He Sold 24hr Fitness For $1.7B… Then Bought It Back | Mind Pump 2815

Key Takeaway

When buying distressed businesses, focus on controllable factors first. Mark Mastrov identified that Crunch Fitness was losing $2M/month simply because leadership eliminated sales and marketing—believing "Field of Dreams" would work. By reactivating basic fundamentals (sales teams, marketing systems, proven operations), he turned the company profitable rapidly. The lesson: Before declaring something broken, ensure you're executing the basics excellently.

Episode Overview

Mark Mastrov, founder of 24 Hour Fitness, shares his journey of leaving the company he built after selling it for $1.7B, watching new ownership make costly mistakes, and eventually buying it back decades later. He discusses the breakdown of his relationship with new ownership, the failed promises, and mismanagement that led to his departure. Mastrov also reveals how he turned around Crunch Fitness from bankruptcy (losing $2M/month) by implementing fundamental sales and marketing systems, and his vision for resurrecting 24 Hour Fitness with recovery services, nutrition, and personal training.

Full Transcript

Transcript of He Sold 24hr Fitness For $1.7B… Then Bought It Back | Mind Pump 2815 from Mind Pump Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Mark, welcome back to the show. Okay, thanks for having me. This is awesome. All right, I got to open with this. So, what's going on with you and 24 Fitness, the company that you founded, you left a long time ago. What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? I think last time I was on, we were talking a lot about that and how I left and what I thought, but you know, it came back to me. You know, I took Crunch to the market last year and we had a very successful transaction in June with the team there.

And then uh I stepped off the board and was looking at myself in July and got a phone call that hey 24 might be available if you want to make a run at it. And I was like well hell yeah I'll make a run at it. So, um, kind of wanted to bring back buy the baby back, so to speak, and, um, spent two months negotiating a term sheet with the current ownership group they had at the time, and finally got them to agree to my price, my structure, and we signed it and then I went out and uh, raised the capital, brought in this group called Long Range Capital as my partner, and then finished the debt facility at the end of the year and got it closed on the 31st of December.

So effective the beginning of this year was able to step back in and kind of have some fun and reignite that brand and she got a great team there. So should be nothing but blue sky. blue sky. blue sky. Now you you say this so calm and cool and diplomatic about this but you you have to take for the audience that doesn't know you have to take us back to the day leaving. I don't know how much you can or will share about like what it felt like to grow that thing to what you grew it to to exit what 2 point something billion something billion something billion uh 1 17 17 okay to 17 billion that you exit that thing for you stay on the board leave not really probably the way you expected to leave.

So, I want to know how that felt, what you were going through in that moment. And then when you leave, do you picture this day down the road? Like, are you thinking or are you thinking I'm going to go compete and go crush? go crush? go crush? I mean, you always think like you can go back and buy something you built cuz they may screw it up, [ __ ] it up, all that good stuff. But I think when when I sold the company in '05, which is like 20 plus years ago, um I was staying with whoever bought it.

They all wanted me not to sell a single share, stay, keep rolling. And I had a lot of people at the table. And then this last group came in force and little and said, "Look, we're going to buy it. We're going to give you a much bigger number. We're going to preempt it, but we don't need you." I'm like, "What do you mean you don't need me? We don't need you. We got people we can bring in." I was like, "Oh, okay." And so I'm out completely.

And then about two weeks before close, they come back to me and say, "Look, we got a reacap recap accounting issue where we have to have a significant role by some shareholder. Would you roll?" And so I kind of took the bullet for the team and let everybody else exit. I rolled a decent chunk over and then I just stayed on as chairman and then they went out and hired a team to come in and that team to me just made every mistake you can possibly make from the beginning of time.

Blew through cash, brought in consultants to the point where, you know, we were in covenant default, heading into covenant default at the end of '07. of '07. of '07. Now, are you when this is happening, are you uh I mean, you're obviously on the board, so you have a vote. Are you just sounding the alarm the whole time? whole time? whole time? Yeah. And are you outnumbered? I mean, what's happening? what's happening? what's happening? No, I I mean, Ted Forceman was a storied guy. Built Gulfream, made a ton of money, and he bought this business kind of as a lastm minute spend.

He bought IMG, and then he bought us at 24hour, wrote a big check and funded it, and he made me five promises in the transaction, and he he failed all five. You know, one of them was he had 500 million of dry powder that we could use to grow with. And 3 months later, I'm like, "Hey, I want to deploy that capital. I got this big acquisition." I had to give it back. I don't have it anymore. Like, what are you talking about? That's part of our deal terms.

He's like, well, I lost it. The other one was, you know, I can give you all five, but the other one was no fee, right? I don't want the VCs to charge a big fee. And probably two months in, he's like, I'm going to charge $2.5 million annual management fee. I go, no, you can't. It's right. You can't. He goes, [ __ ] sue me. Right. Wow. Wow. So, you're like, okay, I'm going to sue my new partner. And okay, I guess I'm not doing that. Then the last one was his team.

There's a guy named Tom Listister who was the lead on the deal. Ted played very little role. He had three really sharp people that came in and did all the diligence and cut the deal with me and everything. I said, "Are you guys staying?" Cuz in the past, I've seen, you know, the head VC disappeared. No, we're staying forever, Mark. We're not leaving. Month three, they're gone. They all quit. Call took new jobs. And so, you get handed all that and you're like, you know, this is pretty interesting.

So I started looking at the financials and and the CEO they brought in was spending money like a drunken sailor on consultants, you know, bringing in Bane and employment consultants. And I said to him, I said, "Look, I I think we got a problem here." So I called Ted and said, "Look, I I think you're going into covenant default." He goes, "What are you talking about? I just looked at the books." I go, "No, you're going into covenant default. You're spending more money than you have on than you're supposed to have on the books." So he said, "Can you fly to New York?" I said, "Yeah." So I flew to New York the next day where he was based.

The CEO at that time was in the room when I walked in, which I didn't expect. And he's like, "Show me." He tells the CEO, "Show me, you know, how we're doing." He goes, "We're doing great." Blah blah blah blah blah. And Ted goes, "Mark, we're doing fine." I go, "Let me show you how to read the financials." I point everything out. And Ted goes, "We're [ __ ] in covenant default." He gets it right away. And he's like, "Mark, you need to fix this." So, I spent the next three months grinding it out with the team and we were able to get through it.

And then, you know, the beginning of the year came around. I said, "Look, that's not for me. I got to go do something else." So, I left in '08, the beginning. And the CEO decided to put a press release out, which was crazy to me. Like, you're putting a press release out that I left like you're celebrating me being gone. And I got two phone calls like the first day, legitimately two phone calls the first day. One was from Lorenzo Fertitta to talk about doing something with the UFC, which we eventually did, and the other was from a group called Angelo Gordon to see if I'd be interested in taking a look at the crunch business, which of course we did.

So, he kind of handed me two big opportunities on his way out of kicking me out of the company, so to speak. I had no idea they reached out that quick to you, cuz I know you had a you had a 5-year non-compete, right? No non-compete. No non-compete. No non-compete. Oh, you did have a non-compete. That was one of the five things I had in my deal is I would have no non-compete. If you want me to stay, you're throwing me out. I don't have a non-compete.

I'm not going to come back and do a non-compete. So, no non-compete. Tesla's like, "Yeah, no problem. No non-compete." non-compete." non-compete." Oh. Oh. Oh. And I think when the CEO at the time found out I was leaving with no non-compete, he lost his mind. He's like, "That we can't have that." I'm like, "Well, I mean, you're throwing me out in a sense. You don't want me around. No problem. I helped you save your ass, but you want to be your own guy. I get it. You want to be the man.

So, be the man and I'm going to go take a time out, go do something else." I thought maybe it take six months, chill a little bit. But the phone started ringing like crazy. Right after they put the press release out, I was like shocked. And so, you know, we ended up looking and putting two really nice new businesses together with the UFC that Adam Sedlac runs now and then Crunch, which we just sold to Lennon Green this summer for a monster number that Jim Roy's running.

You know, Jim left 24 right after me. I didn't know that's how you guys and I didn't know he's running that now. Yeah, Jim's the CEO there. He's kicking ass, doing great work. Ah, no [ __ ] Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's Take me back. Okay. The the second thing you said um the VC charging a 2%. So does that mean that basically what he did was he funded the the business and then he was charging interest on the money that he funded. Is that explain that to me?

Generally when you buy a business, you know, you invest capital, right? And then you put debt on the business and you don't take interest on your capital, right? capital, right? capital, right? Unless you do a preferred piece, which you don't want to allow them to do. So I don't let that happen. They're investing equity up front. I'm investing equity with them pair pursue and then we'll have a debt facility from a bank. If we need a couple hundred million bucks, we'll pay interest on that. Got it.

Got it. Got it. And then as you're sitting at the board, you say, I want a management fee for stewarding the company as the lead investor. And I've seen people gouge you for a lot of cash in that area. So when I got older and smarter and Ted Forceman shows up, I'm like, "No fee. No fee, Mark. We don't charge anything." Awesome. That money goes back to the company to grow, right? versus in their pocket for just showing up at a board meeting and making sure we're doing all the right things.

And these guys said, "No, we want a $2 half million dollar management fee." And I'm like, "Well, paperwork says you can't have one. [ __ ] you. Sue me." Wow. Wow. Wow. Took it anyways. And you're like, "Okay, I guess I got to have a management fee." And that's $2.5 million of capital that you could be deploying out to. Oh, they did so many crazy things which at some point I write in a book if I ever get the chance. But they brought in a gal to be like who was a CFO for them at one point to come into the board and get involved in the company.

And after I left, they made her chairman. And two or three years later, it's all public record. She left the company and sued him for $25 million because she felt that that's what she deserved and that's what was promised by the Force Little Company. and they ended up writing her a $25 million check just to basically move on in life. Wow. So, a lot of crazy [ __ ] went down post post my departure. Yeah. When you were you were you're outside looking in and this stuff. Okay.

