 I want to go back to how you and I might have met back in Palm Desert. Yeah. Yeah, man. So, so that, okay. So, uh, just a little background. I, at the time, before, right before that I was managing a club in Sunnyvale left. That's a whole nother story. Uh, went down to Palm Desert and owned was shares of a club in the Palm Desert area. And you know, when you run a club, you look at your competition and, and there was a gold jam that was closer in Palm Springs. And there was a cathedral city, 24 fitness. And so the, you know, the whole process, you go and you do the flyer thing and you try to poach their people and the whole thing. And, uh, one day I'm in there working and I was with Don Cardona, who was my partner at the time. So, you know, Donna's, and we're in there working. Don goes in the back for something and two guys in suits walk in, look real nice. And I'm like, Oh, great. You know, I got some potential members. So I do the whole and I had no idea who these two guys were. Right. So I, I give them a tour, do the whole thing. And I can tell they're, they're listening, but it can tell they're kind of not interested, but whatever. Either way, I'm going to do my thing. And as we go back to the desk, uh, Don walks out and he goes, Hey, aren't you Mike Apple? And I'm like, huh? And so he knew who you guys were. And then I think you guys walked out and then that was it. But I read it too fast. So I want to know your side of story. We brought you guys in to the, to the club. Do you remember? Well, you know, I, I remember, uh, you know, I was a district manager in the Inland Empire and I think Mike had just come in and I think it was you guys were conquesting our consumers. And so Mike was, and I was a young district manager. I was very, very young at that point. And Mike said, let's just go shop them and let's go check them out. And I think that Mike didn't know it was Don. So I think Mike and Don knew each other really well. And so, uh, once Don appeared, then, you know, there was some connections there. And I remember, I remember you were hustling. I mean, you were, you were, you were a little closer. I was trying to get you guys to buy members. And that, and that's why I connected the dots there because I remember your, your energy. And I'm like, I was, I stepped out of there, go, man, I got to figure out how to get that guy in my district. That's hilarious. You know, it's funny about that is that then when I went back to 24, I go up to Hillsdale. They did a whole re grand opening. I go in there and they said, Hey, before you show up, this was at the time Curtis Harman was the, the VP or whatever DM. No, the VP at the time, they said, Hey, we want you to meet with the new VP. And I said, new VP. I thought it was Curtis and I knew him, right? So I walk into the corporate office and there is Mike Apple dude that walked in and shot Mike. Good to see you. Oh, no, is this going to be good or bad? Anyway, it turned out to be great. Mike, Mike and I became friends and everything, but I learned a ton growing up in that space and, you know, I left or whatever. But now you're, now from there, did you move to what you're doing now or what was your path from 24? Oh man. So, you know, the, the 24 hour timeframe for me was interesting. So I, you know, I started with family fitness down south. Oh, so you were with Ray Wilson. I was a Ray Wilson guy and, and started in 94. And I started as a front desk person and, you know, gradually moved up to sales, AGM did the whole run. And then finally got to a GM spot in 96. And then they put me in Rancho Penisquitos, which was kind of the first when 24 hour Nautilus acquired family fitness. That was the first true 24 hour fitness news sport club that they built. And so jumped into that club. And then, you know, I remember one day, you know, I was eating a big old hamburger and Mark Mastroff walks in and I had, you know, at that point, you know, obviously he's an icon and he's the owner of 24 hour Nautilus, who just acquired us. And so there was a anticipation and a little bit of an anxiety to go meet him and, and did so and trip went really well. Guy blew my mind in regards to what I knew about fitness and what he knew about fitness. And it took me to a whole another another level, another paradigm. And, and then at that point, Mark met started mentoring me. I was very, very lucky, you know, and, and I literally moved 20 times with 24 hour fitness from 96 all the way to 2007 ended up as a divisional president in Texas, overseeing Texas, Florida in the Midwest in 2007. And of course, Carl Liebert came in as the CEO and I was very, very close with Mark and Carl Liebert decided that he didn't want Mark's guys to be running divisions and asked me in a very polite way to not be there anymore. So exited out and then, you know, right when Mark exited and then 30 days later, there was a conversation with the Renzo Fratida and Dana White about starting a fitness concept with the UFC as a 50 50 joint venture. And I didn't understand it at the point I'm thinking to myself, how is a fitness concept with UFC fighters going to translate into mainstream fitness? This didn't make sense to me. And I had an opportunity to go watch a fight camp for 30 days, just observe and understand it. And then I understood it. And, you know, of course, Mark being a genius and kind of seeing where fitness was going around being functional and being very community-based, we kind of put the dots together and then UFC gym was born. Wow. And what a great opportunity because you worked under two of the, I guess, the guys who wrote the framework of how to build a successful gym company because before Nautilus and before family fitness, you didn't really do well business wise with the gym. You know, there were, you know, meat heads and gold gym and, but it wasn't really a business. And then you guys came at, you know, EFT and how to do the sales process and all that stuff. And what was it like working under, you know, for Ray Wilson and then Mark and how were they very different? I mean, there were rumors about the pace, the pace structures being different and Ray Wilson guys were more like owners and, you know, what was that like? Well, first of all, both cultures were incredible. You know, family fitness used to have these blast-offs and literally, you know, the grossing mentality of family fitness was absolutely unreal. And they had white