From Nonprofit Founder To Building A $300M Pilates Business

alright everyone today's episode is anne m malone and started this company called solid core south is a pilates studio where she bootstrap it in the first year she did something like a million and a half in revenue it costs like a hundred thousand dollars to start and she eventually sold this company in the year nine for something like three fifty million dollars and she goes through this entire story but if you're listening i think the really amazing part is to copy some of her attributes because i get done listening to her and i'm like i need to step it up in terms of confidence or in terms of being passionate about something and in fact there's like in minute thirty i i honestly tear up hearing some of her stories so check it out and by the way if you are interested in anne i'm gonna give a plug for money wise this podcast i did with her where she went deep on her finances so how much money she spends how much money she made everything and because i liked her so much on that podcast i wanted her to come on here so check it out and i hope you guys enjoy this episode and let me know in the comments let's do a little background so i think you had a normal job but then started a nonprofit called back on my feet is that right yep and what was the original idea i don't know if you know much about how the homeless system works but many of the shelters in the major cities you can go live there for thirty days and then you get kicked out they give me you thirty days to get your crap together which is not very much time for someone who isn't going through homelessness to be honest to sort of start over go back in the city get back on the system ninety five percent of the folks we worked with were dealing with addiction on on some level so you know sam i know a little bit of your background and i think i mentioned on our last conversation my dad's an addict and when you ask my dad mark what was your addiction and he'll kinda look at you and say everything because my dad doesn't understand moderation you know he had unfortunately instances with drugs and alcohol he went into inpatient program before it was five so i don't really remember this but that seemed to do the trick he hasn't had a a drink or used drugs in thirty seven eight years unfortunately gambling them surface for my dad when i was a teenager and he's struggled with that and now my dad is eat fishes every day for hours a day but you have to find some place to put this thing and i had felt like if you can master the drugs and alcohol you know and and try to get away from the bad behaviors having an addictive personality could actually be beneficial because when you get into something you know you are in it and you kind of ob obsessed over it so running was this great alternative because there is no end you can always do more it's there for you you only need a pair of shoes it was a really great substitute for a lot of these guys who were still chasing the i don't know if you know this but there's a correlation of people who work out who actually tend to drink more because you're chasing the dopamine you you you're looking for these opportunities to get the elevated serotonin spikes so that's why you know yeah working out can be a great a great option for people who are struggling with addiction yeah basically addiction i i don't know shit i just in to i know my situation but addictions don't go away u they they just get transferred you know what i mean and so our thought was you know we can really help to change the emotional identity and get them to like themselves believe in themselves put them in a positive support network and turn them into somebody who is a runner an athlete responsible reliable and then we can go advocate for them at jobs that need employees who have those types of characteristics so marriott became the largest employer of of back on my feet not because we were a charity sam but because we actually had good candidates for them who were so appreciative to have a job in a respectable place where they got benefits paid pretty well an opportunity for for growth by the way what do you do like your first day so you just quit your other job it's a monday you just walked to the corner and like hey everyone or i guess the night before like meet me here tomorrow at five thirty like i don't if you have running shoes or not but like make sure you know what i mean like what do you do like the first like five days yeah so i was a little more organized than than that i knew i needed the shelter to you know work with me and give me permission so i emailed the this i found the director of the shelter online i emailed him he didn't email me back took a little while for him to respond to me but i i kept like badger him and you know he tries to think of the nicest way to tell me that like this isn't gonna work these guys have bigger problems they're not like interested in running and i was very persuasive i'm like if you could please just meet me like i literally have ran by this shelter for two years i'm not a very religious person even though the shelter was religious but like i am being called to do this please meet with me and let let me explain to you why i feel so compelled so he did and sam though crazy thing was this great lie by the way i'm being called to do this like that's good yeah but it's it's true i mean yeah totally but it's also a good like it's like that's like a that's like a great argument right and so he met with me and this shelter again i didn't know anything about this shelter it was called the sunday breakfast rescue mission but when people enter this shelter they the guys have rules and they are not supposed to have any contact with women zero they are there to you know no drugs obviously no alcohol they have a curfew every rules no women and this guy mister mc like i owe a lot to him because he trusted me believed in me and was like okay i'm gonna break our rules i'm gonna allow this woman to come in here and build relationships with these guys and he's like i'm not gonna tell them and that there's some you know young woman who wants to come run with them i'm gonna let them the the participant or the members of the shelter at the time ask them if they are interested in joining a running club that's it and if they say yes i'll let you do it and you know i'm like waiting and waiting and a couple weeks go by and i finally get a response that says here's the names nine guys these guys wanna run and i'm like close i need their shoe sizes so i go to a local running store i get the shoes donated again i'm i can be very convincing it's one of my super superpower i get them to give me all new shoes because i don't want i don't wanna show up there in my new shoes and then it give these guys you know crappy old used shoes because they're homeless i just felt like that's gonna say i'm better than you and i didn't want them to deal that way so i got shoes shirts socks shorts and i went up there and met them i gotta meet them in the chapel for the first time i introduced myself and then i made them sign a contract and it just said if you're gonna join the running club you gotta ship up three days a week monday wednesday friday and you have to be on time you need to come at a positive attitude and you need to be willing to respect and support your teammates and everybody like sat up straighter in their chair they were waiting at least what it felt like for me they were waiting for someone to tell them they were capable of excellence and expecting i guidance say to them you know what just show up if you can it must be tough living in here or just you know do your best if you're please run out to be too late it was like these are the expectations and if you can't agree to them then don't join the club and if you can't agree to them once you do join you know you're gonna get kicked off the team we have to adhere to principles so everybody showed up day one and we are ran in a mile like some of the