Then you're then you're gone and you're looking back. Do you remember like the final straw that broke the camel's back for them? I I mean I I remember being there and knowing when you left and feeling it. feeling it. feeling it. I'll I'll give it to you. I mean I I've never talked about it, but you're asking it. I'm always right at you. So, we had a big business in Asia. Steve Kleinfelter was running it. We were kicking ass in Asia. We're growing like weeds out there.

But Ted didn't like Asia. He's like, "I don't want to go. I don't like Asia so much. You know, it's nice." But I said, "Look, let me sell it." And they said, "Yeah, can you sell it?" Yeah, I can sell it. So, I got a buyer and I had a deal done for $160 million to buy 24 clubs. I mean, big number. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that was going to be awesome for the company. And this is at the end of ' 07. And so come around into the middle of the month, we're supposed to close the 15th of December.

The buyer comes to me and says, "Look, we want to bump it to January 1 to put it into next year. It's important for us to put the capital to work next year versus this year." Like that shouldn't be a problem. So I go to this gal that he had brought in. Uh she's on the board and Ted and say, "Look, they want to bump it two weeks." Go, "No, [ __ ] no. They got to close it now or they can't have it." What are you talking about?

talking about? talking about? They got to close it now. Why? It's two weeks. We want it now. we're not going to let them delay it. And I was like, I didn't understand that. I was like, well, they're going to blow out of the deal. And they did. They said, "No, we're not going to do it this year. We either do it next year or we're out." And they're out. So, I leave the company in January. I'm like, "This is [ __ ] stupid." Right? I leave the company in January.

Long story short, they took our CFO and put him out there to run the Asian business. Two years later, they're bankrupt. bankrupt. bankrupt. Oh, wow. Writing checks. $60 million check going to bankrupt in two years. Two years later, they they basically walk away from the whole business and step out of Asia and lost everything. And that's the first anybody's probably heard of this cuz I've never really talked about it. So that that was I just broke my back when I was like busting my ass for them getting them out of their covenant situation, trying to help out their CEO figure out the business, selling a business unit that would put a lot of cash on the balance sheet and cured everything they needed and they just [ __ ] fumbled it all.

So I said, "Maybe it's time for me to go do something else." cuz you guys are not the smartest kid in the world. I mean, is he is he that much of an idiot at this time or is this almost feel like it's a personal thing? Like just because you wanted it to get done. It's just like a big f you to you. I mean, what what what's going through your head at that minute? Uh I mean, sometimes I look back and say I was really pissed off and I was going to go headtohead, but then I say, "No, I mean I I I had four kids.

I had my wife and we're saying, "Hey, you know, I can retire. I got plenty of money in the bank. I don't need to work anymore, but I'm going to get bored." And then when Lorenzo called me first and I went and met with him and he said look I mean I I want to take UFC and soften it because at that time it was McCain saying it's [ __ ] fighting and you know Dana is fighting everybody and he's like I want to open gyms up and put kids in there and show about the discipline and respect that mixed martial arts brings to communities.

to communities. to communities. So So So I sat with him and literally in two hours we shook hands on a 50/50 partnership partnership partnership that fast. I was just so like I was a breath of fresh air and Lorenzo, Frank, Dana, they're awesome. So, we we put a deal together and we started open gyms and then I get the call on Crunch and you know, hopped on a plane, went out and met with the Angelo Gordon guys. I could tell you a whole story there. I don't know if you want to spend time on No.

Yeah. Go. I want to hear I've been just so you know, the last two times we've been on here, I feel like I was like, man, Mer, I want to know more of the behind thes scenes business stuff and I feel like he's been so politically correct every time. Like, I want to hear all the other stuff. Yeah. No, I get it. Give us the juice. So Angel Gordon says, "Look, come out, take a look at our business." Yeah. And so I came out. I took Jim Rolley with me and Mike Feny.

You know, Mike does all the construction layout design. He's like phenomenal. So I said, "Come with me, Jim. Come with me." So we fly out there. We spend a week looking at all their clubs. And um they're losing 2 million a month. A month. And they have like 28 clubs. M. And so I come back and I sit down with the Angel Gordon team and I'm like, "My suggestion is to put this in a bankruptcy and move on." They're like, "Thank you very much." They kick us out.

We go back home. A week later, I get a phone call and Angel Gordon says, "Look, we heard what you said. We respect what you said. Would you be willing to put it in a bankruptcy with us and then pull it back out and rebuild it?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'd be up for that." So we they had a $40 million debt facility with Goldman Sachs and they said, "Look, Mark, we've got cut that down to 25 million if we pay him cash to put it into bankruptcy and then you got to fund in and out of bankruptcy which will cost us, you know, 5 to 8 million bucks." So I said, "Well, let me talk to Goldman because I think 25 is not the right number.

So, well, they're not going to go any lower." I go, "Well, let me talk to So I got on the phone with Goldman, kind of walked them through my thinking and said, "The most I'm going to give you 15." And after a couple days of back and forth, they agreed to 15. Wow. Wow. Wow. So we bought the debt out for 15. We put the capital in the ticket into bankruptcy. bankruptcy. bankruptcy. In the meantime, Ben Midley, who worked for us at 24, I don't know if you guys remember him, but Ben ran corporate sales, phenomenal guy.

And he came to me at some point said, "Look, Mark, I want to move back to Kitty Bunkport, Maine, where I'm from. I want to raise my family there. I got three young children and I want to stay here, but I just, you know, there was no remote work in those days. And so he's like, I want to move back. No problem, Ben. Love you. Let's stay in touch. He goes back. Well, he ends up working for Planet Fitness. And he spends a couple years, eventually becomes president of Planet Fitness.

And so he gives me a call right before I'm looking at this crunch opportunity. He says, "Look, I'm leaving Planet. It's crazy here. These guys are nuts. I can't handle it. They're riding motorcycles. feeding pizza for our people and he's like, "I got to get out of here." What do you want to do? He goes, "I don't know. I was thinking about maybe starting something similar." And I'm like, "Well, I'd be up for that." So, I put him together with a kid that worked with me named Craig Pepin, who was my EVP of sales and marketing, phenomenal.

phenomenal. phenomenal. And the two of them started working on a concept like, "Hey, we're going to start a little franchise business." And then this crunch thing falls in our lap. And I'm like, "Well, [ __ ] why don't we talk to Craig and Ben about parking it inside this Crunch brand? And so they were like, "Yeah, let's do it." So merged that into the Crunch brand, gave them a bunch of equity, and then we started the franchise business. We took five of our best operators at 24 who had left all free agents and backed them in a couple locations each to prove the model out and then let them grow their area.

So, a guy like Curtis Harmon eventually opened like 40 clubs, made a [ __ ] ton of money, and we started growing the franchise business and that's how that all came together, a long story short, but you know, Ben led that with Craig and then Jim stepped in full-time and said, "Look, I'm I want to be the CEO and grow this thing and like awesome, let's do it." So, Jim stepped in there and and uh started cranking and he's basically done a phenomenal job. When you look at Crunch and you you see it's going under like that, what gave you the confidence that you could bankrupt it and come back?

There had to been something you're looking at the books or the model like what do you see to take the what do you see to take the take that kind of risk? Well, you guys know the business. It'll make you laugh. They had a kid running the company who came out of the hotel industry. industry. industry. Okay. Okay. Okay. And his philosophy was no salespeople, no marketing, no marketing, no marketing, very Carl Libert Home Depot style. It'll be Field of Dreams. They will come, right? right?

right? And I was walking through the place, there's like nobody there. Like, look, they'll see these beautiful clubs and they'll all join and just run them out. They'll be amazing. I'm like, our industry doesn't quite work that way, unfortunately. It's nice, but it doesn't work that way. So, I felt like if we turn the marketing machine on it, it's a very cool brand. I've always loved the name and the whole stick behind it, you know, no judgments, etc. And if we put our systems in place, our technology, our sales systems, we'll turn it.

And we turned it very fast. Wow. Wow. Wow. One thing that one thing, Mark, that I I notice about you um that's often that you're often praised for is uh the relationships that you build and how loyal seem people seem to be with you. You mentioned at least five or six names here that I know have been with you for decades. Talk about the value of that and and how are you able to do that because it's it's it's quite rare to see somebody who's where people are willing to follow them wherever they go.

And so, and that's that's one of the reasons why you're so successful successful, I would say. Tell talk about that a little bit. Today's giveaway is maps powerlift 15. If you want to win, leave a comment below this video. In the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications. If you win, we'll notify you in the comment section. We also have a brand new bundle discounted of workout programs. This one includes Mapy Symmetry, Maps Prime, and the Advanced Training Techniques Guide.

All of that together, 147. Head over to mapsmarch.com. mapsmarch.com. mapsmarch.com. Back to the show. Yeah. So, I mean, I learned early on, I think my dad put it in my head, is that, you know, replace yourself with people who are better if you want to be successful in business. You can't do it all yourself. So, my first gym, like your guys' first gym, you're doing everything. I'm doing payroll, marketing, operations, janitor. I'm doing everything. And I start replacing myself as we find more and more success.

And then I like to share. And so I know there are some guys that build their companies, they don't share, they don't give stock, they keep everything for themselves and they basically run it like a dictatorship. I believe in sharing and giving out as much as I can to everybody and making them true partners. And all these folks have done very well by being a part of what we've built. And so my job is to mentor, to fund, to back and develop people and allow them to live to their dream.

And so I know Jim's super happy with, you know, the wealth he's created through the crunch transaction and the wealth he will create in the next round therefore forth from there. Um Adam and others have done extremely well at UFC. Chris Smith up in Canada is doing phenomenal work up there growing a really cool brand called Fitness World. And I can go on and on and on, but I think when you find people with talent and you get behind them and let them grow and just kind of keep them in the guard rails, let them kind of find their way.

um you get rewarded and so I'm I'm happy to share the pie and happy to reward people so they can make as much money as they dream to make and we'll both win together. together. together. You talk about the guard whales because uh it's not just about that. There's lots of companies that will you'll make a lot of money. You'll get shares and they don't have the same loyalty. Uh talk about what you just mentioned with guard guard rails and working with people and help and allowing them to to do their thing.