sheet partnerships where you got 26% of the revenue to pay all your labor and then you kept whatever was left and then you got up the 30% of the profit. Now it's good if you're an investor and you're in that club and you're driving that club, but as an organization, if you're growing a company, it makes it more complicated and more difficult. So then when you look at Mark's strategy, which was to pay his people very well to create an incredible culture and to be predictable to grow a brand around the globe, that's exactly what family fitness needed because there was no way we could get to scale with the way that, you know, the pay structure was working at that family at that point. So Mark came in, still paid people extremely well and it was interesting. The people that weren't there for the culture left because of the compensation changes that were different. You weren't a partner anymore. You were more of a team member, but those that were there for the culture grew in a significant way and found their own pathway of success. Well, I can imagine that with that old, that family fitness pay structure, you probably had guys running clubs very lean and making significant profit and probably working all day by themselves or doing a lot of stuff themselves. Well, what Mark saw was competition was going to come, right? And family was operating as though we were the only game in town because we were. You know, our competition was another family fitness 15 miles away. And we felt that that was going to be a competitive threat to us if we had one within 15 miles. And so Mark knew over the next 10 to 15 years that, you know, it's great that we're monopolizing, you know, in California here, but it's coming and we got to be prepared. And there's no way that the current process of family fitness was scalable to be able to grow in the way that we needed to grow. And so yeah, it was, it was an interesting transition of understanding that. But what we found was the people again that were engaged and that were open to adapt and change were the ones that were ultimately successful. And yeah, maybe they weren't a one club operator, you know, making 26% payroll and so forth, but they ended up becoming district managers and vice presidents. So they ended up getting incremental pay and then stock options, which proved out to be very successful later. Now it's statistically speaking, acquisitions actually fail more often than they're successful. So was it a smooth transition when they bought Ray Wilson? Or was it a little rocky? It was a little rocky. You know, I remember being in San Diego and when Nautilus acquired us, of course, they painted the picture as though it was a merger, as they always do, right? But we knew that there was an acquisition and we went up to with Curtis up in Santee and Grossmont. That was their first two locations in San Diego and all of Nautilus boys were big boys. They were all linebackers, man. And us family fitness guys were like basketball and baseball players, right? So it was definitely interesting. It was Dave Dunlap and Welby Boyles and Curtis Harmon and that group. And you know, there was a little bit of conflict initially, but then once things settled down, probably six months post merger, it became one big family. And then it really became about professional opportunity and growth and becoming district managers and VPs and going to different markets and trade areas to help grow the brand. Awesome. Now just to set us up for where things are now, I think we should also talk a little bit about how some of the evolution of the space, which was led by, for a long time, 24 hour fitness. I mean, anytime you're the leader of a market, I think the things that you do then your competitors tend to copy. You tend to set the standard. And I remember working for 24 late 90s, early 2000s. And what it looked like was a little bit of a shift, especially, and this is just from my perspective. So I'd love to hear from you, especially when Mark kind of left the company. There was a bit of a shift in the culture where in 1999 or 2000, an all-club membership without sales or promotions was, I don't know, $200, $300 to join, $45 a month. And later on, it started to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And I noticed that there was less emphasis on quality value or that we're going to charge more because we offer more. And it just became almost like, and for lack of a better term, a race to who can get to the least expensive. Am I painting the picture correctly? Was that my own personal experience? Was that what the, it looked like the industry was doing? Yeah, you're right. So, you know, family fitness, the pricing model was 19 bucks a month. And when Mark acquired family, he goes, you guys are ridiculously cheap and there's, there's, it doesn't make sense for you guys to be that price because you're the only game in town. And so we were brought up with that culture of 19 a month. So when Mark says, no, you're taking your price to $44 a month, you're doubling your price tomorrow, we, we didn't know if we could do it. We, we, we didn't understand how to take a presentation from 19 and double it and try to get the same type of closing percentage and guest traffic. And what happened was, what Mark was a genius at was understanding what the true value, what the core value proposition is, and then providing an incredible university or a great culture to be able to help you drive to get to that price point. And so that's when Mark inserted incorporated PT in the sales room, right? In the past, I'll tell you at family, we didn't sell PT ever at point of sale. And so when Mark came in, I don't know if you remember Ron Thompson. Oh yeah. And PT is personal training for the audience. I started off as a trainer, by the way, I remember this distinctly. And so, so we at family, we didn't want to sell and PT, we just wanted to sell memberships and sling them. And, and then Ron said, listen, if you don't sell at least $2,000 in PT a month, I'm going to find you $1,000 on your paycheck. Oh shit. And so all of a sudden, guess what we started doing? We started selling PT and then eventually it, you know, Eric Jenkins became the head of personal training and, and created, did a great job at creating this culture. And then we learned how to drive a value proposition. And then we became very competitive with the Nautilus group up north. And, and