guys crews and got it done really quickly and then there was george who took a while like he was struggling but we made a rule that day that nobody finished the run on their own so everybody went back to get george and we all like brought him into the finish line together and that like first day it was like okay like this is the group and all the media was there for day one like i wanted to get the word out everybody had to come and see this for themselves so the philadelphia inquire the daily news is the local abc b nbc i mean i was all of a sudden like this thing was everywhere alright guys so listen up we're doing something a little bit different here so we had this guy named mister ball mister ball is one of my favorite people on earth if you have been on youtube or tiktok you probably know who's mister ba is so he's has tens of millions of followers and he's built this massive business on it he's probably the best story i've ever heard of my life to be honest and he did this amazing podcast with us that we're gonna release soon we're not releasing the episode right away but we are gonna give it to our true fans and if you are one of those true fans and you do want this interview we have a link below so check it out click the link in the description below and you can listen to it right away now back to the show did people cover you because you're like a charismatic like you got i i don't know if you had your hair like that but like you look like a celebrity would you have your hair like you know your short plaid hair you looked dope and your charismatic were they covering you because you were charismatic and awesome or because this idea was so novel like how do you how how does someone who's not as cool get all this type of press well i i think i'll give you this this this straight answer and because this is you know probably in no bullshit podcast the video in the media was like here's this white lawn girl from north dakota putting herself in the middle of these homeless shelters like running with all of these men like the camera the that this story everything about it was like wait what they just kinda had to know the background and then you add in the fact that my dad is an addict and i'm so drawn to these guys and i could never help my dad and running helped me so now i feel like they can help people who remind me of my dad you know through this and yeah so i think it all just worked and then once they got i mean the homelessness itself right people are like wait the people who are homeless are actually running that alone made people make make make their brains be like wait what and then add in you know the young white girl from north dakota like what's the connection here so the media truly ate it up and it was coming from such a a pure place for me of like i'm trying to heal myself from ten years of nothing coming good for my dad dad's addictions and tearing apart my family and now i get to use all that pain is fueled to help people and you know meeting some of the guys in our program i really think about those first nine guys because in the majority of them were charismatic and lovely and like you just can't help but root for them so once the media started are to talk to mike and to george into james and learn their stories then the fact that they're out there working hard i mean it's the ultimate underdog story and volunteers started showing up this groups started to grow and it was like i'm like this is an opportunity you know tony robbins talks a lot about these windows that open and like this is my window and i had just taken a job at comcast i was supposed to go work there in their government affairs department six figure job like everything that my college degree graduate degree was setting me up for this comcast opportunity was it and i remember going they asked me to go to a baseball game with a lot of like some senators and and people in the political sort of world were in town and comcast was hosting them and i went that night and i was like i am so bored out of my mind there's no way that i can go take this job like all i wanna be doing is hanging out with the back of my beat members is all i i thinking about is like this organization and how i grow it and vision and so i called them the day i was supposed to start and i i thank them for the six weeks that they gave me from time off of my other non nonprofit the job before i was supposed to start and i was like i can't take this job like i have found what i'm was supposed to do with my life and i'm really sorry i know what's the day before but like i i gotta follow my gut on this how old are you i was twenty six twenty six twenty six yeah i mean again i'm asking all adults in my life i'm thinking of doing this like what do you think and everybody's like are you nuts like for your job like you're gonna run with people in homeless shelters for your job and and like trying to explain the vision you know and nobody got it you know my mom thinks i'm like irresponsible she's worked you know like what are you thinking my dad's concerned for my safety all my mentor boss people are like and you don't even have any savings i had i had no money nothing what was the first year's revenue or however are you i'm sure i raised a million bucks in the first year i was oh shit really so you're a machine oh yeah and i would ask i mean i would ask anybody and everybody for money and i knew who to ask sam i figured out that i had to find the executives who were runners in companies that could give and so i would only meet like larry solomon was my first i had a huge article runners world it was awesome you you but i'll also send you that larry lived in philly he was the coo of one of accenture of vertical businesses he emailed me amazing article you know rooting for you while well i took one look at larry title and i was like yeah can we please have coffee i you know trying to tell you more right seriously larry is still a very good friend today but he we met and i was just like i need your help i want you to sit on the board larry and i just become a runner and i'm like you know i really wanna build this thing and i wanna make it big and blah blah blah so he came on board and larry like accenture right they have massive marriott was a client bakeries at and t they had so many tentacles and i'm just like i just need you to introduce me i will go in and close the deal but i need you to introduce me to the big players so that they can write the check and i don't waste weeks or months climbing the meeting with the marketing coordinator and then the marketing director and they just keep passing me up the chain like i'll never be able to raise money best enough so yeah and every meeting i went to i made a specific ask whether it was like i need twenty thousand in four hundred and fifty dollars and here's why and we did to quickly to three more people and then i would also learn that i would that like letting me come and speak at your corporate event or something i was like oh that's i did that one time and i'm like oh this is really powerful like now i get the whole company you know excited about back backing on my feet because it was just so innovative so what's your pitch to me let's say let's say an executive you know i'm i probably spend a few hundred grand a year giving it a away to it causes i care about single moms i care about animals homeless guys i mean i guess that's it's like kind of important but like why should i like give a shit about you well for one sam i would ask if you you know are you a runner hopefully you would say yes i would say so you so you understand that right so if you're an executive perfect so if you're an executive of this company you understand how important culture is and how important culture is for performance and making sure your people feel appreciated and valued here a lot of our members grew up in in households and environments and neighbors where they didn't have that before and i can tell you being out there firsthand with all of these