Yeah, I mean I I believe in paying people extremely well, more than they deserve, and let them earn as much as they want. So, I don't have a problem overcompensating people. Um, I don't have a problem giving them lots of equity, and then I'm there for them. So, my I'm sure you've heard me say, my view is that I'm in the upside down pyramid. I'm at the bottom and I work for you. Uh, you don't work for me. I'm here for you. Whatever you need, you call, I pick up.

You need an email, I give you an answer. You text me, I'm answering you. I mean, my wife kicks me all the time under the table. We're at dinner. I'm on my phone. Give me 5 seconds. I got to get back. You know, I want people moving and I want to be able be there for them. So, um I feel like I've got a lot of loyalty to my team and my people and I want to make them great and coach coach them up best I can.

Yeah, it says a lot too that like your ability to distinguish that quick, right? So I when we were scaling this um I operate from a similar philosophy and like relationships I think is a big reason why we had a lot of success and tend to give a lot and I know I made some mistakes even early on where we're growing a side or a department and I'm like give someone so much that they end up not following through and living up to that because I come from that place also.

What what is it for you? Like what do you see in in that person? You go like this is someone who I can give a percentage or give ownership like what do you see? do you what do you see? I mean they've come up the ranks and so they've worked their way up from sometimes the bottom. I mean Jim came in as an example. I talked to you a lot about Jim today, but Jim came in out of the Marines and his brother was working for us and he came in as a sales counselor and then he worked his way all the way up to president at 24hour within probably a decade where he ran half the company and he's very very talented.

You could see it. Um, what I used to do a lot is we'd have our conventions and I would have people that I thought were potentially leaders and I would cold call them to come up on the stage and speak and close out a session or talk about what they were doing. And that's when you see the people shine. And so I remember I took Jim out of the audience one day. Hey, I need you to come up close this thing out. And he like blew everybody's mind.

Did a phenomenal job. He's like, "Okay, this guy's got leadership skills." Same thing I've did with Adam or Brian who's sitting behind us here who Brian runs all the crunch gyms here in the Bay Area. He's a phenomenal operator. And so I just call him up. Hey, talk a little bit about yourself. Talk a little bit about this subject matter. That's a nice way to do it. And then, you know, the old test is get to meet their family, get to meet the people who are friends around them, who are they as a person, you know, and then spend time with them, break breads, travel, you know, hang out.

We used to do events all the time at 24 where you know we'd have 500 people show up in Hawaii for four days and you'd get to know people and oh yeah you'd spend time and and you'd break bread to eat together and you start to say I really like this person and we get along and I think we could work well together together together and then give them a shot put them up into a higher position. If they perform put them up again and make sure that they earn some serious money so they're super happy and their families got the opportunity to you know enjoy life a little bit.

Mark, do you remember uh probably it was 199 You don't remember. It was 1998. You came into a club that I was working and had me give you a tour of the Do you remember that? We talked about it. Yeah. That was that was that was such an awesome uh moment. You're 19 at that time, right? I was 18 or 19 years old and at the time I was selling just crazy numbers of personal training and memberships and and you showed up and he said, "I want you to give me I want this kid to give me a tour." So he told me you're a badass.

I'm like, "All right, I got to meet this guy. I gave you a tour and I was too young to understand like I'm the the owner of the company's coming to get, you know, get a tour. But I remember that. I always remember that. So, uh I think that's part of uh your success is that you you give people that feeling, which is why they tend to follow you whenever you make jumps. Now, looking back at 24, you left. left. left. Uh they're they they're they're different now.

So talk about like cuz at one point that was the model like 24hour uh they were the ones that created the model for a successful health club. They really were. Everybody else had to copy them at that point. But after you left uh their image changed. It wasn't the same. Now when you're looking at it now, what are you going to what are you looking at? What are you going to try and change or switch or or what are you going to do different? different? different?

I know. Great question. I mean they after I left they probably went through five leadership groups and probably three different investors, maybe four. and they kind of went on a path that lost their way. I think they were they were performing pretty well at one point and then struggling at another point and they changed leadership and then a group came in and and put a lot of debt on it and didn't equitize it as much. So, they had a heavy load of debt and then they started to struggle a little bit and so they hit the pandemic and at that point just decided that, you know, we're going to have to file bankruptcy and reorganize and then at that point the equity guys are gone.

they lose their investment and the debt holders have the right to kind of come in and own the company company company which is the reason why we wanted to buy that debt at Crunch when we bought it from you know Goldman Sachs is because now we control the debt we control the outcome of bankruptcy so we're in first position so they kind of came through there and and they finally landed on a a guy by the name of Carl Sam Carl Sam Carl Sam to be the CEO came out of Best Buy was like a COO there sharp and he writed the ship reorganized it um leaned it out pretty heavily and didn't grow at all for the last four years cuz his hands have been tied behind his back by the guys that owned it.

They didn't want to put any money into the business. They remodeled. They kept the clubs running well. Um but the company kind of lost its way a little bit. So, as I step back in, I'm trying to take a look at where they sit right now and what I think we can do to kind of bring it back to where it was because we were on fire and doing everything right and had an amazing opportunity and it kind of got fumbled by the leadership groups that came in behind.

And it's hard for a guy like even Carl who's the CEO and all of a sudden I show up, right? The founder is back, you know, and he's an old fart now, but what the hell? What are we going to do? Is he still there? Oh, Carl, this is a new Carl. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, Libert's gone, of course. But Sam is running it and you know he's done a great job. I like look let's let's learn. Let's see what you think. What do you see?

And I've been pointing a lot of stuff out that look this is where I think we need to go and if you want bring it to the team and if they like it let's do it. And we're going to bring back nutrition because they kind of walked away from nutrition. We're going to bring back personal training because they kind of walked away from personal training. We're going to change the pricing structure, make it simpler and easier. We're not going to go down to $9.99 HVLP stuff.

That's not where we're going to be. These boxes they have are 40, 50, 60,000 square feet with pools and courts. They're beautiful. We're going to bring in recovery and put a lot of capital work. So, we'll remodel about 60 clubs this year, give or take. We'll try and open six or eight. We'll try and buy eight or 10 because we got a lot of cash on the balance sheet to go kick some ass. But, it's going to be a year or two to kind of resurrect and find out what the new future is for the company.

And I'm excited to see what the team there decides to do. There's a lot of really talented people. talented people. talented people. Do do you think we're in a kind of changing landscape? It it felt like 5 8 years ago, uh, you know, you saw the, um, F45s, the Orange Theories kind of explode. I kind of feel like they've peaked and they're kind of tipping back off. You seem it seems like this spa recovery bigger kind of footprint, even places where you can do work and l it seems like it's going that direction.

like what's your thought when you look at the entire landscape of of the direction of the space and is is there any plans of of melding some of those ideas in with the 24? Yeah, it's really interesting because if you look at the way I look at the business, so I I kind of if you remember every 5 years I try and take a project near my home and build what I call the club of the future. I'll I'll make some crazy brand name and I'll just go dabble with it and see.

So I live in Vegas now. So I I took some square footage there and I'm building what I think is the club of the future. And so what's inside that club, right? And so there's definitely med spa. spa. spa. So we can start to do body scans. We can start to do GLP. We can do peptides, NAD, and get into IV therapy, and really start to help people understand how to enhance their workout, enhance their recovery, enhance their bodies. Yeah. So we want to get into that.

Um we're going to equip it with the latest and greatest, craziest stuff out there. You see a lot of these clubs now that are very focused on the free weight side of the house going after the Gen Z market. Y market. Y market. Y I'd say 40% of the people joining gyms right now are from the Gen Z. They're on fire. They love working out. They love training in post. Yeah. So that young crowd's really cool to watch. And then we've moved away from uh what I call group showers to private showers.

So, what I've started doing in the clubs, even the one that's here in in the bay up the street here that uh Brian built, you know, we've got 10 private showers in there, well-appointed, beautiful, full service. You go in, use it yourself, come out, we clean in behind you, and roll it to the next person. And we're moving towards that to make the clubs more unisexoriented to eliminate some of those issues that come around with the they them stuff, but at the same time, make it a little bit more higherend, high scale.

high scale. high scale. And then recovery starts to get bigger. There's beginning, intermediate, advanced recovery. Right. Yeah. So, you can spend 100 grand or 500 grand depending on what you want to put inside your recovery room if you want to do hyperbaric chambers, which is what we're going to start to do. You know, we're starting to hit the big stuff and people are going to go crazy for some of the treatments they've never tried that we'll present to them as a first time opportunity. I think that the opportunity options the opportunity to combine um this exploding uh medical intervention that is going to continue to explode the the GLP1s the the new generations the peptides I mean this is huge.

We've never seen anything like this uh when it comes to medical interventions. medical interventions. medical interventions. To combine that with which we we believe this to be necessary to combine it with a good trainer, a good coach, strength training, diet so you don't lose the muscle. That has to be the future. And I think that's such a great opportunity because I could see people using, we talk about this on the show all the time, using GLP1s without strength training, without that kind of coach. It's not the best solution.

But in combination, it's great. Uh which leads us to personal training. You said you're bringing that back. Why did gyms generally move away from that and and why was that a mistake? So, I mean, the pandemic came and everybody had to work from home and the trainers started training people in their garages or in the parks or at their home of their client and they built a little business up and so a lot of them didn't come back to the fitness industry. They stayed out on their own independently.

And then these little gyms would show up that you could rent space from and bring in your clients. And so they started using those, making a little bit more money. And the gym struggled to replace people, you know, as you know, a lot of people didn't want to work after the, you know, oh, 2021 period. It's like, I don't need to work anymore. [ __ ] Just the government's sending me money. I'm good. Um, so I think the the flip side was that the training core kind of decreased a little bit.

There's still a lot of success in places. There's still gyms doing big numbers, but they had to rebuild that culture. And at 24, they kind of fell in that trap where they, you know, I went into a gym blow your mind. I went into a gym on the East Coast that's doing 3,500 workouts a day. I mean, it's like incredible, right? I tour the whole facility. I go, "How's your personal training appointment?" "Oh, it's good. How is it?" "Well, we did 13,000 last month." Oh my god.