because there was very little competition at that point, all of a sudden our dues bases were going up, you know, 15, 20% month over month. And it was an incredible growth period. And then, you know, as Mark continued to drive culture and drive production, do everything that, that he did through his leadership. And he sold the company and, and, and then eventually that company said, Hey, you know, we're going to try to go a different process and bring six Sigma strategies in here and become efficient and, and reduce the value proposition by reducing labor and taking everything digital without needing a salesperson. And then of course, what happened at that point, things started to go backwards. And then people started reenrolling the same members price point started to drop because everybody thinks you can make up volume by reducing price point, but you can't. You have about a 14 day period in which volume will increase. But typically, that's because you're reenrolling the same consumer. And then after that 14 day period, the guest traffic goes back to being the same, but now you're enrolling at, you know, $10 less than what you originally had. Now, if you're a member at 24 hour fitness, and you're paying 49, 45 bucks a month, and all of a sudden you see new members paying $30 a month, what are you going to do? And so that's what happened. And that's why dues basis, in my opinion, started to reduce. And then as you start reducing dues basis and revenue and profit start to go down, then paycheck start to go down, paycheck start to go down, culture reduces, right? One thing leads to the other, and then the company starts having negative comps and, and so forth. And it puts itself in a difficult position. And so that you listen, there's things that happened, you know, that were successful. And, you know, the digital landscape was changing, you know, in that 10 year period. And certainly, I'm sure there's some things that were dynamic that 24 introduced to the market. And let's face it, 24, you know, if you go back to 2004, 2005, 24 was the game. LA Fitness was a distant second, lifetime wasn't really in the conversation. And then through that change of Mark, leaving 24 hour and new people coming in, 24 lost its way and never became the same organization it was back in the early 2000s. Do you remember, is there a pivotal moment when you realize that? Yeah, you know, I realized it when, and with all due respect to everybody, I don't, I always like to, you know, take the high road in, in, in people communication. But when the conversation started to become about how to reduce your way to profit versus getting the profit with offense, I knew we became more of an organization that was driven around accounting principles versus fitness and winning and culture. Prevent defense never works, right? No, no, you just, you just end up tightening your belt, making bad decisions and it just, it just doesn't work. And so certainly there's times that you have to be on the defensive when, you know, you're going through periods like COVID and so forth. But that was the time. I mean, I mean, if, if Mark, you know, Mark my words, if Mark would have stayed in the organization driving the company north of 2006, 24 hour, I think we'd have 1000 clubs today. I 100% agree. I remember being in a meeting and it was a big meeting about how we're going to change the process. And I was part of that meeting because I was one of the early trainers who became a manager and I did sell fitness first. I saw lots of value. I was a fitness guy. I never started off as a sales guy. I was, I was a fitness guy. And I remember we're in this meeting and they're presenting and they're saying, you know, if you just have a menu, look, we have all the clubs, we got beautiful facilities, we got great equipment. All you need is a menu prices. You don't need to sell anything. We're the best people will pick the best one. And to me, I was like, this is not right. I know that you put me in a club that is half the size of the one down the street with crappy equipment in a pool that's broken half the time. And I'll do better because the people will show up for me, not for the equipment and trainers know this. I could train someone, give them an excellent, amazing workout with a pair of bands better than the person can do on their own in a, the most beautifully equipped facility. So I heard this. I remember, I think it was my district manager at the time is listening to the person say this and stands up and says, how many memberships have you sold to the guy who was presenting? And he's like, well, man, and then he points to me, how about you selling them? I don't know, thousands. He goes, I'm going to take his advice over yours. And I remember hearing this and going, wow. And so this is kind of leading to, you know, what seems to look like almost like the final straw on the camel's back because what it looked like is a fitness space started to go in that direction, lower costs, lower labor costs. That's how we're making our profits. Now gyms are selling very, very cheap memberships, big facilities, they're counting on people not working out, not getting results. Otherwise, if they all showed up, the club would have to shut down. And then you have COVID, which it makes that model impossible because you have two factors, lots of local governments telling clubs, first off, you can't open. Oh, and then when you can, you got to run at 15, 20% capacity. Now your equipment, we got to, you know, space it out. And now it's even lower service. And all the people that are, you know, people who tend to pay 15 bucks a month and don't show up now are like, well, I'm not going to pay anymore. That model doesn't work. And then on top of it, the fear of showing up at the gym and you have people who are afraid to go in. And the, but those hardcore fit and people who really value fitness, I think would show up and pay more for that kind of service. So it's almost like the market moved in that direction. COVID hits hammered. Now they're like two giants, gold, gold, gym, 24 hour fitness, bankrupt clubs, but you guys took a different, a bit of a different approach. Can you explain kind of what you guys, cause I think you guys did the right thing. Well, listen, COVID has been difficult for everybody in the industry and really any service business. And, and, you know, maybe we can talk about my feelings around Governor