The AI Era Of Fitness: Why Human Connection Matters More Than Ever With Justin Tamsett | EP 199

I think for us, and this was at this event that I went to a couple of weeks ago in the US where they talked about the different ages that we've been through as a society, you know, the hunter and gatherer age, the agricultural age, the industrial age, the information age. We're now in the AI age. And this particular speaker then predicted that the next age that will go from this intellectual and transactional age We'll actually move into an emotional and relational age, which will bring us back to how important people are in our business.

Yes.

Because there's gonna be this lust from our consumers to not wanna speak to an AI bot. They're gonna actually wanna talk to somebody.

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host, Richard Turtungi, and in today's episode, we've got a special guest coming in, backed by popular demand. In fact, he was one of the most popular episodes when I had him on previously. His name is Justin Tamset, JT for short. He's a managing director of Active Management. Now, if you don't know who JT is, he's a fitness industry lifer. That is right, lifer. After starting his career in 1988, that's right, 1988, a multiple former gym owner, he now runs a business called Rex Roundtables. Now I'm actually a Rexer. I'm in his supplier roundtable, and that's why I wanted to jump him on because he's got some interesting facts around what's happening in the fitness industry, not just in Australia but in the USA, which is really interesting. He's also the owner of the Fitness Business Podcast, which by the way is the number one podcast in the world for gym owners and staff. He's Australia's most awarded industry consultant, a leading international speaker, and regarded one of the most foremost thinkers to get our industry creating positive impact in our communities. He's back from his US trip and heading back there soon. And the thing that I wanted to— welcome, JT, by the way. Welcome. He's here now. He's here now. Yes. Hello.

Yes. Thank you, RT.

Thank you so much. I wanted just to kick off saying, just before you— I said, you're going back to the US and you've got a very interesting concept. It may be interesting. It might— maybe it's interesting in now the space of 2024. And as I mentioned, I'm recently a Rex roundtable for the suppliers network, which I find a lot of value in that. And It's not a Zoom. It's, it's, it's a face-to-face, and you're traveling all around US, and you meet round tables face-to-face. Now, it seems like it's basic, but in this day and age, I mean, that's a lot of traveling to the US. You're based in New South Wales, Australia, and, and there's got to be something in it. There's, there's a success of clues there because you've been in the game for a very long time. And before I sort of get into the predictions that I want to go through today, what do you think of being face-to-face with business owners specifically in the fitness and wellness industry? What does that do to somebody?

Look, I think we are social beasts as human beings. We love to socialize. We love to be with other humans. That's in our DNA. And, you know, certainly the beauty of Zoom, the beauty of podcasts, the beauty of videos on YouTube, that all makes learning very accessible. Yeah. And I think that's great for learning projects and learning how the how-to-do things. So, you know, for us, you and I'll have a conversation, but people listening to the podcast, They don't actually get to integrate or join the conversation, if you will. It's two-way between us. But when you get face-to-face, it's a conversation and then allows deeper layering in that conversation. So I still think there's a massive place for face-to-face events. And I know it's a pain in the ass for people to get on a plane and fly somewhere. I mean, You guys just had your event in Melbourne and people probably whinge about having to do that, but when they're there, there's no whinging. There's no whinging when people are face to face.

That's true.

So I do think there's a really key component to education and layering education into an in-depth level when you're face to face. There's certainly a place for video and there's certainly a place for podcasts and audio and reading. But once you get face-to-face, you can dive deeper in and get greater understanding and be able to then almost translate that into your business and have a conversation with others about how does this relate to my business? This is what I think, but what do you think?

Yeah, really interesting. It's that fly on the wall conversation. I mean, between us, we are having a conversation, but as you mentioned, somebody listening in, you might be in your car, running on audio, but you're not able to engage or say hello to us. So, so it's just, it's almost like you're on the sidelines of the content. And, and yeah, you're right, that's a learning aspect. So, so what you do, what Rex does, and even just this conversation of like connection, is, is when you bring multiple people together, you're able to have an opinion, or even if you don't have an opinion, you can listen. And you can sort of see what's not being said. It's the verbal, maybe it's the verbal, the nonverbal language, I should say, that we're missing out on possibly.