I'm like, "Well, how many trainers you have?" "We just have one." I'm like, "What? The whole place? 3500 workouts?" workouts?" workouts?" Yeah. I mean, you guys should be doing 200 grand a month here. So, they're like, "Okay, we're going to start hiring." Yeah, you need to hire and get back at it. But the opportunity is there. And to me, it's about helping the members achieve their goals. As you guys know, personal training is super important because everybody trains, but they don't watch their nutrition. They don't know how to lift properly.

They aren't exercising properly. They're getting functional in. And so, the trainer plays this massive role in helping people get on the right path, whether they want to stay with that trainer for a year or a month, a day, whatever. It's a big big benefit. And so, that's what we need to focus back on at 24 for sure is to rebuild that personal training. I 100% agree with that. We So what moved us in that direction? So we're now on like 18 months of that off air.

We'll talk numbers in the business and what we've done and some of the ideas that we have. Well, it seems as there's going to be this massive divide of people that go the AI robot, no human connection, and then there's going to be another side that's going to be thirsty for that human connection. And we're doubling down on that. We really believe that uh that I mean we were meant uh to to be with each other and and there's so much that happens when you're actually with another human being that AI just can't replace.

And I know there's going to be a lot of people that will adopt it. I know it'll be low cost, but there's going to be a ton of people I think that are going to be thirsty for connection. And I think it's going to make a huge boom. I think it's Do you think that? Do you think that's Yeah, 100%. And I think that, you know, AI is going to play its role, but at the end of the day, I think we're in a great space because we want community, we want experience, we want to touch and feel, and we don't want to sit at home all day.

And so, I think ultimately the trainer is a great opportunity for people in career change. And the money that, you know, that trainers make is ridiculous. ridiculous. ridiculous. You know, there's folks making 150, 200 grand training in the gym, right? And they're like loving it with full benefits. You know, the club feeds them new prospects every day. They come in and enroll. I mean, Adam Sedlac is doing at UFC gym two for 22. You get two personal training sessions for 22 bucks as you join. Wow.

Wow. Wow. And they convert that well to They convert well, but it gives people a chance to see what training is about, how it can enhance them. And a lot of people like, [ __ ] I want more of this. And then they go and buy training. But his philosophy is that everybody gets touched if they want to be. If they don't want to, no problem. But that's such a ridiculous price. We lose money on that. We don't make money. We pay the trainer more than that. But it's a way to let people know that personal training is super important and we got your back.

Do you think one of the biggest mistakes that uh gyms can make is forget that it's a people business and think it's more of a equipment and maybe analytics and you know we got the nicest looking whatever versus like it's about it's really about the people isn't it? it? it? It always is. It's I call it the guru in the box. It's who the leader is, right? Who are you following? And if you have like you're 18 19 years old, the whole gym's following you. Yeah.

You're the GM. You're in charge and they love you. You got charisma. like, "Oh my god, I'll follow this guy to the end of the earth." So, you got to have that person in in in the location that kind of leads the charge and then builds a team around them. That's awesome. And so, from that standpoint, it's always about people. Everything in life is generally about people. But, you know, technology is moving fast. AI is moving fast. Holograms are starting to show up. We're going to have all this crazy [ __ ] You know, we'll see what everybody does.

Maybe a robot's going to be teaching me how to work out. I don't know. But I do think at the end of the day when you come into the gym, the change that's really interesting is that the gym is packed all day long because nobody's working. working. working. People have jobs now from home and they can work from 5 to 8 and go work out from 8:00 to 10:00, come back and finish up at home. Are busy hours changing time now? Is that changing a lot?

interesting that I I was at a I was in Hawaii and I went into a 24-hour fitness gym at 1:00 in the afternoon and there was over 550 people in it. Wow. I was like blown away. I'm like, does anybody work? They just left. No, I mean this club's busy all day. It's like so the gym business is 24 hours a day now. It's not like, you know, morning, noon, and nights used to be like that. All day long people are in there in different shifts, the types of people come in throughout the day, which is really awesome for our industry and and awesome for people to have that flexibility to come in and train in hours that normally were quiet that are now a little bit busier than ever before.

Yeah, Gen Z, you'd mentioned them a bit and I had read some statistic about the drop in alcohol sales and how they're just not interested in hanging out like that and looking for healthier options. Is that like a demographic you're really trying to kind of include like hang outwise? I know there's some gyms that actually are trying to create kind of like a lounge experience for them so they can extend their workouts to I've got this wacky theory I've got this wacky theory where you the baby boomers call it the 60 to 80 crowd you know got into fitness you know in the 70s and 80s they started exercising exercising exercising um and it's part of their life and then their children underneath them kind of grew up with them at their gyms or country clubs and they exercised as well like oh this is pretty normal now the baby boomers are focused on longevity I want live forever.

I'm going to take my peptides, my JLP1s. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to lift weights. I'm going to do all the stuff you see in social media. And then their children are seeing now the grandkids, which are I call the Gen Z folks, right? Are looking up at my mom and dad work out, my grandma, grandpa work out, I work out, I played sports, I want to exercise, hey, what's this peptide thing? You know, what's this social media thing? And so we're starting to see that people are recognizing that, you know, to live longer and live healthier, you got to do some strength training, right?

And if you want to do it in the park, God bless you. But if you want to come to the gym, we'll take care of you. But I think that there's a a change in the scenery right now where everybody has recognized that, you know, gyms and fitness is the third place. It's not Starbucks. It's homework and gym. gym. gym. And that's where community is. And now they're getting into running events and and Pilates is blowing out like crazy and everybody's into exercise. It's kind of cool.

of cool. of cool. It is really cool. It is. And we saw a huge uh switch uh where women weren't strength training, now they are. Now you're seeing a lot of kids working out. So is this is fitness having its like biggest moment? If you want the benefits of running on ketones like you would on a ketogenic diet. So when people run a ketogenic diet, they feel sharper mentally. They feel less inflammation. They just feel good. But the problem is you can't eat carbs, right? A ketogenic diet is zero carbs.

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Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I think it is. I I think that's well said. I think it's having its moment right now. And I did some interviews uh with some of the national media and their whole thing is why would you come back to 24-hour Fitness? Like, you know, the business is kind of gone now. Like, what are you talking about? Fitness is on fire. You're missing it. Planet Fitness has 2,000 locations. Crunch is 600 and opening 100 this year. Um, 24 hours got a big business. LA Fitness got a big business.

EOS is killing it. Rich and those guys are awesome over at EOS. They're doing great work. Everybody's on fire. What am I missing? You just don't know. know. know. I haven't been there. Well, I mean that you highlighted that when you talked about the gym. You said it was New York or East Coast that 3,500 workouts and only 15 grand in personal training. That's training. That's training. That's 13 grand and one trainer. One trainer. I'm like, I'm coming here. I'm going to run. I mean, we were doing I want this guy.

We were doing 100 grand in personal training a month out of Santa Teresa when we were getting 1,500 to,700 workouts. workouts. workouts. Crazy, right? Crazy, right? Crazy, right? So, I mean, you're talking about almost should be doing double that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I mean, so what a huge miss. It's just it's just a big opportunity for people as they look at career change or coming back to the industry. You know, I'm seeing I I've got a gym that I'm working with because I what I do is I I tour around all the two floors.

pick a couple gyms in each market that they're going to report into me every day and I kind of manage them so I get a feel for what's going on, how hard they're working, etc. But I had a gym I went to and I said, "Look, what what's what did you do last month?" They go, "We did like 38." I go, "It's pretty good. What's your all-time record?" They go, "16 back in the day." They looked it up. I said, "Can we do 116 this month?" They go, "Oh, it's like the 12th of the month." They go, "There's no way." I said, "Can we give it a shot?" They did 108.

I mean just like just because every day I'm like sell do service work the desk work the floor talk to members and you start working they go 108 and this month they're on pass on pace to hit 120 like it's not that hard. Yeah. I mean I was I was literally going to ask you that I was literally going to ask you that question how big of a difference the just the right team can make make make in the same club. I mean you could switch out the team or change the attitude dramatically different uh in revenue and experience uh for the members.

Yeah. members. Yeah. members. Yeah. You know totally different. Do you see I I've I've been reading articles on the gym industry and how they're saying that the middle the middle the middle type of gym is disappearing and it's becoming uh the either the expensive kind of country club experience and the super low inexpensive you know entry type gyms. Is that do you see that happening? Do you see there any room for the middle or Yeah, I mean that's that's that's what the word has been in the marketing and the media for the last couple of years is that the middle is gone.

like the 25 fitness at 40 bucks and LA fitness at 40 bucks is gone and then HVLP is really 10 bucks. But the reality is that that $10 is the lost leader when they come in the door. They're buying the next tier up. They want recovery. They want all club access. They want classes. So they're stepping up to 25 to $35. So they're approaching the middle. And then the other thing is the gym of today is like 75 bucks, right? So you see these guys are coming out with these huge freeway gyms with lots of cool lighting and they're charging $75.

They're getting it all day long. So the middle is still there. You just have to decide, you know, how you want to market to it. I wonder if it's in to your point of like leadership and people is did all the great people leave to the like either if you were an old 24-hour guy that was a great GM or RVP or whatever, did you end up going and starting your own stereo fitness or did you go and you know get to one of the spas because there was more money there and everybody just left that middle is that could be that I mean that's what it sounds like is is is I mean a lot of talent has left the industry during the pandemic and after and some of the brands you know, went through difficult times.

Gold's Gyms filed BK, 24-hour filed BK, New York Sports filed BK. Um, Equinox got hit really hard, Ellie Fitness got hit really hard. So, you know, a lot of those guys struggle and people left because they had to cut back on payroll and couldn't take care of them. So, they spun out into other organizations. So, uh, groups like EOS, which which, uh, rid leads has picked up a lot of people on waivers. So they've got a lot of X24, XC Crunch, X lifetime people that, you know, been able to help them grow their business.

And so I think the talent still out there is just like you said, spread out a little bit and then a lot have gone out and opened up their own gym concepts and done really well, which is awesome to see. Is the footprint of gyms, you mentioned free weights a few times, so I noticed this. So, I work out in a couple commercial gyms here and there and I noticed that the footprints seem to be moving more towards strength training and away from, you know, back in the day it was a big cardio.