Newsom shortly. I'd love to share that. I've been salivating for that, but yeah, we'll get to that. But, you know, the, the, in the conversation, as we're dealing with COVID, you know, and you have lease liabilities and you have to try to figure out how to do the right things for people. It's not cheap. And when you don't have revenue coming in, it makes it complicated. And it's not that it wasn't part of the discussion. It's that I'm very blessed to have great ownership and with Mark Mastroff and with the UFC and with our private equity. And, and, you know, we're, we were so fortunate that, you know, they looked at it as an opportunity to try to do the right thing and to double down on what we think we're capable of doing. You know, you mentioned it nicely earlier is that, you know, influencing fitness influence is a big thing. And if you don't, if you aren't good at fitness influencing, you might as well charge $2 a month for your product. And that's why I think in my opinion, 24 started to reduce price and, you know, you have all these, you know, planet fitnesses and all these low cost players that you don't need labor. You can reduce labor in a significant way, open your gyms and just hope people show up. And listen, it's a respectable business model and it's flourishing, which is why, you know, LA Fitness, I'm sure you guys are seeing are debranding a lot of their clubs and going low cost and, and you're seeing it in multiple facilities. And so what we chose to do is be an influencer and stand for something and say, you know what, we're not going to be the lowest price club in town, but we're going to try to have the deepest value proposition where you're part of a community where you're going to be have insight to nutrition and discipline and mental mindset and so forth. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's challenging still, you know, there's people that can't afford memberships, there's people that are going through challenges and frustrations. And, and you learn a lot about your people, you learn a lot about the people that are in your company that are there for the right reasons and those that are just 100% self serving. And I'm, I got to tell you, I'm blessed. I look at some of the people that are in our clubs and our company with the GMs, the fitness directors, OMs, you know, through maintenance texts, you know, everybody that, that really wasn't all about them being self serving and saying, Hey, what's in it for me? It's about, Hey, I want to go out and help my community. I want to go out and help my other team members be able to not only have a job, but be able to create and make an impact in their specific trade areas so they can take on this, this evil pandemic that we're dealing with. And I got to tell you, I was inspired. Whereas I saw some of, some of the best grocers that I had ended up not having that same attitude no longer with us. And listen, I respect you. Thanks for all the work that you've done. I appreciate to this point. But your attitude is not the right attitude to be able to take us where we need to go to adapt with what is we're dealing with in the current market conditions. And people started to separate themselves as, as true leaders in this inside this industry, not just in UFC gym, but this industry. So yeah, I think that's where we see and I think, you know, the people that we have today, I'm so proud of them and excited to continue to work with them. And, and my, you know, Mark and the private equity back team said, Hey, let's go find real estate, you know, 24 hours, you know, announced chapter 11. And, and we knew, obviously, we know the sites well. And, and, and let's go figure out how to, you know, if 24 is going to reject, let's go see if there's an opportunity. And certainly, you know, we're excited that we're jumping into these. I just signed the lease of a club that I was a sales counselor at in 1995. In Point Loma, you know, I was a sales counselor there and I stepped in and walking through it. And I'm just like, man, full circle, full circle on this. Yeah. It seems like you guys doubled down on increasing service, increasing value. So maybe lower volume charging more, but providing more service, which to me seems like that. Also, okay, two things why I think that's great. One is it appeals to my, my trainer sense. I like fitness. I think it's extremely valuable. But from a business sense with the current climate, I can't see the other model doing well at all. I feel like that's the only model that'll succeed where, okay, we have to have 25% capacity, fine, we're high service, high volume, but you pay more and people who want that kind of service and that value are going to pay for it. If that's true, then why though is, why is someone like Planet, why is Planet Fitness surviving right now? What's your theory on that? Well, first of all, low cost is going to stay. I mean, it's not going anywhere. And, you know, let's face it, low cost is a very easy entry point for consumers that don't know about fitness. And so that's why that's why it'll always sustain. And, you know, I have a lot of respect and a lot of friends that are in the crunch franchise, low cost, right? And they do a fantastic job. They got a good value proposition and they do well. When you look at Planet, I mean, listen, the name recognition for Planet now is second to none. And so they're going to survive. There's going to be some planets that shut down, but they're going to survive. And there are trusted brands, right? So people will go pay $10 a month and they'll do their thing. Now, in my opinion, if you join a Planet or you join a UFC, you're going to have the ability to take advantage of twice the amount of services and your chances to get the results that you're looking for to stay with working out are going to triple quadruple. Because you have best in class trainers and coaches, because you have recovery stations that you can do Norma Tech and cryotherapy, because you can take classes like jujitsu and boxing and kickboxing and hit classes where you form communities and relationships with people. You go to Planet Fitness with all due respect to their model. What do you do? You go in, you get on a treadmill, you get on some training equipment. And yeah, it's a little bit of pizza, but there's no relationship connectivity like you'll find in the higher value proposition brands, which is why I think