guys they are some of the hardest working individuals i have ever met before but no one's given them a chance and if you don't have respect for people who are out there at five thirty in the morning trying to put their life on the right track and doing the work and the effort no one's running their miles for them they are doing it on their own and it's a pretty compelling sight to see and i can guarantee you if you give us a check not only will you know the money go to helping these individuals my life for but we'll get your employees involved you know talk about a cause where you know employees can get actually involved on the ground floor running with us we do skill set training right where we teach these guys about literacy helping them train them for you know what their next opportunity could be but i can tell you from all the other companies we work with we have higher employee engagement with back my feet than people have had in any other number about that think work you you make me emotional because like on this podcast and in my life i care about making money you know i care about businesses and we're gonna talk about solid and and all the traditional success that you've had it just seems you know like i remember being in the hospital recently because i had like a kidney stone and i felt like i was dying and this like nigerian nurse was like taking care of me and like in my head i'm like you you probably have seen five of me today and like you don't even make that much money whatever but like mh you're making my life so much better right now like you have you're calming me down and like you are making this stay the best as opposed to the doctor who makes way more money but like just in and out and that's sort of kinda like how i feel when don't i talk about this nonprofit stuff which is making rich people richer it's kind of insignificant compared to mh giving someone a shot or like doing something that actually matters and so did you get equal fulfillment pursuing solid core for the sake of like wealth creation versus what you were doing with back of my feet i had a lot of fun building solid core and i feel really good about how i've made my wealth over the last ten years i mean i get to make people's lives happier healthier and help people be more confident and my team you know there are thousands of people who work at sole core who love their job who you know we pay people really well i think we pay higher than any other fitness organization our coaches on a per class basis like they're are coaches who make over three hundred bucks a class because we've always done a revenue share model and i have just never believed sam that it has to be a zero sum game like yeah should i have made the most money sure because i took all the risk put all the money in like i have no problem saying that some people can with me that's fine but do i think that my employees should have made zero no which is why i put a a long term incentive plan in place for them a profit sharing plan when i sold the business and everybody got paid every full time employee who had been with solo court for a year got paid on that last transaction and they're gonna get paid on the next transaction as well and i feel really good about that so i would say honestly like a similar fulfilling but like back of my feet made my life makes sense so when i sort to feel like it was time for my next thing yes i thought it and i thought it out of a few things one who who am i like my life is extraordinary i get to help people all the time oh my god fear like what if i fail at my next thing whatever that is is all this gonna be for nothing and people will just think i'm a one yet wonder that definitely was something i had to work through and i didn't really know kinda had a tough that thing you know all the attention that it was receiving i was receiving all the accolades my ego was involved for sure but i couldn't sit there tell back of my feet members in our mission to push and challenge themselves you know move moving things forward one step at a time growing if i wasn't willing to do the same so i was like listen i have an incredible board of like thirteen fourteen c level people there is an amazing budget the program the systems the processes the team everything had been set up like i really felt like i did my job as the founder and the first ceo of the of the organization so it it helped me to be able to move on to the next thing and then you you go on and you do solid core which if you don't know for the listener it's a pilates studio that's just fucking bad ass you scale that out and you get to you sell it eventually for like three hundred million dollars but you had the story and and you could and you could dive deep on the numbers and we went through a lot of the numbers on money wise but you can go through some of the numbers but if i remember correctly your idea was basically like you're were in la you you went to a pilates studio you do the math and you're like well they have like eight reformer here a reformer cost as much money i think i could do like a hundred grand a month if i make this in dc or new york or wherever you made the first one is that is that story right pretty close and deaf i discovered it in la and then i was back in new york and and found another pilates studio they had the same machines as them and i was that i started to do the after i after i went for like thirty days and i was like i have never seen my body looked like this and it's only been thirty days and i feel so good and i addicted i was just bringing everybody i knew and then i did the math and i was like this is an incredible business and no one's really doing it on a big scale yet was the math well so there's ten machines in there in this particular studio and the per class was like thirty dollars a class and you couldn't buy membership you had to buy every time you went and so many how many people per a class ten ten oh sorry and it was a full yeah ten times well yes this ten it was full every time you couldn't get these classes so there was ten classes a day right okay so that's three hundred dollars a session yeah times ten so that's three thousand dollars a day mh and they're full all the time the they were all the time like impossible to get into class and you're like three thousand dollars a day times thirty that's ninety thousand dollars that would be cool yeah totally and i was and i also felt you know one of the things that i tell people a lot when i when i speak is like play a game you know you can win and so i knew after back on my feet i had to find another game i can win i was the perfect person to start back on my feet because of my story my experience in profits my true authenticity for wanting to help these guys and i just had a knack for understanding system scalability and process and so with solid core i knew i needed something that was authentically authentically representative of who i was and i am the workout queen i mean out of all my friends i've done so many marathons like fitness and wellness has always been a key if not they keep priority and so when i discovered this i'm like nobody knows you can work out like this we're all out there jumping pounding you know getting injured because it's a rite of passage to be fit like this is so different and nobody knows about it and and i know i know how to build community i know how to scale i understand branding and i understand how to give a really good experience therefore this is a game i think i can win this is what i'm gonna do next and held were you for this one thirty one thirty thirty one thirty two thirty one three two yeah and you had saved like i think you said like a hundred and fifty grand from one five years yeah one seventy five from like five years of of roughly the nonprofit and you put didn't you tell me you put all of it into a location and reformer like you like transfer the money you like transferred it from like anne checking account to solid cores checking like all of it yeah and