Now, it looks like it's more strength training. Is that is do you see that as is continue moving in that direction? that direction? that direction? Yeah, I think if you look at the Gen Z, the young audiences coming in, cardio has shrunk, right? Selectoriz is still nice, but they really want to work out on unique equipment. So, I don't know if you've seen Skelecore um with Skelecore. Phenomenal. Look them up, man. They're they're awesome. Out of out of Florida, run by a um father and his sons and his wife out of South Africa.

Africa. Africa. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um Mark runs it. This guy Mark Arian. He um um um And this is strength training. Yes, strength training. Just I mean they got plates. They got everything. They got dumbbells that have geigers on them. So when you set them down, it brings it back. So the the amount like 20 pounds is center versus a lot of people put them upside down. Like my wife hates that. Like I want my dumbbells. Oh, I see. So the weight it always says the name.

the name. the name. A little spinning geer in the middle. So it comes out. So you always see the number on the top. Oh, that's cool. They do all kinds of aesthetics for sure. sure. sure. Yeah, they got weight plates that you can have polka dots on or whoever the hell you want. And then they bend their steel really innovatively and very creatively. So they're doing really phenomenal work. And then of course you got Panetta and Jim 80. Then you got all the basics and the the regular lines matrix and life fitness and core, you know, etc.

But right now, kids are coming in saying, "I want to I want to train on eight or 10 different pieces for my pecs, you know? I want to work on different [ __ ] I want the same damn piece my dad was using. I want something cool." And so, you got to have a big ass, you know, call it powerlifting area. And racks, you got to have 10 racks in a club. And what's really cool is you put these power racks in, it's women working out. I mean, men.

So, it's nuts. I was just going to say when you're putting when these gyms are putting them together, they they're now looking at well now women is 50% of the people using this. So you're going to see more hip thrust. You're going to see more more more and they love the barbell stuff is what I'm saying which is really really cool. Deadlifting, they're cleaning and jerking. They're doing all kinds of [ __ ] You're like Jesus Christ this is crazy. But that's you know kids today get after it.

They really are training hard and and a lot of them came through sports programs, right? More kids are participating in sports. They're training hard through high school and college. are coming out and they're finding the gym and they're pounding it and it's it's fun to watch. One thing that I'm seeing just in in our space in new media because you know obviously this is what we work in and you start to see trends kind of start in new media and because uh selectorized strength training equipment has been around for a while.

Strength training's been relatively popular for a while. You're starting to see people look for gyms with equipment that you don't see so often anymore. Like there's that big hammer strength dinosaur uh leg press machine. And I forgot what it was called, but like they were only 600 made cuz they took so much. Now you got people looking for them. Like I want to use this. This is like the best leg press I've ever reviewed. Or the or the Nautilus pullover machine, which you just don't find with the chain.

It doesn't even have the belt. It's got the dangerous chain you could lose your finger in. Like people are now like I want to see this kind. I could see value in bringing back some of these, you know, kind of vintage looking equipment. You're 100% right. They want something nobody else has, right? They wanted something unique. They want to post it on social media. They want to show how vascular they've become or how big their quads have gotten or whatever it is. They do a little bit of everything and it's fun to watch.

But, you know, the cool thing is is that people are recognizing that strength training is really important towards life and longevity, right? The GLP1 prescription more often than not by doctors, you need to do some training. You have to go join a gym or do some resistance training at home because you're going to deplete your fat and your muscle mass could eventually get hammered as well once you burn through your fat. And so, you see that happen all the time. And then like you said before, you know, peptides, you know, I've been in rooms now like who's doing peptides?

Like two people raise their hand. Now it's starting to get to be 8 to 10 and I assume it's going to be 10 out of 10, you know. So it's really interesting to watch what the young audience is pushing and what they're seeing as far as results. I just ran into um Anuinette and she told me she Oh, you see Mark, you have to ask him uh what what's the future of Group X? She's like, he's always hated group X. Is he going to is he going to eliminate it?

Is it going to go out? He's like, what's your what's your take on on that? Well, first he's wrong. I love group X. I never hated it. And we had so many classes. But you know, a lot of people have cup group X because when you came out of the pandemic, you know, breathing in a room with a lot of people, I can't do that. So, you couldn't go to Orange Theory. You couldn't go to Soul Cycle. You couldn't even do F45. It's like, no, no, that's bad.

Right. But then people started recognizing, wait a minute, we all got head fake there. Yeah. It had nothing to do with spitting in the air and all that [ __ ] So, group fitness started making a comeback. And so, certain classes are packed, you know, body pumps packed because they want to press weight in fitness. Zumba has never gone away. So, throw a Zumba class in any hour you want. Uh, we're going to start doing Zumba at 2 in the morning. It'll be packed. Everybody will show up.

It won't change. And then Pilates has gone nuts, right? Pilates, if you don't have Pilates, it's like you're you're not in tune with the industry. So, I think Group X will continue to grow and make a comeback. And it feels like a lot of successful gyms you walk into, you have to have a decent number of women in there working out. And Group X pulls a lot of women in still. Yeah. still. Yeah. still. Yeah. Yeah. And and just to point out to her that she's wrong.

When when we started Crunch, right, Planet was our competitor. They had no Group X. Group X. Group X. We said we're going to put Group X in Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Crunch, that's the differentiator Crunch has. It's got two and 3,000 square foot group. And they got unique stuff, too. They were the first ones to do like the hanging from the straps and do all kinds of cool stuff. I remember going to very innovative. Uh um you know we had Donna Cyrus who was at Crunch when we acquired it was one of the big leaders in crazy stuff like you know stiletto you know workouts and and other things that she kind of created uh that we we took and put into our brand.

Oh yeah. When you uh when you took over UFC, how long until you guys were really cranking? Like how long did it take? What was that? What was the tipping point? point? point? Probably five years because we we started a franchise. And what you don't realize is we're in like 42 countries like in crazy places really all over the world. Adam flies all over. We're in the Middle East. We're growing like crazy in India. India. India. Wow. Wow. Wow. We just opened a couple more in China.

We're in every country. And it's growing from that standpoint because the brand is such a, you know, international brand. People love it. And so you get a lot of people there. So we've almost focused less domestically and more globally, which is kind of a reverse of your typical strategy. I mean, you're the one who came out with like the cluster idea, right, of like you start with a gym here, then you go 15 miles of the road and go out versus going the going away. Is that because the UFC brand?

Is that why because UFC is so big? That's why you can get away and do that that and and it's a different kind of audience. It's a little bit bigger catchment area because of the mixed martial arts and the BJJ and the boxing. You bring people in. great instructors and a lot of people come into that and then we do kids programs which is what's really cool. So call it you know four or five years old to 12 or 13 you can go take classes like your normal martial arts classes but these are mixed martial arts classes so you can learn to do BJJ Mui Thai kickboxing whatever you want but the nice thing is you can train with mom and dad.

Yeah they can all come into class together where in a regular traditional gym we we would never let a 5-year-old go into the gym. So the UFC has a different audience in a bigger catchment area and they do a phenomenal work in the in the mixed martial arts communities. Does the Paramount deal affect you, the Paramount with UFC? I mean the I'm curious to like We think it helps of course, right? Because now you have a much bigger audience and catchment because anybody that subscribes to Paramount Plus for 12 bucks a month is able to watch a UFC fight where before pay-per-view was $150.

$150. $150. So, in talking to Dana and everybody, we think it's definitely going to be super helpful. helpful. helpful. Yeah, that's what I was wondering if you would start doing like more commercial. I was my wife and I were just talking about the fights this weekend and she's like, "I don't understand why I don't feel like uh they don't UFC doesn't promote the fights too much." I said, "Well, that's because they went to Paramount and they just gained all that audience. They don't need to do that to promote for anymore." Speaking of promoting and marketing, because the the space seems to marketing in general seems to be changing.

You know, social media got big. Now, AI is making ads. I feel like people want something authentic. How is marketing has it changed uh since you've been doing this where you're really trying to get people in through like what does it look like now? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's all about social media and the algorithms to the digital channel, right? So, you could be hot as hell on Facebook one week and nothing the next. You got to kind of crack the code. Um the genius behind that sitting behind me, Brian Kgari, he's like phenomenal.

If you want to talk marketing, he could talk you for hours. But reality is less direct mail, less TV, less radio, a lot of social and then a lot of instore, a lot of referral stuff so we can get things in front of our members to reward them for rec recommending our facility to their friends or family. And that's where you kind of hit the ground. And then just some outreach. You got to have some hustle. So, as you know, you got to get out in the community and create awareness because five blocks away somebody may never know you have a gym there because they don't drive that way.

So, a lot of it's just handtoand too. But digital is probably the most important and you got to come through the social channels. You might find that Snapchat's crushing it this week for some reason, right? Then you slide over and and um you know, YouTube is crazy. So, you just have to kind of see what the eb and flow is. Any thoughts of collaborating similar to what you did back in the days with like a Magic Johnson gym? Like what's to stop you from collaborating with one of the largest largest largest health and fitness podcasts or one of the largest the largest or one of the largest we could do it.

Let's do it. I mean so no seriously like like I mean that I I have no idea how successful that strategy was back in the days where you partner with a big name in in sports like that and their names on it and it's a collab but 24-hour fitness is gym but it's you know a Magic Johnson or whatever. I mean, it seems like today's day and age, uh, celebrities are less the movie stars and the athletes and more YouTube stars, podcast, and like social media stars.