Well, I often think, you know, when people get together, it's the conversations that occur in the hallways. It's the conversations that occur at dinner. It's the conversations if you're at a conference in a bar where you actually probably get more takeaways than you do when you're actually in the event, for want of a better description. So I think, I do think there's definitely a place still for face-to-face events and it's making that effort to get there because that's where you truly learn. And, you know, we're gonna talk about predictions and I recently went to a conference in the US. Yeah. And I'll talk about what that would be. But in that conference, they really went into this whole space of how important people are in our business moving forward because we're in this age of AI, which we can talk about as well. But we still need people. And at the end of the day, the fitness industry is a people engagement business. And so I think if it's an engagement business in a studio or in a gym or performance gym or whatever the case may be, it's also got to be for us as business owners to be able to get together and, like I say, chew the thin on how we get better.

Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Great. Well, that's not in the predictions. That could be a prediction. Now, JT, I did want to get straight into it because I Hopefully somebody has heard you on a Facebook or at one of your podcasts or at an event speaking. And I do think that you have one real true uniqueness about you, and that's predictions, I think, in regards to the reason being because you're in a lot of different situations that people aren't. So they might be reading, people might be reading and absorbing, but I think in US, you're there for a month and you're at like 8, 9 different locations inside different businesses. Yeah. So probably someone could say, yeah, I'm gonna speak to 5,000 people on the front of a stage. But you're, you're actually listening to these, to these really deep conversations from franchises to independents. So, you know, hopefully the reason why I say that is because predictions are— anybody can say, I predict, I predict, I predict. But, but, but I really think that some of these, these predictions that when you say it, People listen. So I'm really curious around what do you think? We're halfway through the year nearly in 2000 and what is it, '24? We're 5 years post-COVID. We've come from a land of interest rate recessions if you're in Australia and tightening the belt for a lot of businesses, but we're coming out of that. We're going now into winter period and for the next 12 months, So I'd love to know, JT, what are you hearing? What's on the ground that we should be predicting and waiting for, for our fitness or wellness or studio like that?

Well, I think for many people, Rich, they're going through their first ever, and I hate the phrase because it's used almost too much, cost of living crisis. They've never been through this. As a country, we've lived in good times for many years. And for some people, this is the first time that they've had to tighten their belt. For me, I've lived through stock market crashes and recessions that we were meant to have, that politicians have said we were meant to have and so on. And I actually had it, my club was when we were in a recession. Right. And at the end of the day, What, what we generally see is people don't stop coming to the gym.

Okay.

Even though money might be tight, they know the importance of going to the gym for their health's sake. Now, I guess the challenge becomes is, are they gonna keep paying $55 or $66 a week for their membership? Or are they gonna cancel that and go to a gym that might only be $15 a week?

Yep.

That's the thing that we really don't know too much about. But what, what we do know is people generally keep their gym memberships despite the media saying, hey, you should cancel your gym memberships and just walk or just do your pushups in the park or whatever the case may be. People still generally keep it. So what will be interesting to see will be over the next 6 months to the end of the year is whether we see people stick to their current modality of training or place where they train, or whether they actually switch to a cheaper— and I'm using air commas there— a cheaper modality of working out.

Interesting. And so obviously depending if your type of business you're in, if you own a a cheaper membership gym-orientated business, you might be rubbing your hands together and going, yes, but you got other businesses that are charging a higher amount. Should they be worried, JT? Are we ready for worry or has that already been?

No, look, I don't think we need to worry at all. I think, again, because of the world that we now live in, community is so important. I think the challenge for fitness businesses are the fitness businesses where there is no community between the members, where there's no community. In other words, the member pays to rent gym equipment every week or every fortnight or every month in their payments. They're just renting equipment. So there's no stickiness between them and the brand or them and the club or them and the community. They're the businesses that need to be worried. But if you've got a strong community that you work hard to connect your members, you work hard to make your members feel special beyond just the workouts,

Yes.

then I think people will go, you know what? I need that as part of my life. So you don't need to worry unless your business model is People pay to rent equipment and there's plenty of businesses that do that. But I'm not sure, probably they're listening to this podcast.