and i that then that didn't feel so scary because i was a hundred percent owner in the business so it was like the scary part was that that it wasn't moving the money it was that the money was gonna leave that account yeah yeah did it all leave oh and i mean a high majority but the great news was as soon as i opened we started making money so you know i had i mean sam like i was i i still am but especially back then out a necessity i was like a killer negotiator i had to get you to root for me you know so i'm talking to my general contractor you know and it's like listen can we do net sixty terms like if i can pay you sooner i will this is who i am i started this nonprofit this is what i'm doing now you know i have this money you know i can pay you but i'm trying to make sure i don't like get in front of my skis and so like i would negotiate you know that side of things and the first landlord made me give four months of security deposit which killed me i was like thirty grand that i have to give to you that like just gets to sit there and after that i refused to do security deposits and was very successful in making that happen but yeah and so as soon as like we opened and i started selling packages on them forget my first by first sale it was just one woman named amy who i still know she was pregnant and she was like i wanna buy you know private sessions and she went online and she bought twenty five hundred dollars worth of private sessions and i was like i can't believe this woman just gave me all that money she's never even done the has no anything and so i trained her every day at five am before the the studio like we started class at six am and then you know once we opened i got press i i leaned down my media contacts from back on my seat i got an article on the post yeah it it was dc yeah and and so how and how much was the startup up costs it was oh gosh maybe a math but i know the build out was like a hundred and fifty grand right i had to buy the i had to pay a licensing fee of twenty five thousand dollars just to open the studio that was just a licensing fee that's insane right that that's a that's an insane deal why can't i just buy a machine it's my machine to do that i i that's why i ended that relationship in a couple years and went through a lawsuit but then i had to buy the machines which i finance because i couldn't afford to buy them out right didn't have all the cash right finance them and i was paying the monthly you know a monthly fee to do that and then and that so those those machines were six thousand dollars at that time i seven thousand dollars a piece so that was seventy grand but didn't have to pay out upfront and then the rent was nine no sorry seven grand seven grand a month and what was your first month of sales oh i like we literally did over a hundred grand in the first first month that's insane it was nuts i mean but it but i was betting big and you know i i think i told this through that but it's still gonna i have to tell i was petrified you know those moments where you have that you're like oh in and you're like oh my god what am i doing larry here comes larry again from back of my feet and he's like listen i'll give you seventy five grand for thirty percent of the business if you don't wanna use all your capital like listen you grew this profit i know you're gonna be successful you know if you wanna keep a little cash i'll do this deal and back then seventy five grand would all i had was one seventy five was a lot of money and i you know i was beginning to think it was a responsible thing to do to take this money maybe i should do this deal and then i remember thinking i have the money and if i take his money all i'm gonna say is this is a massive doubt in myself i'm doubting myself and when things really get hard i am then gonna lean into seventy five k and convince myself like well at least i have that you know like you know i i don't need to this is too hard at least i have my seventy five k and so i was like i can't i can't take that money it's just gonna it's gonna take my drive away it's gonna take the hunger i need to feel like i'm being chased by a bear i need to figure this out and that's the way this is gonna be successful so i just i mean every every hour of i was passing out solid core pamphlets flyers is like anything i could do to get you to come take the class and then fortunately what happened was the same thing that happened to me when i took it everybody started telling their friends and sam after your first class right you said you were so sore guess what everybody wanted not a bad way by the way but but everybody wants to tell everybody house oh my god i'm so sore i did this work workout called ce you've gotta go they all wanna tell each other how much they're working out so so it just snowball did you create the routine that was part of the license so i got trained on what was called this method called degree so we had someone come in and train me and then i trained by trainers on how to do that i'm not a personal trainer like that's not not my background and so we started again using their training program for us and then soon realize that like we actually wanna make this more athletic these names that they're using were kinda silly it was it was like nothing intuitive and then the machine started breaking and so i was like this relationship is doing nothing for me i don't know why i have to be associated with lag i wanna like make my own machines that i'd need to be in charge of manufacturing like the workouts don't make sense i had hired somebody else to do the training who had a big background in mma and and and you know she was certified and everything else and started playing around with the workout she wrote a massive training program and then we separated from la and he sued me like immediately which you won i think right or yeah sorry you you're not a allowed to say well i mean it's far enough down but for all intents purposes he had to buy back his machines for me and we agreed to never to never talk again which we haven't so and and frankly after we did that all these other people who were part of la agreed then also started to make their own machines realizing like why are we paying a massive premium on machines this isn't a franchise so we're getting the benefit of a national brand here yeah yeah like it just didn't make any business financial sense so yeah and then making my own machines like that was a huge gamble i didn't know how to do that obviously and like tooling engineering manufacturing prototypes i probably spent lost a couple hundred grand just because i didn't know what i was doing maybe probably even more than that but like we got a machine and it wasn't right i already like it like it didn't work properly like we had to redo it it was a mess what was your first year's revenue the first year revenue think you asked me this last time and then i had i you said a million dollars right well the first it was more than that because that was the first studios revenue and then in the first year you know i had five of these open so you had i didn't know you had five at at the end of the first year yeah that's insane right yeah but same thing i'm like momentum momentum momentum you ever heard the funny story about subway and i if it's true or not but like i just love it so i keep telling it but subway had one location and they were like off the beaten path and they weren't doing that great so they thought you know we need to open a second one because people will think if we have two that were killing it and i like remember hearing that story ceramic like that's so brilliant and even though we were killing it i was like i need to maximize on this and get two and three and four open so that people start being like i'm seeing this thing everywhere i must be missing out they must be doing so well this thing must work and that really like served us really well so we just kept reinvest the profits into the next studio i kept negotiating you know as long