What's to stop you from doing something like that? Nothing. I mean, it's definitely on the list. I mean, I didn't come into 24 with the new team saying, "Hey, let's get back to it." They told me we were getting a lot of phone calls from people who want to know if we could do something with you. And so, it's something for us to think about. Um, I know that Mark Wahlberg, as an example, is doing a cross promotion with EOS. He's gonna open up a couple municipal gyms with them, which I'm excited to see.

see. see. Um, and happy for Mark, too. Great guy. Um, I think we'll probably do some things in time and be open-minded to what may be presented to us. U, we'll see what what comes. How did his run with F45 do? Because I know he did some with F45, too. Do you know if that was very successful or not? I think that they they were on fire for a bit of time and then they went public and they got in some trouble because their counting ended up not being what was reported and their stock got pounded and so they're been delisted and I know Mark's no longer involved at all with that and I think they're trying to come out of kind of a delisting to kind of resurrect the brand but I haven't heard who's going to get it and who's going to do it.

do it. do it. How getting going back to 24 I mean obviously you love what you do because you're always doing it. you do a great job. But going back to 24, is there like a different fire where you're like, "Oh yeah, this is my kid. Let's yeah, this is my kid. Let's make this happen." Yeah. It's kind of like um the bones are there. So you get back and you meet people like, "How long you been here?" I've been here 25 years. I've been here 18 years.

We we were in Elserto this morning and the kid there um says, "I've been here 16 years Tuesday." I'm like, "Damn, that's awesome." So there's a lot of people that have been loyal and stuck around a long time, which is really cool. The clubs are very familiar to me. I walk in and it's the same build out because back in the day when we were building Mikey and I was sitting I say look I want to build these clubs bulletproof where they can last the test of time because I don't want to come back and have to spend money again.

And so I'm walking in these clubs and they stood the test of time. The locker rooms look great. The flooring is maintained. Uh we put metal on the walls if you remember. All that sheet metal's still there. I'm like the desk looks good. I go holy [ __ ] this thing worked. You know it lasted. it lasted. it lasted. It sure looks tired. We need to remodel it. And so we're in the middle and and u I was able to get Mike Feny to come back and so he's come back to help again.

And David Roth has led the initiatives down there at 24 right now. So the two of them are all over these remodels and new locations. So it'll be a lot of fun to spend a lot of money and and uh see how the clubs react to all that we do. How about the careers in fitness? Uh you know uh going into fitness and making it your career. Uh I mean it some of my best memories are working in the gyms but even today if you talk uh I don't I don't know if a lot of people even realize like I can have a career in the gym industry like talk to that a little bit and maybe the opportunities for people.

people. people. Yeah great I mean great question. So you know like you I love being in the gym so I mean that's kind of like I don't like being in the office so I'm a field person. I'm always out talking to everybody hanging out trying to get things done. If I walk in the club what do you need? I'll make sure you get taken care of. But I love being in in the field and I think that the industry is so rewarding because you're kind of like part of the community.

You meet all your neighbors, everybody that works nearby, all the families. You get to know everybody and then it can earn a lot of a really really good income. You know, depending on what position you're in, whether you get into personal training or sales or management, your upper mobility to start making north of six figures, mid six figures is pretty pretty cool. And so it's a great business. It's a people business. I know that a lot of times when you talk to people now, they say kids don't have people skills anymore.

They can't look in the eye. They they're down on the phone. They aren't doing the things they do. This is a business that breaks you away from all that. So like if you met my kids, all my kids are look in the eye. They can talk to you. They can hang out with you. You'll spend time with them. And there's a lot of their friends are the same. So, I think this industry is going to start to attract a lot of these younger kids and they're going to find their home and they're going to find success and they're going to spin out and open their own companies or they're going to ride along with guys like us to teach them the way and have a [ __ ] ton of fun.

We were just talking about that because uh it's such a unique environment unless you've worked in a gym. Uh it's really hard to kind of understand like you got people showing up voluntarily to better themselves. So, they kind of already in this mental state of like, I'm going to I'm in this growth mindset. Then, people that work in gyms tend to love fitness. They tend to have better energy. You got music in the background. I can't think of a more fun kind of positive. You know, there's always, you know, places that maybe not so great, but generally speaking, it's one of the best in my niece just I just got her uh over at UFC gym by Oakidge over there.

Don's running that club and you know me and Don go way back and she just got a job at the front desk and she's only 18 and I'm I'm telling I'm like this is the best environment for you to just be in. It's such a great but a lot of people don't realize that. They just have no idea. It's a great place to work. Well, I mean we're doing something positive. It's healthy, right? And so it's not a negative business where where a lot of people are in trying to sell something that they really don't need.

But I'll I'll tell you a story while while we're here just to give you an idea of what the gym business can be like on a day. So, when I was in my very first gym, um, back in the day, receptionist buzzed my office cuz he used to buzz the office and pick up the phone. So, I pick up the phone. She goes, "There's a guy up here wants to see you." I'm like, "Uh, okay." Send him back. So, the door opens up and in walks this guy and it's Sunny Barker.

Sunny Barker is the head of the Hell's Angels. He's got two big boys with him. And at that time, he'd come out and he had had to use the microphone on your throat to talk. So, he comes into my office, sits down, he goes, "I've been want you. I don't want to imitate his voice." He's like, "I've been watching you. I like what you're doing here. I want to send my people in here to train and I want a great rate." I'm like, "Uh, yes, sir.

What do you want?" So, we we cut a deal. I think it was 300 bucks a year. And he says, "They're going to bring cash and you're going to take care of them." I said, "Yes, sir." And so, out the door he goes. I started getting six to eight people a day. 300 bucks. I'm here to see Mark. Sunny sent me in. And, you know, could be bikers, could be girls, could be everybody. And that went on for a decade, right? Every manager in behind me, like Vinnie Frell called me up, Sunny Ber's in his gym.

No way. Like, take care of them. Yeah. 300 bucks. That's it. And and so I built this relationship with him where he would come in maybe every six months and check in. How's it going? How's your business? You're making money, doing well. And it was like crazy. So I have thousands of stories like that where you meet some of the most amazing people when you're sitting in your gym because everybody touches you at some point in the community. community. community. You're the perfect person to ask this, Mark.

What makes a good general manager? You're running a club. Uh what are the characteristics of somebody that's going to run a successful club? successful club? successful club? Yeah, I mean the great GMs have charisma, charisma, charisma, right? People want to follow them and they have attention to detail and they care, right? They want their club to be clean. They want it to be wellmaintained. They care about their people. You know, they got their back. They want to support them. And then they're driven, right? Generally, they're really driven.

and they want to make a good living and they want to grow and they want to excel. Um, obviously all the other things that you normally point to that they're bright and intuitive, you know, um, they've got street smarts and all that stuff, but generally you can teach a lot of things to people, but at the end of the day, I always say that charisma plays a pretty big role big role big role because the person who leads the environment is one you want to follow.

M uh an observation that I've had just because I I've been in now the industry now over 20 something years and uh some of the best salespeople I've ever met in my entire life uh started selling gym memberships and now these people went on to sell homes or cars or get into loans or entrepreneurs and whatever field they go into they're the best at what they do but they learned uh how to sell with gym memberships. Now, my theory is that because I I see this all the time.

I'm like, "Okay, here's pro this is probably why it's a fast sales cycle. So, you're practicing constantly and you're selling an idea. You're not selling some product. So, somebody's got to walk out with this idea. So, you got to get good and you got to practice a lot." That's my theory. What do you think? think? think? I Yeah, I tell everybody that when they used to come to work for us, I used to always say, "Look, you know, one thing we're going to teach you to do is how to sell because you sell yourself every day in some way, and we're going to teach you how to sell yourself and be yourself." And that was always the way that we did the the sales training.

Um, reality is is that as we could talk forever, I run into so many people all over the place that had once touched us and worked for us. Um, there's a GM for an NFL team that I was having a meeting with and when I left the room, he says, "By the way, I want to thank you." I'm like, "Oh, you're welcome. you know, and I want to thank you because I put myself through college working for you as a personal trainer and then I got a job as an intern here and now I'm the GM running this NFL team.

So, you get stuff like that. But, um, selling is super important, I think, for life and it's a skill you need to learn and if you're great at it, you always follow the best salespeople, right? They're just so charismatic and they're the person that seems to have a pi piper ability to get people to go wherever they go. It'd be such a cool exercise. We do this sometimes. we reminisce of all the friends that we built working at 24 uh underneath you and I mean just between the three of us we could probably count 20 people that are all like multi-millionaires that have gone on it's just it would be so such a fun exercise to see how many of those people that are attached to you know like the the Kevin Bacon of fitness you know I appreciate that I'll be I'll be I'll be for sure for sure for sure no it really it feels like that you I was uh telling a story to the the staff.

So, we're we're we're 11 years we've been doing this now and u 10 years in a row we've been able to uh grow and out compete the prior year every single year. Uh last year was the first difficult year we had and we're looking at numbers from the prior year and I'm with the all the department heads and talking to them and uh you know it's like oh this is going to be such a tough month and I I shared the story of what you did for the Hawaii month.

You took a time of the year that was the worst time and flipped it on its head end being, you know, for I don't know how many decades it continued to be the biggest. When you think of and I the least the crunch UFC in 24, what are some of the most proudest like business strategies that you've implemented um when you look back that like that and that has to I would think would be one of them that like that's so impressive to me. No, I think I think ancillary like bringing in retail personal training supplements.

I mean Neil Spruce and and he did Apex Fit. So he's phenomenal. So you get Neil attached to you. He helps the trainers become educated on how to help people understand how to fuel their body when they exercise. So it's really important. So I think the ancillary was really important. And then I think attention to detail inside the facility right from all components. The way you equip it, the way you design it. You know Mike Feny played a huge role in all that. did a phenomenal job for us and and we'd sit there for hours in meetings just to figure out that that piece and then the amenities you wanted.

Do you want a pool? Do you want a basketball court? Do you want raetball? Do you want squash? Do you want a big group X room? How do you design your facility so it meets the community that you serve and how big do you need to be? And and and all the nuances that come in. I mean, how big is your damn parking lot? Because the parking lot often control the success of your business. If you had a 100 car parks, you were not going to be a high volume club.

But if you had 400, you could be a very high volume club and do 2500 to 3,000 workouts a day. When did you guys figure out that people would rather watch people working out than TV while doing cardio? Cuz that's that's like a big deal. No, you're right. That's like when did you guys figure that out? How'd you piece that? Because you're in the gym all the time. You're like, "Wait a minute. People like to go watch Well, I mean you're in the gym, you kind of figured out." But we did this study and the most successful clubs that we had had mezzanines.