I doubt so. Yep. I doubt the Planet Fitness are listening. JT, it's interesting in the community because I think if you're still in business and you have been through COVID 5 years ago, if your business has been around 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years, that was probably a massive thing that had to happen through that era. So you should be in a decent stance at the moment because you would've been progression through community. So hopefully if anybody's listening to this, they're probably in a better stance than they were maybe 5 years ago. And so they're ready for this next little hurdle, we could say.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I do think to a certain degree, Rich, when we came out of COVID the talk was so much about community and what does that look like and how do we build community. And then I kind of feel it almost dropped off the radar a little bit and we went back to focusing on weight loss and we got focusing on getting people fitter instead of looking basically at that mental health aspect. And I still think this is the underlying success story of the fitness industry, is that We can make people feel better in their head as well as in their heart without even worrying about weight loss. And I think when we think like that, that engagement of brain and heart feel better community, and if we revert back to that and emphasize that more, uh, and I, and I accept that somebody who's interested in joining a gym is probably not necessarily looking for our community. But once they get in, then they stay. And there's actually a great video from a CrossFit box in British Columbia and it's called The COVID And they say, and I've heard this phraseology multiple times, but they say, people came to us for the workout, but they stayed with us for the community.

Yeah, that's really cool. It's that get them in the door and then keep them through the community. That's awesome. Actually, Mike from MyZone, he was at our Melbourne— he was a speaker at our Melbourne marketing workshop about a month ago, and he mentioned there are a lot of people talk about community, but how do you prove that you have community? People say, oh yeah, we'll catch up with our Community. So it was a really interesting statement. People always say, they come to us from marketing, they say, oh, that community is awesome, community is awesome. And so, but like, what makes great community? Is it that you put an event on once a month, or they're sticking around for that community, those interpersonal conversations? So that, that's probably a really great, a really great conversation for anybody to continue picking up with. How do they make how do their community stick around? How do they make it better? If what you're saying is correct in regards to, yeah, they'll stick around for the community. So maybe that's a big piece of the pie that we can all be better on or just be really, what's our idealistic community to have and how do we measure that community? How do we know it's working? I think that's a really, something to really think about because,

yeah. For me, I think my definition of a really good community is When the, when the members or the clients talk to each other. And when they're, when they're engaging with each other while they're working out or on the way in or on the way out of a studio, when there's that engagement between clients and members, then you know you've got a good community.

Yeah, that's a great way to summarize that.

Like, to me, that's a real key one. Again, using CrossFit as an example, not that we should ever quote Coach Glassman, but Coach Glassman said his definition of a good community was, if your car broke down, Rich, I would drive to your house, pick you up, and bring you to the CrossFit workout.

Wow, that's cool.

Like, that's, that's what, that's how he wanted to build a community.

Yeah, great. Very good.

I like that. We all have different definitions of what that community looks like and we all have different cultures and every culture probably has a different definition of a community. But I think when people lean in against that wheel to help each other out when times are tough or support them, make them feel welcome, and that's when you know that there's a strong community.

Yeah, great. I've got some more questions to ask, but I wanna give you the floor a little bit, JT, and if you've got one or two more predictions that you'd like to share.

I think one of the interesting things that business is going through at the moment, and you are probably more across this than me, is AI. And I was thinking about this this morning, Rich, when I was running. And I was like, what is AI? Like, seriously, excuse the French, but what the fuck is AI? Because these days AI seems to cover, it's just such this broad term for anything that computers do for us.

Yeah.

And I'm not sure that's the right definition. And therefore, I think because it's just this broad term, as an industry, we get lost in what AI is. And therefore, I think we become almost overwhelmed by AI, almost to the sense of being paralyzed by analyzing AI and what it can do for our business and that sort of thing. I mean, I talked to a club owner the other day and he was telling me, oh, we use AI. And I said, oh, what's that? How do you use it? And he said, oh, we have automated emails that go out at different stages of people's membership. And I said, interesting. So are those triggered by the behavior of the member or are they triggered by how long they've been a member as an example? And he said, oh no, no, it's not what they do. It's just how long they've been with us. And in my head I'm like, that's not AI, that's a CRM.

Yeah. Yep. It's interesting. I think AI, and it's funny you say that because we just launched an AI marketing workshop yesterday. which we're rolling out the next 3 months. And it's really interesting. It's like when the internet came out, JT. I, I think this is the era that we're in. It's like, oh, the www, was it 3 W's? And that's what I think AI is. And AI, everybody's gonna have a different meaning to AI and what they do with it and how it works. But I actually think it's, it's, it's definitely put attention to, if you wanna call it automations, which have been around for a long time, as we know, and it's definitely put attention into ways businesses can do things much better. But a lot of it is still, I mean, in, you know, my books is AI is very different to maybe what someone else's AI is, what your example was there.