like longer terms to pay back if i needed to and i just stopped doing security deposits with with landlords how old was the business when you sold each different chunk because you told it a couple times right yeah so i did a minority deal in two thousand seventeen so the business was four years old at that point and we had twenty seven locations on an annual basis each one of those studios was doing about seven hundred grand okay so twenty seven times seven hundred that's roughly nineteen million dollars in revenue yeah you sold the business for what valuation or you sold a chunk for what valuation i did a pretty big valuation back then so the valuation was like close to sixty million wow yeah and people people the the the firms definitely blocked at that and i just said listen it's not so much about the number it's about the terms and i know how much money i need to get to a hundred studios and that's twelve million dollars because i'm gonna continue to use the profits and i also wanna take secondary off of the table and and i obviously know i'm like that especially that early and i was like listen these are those are the terms like don't don't get so freaked out about the terms tell me what you need in order to do this deal and so there was a a healthy prep on the the minority deal that i agreed to and i had no problem doing that and i remember two if people were like you know and how do we know you're not gonna walk away for six million and i'm like i would like i would just sell the whole business if that was the case like you think i'm in this for six million dollars like which is such a good way to like approach you are good i'm really bad at negotiating like all my staff knows that like don't come to sam about salary discussions because my default is like i just say i just say i you gotta talk to this for other person about that because i just say yes to i just say yes to everything so i like removed myself from negotiation because i'm too nice and like well how do you on this podcast i know like i well i don't that that it would sound like a back at a couple of but it's not but i i'm just i'm soft as fuck like i just i just i'm like yeah i'll do whatever you want i'll do to approach like a no negotiation of like don't say no just tell me what you need to win and i'll see if i can actually make that happen for you and but then in order for you to win it has to take it into account here's what i need exactly and so i i did that with landlords and you know and private equity it's like you know landlord would always block but we we always just security by it i'm like that's not really a response right like what are you trying to protect against right you have a corporate guarantee you have x like help me understand this and i can try to solve the problem a different way so i i solve the private equity problem with the preferred return you know it's like you're your downside expert i'm not gonna see another dime until you make you know the two point five x extra money that's just such a funny response we always well why do i think of a deposit because we've always do deposits well that that's not that's not a good reply give me a different reply that's the best but and it it really it really does work because you make them articulate what's important to them and usually what's important to landlords is you know the ledger the balance sheet of the total you know term of the deal and you know so that's why we were able to push rent a little further down the road and like increase the rent in your five or six and you know okay you're protected on the corporate guarantee you know front so like you know you have three years so i'm not gonna do a security deposit and let me tell you why that's important for me and why it benefits you because the more i get open the bigger the brand is you know it's gonna get more brand equity and and you know this location will do better so yeah i think people all people can do a better job of of negotiating and it's one of a really amazing skill sets to to learn chris v never split the difference and love that book i read that book during covid because i really had to get good at negotiation and what's the what's like the the the summary of that well he just goes through these different strategies right about like mirroring and he gives us one of my favorite examples was he gives this of a car he goes in he's like listen and i have call it ten thousand three hundred dollars you know that's the car that i want and just say it was like fifteen grand or something and the guy comes back was like okay great news was i down to fourteen he's like well thank you so much i really appreciate you advocating for me but the number of the the amount of money i have right now hasn't hasn't changed they still have ten thousand three hundred dollars if you can do a deal for that you know i'm i'm here goes back comes down more gets to like call it eleven three and at that point he knows right because he hasn't moved he knows you're not walking away you aren't you're so close the guy gonna do the deal and i remember using that strategy a lot as well in negotiating you get people to come come come and now they're just too close that they're not gonna move away so the whole point is like not meeting in the middle right so the point is do you go to eleven thousand or you still at ten five he's stuck he's stuck because doctor guy is so close now he's not gonna walk away what it's like eight you know it used to be five grand away now you're just eight hundred grand or sorry eight hundred dollars away so he like get ends up getting you know the deal done and he just goes through different strategies in there on how you can mirror you know this is what i hear you're saying yes you know and like don't walk away when you hear and know like a note doesn't have to be a bad thing so me and my lawyer who i had on staff at that point who's just a jack of all trades it's an unbelievable you know we read that book sam because during covid we knew it's like what's gonna kill us what's gonna kill this company is not that we don't have revenue coming in right now it's if these landlords sue us and make us pay rent and no one really understood who was right or wrong then you know it's like well this is a force or it's like well we don't have any money coming and how do you expect this payment rent so we just said we just have to get the landlords on our side we have to figure out a way to restructure the deal that doesn't allow us to pay rent when we are closed and we also can't kick the can down the road you know so we came up with strategies like how about we lengthen the term of lease we'll add another year or two to the back end of the lease you know so that you have a longer tenant like if you force us to pay rent you're not gonna get another dime from us you know because we're gonna go bankrupt but if you work with us or maybe we increase the rent you know you're eight nine and ten to make up some of the difference for this but we know that we couldn't in a year from now have this like okay you oh rent for those three months and give us a check for ninety k it's seventy five studios like there was just no way we were gonna recover from that so anyway those kinds of things you know people talk about how covid would killed so many gyms and a lot of that was not just because of covid it was because of these operational and financial decisions that weren't like made as smartly as maybe some other companies could have made in not understanding what was gonna be the demise of them when you when you completely got out it like what three hundred million dollar valuation yeah a little little more than that but yeah and that was last last april i got i sold love shares held was the business then nine and a half years that's a great run and when you look at like what made you guys great was it operational excellence was it because your brand was cool was it because the workout was better than any anywhere else like what's like the honest