Oh. Oh. Oh. And I was like, "Holy shit." So we started building all our clubs with mezan mezan mezan and then everybody's like yeah I love sitting up watch everybody work out and I got TVs and that was the thing and so even today I'm walking in a lot of clubs telling guys you know why we built that mezzanine no why'd you do that I walk them through because we did this focus group survey and study that our best successful clubs had mezzanines and so that's how we started doing more of that kind of a two-tier even clubs that didn't have mezzines like our San Ramon club I put like a catwalk in it so I I elevated up put a catwalk all the way across like 60,000 foot facility and then builds a little cardio area in the back so you could look out walk around and that club was number one in the company for years and years and years if you ever been in Santa Monica near the corporate office that had that catwalk in the middle.

What I mean that's just a big since again people don't realize that that's a big deal but gyms back in the day cardio didn't look at anything. It was TVs and then that switch made a a really really big difference. Uh, are there anything else that you could think of? Like, okay, here's another one. Gyms back in the day used to have rooms. Free weight room, machine room, cardio room. Now it's like, keep it all open. What made you guys figure that out? Was it just Well, in the early days, you know, you compartmentalize because people are intimidated.

It's kind of like the UFC when we first started. People walk in like, I don't want to go there because I'm going to get my face beat out. Like, no, we don't do any fighting here. We train. And then they go, oh, this is amazing. And they bring their friends and family. But in the early days, you had a wall around the freeways cuz women wouldn't want to go in there. They'd look and go, "Oh no, I don't want to go with those big bodybuilder guys." And then the the women wanted their own little section and everything was kind of boxed.

And then you started to recognize that, wait a minute, women are now moving around. They're going to every area. Let's just open it up. And then it was a lot easier to reconfigure your club because you can pick up and move it. If you want to move your free weights to one area and select, you could do that where when you compartmentalize, it was a little bit tougher to do it. And then mirrors played a big role, right? right? right? Yeah. So where do you put the mirrors as you do your dumbbells and as you do your squat racks etc.

And how you do the placement of that was a big part of it too because when we compartmentalized we got a lot of mirrors around the walls. When we opened it up everything faced the the outside of the building and then you had to run mirrors in the middle if you wanted people to be able to see themselves. themselves. themselves. Oh wow. How how long have you been doing what did you call the the test gym that's by your house? How long have you been doing that for?

Were you like most of my career I've been making something up. Yeah. Like we did the UFC and conquered the first one was right by my home. I lived in Lafayette at the time. I'm like we're going to open up right by the house and Jim lived there too. Mike was close by. So that was our our beta and we basically tested that out forever and ever. I didn't realize you do that. One thing that I noticed Mark and you're the guy again the guy to ask is you know there's gyms that feel so dark and then there's gyms that have natural light and it for me it makes a big difference to feel like there's natural light coming in.

Is that something now that that's being paid attention to? I think it's super important. I mean, I like a lot of glass, uh, skylights, if I can get it. I think it's super important. Um, some of the clubs today are a lot of lighting. If you've noticed, they're putting in all kinds of disco lighting and and crazy equipment, a lot of mirrors, a lot of shiny stuff. I think that the Gen Z crowd may like that. Not for me. I mean, not not I don't want to come in and feel like I'm in Vegas, you know, hanging out in my gym, but maybe once in a while.

Um, but yeah, I think that light is really important. Natural light is really important. That's why we didn't do a lot of basement space. Get offered basement all the time. We'll put you in the basement. I'm not going there because you're going into a dungeon and people don't want to work out in a dungeon. They might grind. You know, they might you might get that lifter to go in there, but but the female audience isn't going to drop down into that dungeon. It's not going to happen.

No. Why Why Mark? Why haven't you retired? Why do you keep doing this? You got all the money you want. You're successful. You could totally drop out and be like, "Whatever. Why not? Why?" Yeah. I get that asked a bunch of times. I I mean when I left Crunch and I said, "Okay, I mean maybe I'm just going to take a time out and I got a bunch of stuff all over the world that I'm still owning and operating in multiple countries." Um I told my wife, I said, "Uh, you know, I got this opportunity with 24." And and she's like, "You should do it." She got excited like, "What?

Really?" She goes, "Yeah, get that back. I got to do it." So she was behind me. I was like, "Wow." Okay. Well, after it and she's been the most happy like you're out of the house. Get the hell out of here. go do work, get back in a few days and let me do my thing. But yeah, she's been super supportive. And then I've got four kids between 17 and 24. And they were all young when I left the company. And they watched me build crunch.

And they're all doing different things. None of them are in the fitness industry, so to speak. I got one in college, one in high school. My oldest son, Mason, selling real estate in Dubai of all places. places. places. Really cool for him. My daughter's doing what most girls these days, you know, go to do social media and modeling. She's been, if you look at Nike, she's all over Nike. They've been hiring like crazy. So, she's been doing a lot of modeling and she finished playing basketball Cal and she's kind of said that's on my bucket list.

I'm still young. I'm 22. I want to do a little bit of modeling. So, but long story short is now for them to maybe eventually get involved in the business and and have a chance in their 20s like I did when I started to um learn a little bit about fitness and see if it's something that some of them want to do. I feel like that would be the dream. The dream would be dad and be able to find a way to build something to where you guys can all stay connected and work together.

when you were scaling and growing like that and they were young. Were you were you able cuz I feel like you've you've also been a very present father at least from from afar what it looks like you get what it looks like you get to go go to a lot of games and you don't miss a lot. So the fact that you've been able to build these things and still be able to do that. How did you do that? Did you just did you make a rule yourself hey when they get to a certain age I'm going to do only this much or I'm going to like how did you how did you structure that?

Yeah. No, great question. I mean, you know, when we we sold in '05 and I kind of stepped out for a little bit before we built the other brands, you know, the kids were young and we had a couple more after that. And so, I love being with my kids. And so, I made it important as part of my DNA is that I'm going to be there for them first. And so, I would work as hard as I could and then get home and be there for their games and take them places.

So, my son, my daughter, they played club sports. I took them all over the country. I would work on the phone and work on my computer in breaks and I would talk to people, but I was always there with them and traveling and hanging out and going to their games making sure I didn't miss anything. Um, I think I think this plays uh I was asking you about loyalty earlier. I think this might be one of the factors cuz people have said about you that you value their families whereas sometimes you work with people that are really driven and it's like you got to sacrifice your time with your kids.

Uh whereas what I've heard from people is like oh no, he he he cares. He wants you to be with your family. Yeah, I mean I I'm a big family guy, so I'm constantly asking, "How are your kids? How's your wife? How's your family? What's going on in life? How are your parents?" And if somebody says, "Look, my my boy's playing a soccer game on Friday. It's a state game." Well, you're not working. Get the hell out of here. You know, go do what you need to do.

And I I think it's important that family is super important. You want to be you want to be good at work. You want to be great at home, right? And you want to be as good as you possibly can be in your community. So, I'm always preaching that be great at home. That's super important because if you're balanced at home, you're kicking ass at work. Agreed. If you're a mess at home, you're not kicking ass. I'm not going to work. Do you have a nemesis? Do you have somebody you're like, "Oh, yeah.

I I can't I want to crush that company. I want to just out compete them." Yeah. I mean, good question. Uh I've had them over the years and and I felt like I did crush them, so I'm happy about that. that. that. But right now, I'm friendly with everybody. Okay. I was on the phone with um Jim Rolley yesterday and he probably hates me saying this, but you know Jim, you know Jim's like a little bit uptight that I left Crunch and ran over and bought 24.

He's like, "Why the [ __ ] did you do that?" Oh [ __ ] man. It's my baby. Why can't I have it back? It's not fair to say why' I do it. But he said, "A lot of the a lot of the crunch guys are are like, "How could Mark do that to you? How could he run over to 24?" And Jim's like, "Well, you don't know Mark like I know Mark, right?" And I said to him, I said, 'Well, just let them know that we're not going to be $9.99.

We're going to hopefully be a little bit higher pricing. They're going to look at us not as a direct competitor, but let them all know that they piss me off. I'm going to [ __ ] come after. And he started laughing. I know. I know. So, don't think they're going to open up next door to me and I'm not going to counter. counter. counter. They're going to build something right next to put them out of [ __ ] business. So, business. So, business. So, be nice in the sandbox. Play nice and we'll play nice.

Have you had Okay, so you have you had uh again, have you you come off so calm, cool? Have you have you done anything after a win, a conquer, a squash to someone? Like what's have you done something? Send a nice letter, bouquet of flowers, like have you done something to have you done something to somebody who's who's done you like that and then in business you got your like, have you done something like that? Yeah, I I had a a group call me three days, four days ago, just an example.

Um and they have some clubs in Texas. They said, "Hey, there's a site that's 100 ft from one of your locations that the landlord says he can put us into, and we're thinking of going in there, and I just want to call you first out of courtesy to see what you would do if I did that." And I said, "Well, first, you'd be my mortal enemy. Second, I would take my club in a remodel before you even started construction. I'd lower my price to the ridiculous and I'd [ __ ] hammer you and put you out of business." business." business." He's like, "Okay, I'm not going there." But but um it's a fun competitive business.

You're kind of competing against your brothers and sisters out there and there's plenty of room for everybody. You just have to differentiate your product a little bit and I think 24 has a very differentiated product from Crunch and Planet for sure. Uh LA Fitness is starting to sell a lot of their boxes right now. They're slowing down a little bit. He's moved towards a club studio concept which is around group exercise high-end $200 a month type product. So, I I think that we can all kind of differentiate and survive and do well, but I don't like when people [ __ ] with me.

I just have a tendency to love to compete. I've been competing my whole life in everything that I do, whether it's through my kids, whether it's through business. So, once you fire me up, I mean, I will not stop sleeping, thinking about it, and basically just get after it. Which which kids most like you? Oh, great question. Um, I think they're they're all pretty similar. My oldest son is a badass. He's he's like he was a 6'5 245 pound kid. Just a big big monster. Played football in college.