And I think, I think for us, And this was at this event that I went to a couple of weeks ago in the US where they talked about the different ages that we've been through as a society, you know, the hunter and gatherer age, the agricultural age, the industrial age, the information age. We're now in the AI age. And this particular speaker then predicted that the next age that will go from this intellectual and transactional age will We'll actually move into an emotional and relational age, which will bring us back to how important people are in our business. Because there's gonna be this lust from our consumers to not wanna speak to an AI bot. They're gonna actually wanna talk to somebody. They're gonna wanna have an— An

AI robot, an AI like, hey, hey JT, welcome to the club. Yeah.

And like there's a place for that in our business. Absolutely. And like we've got, again, you know, think about predictions. We've got clients on our Rex Roundtables in the US, they're using an AI bot to call members who are delinquent payers to get their new credit card details or their new bank account details to be able to bill them. Now that's historically always been a person, but now we can make it more efficient with an AI bot.

Yep.

So I, I can see there's a place for it, but I can't see how an AI bot can, um, help me do a squat better or help me or motivate me to run that little bit faster on a treadmill in a, in an interval session.

Yeah, I also think too it's, it's going to be the age demographic, like what age are you and what are you growing up with as well. I think that's going to be a huge huge piece of it, but it doesn't even matter if, you know, my kids are 7, they're going to grow up in a very different world already. But I think you're 100% correct. It will eventually, even if they're having a relationship with a bot or a robot or something like that, then that's going to happen. But then it's always going to come back to that communication piece where they're lacking. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, one of my predictions is the communication piece. I've got a friend of mine, Sam Cawthorn. He's the business has ever been through communication now, teaching people to communicate where it wasn't a big thing before. But it's like, oh, communication's actually bigger than any time before because we forgot the art of communication and people are really struggling with that. I think that's going to be a huge piece of this next, as you said, the relationship problem. And that's, to me, I think it's going to be next somewhere down the line.

Mate, I agree wholeheartedly. And That's great that Sam's doing that because there's very few people that are actually focusing on that communication side of things. And I call it the soft skills of communication. And I was working with a client last week and I said to them, do all of you know how to shake hands? And they all went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

And so we did a demo of shaking hands and to be fair, probably 60% of them knew how to shake hands and it felt like a good handshake and 40% felt like it was a wet fish.

Wow. Wow. That really makes you think, doesn't it?

Because they're just not, you know, and respectfully, these people had been in lockdown for 2 years in Victoria. So again, their soft skills, the listening skills. So, you know, I think if it was a prediction, I don't know if it's a prediction, Not about our industry, but it's a prediction about society is we've lost those soft skills of communication.

Yeah, really interesting. I think that's just a reminder that we need to teach people and teach them how to be better. And that's our team as well, right? Teach them what we want because they probably don't even know themselves.

And this conference that I was at, Rich, they said there was a slide that said this: in the past, jobs were about muscles. Now they're about brains, but in the future they'll be about the heart. And that's where we talk about that communication piece between people to people.

Yeah, excellent. I like that.

And this speaker was really trying to drill home to us as attendees that the focus must be on the people that work for us. And, and what that looks like. He shared some stats that said the number one most important quality in a job is fulfillment. Having a manager who cares was close behind. So number one is, how am I, how am I getting self-fulfillment from this role? And number 2 is just having somebody who actually cares about them.

Yeah, what great, great insights there.

So as a leader, you know, we can certainly revert to AI to speed up our efficiencies, but I don't necessarily think it'll speed up our effectiveness. That's where we need people. So as a leader who is probably listening today, your most coveted skill in the future is going to be making sure the person in front of you feels seen, that they feel heard, and in fact that they feel valued in your, in your business. Whether that's one other trainer that works within your studio, you want them to feel seen, heard, and valued, or whether it's 5 other people or 10 other people in your business.

Yeah, awesome. That is, uh, excellent, uh, insights there. I love that one. So we talked about community. A big piece around community, something to really hone in. AI age moving into relationships and this whole thing we can combat against that or keep our, keep our staff, keep our people and keep them in fulfillment. Quick question for you, JT. Do you see anything different in the US versus Australia or New Zealand? Are we in front? Are we behind? Or do things, you know, before, back in the day, it used to be go to the US and get all the good stuff to Australia. But is it like that still, JT, or is it equal?