assessment of like these were the one or two factors that set us apart from barry's boot camp or whoever else is you consider to be competition or all the mom and props out there yeah the workout is incredible and and i'm glad you've gone to it because you couldn't understand a little bit what i'm saying it's just like unlike anything that was ever out there and now there's a lot more pilates out there but we had speed to market we are the dominant player you know in the space and we have a pretty cool full brand so i think the aesthetics we know what our brand is right the whole tagline line is create the strongest version of yourself and i think the company is still doing a really good job of leaning into that one of my favorite campaigns we did was it's not for everyone and we really went in and like this doesn't this may not be for you but it's for somebody you know it was almost like a nike commercial it's like if you like to push yourself those are great commercials yeah yeah and the the the night you're talking about the nike olympic ones yes exactly yeah know and those are great winning when i'm got for everyone so we did we did this campaign in a few years ago and it really like people people watched that and it's was like i want that to be for me i'm tough i'm strong i like to push myself i wanna grow i can handle tough things and so i think there's is this aura of it do you know somebody who does sal core you're like i know who you are like i i know exactly the type person you are you're driven you're ambitious you like to work hard you're not afraid of the work you're not you you the the work is actually the joy for you you want to feel good at the end of the day and knowing you put your all and tried your best at like everything you did so i think the brand eat ethos is definitely a big part of our success and don't get me wrong again operationally i'm a pretty good operator are you like pretty good where you're like you're actually the best like or are you like that's like i'm pretty good at it but it's maybe not the best the the thing that i'm best at yeah i'm great at putting systems processes in place but like i'm not the right person to run sal core today if that makes sense like it's too big it's too i'm monolithic it's like i just i moved quickly and that's not actually what you need you need somebody like brian who's much more methodical analytical patient i think that for most entrepreneurs who are like new i think that branding and some of these exercises aren't terribly important but i think that if you have a proven track record where you're like this person execute well and they execute when you have that track track record which i i think i do like for all my businesses now i i spend a lot of time on branding mh where i'm like what is this how does this make someone feel like the colors the name things like that and that like i like i said this i don't think that's important for most people when they're just starting out because it's like you just gotta get started and get some traction with you guys you kinda it seems like you came out the gate with good branding and you're kind of in that that boat by the way we're like this is your second company and you you're like it's like no you execute it it's so it's okay to like kinda split this or take this stuff through who inspired you for your branding and where what was the exercise that you went through yeah we're we're similar there i i love the branding and marketing as as well so i i i did that for back of my feet and and and sal core in the beginning you know like with back on my feet it just that the name itself i i remember someone telling me like we should call this thing the homeless runners association of america and i was like that alone will make the thing fail because it doesn't sound cool it doesn't you know what i mean it sounds like one of these every other organization that just like you know and i wanted us to be cool and coming up with the name for solid pour it was just like reiterating a bunch of names and i'm like oh that just has it that just makes you sound badass ass like you know when people like oh that's solid like obviously like the core piece has you know lots of double meanings and whatever and then the brackets i thought could indicate like your oblique and the tightness and community and together and so was like this is it it just it just kinda looks cool and they you know we haven't done a a a redo of the logo or anything like it just kinda stuck around and the brackets i mean i have i know even been seen but i like a bracket now i looked it up my shirt for you too i have a bracket box papa i have a bracket tattoo again i just i just always feel like things need to be cool for people to to wanna to wanna be a part of them and so i didn't wanna spend a ton of like stupid money on branding and marketing for another idea that probably would have worked also but one of my mantra is that there's more than one right answer and this was like a right enough answer of i wanna ask you about some ideas but you you kinda caused the pilates thing like at the right yeah find that one well what fitness related businesses that you right now you're when you were talking about a few you're talking about something when and i started to thinking of hydro it's called hydro have you seen hydro h y d r o x hydro rocks i think it's rocks yeah is it rocks sorry like the competition yes the competition of new york i like i went and saw it it is awesome it is awesome like i saw that and i'm like oh this is like gonna be a this is maybe it's already a thing but it's like this is like really gonna be a a a a thing are there any things that you see where you're like this is this is like gonna pop well this i will talk about boutique finish in a second but one of the things that my husband and i went to french just is twenty nine zero twenty nine have you heard of this event yes the founders in hampton did he talk to mark yeah i did talk to him yes so i'm gonna go to they're they're releasing the schedule soon i'm going to one of them you gotta go i i we just did it so the the twenty nine o twenty nine is the elevation of everest so they created this event where they partner with ski mountains for the most part around the country and you have to climb whatever the number of times up that mountain and that's the equivalent of everest so we were in mountain term blanc which is in canada and our mountain was about twenty two hundred elevation so we had to climb this thing fifteen times one point seven mile and it was it was steep and i'm like a marathon or i've done these things so i really was like i'm just walking you know up a hill like i'll be fine completely different than anything i've ever done before for the pure duration like if you think it takes you sixty to ninety minutes to get up these things you know you're out there for fifteen to twenty or some people longer like some people literally had to be on their feet for thirty hours to get the fifteen hikes in for the time that you're allotted because you have thirty six hours it is unbelievably inspiring the people that are there because most people are there because they're going through a divorce they're fighting some health battle it's lost a hundred pounds they've got something you know later going in their life and they need to show themselves that they can climb the ef mountain physically so that they can go back and do it you know emotionally mentally spiritually whatever and it's just awesome like it's awesome yeah and his business is wild basically i think they sell out like most other events now i think it's like five thousand dollars to go and they provide the accommodations and yeah it's not you're not slum it it's like really nice stuff yeah and so you think that's like gonna take off i think things like that like i think there's gonna be hi rock love at innovation there was a craft face crossfit games i think you're gonna start to see more events you know remember when like