we're going to perform exceptionally well, not only as we get through the end of COVID, but as we get outside of it. Yeah. I mean, CrossFit proved that. I mean, their explosion was warehouse gyms. They're not fancy. They're not nice. People paying 100, 150, 200 bucks a month. They exploded because of the community. The fitness community is what brought people in. All right, let's get to Gavin Newsom. It appears to me from what I see on social media that you're kind of either part of or spearheading this effort to recall them or get them out. What's the deal with all that? What's going on? Well, you may have saw my desire to have Mark Mastroff run for governor. I've been pushing that, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. But yeah, I mean, listen, I've never in my life seen anything like we're going through today, and I've never been so disappointed in a governor than Governor Newsom. And when you look, I have the benefit of seeing 35 countries because we're in 35 countries around the globe. And when you see how other countries, other states are dealing with this pandemic, by far, California is the worst. And I would say Hawaii is just a little bit behind California. And it's the inconsistencies. It's the making decisions without thinking things through. It's not trusting business owners. It's not trusting the people that put him in office. And it's frustrating and disappointing. And so if you just look in the rear of your mirror and you say, okay, I understand when this pandemic hit, you got to shut down because we didn't know what we were dealing with. So I get it. And really, the U.S. shut down for a couple of weeks there. And they had to learn. They had to understand. And the one thing that I wanted to make sure that UFC gym did was respect the process, not break the rules and make sure that we respected the decision of what our government was telling us. And so we did that. We shut down and we were respectful to that. And then there were many committees that were formed that were able to give governor Newsom feedback on fitness. And if you guys think about fitness and you think about how fitness is provided, if you go to Home Depot, which is, by the way, considered an essential business that's packed in today's world, is there a membership system to say, if I have COVID at Home Depot that I can automatically call all the Home Depot customers and say, hey, somebody had COVID in Home Depot? No, they don't track it that way. They don't track it. In a gym that's focused on cleanliness all the time. By the way, before COVID, we were focused on cleanliness. When COVID hit, we doubled down our efforts on cleanliness. And so you took temperatures. You did everything that was being asked. You wore a mask inside the facilities if that's what was being asked. And because we checked every member in, if somebody happened to get COVID or if somebody thought they had COVID, guess what we could do? We could automatically notify every single customer that checked in over the last 14-day period. And so we ran the play beautifully. And as you guys may have seen, the data says that there's a 0.002 percent infection rate, which is basically 0 percent in regards to fitness clubs that are respecting the boundaries of what COVID brought to it. I just read that. It was a huge study published in Ursa, and it kind of made its rounds. And it said that of more than 40, I haven't written down, of more than 49 million health club visits, only 0.0023 percent tested positive for COVID-19. This is more than 500 times less than the current estimated U.S. national average. Based off of this, 49 million visits, one of the safer places you could go that's outside of your home is a health club and a gym. And I'll tell you this is that, and I say this, I'm trying to be respectful with the way that I say this, but I believe Governor Newsom's policies are costing people their lives. And you guys have always done a great job. I've listened to your podcast, and you guys always talk about mental health. And take a look at the increase of mental health issues over the last four months. Suicide rates all of it. And mental health guys is if you eat bad, you have worse mental health. If you don't exercise, your mental health diminishes. If you don't take care of yourself and socialize with others, your mental health diminishes. If you do all your communication on Zoom, your mental health diminishes. If you think about Zoom, you're watching a two-dimensional screen. Well, physiologically and mentally, you're used to three-dimensional conversations. And so by putting yourself in that position to always have two-dimensional conversations, you're ruining your mental health. When mental health starts to go south, everything else follows. And so by Governor Newsom saying, hey, we're going to say that, you know what, we're going to close all gyms, even though you guys approved out scientifically that you're safe, we're going to close you down. That put all of us in a position not to provide the best potential opportunity for new consumers to go after and improve their mental health. I 100% agree with you. And there's also this, that of all of the businesses where people congregate, essential businesses, now restaurants are a part of that, with health clubs you have a stronger natural control. There's a self-selection bias. People, if they're feeling a little bit under the weather, don't work out. They usually do not work out. The only people that work out when they're feeling a little under the weather are the super maniac fanatic fitness people, which make up a very small percentage of the people that work out in gyms. Now that's not true for restaurants. People have a little sniffle, a little bit of feeling under the weather. Yeah, I can go eat at a restaurant. Yeah, I could go to the mall, not a problem. Do you want to go work out? No, no, no. I'm not feeling 100%. So there's also that going on where when you go in the gym, I mean, look, I managed gyms for decades. You never saw sick people in the gym. People who feel sick don't work out. So that on top of the all of the cleanliness and the fact that there's also the bias of the sense that people who exercise a stronger immune systems, you implement all of safety procedures. It's like they took zero regard for the actual results and it's a feel good policy. Oh, people are in a place together sharing equipment, ban