Look, I gotta— I don't think it is. I think we're about equal.

Yeah.

I think the beauty of the US is it's such a big market. So you can go to somewhere like New York, which is New York is a complete and separate ecosystem for health and fitness. You can walk out of your hotel and look left or look right if you're in downtown New York and you'll probably see 5 or 6 different modalities of how you could work out in each direction. But they can do that because they've got the population to do

that.

I think we as Aussies, we kind of go over there and think, oh my gosh, this industry is so much better, but it's not that much better. It's just there's more variety because there's more people that work there and they can make it work.

Got it.

So I don't think we're actually, from the sense of service levels, we are by far equal, if not in front. The sales skills that, you know, people like Steve teaches, you know, we're at least equal there, if not in front. from a sales perspective. And I think the other advantage for us, and people wouldn't see it as an advantage, I'm sure, is our expenses are a lot higher than some of the US. So we actually probably run better businesses financially speaking because we got tougher obstacles. However, in the US, Things are not rosy for everybody. It is still tough over there in the sense that their numbers in some areas are not back post-COVID. California is still really struggling. Yep. Perhaps the most fascinating thing for me, Rich, is in California, if you work on the front desk, I think the current minimum wage is Like $22, $23 US an hour. For exactly the same job in Texas, it's $7.

Wow. Wow.

So, you know, you can, in California, you could probably earn more flipping burgers than you could standing on the front desk at a gym. So we see over there certainly a real struggle to get really good quality people to work for us. No different here though. So I don't really think there's a lot of difference between the two industries anymore. I think we're very much on par.

Yeah. Great. Well, that's good to know. All right, JT, I've got a couple quick questions for you. Well, I've got 2 quick questions for you. If you were down to your last $100 in your business, And that was it and you're in a fitness or wellness business, what do you think you'd spend $100 on, JT?

I'd give it to you.

Oh, that's a great answer.

No, I'm serious. Like, you know, one of the things that I hear a lot is that when our expenses increase and our income decreases, then we go, all right, well, where do we save money? Well, we'll save money in marketing. Well, okay, if you reduce your marketing spend, how do you increase your income? So, you know, potentially I would give my $100 to you, Rich, and I'd say, all right, help me market to my current members who love me. How do I get them to spend more money with me? And then that might just give me a few extra bucks to then say, all right, now I need to market into my community and I can do socials or digital or whatever the case may be. But I think if I'm down to my last $100, I've gotta spend that in marketing. I can't, not spend it in ways to grow my income.

Yeah. Great answer. And then go to the lowest hanging fruit first of all to get the highest return. That's even better. Best advice you've ever received, JT? I know it's a big question, but is there one piece or two piece advice that you've received over the years that's really helped you?

You'd be surprised how many people ask me that question. I think it's because I've been around for so long. And they're like, you know, you've gotta have someone giving you some great words of wisdom over the years. And I actually don't have any phrase or sentence or soliloquy to be able to share with you on the best advice. But here's what I do think is that I was always and are always open to that advice.

Right.

So, you know, for me, I don't know everything. I never will know everything. So when someone gives me advice or shares something with me, I kind of, I take that on board and then I go away and digest it to work out its relevance either for my business or for me personally. So I think It's a meme. I'm sure it's a meme somewhere on socials, but you can either be green and growing or ripe and rotting. So if you think about an apple, it sits, so long as an apple sits on the tree, it's green and it's growing. But once it falls from the tree and it's ripe, it then falls to the ground and it then can rot. So for me as a business person, as a parent, As a human being, I like to think the advice that was never given to me, but is my philosophy, is that I'm open to advice. I want to hear advice and then let me make the decision of, well, the relevance of that in my life.

Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. I just Googled it. There is a meme. There's a meme to everything now, JT, on social media. I was saying that to Joey the other day. I sent her— I always— I don't know if you do. I send Joey, my wife, memes from Instagram all the time, right? And I was like, where'd this all come from, this meme stuff on Instagram? Like, there's always a funny thing for everything that we do, positive or negative. There's always somebody that's analyzing something we're doing. It's getting kind of ridiculous, but there is something always out there to remind us of that. I'm not sure why, but there is always stuff like that.

And I can't work out how they make any money out of making those memes.