reg and some of the you know rag relay no what's that oh my gosh the rag used to have you it's like r a g n a r it might still be going on i still anybody desert it anymore but it was these relays where you when you had two vans and you had like twenty four hours to run hundreds of miles and like you're you're you're literally driving through the night like your vans are moving on there's stations are it was just again so cool i don't really know if it's still going on but it is i think it is okay and okay and the company that owns it i think they own like a bunch of different events now yeah so i think that i do i really think that there's this continued movement i mean i know you don't drink i really don't drink a lot of my friends don't wanna be partying like everybody is looking least in my group for like physical fun activities to be doing with their time and i think these sort of endurance challenge events of all sorts are gonna continue to grow and and pop up all over the place because that's how i think a lot of people wanna spend their times and i'll tell you i didn't have my phone with me for the entire time i hike i refused to bring it with and i just am i'm craving being out in nature challenging myself physically and i think a lot of other people are to so you're gonna see more of that i think a lot and then from the put the way mark told me he was like i was like what makes you guys special and he was like well like gave a big breakdown but he was like one of the things is that we make it so like most of the people are gonna fail like we want it to be hard enough to wear if you get done with it it's a big deal to too yeah and you're gonna wanna talk about it yeah he's like most events they actually make it with too many people succeed and so he was like talking about how like the mindset behind making that event but you know what they do really well so the a sense they they list different mountains so you actually don't feel like you're failing so even though you may have not made it to everest like if you climbed ten of those you made it to kill jar so they give you a metal a kilo jar metal instead of like did you get all to all of it you did all of it yeah the did you almost quit at all or do were you like no i'm getting this a matter of what well marco and will tell you so i i didn't get any sleep the night before and i actually like a mini meltdown and i'm like i'm i i don't do well with sleep deprivation i'm not gonna be able to do this and so i was on three hours of sleep and my strategy was i'm just gonna do as many as i can as fast as i can before i hit a wall so i was on pace to probably finish it in the top five and i my eleventh lap it just you know like if you ever done an endurance event and like the wall it just happens and it happened and i made it up the mountain halfway in the time that it was taking me to reach the whole thing i had to sit in the med tent for forty five minutes i'm asking them i'm like i can't i can't keep going i need to go down at the mountain there's there's my half of lap count so i can come back tomorrow and they're like no and i was like i'm like what like and now i really can't go down and i just couldn't get myself together and the along comes mark and he gives me coke like not that kind of coke he gives me coca cola cola yeah and the he figures like yeah he's like you're gonna do this i'm gonna walk up the second half of the mountain with you you know you're not gonna go back down i can see it in your eyes you you know like you're not somebody who needs to go back down so like yeah i took that shot of coca cola and like got up and we made it up the second half of the mountain and then i went down and went to bed and finish my next four in the morning but yeah mark like came along and saved me you had this you put the notes you said the number one reason we had to let people go was because they lacked proper judgment and critical thinking skills you said what i discovered was that the best critical thinkers are great at taboo because you have to think on your feet and be strategic when you describe the word you wanna get people to say what's taboo i don't even know what that is yeah so taboo a game where you like have teams and you get a card and the top of the card says a word say let's say it says you know book and you have to get your team to say that word but underneath that word book is five words that you can't say to get them to so what i say like page or reading or things like that so you have to think creatively and i have to know who's on my team you know so like how how i would get sam to say this you know say this word and like there are people who crush that game and from my experience whenever we've played on a retreat or something the people who get stuck or flustered or can't think on their feet whatever usually didn't work there i was longer and i'm like there has to be a correlation between this game the ability to figure figure it out of like who's on your team how do you we make this happen thinking on their feet and some of the smartest people that i think are my friend group are also excellent at that game so there's something there you also said something like you're like well ai is taking over fitness and you can personalize data supplements exercise food based on individuals so for example if you're a forty four woman a forty four year old woman who wants gain ten pounds of muscle we know your blood work we know this about we know that about you here's the program that you're gonna be using yeah or you should be using is there anyone in the space who you like who's taking advantage of that insight yeah so the i'm i'm an adviser and an investor so i will disclose that to a company called oxford and they are in at home it's sort of like tonal but i think it's much more comprehensive apprehensive and better and their ai game is really progressing to do just that it knows when you're tired it knows certain things you know how you're lifting the weight you're imbalance whatever and they are really investing in the ai so that they can partner and you can add your blood work in and you can add every of data point that you have about yourself and then what your goals are and it will design again like exactly what you need to be doing and i think we're really i think that's gonna start to take off in a lot of different areas but listen you you there's a lot of people who are still just like checking the box and i think that's why they get frustrated because they're not doing the right things for the results that they want and it's a little bit of a guessing game you know not knowing your metabolism not knowing your deficiencies not knowing you know again your age or your hormones and how all these things are affecting the workouts that you do so i think that's just gonna continue to to within five years i think it'll be kind of foolish should just be like guessing on what you should be doing to work out i've had a a handful of friends get diagnosed with cancer recently and one of my friends detected it because he did one of these like pre novo or something like that one of those like scans that just pay money for and i've like in fifty years or some amount of decades we're gonna look back and we're gonna think it's insane that you had cancer growing inside of your body and it could've have been okay had you just been told that it was there and it's like you've got this like foreign thing in your body that led you don't know about it and that's kind of a that we accept that that's normal now but i think that in sometime in the future we're not we're we're gonna be unwilling to accept that and so i'm personally personally really interested in that i am also per personally quite interested in like figuring out exactly the fitness or diet that works for me i can't based off of blood work i don't think i've seen a product out there that's doing a that's nailing that though yeah i i don't think a lot of it's like pseudo science so i just i think it's it's