it. And I agree with you. I think it's contributing to worse outcomes. And then you mentioned something about Zoom. You know where you see that real clearly? Adam, you said you had kids. I have two young kids. I have a 11 year old daughter and a 15 year old son. They're doing distance learning. And you see this, you see the decline in their health quite dramatically, probably because they're young and they're developing minds. And it's like, I have to make efforts to get them out around people. Otherwise they turn into children I don't recognize. No, it's, I mean, listen, it's, I have four kids and, you know, they're all older, but my daughter is a senior in high school and you're absolutely right. The social connectivity, the ability to have discipline and so forth, it's being modified and changed. And listen, I think, I think it's important also to talk about this and it's a little bit of an elephant in the room is that, you know, there's people out that do have health conditions and they shouldn't be going to the gym right now. They really shouldn't. I don't want them to risk it. I don't want them to risk their life if you are in a category that, you know, will allow you to potentially die from a COVID-19 if you happen to contract it. So I don't want, I don't want, I want the message to be clear is that I just want people to be respectful and understand that and that's what we're finding by the way. When we opened the gyms and we started taking temperatures, nobody came to the gym sick like you talked about. Nobody came to the facility if they just felt, you know, if they didn't have the right energy level, they respected the boundaries and those that could not come back to the gym, let's freeze your dues. Don't come back. Do what you need to do. Be comfortable before you step through our doors. So then we can provide you a level of what I would call sanity for both the consumer that needs to make sure they stay healthy and for the consumer that is unsure because they have prior conditions, respect that. Now, why do you think that they listed gyms as the bottom of the barrel in terms of essential businesses? Is it because the fitness space in, let's say, California doesn't have a lobby, we don't have enough power to, because I know that makes a big difference. I know powerful lobbies will get favors and things to be passed and it seems like the gyms of all the businesses, it seems like that's one of the last ones to be allowed to operate. Like anything, it's education and awareness and I think that we live the industry. You guys live the industry. You know about the human body. You're very educated and you understand how to make sure you can navigate this tightrope. If you don't know the industry and you're not aware and you just think about it on the surface and say, okay, I'm going to have 100 people in one building sweating and working out hard and breathing hard, man, you're going to be able to get COVID in that arena if you don't know any better. So I think you have uneducated, unaware people making policy decisions and not trusting the body that put them there. So what are the conversations behind closed doors that you guys are having about California right now? Are you having conversations around what if and should we do this, should we do that? Or because you guys are bankrolled, you can weather the storm. What are the behind the doors conversations that are happening right now? In regards to continued operations, yeah, no, I mean, first of all, I mean, I think you guys have seen the California Fitness Alliance and we are suing Governor Newsom and the state of California behind the way they're looking at fitness. And so I think that is going to continue a conversation that has to have has to happen. When you look at from an operational perspective, it's just about being smart. And listen, as much as I disagree with what Governor Newsom is doing, I'm respecting the law and I'm respecting the boundaries. I'm not going to be a rogue company that decides just to open my gym and give the middle finger to Governor Newsom, although in spirit, I'd like to do that. But it's just not the right thing to do. And if I'm going to expect my people and my team to respect and have integrity in a process, I have to show the same integrity as it relates to the state of California. That being said, is that we're planning to perform and we're planning to maximize our ability to take the rules that we currently have. And hopefully, as we get through this period of time and we get some sort of vaccine, and there's a, and by the way, I think there's COVID fatigue going on where people just don't care as much anymore. I think it's not part of that. I think it's just people are forgetting the way they're masked. It's just like, okay, I've had enough and you're starting to see it and feel it a little bit. But we're already taking our workouts outside. So the majority of our Cubs in California are doing outdoor workouts in Hawaii. They're going to start doing outdoor workouts. That was just authorized last week. When you look at international, most of the international countries are coming back to normal. As a matter of fact, I just had a call with our partner in Shanghai last night. He started his next presale and literally they're having parties and life is normal in China. And so it's going to trial. It's going to get here. And we just have to make sure that we've got the right people around us in our clubs and at our support center, which I believe in my heart that we do. And then we have to be very strategic on how we make sure that we take care of our consumers and listen to our consumers, not just try to open and charge people and get as much revenue as possible, but be very strategic and saying, hey, listen, we're in this together. We also have to make sure that we're working with our landlords and we're having some very good dialogue and conversations of how we're going to mitigate these waters. And I got to tell you, our landlords have been fantastic. And when you take a look at the potential of doing a chapter 11 or having landlords work with you, our landlords are working with us. And I feel very good about the relationships we have with them. So that's through transparency. And so I think it's about slowly bringing back the fitness model and making sure you stay true to who you are, controlling what you can control, and then making sure