I don't know. I'm not— probably AI, JT.

It's probably an AI bot doing something for them.

They've got the AI bot in there. Listen, JT, I've got 2 more questions right before we wrap up. One of them's off the cuff. I haven't really taken that through to you, but there's a lot of business owners, JT, that have been in business for a long time. And as you progress as a parent, you're a father, and I talk to other business people, and I think any community that you're at, you're in a community because you want to see what other people are doing. And as you continue to grow a business, it could be a fitness studio or any kind of business, you're going to have to trade time versus money or time versus time or anything like that to grow. I'd love to know your insight, and I'm starting to ask this to our guests, is How do you consistently grow a business and how do you also grow, you know, even the handshake? It made me think about, oh, you got to tell your son how to shake a hand. And I know you have a daughter, but how do you combine both worlds, running a business and also trying to be there for your kids as well? It's something that I'm really fascinated about at the moment because there's always that growth in one part and another part is not growing. And I don't personally believe that— I haven't worked it out, but I don't personally believe you can grow all different sectors at the same time. I think one's going to grow more than the other. That's my opinion on it. But I'd love to know your insight, JT. Can you grow all parts of your world or is that a myth?

I actually think you can.

Yep.

But I think it requires a lot of discipline. I think as small business owners, and I guess the majority of people listening to today's podcast are going to be small business owners, that life as a small business owner bleeds into our life as a partner to a lover or a part or a parent, or even a son or daughter. That, that life bleeds in. But what I, what I believe is that if, if the life outside of business is in the toilet, then that impacts how you actually see your own business. So Certainly for me, my priorities have changed as my daughter has got older. When she was little, working for myself allowed me to always take Monday off. Monday was daddy daycare. And so I spent that time with her. Even now at 15, in the school holidays, you know, we try to spend a Monday together doing something. And I think we have a pretty good relationship as a father-daughter 15-year-old. I'm sure it'll be stretched and strained as she becomes 16, 17 and driving and then drinking. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

Well, you're doing a good job at 15. She's still hanging out with dad on Mondays. That's good.

But we work hard on that and I think, I just think The challenge is, particularly for us in small business, is to put down— and I'm holding up my phone at the moment to you— is to put down the phone and be present. And be present with our kids or be present with our partners. Because all they'll do is mirror our behavior and we can justify it and say, well, I'm in small business, so I'm checking my emails or checking my bookings for tomorrow. And it's all very easy to justify.

Yes.

But why don't you just hold off looking at your phone until 8:45 because your kid's in bed at 8:30 rather than looking at it at 7:30 when you could be just watching TV together?

Yeah.

Look, I'll confess something, Rich, but so long as you can edit this out.

Totally.

Our guilty pleasure is we've just, as a family, we've just watched Farmer Wants a Wife.

Oh, yep, yep.

And it's Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night.

Yeah, it's like every night, isn't it? Yeah,

3 weeks. But the 3 of us sit down and we all watch it together.

Yes.

And we talk about it, we talk about the relationship, and we talk about why he might like her and, and that sort of thing. And at the end of the show, and, you know, Zoe sort of goes to bed, I kind of sit there and I go, I'm not sure that was a learning experience, but it was a bonding experience.

Yeah, great.

No phones, no screens other than the TV screen. So we're having those conversations. So I do think you can grow it. I think you can grow both, but you've got to take the discipline. You've got to have that commitment that you've got to your business, to your family as well. And as you know, because I know you do this, I love coaching my kid in sport because I have to put my phone down and I've gotta have that commitment on a Saturday and training. So it forces me to disconnect from the world. So again, maybe that's the right advice or the wrong advice for people. I don't know. I don't know. But that's been my success is that coaching Zoe for netball for 10 years has meant that at least For probably 3 hours a week, there's no, no device other than me and her talking.

So great. And I appreciate the, uh, the question to the un— um, the, the non— didn't even give you the, the questions on that one. So thank you so much for that. And, uh, yeah, totally true. When you are coaching, you've got to turn that phone off. Um, I forgot my watch a few times and I have my phone, a timer, and my son says, get off the phone. I said, I'm just timing it. They They hate when you're on the phone. So yeah, really great insights here. And I think the reason why I wanted to ask that question, because you have been in the game for a while, JT. You've still got hair. I don't. So it can't have been that long. But anyway, you have. And I am really fascinated about how to stay in an industry or a sector or something long-term without with other parts of your life still intact. I think that's a, that's a huge piece and a huge win. And I know a lot of people can't get that right. So I appreciate the response on that question. Love to know the last prediction for you going into the second part of 2024, 2025. Anything that you are seeing that people should possibly You know, add into their business or something they should take away?