My daughter's uber competitive. I mean, she's cracking me up. She's like, "Hey dad, I was in New York molling. I was doing some fashion week stuff and I went down to Soldore and I got next to this gal who was in great shape and we competed in the whole class." class." class." My My third son's a big lifter. You'd love him. He's probably, you know, 6'1, 230 lb kid, massive, lean. And my last guy's probably the craziest of them all. He's in high school, so still, but he's a a great athlete, very competitive, but I think they're all they're all like me.

They all have a fire. They've all competed in sports because I came through the sports channel like you guys did. did. did. I think that's how you learn how to compete. You learn how to win, how to lose, how to deal with difficult people, how to overcome the odds, how putting in the time, energy, and effort shows you success. Yeah. success. Yeah. success. Yeah. And it's the same thing in life and in business. You got to put the effort in to get there. And I think that that's part of what my kids have gone through.

They've all been competing at very high levels as I pushed and pushed and coached and coached and try to be there for them and uh see that engine run, I think, is is part of what makes uh this country so great. What's uh which one's most likely to have the business acumen? I mean, they all do. My my daughter's very entrepreneural. My oldest son's very entrepreneural. My third guy's a brainiac, super smart. I mean, the 4.4 validictorian type kid, great athlete. And my youngest guy's the he's an assassin.

He's just, you know, because you're the fourth kid, you don't have to have a curfew anymore where my oldest son had a 10 p.m. curfew. This guy can go out till 2 in the morning. My wife doesn't care. Um, and he's um 63, 190 pound athlete, good-looking kid that whatever he wants to do, he he somehow seems to make it work. as an example, you know, he he befriends uh uh Adam Sandler, and during the pandemic, we spent a lot of time with the Sandlers. Adam's awesome.

And he golf with Adam every day because he's a really good golfer. And one day, Adam's like, "Hey, do you think your kid would want to be in a movie?" I'm like, "I don't know. You can ask him." He goes, "Well, ask him because I I got this role for him." And I'm like, "Okay." And so I asked him and Merrick, our youngest, is like, "Yeah, I'd be up for that." And so Adam's like, "Well, you got to you got to audition for Netflix. I can't get you the job, but I can get you in the door." So he auditions and they hire him and he makes a movie for Adam Sandler.

He's just that kid that something always seems to happen for him. So when you say which one, I know sometimes I think it might be him because he's the last one, but he just kind of whatever he steps into, it just always seems to work. They all have the potential though. It sounds like when you look back, we're all fathers. all fathers. all fathers. Um Um Um what what would you say you and your wife did really? I mean, to have four kids that really turn out like that, that's that's really rare, especially for having a father who is as built something as big as you have, it's really tough to to juggle that much business success, also that much family success.

Like, when you look back, what did you and your wife do really, right? Like, well, I give her all the credit and she takes it. Um, and she was present at all times with the kids and she's she's a Colorado girl. She's all over. She's a great athlete, phenomenal shape and she just focused on the kids and gave them everything she had every day and kept them, you know, again, in the guard rails. Never got too far off the right or the left and made sure that they were really well balanced.

And my job was to mentor, train, and develop, right? Which is what I do at work and what I do at home. I mean, I'm constantly with them. I'm not their best friend, but I'm going to push them, shove them. I'm going to make sure they got their grades right. They're doing their homework. I'm on top of all that stuff. and and um engage with them on a daily basis. And then you just have to make sure that they have the right people around them because sometimes they bring a friend into the friend group.

It's like ah it's not a good choice. You might want to rethink that particular. We were just talking about that before you walked in today. That's something that I've been dealing with quite a bit lately. But I'm curious to hear how you deal with that. Yeah. My wife's like, "They can't come to the house. You can't go to their house. They're not part of your friend group. Sorry. Not going to happen." And she's done that a bunch of times. And I'm like, "I like that kid.

No, this this this. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Okay. That's that's I got it. And so there's some of that, but you know that the kids also see how hard you work, right? Which is another reason why I'm still working. It's like I want them to know that I'm never going to retire. I'm going to bust my ass and and you need to do the same. So they see me working hard and they're they're proud to to see their dad working hard. And then, you know, I've always got their back.

Whatever they need, whatever they want to do, no problem. We'll take care of it. We'll make it happen. Did you and your wife naturally fall into those roles or did you guys actually have like a sit down convers? I mean, how'd that unfold? unfold? unfold? Yeah, good question. I mean, my my wife's a dominant personality, so I pretty much fall in line behind her. You know, she's the smartest person in the household, so whatever she says goes. We'll have our spats here and there, but generally she's been really, really good at fueling the kids, feeding them well, keeping them healthy, not getting them into the [ __ ] crap candy, all that.

She's really, really healthy. uh feeding them as best she can and fueling them for success and then staying on top of them, you know. But I think the two of us kind of figured out after a period of time where we needed to balance it out. I was about education of sports. Yeah. And she was about everything else, you know, the way that they groom, take care of the room, the way they dress, the attire, how they talk to people. Um I remember remember remember a great story.

We we got invited to um a dinner at George Clooney's house, the actor. And we came over. George, of course, at that time was not going to have kids, never get married, what his thing was, and knew him a little bit. Nice guy. So, we come to the house. Each one of my kids comes in the door because we brought all four of the kids. They're like, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Clooney. My name's Mason. My name's Mia. My name is Maddox. My name is Merrick." They all introduce themselves.

Merrick's probably like four years old at the time. and they all go through. Then we had a dinner the night about 20 people and George says, "I just want to say that I had an observation tonight that the four Mastro kids walked in. They all looked me in the eye. They shook my hand. They said their name. They said my name. That's how I was raised. If I could have four kids like that, I would have kids." And that was badass. I was like, you know, that that's a pretty cool observation.

And then they spent time talking to him. And one of the things he told him is that one of the keys to success that you're going to find is life is to be a good storyteller. If you can tell a good story, that's going to bode well for you. And and if you get my four kids, they all tell pretty good stories. You know, they don't tell me all the good ones, but we do have some. But yeah, so things like that in life where opportunity presents itself and and your kids can be around you and they can experience thing, it rounds them and it makes them hungry for more.

more. more. Yeah. Yeah. That's I have a speculation. And I'd love your just your opinion on when you're, you know, when we're looking at like the landscape with tech and there's all these speculations with AI and what it's doing. And one of them, you know, I heard Elon Musk say, you know, it's going to be a future of universal high income. And so, you're going to have incredible efficiency and you're going to have machines and robots and AI doing all this work for us, which means you're have a lot of people who will have, I guess, I guess, resources, but not go to work.

For me, I feel like that's going to make fitness explode. Yeah. It's going to make your fitness uh so big because you have all these people with all this time and where are you going to spend your time? You're going to want to go to the gym to become more fit, to meet with people, to work with people. So, I feel like the potential there is massive. I I agree 100%. I think that fitness is becoming more social, right? So, it's like a social club. It's not just a gym.

It's place where I can hang out, talk to people, meet people, do business, right? And at the same time, look and feel better. So, we've been doing that our entire life, but people are starting to recognize that you guys are doing good work and this is something that's going to continue to bode well as we come through this whole AI period, whatever that ends up being. You know, there's some people think that the 30% of the workforce is going to lose their jobs, have to change career paths, and maybe that'll happen, but I think our industry is going to just excel.

Yep. So, I think we're in a good place, and I'm feeling pretty good for all the folks that are getting after it. Last question I have for you um related to the 24 acquisition. Will the financial side of it be public? Will we know like exactly what you acquire it for and all all that? Will that be public? No, I mean it's a private transaction. Um if we decide to go public one day, it might be, but for now it's just, you know, myself and one partner and we own it.

We'll crush it. They're letting me run hard and I'm kind of in charge and it's all good. Okay. Got a great team there. Uh Carl Sam's awesome. He's got great people around him. We just have to give them the tools for success and and let them fly and then let them make a [ __ ] ton more money so they're all happy. You have a favorite location? Favorite 24 fitness location? Yeah, good question. Um I mean if I go back to the old days, Sunnyville was probably my favorite location.

See all that wood in there? That baby was a badass club. We did well there. And you know, I can remember some of the staff and we had a lot of fun. You know, uh lost a few people that have not not with us anymore that used to work there. work there. work there. I ran that club. John Stewart worked for me. John me. John me. John passed from Cronin's disease. Yeah. But you know, the human volcano we used to call him if you remember right.

But that club was probably my favorite in the old days in the in the modern era. I mean, it'd probably be between San Ramon and we opened a big box 100,000 square footer down in LA that was pretty damn cool. But But But is that the one with the the escalators that went up to it? Is that that one? No, that was Pointloma. Oh, Pointloma. That's what that was. This one we used to get a lot of laughter from because the escalator going into the gym.

There were stairs the other side the picture like look at this, you know. Used to go viral all the time. We get a kick out of it. It's now a UFC gym actually. actually. actually. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Well, you know, recently we heard the White House say they're going to release uh the potential aliens that are real or whatever. That ad? That ad? That ad? Yeah. Do you still think they're going to eat the fat ones first? So, So, So, please bring your throwback.

It'll make you laugh because um I kept all my [ __ ] from 24hour like in boxes and my wife like every year, can you get rid of this stuff in the garage? I'm like, no, I'm keeping it. And I kept it, kept it, kept it until 20 years later all of a sudden 24-hour falls back in my lap. I'm like, see? So, I started opening stuff up and I had the alien shirts. No, you don't. Oh, yeah. I got a bunch of the originals. So, I took it to the company.

I gave it to Carl. So, they made a new shirt and it's basically the whole alien thing, but it says we're back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we're gonna wear those. So, make them right now. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. But yeah, I have a bunch of the old ones and ton of stuff that we broke out all all kinds of retail. I have a box in my garage with all my 24-hour awards and like a huge box with all of them. My very first one, my name is misspelled.

is misspelled. is misspelled. Never fails. Never fails. Never fails. No, it never fails. Well, this this was awesome. Yeah, great time. Appreciate you coming on and uh you know we we we're excited to watch it, man. Appreciate you guys doing great work. Happy for you. Keep it rolling. If we can be helpful in any way, you let us know. know. know. We will. We will. We will. But uh kick ass. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.