that we're listening to our consumers and our team members so we can navigate the business the right way. Now, we kind of briefly went over Gavin Newsom and I kind of want to go back just a little bit, just because there's a lot of people that have those same feelings and about how everything's been handled. And what does the recalling process actually look like? And what can people sort of get behind and kind of get involved politically to address this if they have concerns about the way everything's been handled as well? Well, you got the power of social media and you'll see that there's now recall stations all over the state. And again, I have a great alternative for Gavin Newsom, his name is Mark Mastroff, and I think nobody could run this state better than Mark. Oh, that'd be a dream. That'd be amazing. But listen, recalling is decisive and I get it. And the emotional part, the ego part of me would say, let's get him out of office. I would rather Governor Newsom just say, hey, come to the table and let me understand and get educated on what your point of view is. Let me understand that I'm affecting millions of people that live in the state of California and their ability to improve their health. Let me understand how I'm letting down thousands and thousands and thousands of team members that no longer have a job. And let me understand the science behind what you guys are talking about about a 0.002% infection rate. If he were just to come to the table and meet us halfway and have a dialogue, we'd appreciate it. If it's about science, let's match those together. And that's when he gets on his daily calls. That's what he's talking about his science, but at the same position, he's not holistic in that view. It's very in my view, and again, it's my opinion, but he's very, very self-serving in his view. I think it's incredibly political. And I think some of the people that he surrounded himself with are following suit in that political environment. And I think we need to buck the system a little bit and we need to start just like I talked about listening to our team members and listening to our customers. He's got to do the same thing. I don't feel like this is an educational, I don't think that he's lacking the information, the knowledge. I mean, maybe I'm just more skeptical. Like I think that there's, when it comes to politicians, it always seems to come back to money. Yeah. There's, there's- How I can get reelected. Right. You got to believe that, right? Do you really think, do you really think this man doesn't have someone as smart as one of us in this room that's in his ear telling him the, or he can't read an article like Sal was just referring to? You got, don't you think there's something else behind all this? Well, listen, if you, if you select a person that's giving you advice that's against fitness before COVID, then more than likely the advice they're going to be given during COVID is don't open gyms. And I think if I'm not, I might be incorrect, but I think that's who he's selected as his head of health services. And so he has somebody in his ear that isn't supportive of fitness gyms and doesn't really think it's the answer to, or it's the solution to what I've been talking about. Now that being said, I, I, I agree with you. It's tough. It's a tough position to be. I like to look at things half full. And I like to trust people. And I like to think that, that we can get through anything with respect and emotional intelligence. But I'm, I'm just, I'm just so disappointed and, and, and, and really quite frankly, I'm sad because, you know, I'm reading stories where, where people are looking at life, you know, just half empty and, and they don't see tomorrow and their futures are going away. I'm looking at senior classes graduating, you know, without the same emotional highs that all of us have when we graduated, I'm looking at big events like weddings and funerals and, and other things that families have that have been conditioned not to have a community come together. And there's ways to do this guys in a safe way in a respectable way, but I just, it feels very one dimensional. So look, when you see the, the, the health transformations that a fitness journey can produce for people, and I mean, in all respects, you, you have to weigh that out against the, now you don't have a place to work out. Okay. So you, you maybe reduce your risk of contracting COVID by, you know, zero, zero, two percent, but you've dramatically increased your risk of all these other health problems dramatically makes a huge, especially if you're older, by the way. I mean, I've trained people at advanced age and I see what happens to them, they don't work out for a month. It looks like when you're younger and you don't work out for a year, the health decline is tremendous. I've seen this with my grandparents who were isolated because they're high risk and you know, my grandmother had a stroke and my grandfather now is ill and part of it is they're not around other people. They're not moving as much as they used to. I don't think they're weighing that out. And I think it's very political. I agree with you. That being said, and because you've managed and worked in so many different states and you see a lot of different jurisdictions right now, what areas are doing a better job? What areas do you see that are different than the way we're operating? Texas, Florida, in my opinion, are doing a fantastic job. And listen, it's so funny when you hear data through the media because I quite frankly guys, I don't know what media source to even trust anymore. I don't know where to go. And it's both sides. Mind pump media. And listen, I'm calling it on the right and the left side. I mean, I think both sides are polarizing right now. And I just, I don't understand where to go to get information and data the right way. But I will say this is that I've been traveling to Texas. I've been traveling to Florida and you can just feel the difference of life in those two states versus the state of California. And so I think it's night and day and I think there's better leadership there. I think there's more understanding and awareness of how to move a society and keep them moving and keep their mindset right. And I'll tell you, I'm just, throw out me being in the fitness business and throw out that self-serving aspect of me wanting to have my company thrive and stay alive. Just