none of it's like awesome at the moment do know what i mean yeah i agree i and i think i it it will get there because if people can figure that if the if people can figure that out and again imagine if you've been so frustrated your entire life to not see the results when you're willing to do the work when you're willing to put in the effort and like it's still not happening i just think it's only a a matter of time with where we are with yeah the the ai stuff and the demand for it frankly are you gonna start another company no sir not right now not right now i'm i know too much i know too much like the beauty of starting companies is i think a lot of times is naive and i'll also be truly honest that like something the the financial motivation is a little bit gone of course you know i really felt with back in my feet in sal core that i'm like doing this one i was very into in both but two it was like i'm gonna make people's lives better i felt like i'm the perfect person to do that so i haven't had i'm not i'm i'm also not looking for it right now but if i have that experience again where i come across something or i moved or and i'm like i have to do this like that is when i will that is when i will do it but for for now i just feel like i'm giving spouse myself some freedom some time to to feel this new chapter are you like seeking anything or you're just like yeah like because that's like an interesting mindset that that i've been in before and i don't know if i approached it the best way but it's like the mindset i'm just gonna go and live and i'm gonna be and my ears are open and if i get called yes i'm just going to live right now and yeah i think even if i got called right now sam i would i wouldn't i don't know if i could i if i could do it like because you're tired or you're happy exactly it's not tired i'm actually very energized but you've heard the book was zero yeah i think we talked about that right so i'm just you know i want to be playing like i'm trying to stay in my feminine because i've been in my masculine a lot in my life and like i want to have room and prioritizing playing and for me that is beach volleyball ball it's any kind of sports it's connecting with friends and family and being able to be a little bit care free and i don't want to put so much rigid structure bracket in my schedule i just feel like i need a breeder from that and i and i'm not willing i'm not willing to do it alright so we you're about to wrap up and was like you gotta talk about this idea alright what what's this idea i read it but i need you to explain it better so you got this idea tell me about jump yeah so i so you've all been at the air airport right and like your flight gets canceled or delayed and you're desperate to get home and you of course like you go up to the airlines and they can't do anything because they're not gonna kick anybody else off of the flight they don't care about your status and whatever and so the idea for jump seat is right very much like ticket master or something else where there's a platform where let's just say sam again it's like i canceled and you're like damn and i have to get home either go on jump seat and you offer you a thousand dollars for any seat on any flight going back to where do you live let's say i'm going back to new york okay so you're going back to new york and like you put the offer route there and also one has to do is accept your offer you trade seats they now are on your flight whenever that like it's reschedule but they don't have the same timeline that you do to get home so it's like no problem and it can work in reverse where if i'm at the airport and i'm like you know i have a flight back to miami but like i'm in no rush i'm gonna put my seat up for sale and if someone else wants to get home sooner they can buy my seat once it's like seat geek for plane tickets where it's like someone owns them but if you own it you can auction off your totally auction it off but think about think about how much happier your customers would be and the airlines where you could build in the airline to take a little bit of the cut so now i'm a happier delta customer because i solved my own problem even on delta couldn't solve it but they're allowing this platform and you can even do it for seats so let's just say i'm on a flight and i'm sitting in thirty two and i'm like i really wanna fly first class this person has first class they don't really care they put up their seat for like five hundred bucks and they'll come back and take my economy seat and now i get to sit in first spot would you ever pursue this no because i don't think this is a game i can win i'm not like a tech person or or something that's why i want like i i want this product so i can use it so that's why i want somebody who's like oh my god this makes so much sense and you fell in love with the name jump seat that's a good one it's a great and i have a logo and everything like you really it's so good i'll send it to ari you can see it how so good how could someone wait would you actually work with someone if they wanted do if wanted to how it do you wanna give away how could someone contact you like at latest dm you and instagram yeah i yeah i if you is that is figure on how to find me you're not the right person to totally stuff so yeah yeah how much you think well whoever owns jump seat dot com they're they're just sitting own not using it you own jump seat dot com of course i own it how much should you pay for this like five dollars or something not much jump seat dot com was five dollars i bought it years ago i literally had i've had this idea for such a long time and then i'm like just make the logo you know like i had my friend make the logo and it's it's really good it's it's the name is so perfect it's like what i can just trade seats and and people are like oh my god airlines are never gonna allow that i'm like they already allow aggregates like ex ex and you know they're already in their back end system and this solves a problem for them and they can make more money by just taking five dollars off of every time someone switch sheets so why would you know why would they care this so funny i thought this was a half big thing so you're you're in i mean i would love for someone to do it i'll give you the wait i won't give it for you can you can give me a little bit of equity in the company and you can you can run with it but you're gonna have to convince me why you're the right person to to do it what would they have to say to convince you well i'd have to know again why it's a game they can win what's their background do they have the tech do they have any you know connections in the airline industry have they ever built anything like this before you know why would this be interesting to them do they know how to scale and and build something like do they have the tech experience which i don't have it all thought that's so funny i like went to jump dot com and i'm like oh hey it's registered but no using it i did not realize you're this you're this far down alright so they're gonna well here's what i wanna know you're gonna have to message me and i'll have to do a i'll do a shout out like if there ever are any results but you have to let me know how many people message you and if anyone's actually promising okay i will i said it last time it felt like i was like like being not genuine because i was so happy but you're you inspired the shadow me and you're one of my favorite people on earth i i have found myself since we last talk like approaching a situation i mean what would anne think about this and so i just wanna thank you for being part of my life and doing these podcasts you're the best mean a lot to me that's really sweet we'll get you a t shirt at sam that says what would do you do just kidding that would be great that would be great as long as it's a crop top exactly yeah as long as it's a crop top then it's good and it must be at least two sizes too small yeah i appreciate you thank you very much mess pod