere, which is quite you know quite a thing to hang your hat on. And Leon McNeese, who's was the founder of Total Fusion, and his wife Michelle and their son Ben had a vision for this. And I've been lucky enough to become a part of that. And the vision that's being exacted is, is what I, I hope the Australian industry would embrace, um, and it really will need to. And that is really to look at wellness as a part of the future of fitness. You know, fitness will always have it have its place. But to expand and bring in these additional elements, you know, really I think what we're demonstrating through Alliance, you know, Wellness is it was really more what the ultimate potential is. But there's no reason why a studio owner should not be thinking, well, hang on, I could add some infrared saunas in, or I could, you know, add some Normatec boots in the lounge area, or I could, you know, come up with some really good healthy smoothies to offer my members so that when they finish that, you know, there's just a lot of ways that we can do that at any scale, at any level. But what we're doing, this is actually an image of the piazza for the wellness center and it's wrapped by the wellness center, which is 5 stories high. It has a doggy daycare, it has a kids zone. I mean, it's got, you know, world-class laundry there because to be honest, you know, we'll towels will become a part of the business we do, which in the States is more the norm, much less the norm here. But yeah, really exciting stuff and I'm privileged to be a part of it, honestly. So it is an exciting part of my day, that's for sure.

Well, yeah, it's super exciting. And I think it's all those elements we spoke about today, really, I think hopefully it's guided everybody on this journey today of Realizing that, you know, there is more out there and they can continue in this industry just by, you know, as you said, you know, connecting, seeing what's out there, adding something very small into their current studio, partnering with, you know, some key people in their communities to do so, and just, you know, having a look outside their box of what else is happening. You know what you're doing as well. I mean, I recommend them to grab a copy of Infinity Principle book and, you know, sort of, you know, visualizing how they can best help their community to, you know, and lead the way. Most importantly, I think that's the key thing here. I think everybody wants to, you know, when we talk about marketing and sales-specific trainings, you know, marketing is all about doing something that's going to get attention in the marketplace. And if it's an offer or if it's a, If it's a reel, if it's a website, whatever it is, it's about how do we get the most amount of attention? And so congested in the marketplace today. And I always go back and go, well, we can market, you can do some very clever marketing, but at the end of the day, if you have great retention, great members are getting results, and you're able to bring new things into your studio or gym that you haven't yet tried before, And you might be thinking, well, why I didn't do it before? And I think this is the great opportunity right now. And we're calling this in 2023 to actually— now is the chance to try something, to do something little and see where that progresses. Because I think it's such an exciting future out there. And I'm glad that you're leading the way in these areas and showing people how they can best serve as well. And I think that's the greatest thing about podcasts and books and everything out there. It's like, people are willing, like yourself, to share. And I think that's something that I certainly didn't have when I was starting off my first studio, or probably nor you had. Just finally, before we leave on that, is that something that naturally has to come as you become a leader, Grant, is sharing what you've known and to continue through? Is that part of the journey?

I honestly think so. I was listening to a podcast this morning on my way into work and, you know, I was talking exactly about this and it was Modern Wisdom and it was, you know, the essence of sharing. There's so much more that you gain out of that. And I think a lot of times we get the scarcity mentality that, oh, if I tell people what I'm doing, they're gonna go do it. We're all unique in and unto ourselves. And I think if we're our best form of ourselves, then we should share openly because no one else is gonna replicate you. That's for sure. The one thing I would say on the marketing front, a lot of times we go for awareness. You know, we feel like marketing is awareness. It surely is, but marketing is also resonance and relevance.

Hmm.

And I think that's really, really powerful in what we're talking about here is it's got to resonate with people. You know, they've got to be able to relate to it. And maybe at another time we'll talk more about the deconditioned and, you know, how to attract that market, but it's all about resonance. And relevance. It's got to be relevant to people. And I know a lot of people that would not go and do a group exercise class, but they might consider sitting in a recovery area in a set of NormaTec boots, you know, after a heavy day working behind the counter at Bunnings, right? Or whatever. Um, though there's entry points, and, and I think if we— if I could leave this last point— if we think about lots of entry points into our club, whether that's through a physician referral or through, uh, an access point where a person doesn't feel like I've got to go and put some energy in, in actual fact, where they can maybe get some energy back, right? A little bit of return. And I know we get energy from exercise, but not everybody relates to that. So again, relevance and resonance. If we really think about things when we are resonating and being relevant to the market we're trying to attract, that's when we get real traction. So.

Yeah. Great point to leave on there, Grant. Thank you so much for today's Words of wisdom, so much valuable insights there. I think there's a lot we can cover and I probably look forward to having you back on the podcast because I got so many questions about your book and leadership and that. So thank you so much for your time and your insights as always.

Thank you, Richard. Thanks. Really good to hang out with you, mate.

Cheers, Grant. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I know certainly I have. So if you haven't, I have. And the best way to find out more about this is on our show notes. And if you want to grab a copy of Grant's book, you can go to The Affinity Principle or check out Amazon and definitely lead down this path because it is such an interesting time and Grant's at the forefront of that. So until next time, team, if you want to listen to more of these episodes, you can go through our YouTube channel. Or you can go to our website, commarketing.com.au, and you can find some more relevant sources of information there and some other experts that I've had on previous episodes. Thanks so much.