You might well like what I'm about to say. I think video, authentic video is gonna just continue to grow and be an important part of conveying a message to both your community of current clients as well as future clients. I just, I love video because I think video just shows that authenticity of who the person is, and I can work out whether I think that I would get on with them and therefore want to train with them or not. So my prediction would be video will Continue to be successful. And I also predict that there'll be a hell of a lot of people that'll fuck up their video marketing because they'll try to be something that they're not.

What a great prediction. I agree with you, JT. As mentioned, I, we launched a new event and I put some ads out and one of the ads I put out, I got an app. I wanted to test it out. I've got an app And you can choose anybody that you want on the video. So you put the script and they talk for you, and they're a real person, but they just mimic their voice. Anyway, so I'm— I put 2 random people in the video. I've got a guy, a blonde girl, a brunette girl, and I just really want to see what would happen here. And the results are a little bit too early, but I can tell you right now that It— that, that's gonna lie the problem when we have all this AI technology. Nobody knows who these people are, and the results are just gonna be poor quality. So again, it comes down to that communication piece. It comes down to how do you get answers off a person that is scared to be in a video. So yeah, the future is bright. But I, but I, I do love your, your concept there is If you're green, you're growing. And I think that's what this whole podcast is about. And I thank you for your time and your experience, JT.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Look, you guys at Com do an amazing job and you fill up a big void in our industry because I do feel the weakness for a lot of people is marketing, whether that's internal or external. You teach them how to fish. You don't do the fishing for them necessarily. They can do that themselves. And I think that's a great aspect of what you guys do and you help. If I can just do one quick shout out, Rich.

Of course.

Quick shout out to Joey. Joey needs to listen to you more. She needs to be on more videos because she will get more traction than you on a video. We know that, don't we?

She'll definitely convert better, JT. 100% convert better.

You know, when you told me that, A couple of months ago, that has stuck in my head and that's why that prediction about video and being authentic is, it just sits there with me and I just go, you know what? Rather than paying a brunette to talk about our product, Joey will do a great job.

Yeah, she would do it for you, right?

Yeah.

She certainly will. I just couldn't get her on that. She just was, I said, Joey, can we do the videos? I said, It was a Thursday last week and I said, can you get the videos? And so then she was busy and she couldn't get on. I said, all right, I'm just gonna try this. It won't work, but I just wanna do the test out there and see it and just to have a bit of a cheeky joke around AI. So anybody sees those ads, they can be a bit cheeky and there's a reason for it because everybody thinking that AI is the thing, but it's certainly, you know, getting somebody to record a video that's not your brand or not your person. It's going to be a flop if ever I've seen one myself.

Oh, 100%. I just— yeah.

So everything we don't believe in.

That bit there will probably end up on the cutting room floor, except it might actually get cut up and then just texted to Joey at some stage.

I certainly will. I will text that. She'll get that eventually. Thank you so much, JT. Now, JT, just before we go, a quick shout out. For those who do want to maybe connect with you possibly on a RECS roundtable, quick question, who do you look for and where can they get more information for that?

Probably the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn. I mean, you can just Google Justin Tamsett and there'll be a couple of ways you can get hold of me or look for me on LinkedIn and just shoot me a message and then we can talk to see if RECS is the right thing for you.

Yeah. Awesome. So guys, if you want a, a bit of a face-to-face experience and education and great community, hit up Justin Tamzin on LinkedIn and ask him about Rex, and he'll hit you back with some questions and go from there. Thanks, JT, for your wisdom and advice. Look forward to catching up next time. I'll, I'll get those predictions down, and I'm looking forward to them All coming out in the future.

Thanks, mate. Appreciate your time too.

Thank you, team. If you've enjoyed this episode, um, be sure to listen for more. There's about 200 of these episodes. You can go to commarketing.com.au or listen on your favorite, um, um, audio advice— audio, what am I saying? Audio Spotify. They're all out there. Just search AI, you'll find them. Thanks, team. I'll catch you next time on the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Bye for now.