the thing that you guys talk about with mental health, I mean, it's just, that's the number one issue in this country right now that we're going to be dealing with for the next six months to probably 12 months. And that's after that's post COVID. And that's in addition to all the economic challenges that we're going to have. And, you know, that's all going to be incremental, but the mental health issue will be the number one problem in this country for the foreseeable future. And to me, you know, it's trainers, it's great fitness offerings and it's great, it's the ability to make sure you bring communities together that solve that and we have to figure it out. Agreed fitness, the fitness space is really the answer to chronic modern health problems, whether you're talking about obesity, diabetes. Western medicine and science has yet to solve those problems as effectively as leading a fitness and health journey. And even if you include mental health issues like anxiety, depression, we know this, you know, mild to moderate depression, which is the most common form of depression is treated by exercise, at least as effectively as medication in the, you know, medium term, in the long term, many scientists believe it to be superior because of the added continual benefits that you get from fitness versus medication where it tends to stop working after a certain period of time. I want to talk to you a little bit more about the business of fitness because you run, you've run big clubs, you've run a lot of these companies, you're with, I believe, to be one of the more successful fitness companies in the world. So you're always dealing with competitors. There's always competition coming in and it looks like because of the, because of the current climate, there's a new competitor on the scene that poses a new challenge that maybe wasn't so challenging before. And that is the at-home gym market and the tech market. I mean, now that gyms are hamstrung by regulations and maybe fear from consumers, Peloton is blowing up. We just now, you know, Apple is getting into the mix. Mirror tonal. Mirror tonal you have. Amazon. Buy, you know, home gym equipment. I saw dumbbells. This is this true story. This is when this all went down. I saw dumbbells on the, what is it like, that Facebook marketplace or whatever. It was a pair of dumbbells. It was like 150 bucks. Like 10 times the price. For a pair of 12 pound dumbbells. And I know that's because everybody's buying them out and the demand is so high. So how are you guys dealing with that competitor, which maybe you didn't even have to consider before? Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, let me ask you a question. If you want to go work out in the gym today, where are you going to go? Yeah, it's a good question. Right now, I mean, very few of them are open. So almost never. And if you're into doing cardio, Peloton's a great option, right? No, no doubt about it. There's the mirror. There's, there's all these virtual sites. But when, and listen, it's not going or it was already building before COVID. It was already something that was going to be part of a holistic fitness journey. I embrace it. I'm fine with it. I think it's fantastic because you know why it changes the narrative of fitness. And it allows for us to continue to get penetration into our communities. And let's face it, you know, when you only have a 23, 24% penetration rate in fitness, anything that we can do to get penetration rates over 50%, let's do it. And, and, you know, competitor, you know, that word competitor is, is what's changing. No longer are we am I, have I got competitors, I got people that are aligned with me on fitness journeys, we have different value propositions, we have different ideals. But, but at the end of the day, we're together in trying to take a movement to get people moving across this globe. And, and, you know, you guys have said this before, it's about, you know, how many calories you're taking in, it's, it's processed foods, it's, it's, you know, activity, it's, it's community, it's bringing all that together. And if, if we can align with Apple, if we can align with Peloton, if we can align with our own at home services, and bring it all together in a holistic view, alls we're doing is increasing penetration percentages and getting people more involved. If I can get Peloton to introduce fitness to another 100 people, I promise you two to three of them are going to come check out my gym. Oh, that's, you know, that's a great attitude. That is so true. I know when I would manage gyms, I remember when curves became a thing. This was the, at one point, curves exploded across the scene. And I remember a few of them opening up near me and my sales, you know, staff saying, oh my gosh, are they going to take our members? And I said, actually, they're probably going to bring more fitness awareness in the area and we'll probably start to see more traffic. And we did. We absolutely did. So that's what you're referring to. You're saying that these companies are increasing penetration, therefore increasing the amount of people now that are going to be paying attention to you guys. Well, and think about the marketing investment for just Peloton, right? Now, right now, they're not spending a lot, but pre COVID, they were spending a significant amount of money about talking about fitness at home. And the key word there is not at home. The key word, the key word is fitness. And the more that becomes part of the conversation, the increased percentage of people that are going to be thinking about fitness and changing their life. And let's face it, what is obesity now? 45%? Yeah, it's almost half or a majority. Yeah, it's huge. And so if there's that type of opportunity, and we can together align and create this narrative where everybody's talking about doing something, we all win. And I truly believe we can do that. And I think what you're going to see is people joining Peloton, having their bikes, spending that $2,500 or whatever it is, doing the subscription service and saying, you know what, I also want to do a hit class at UFC, or I want to take a boxing class at UFC and complimenting one another. I also think people are going to be joining multiple fitness facilities in the future, not just UFC gym, but they're also going to join one that's close to their work. Maybe it's a $10 month club because it's convenient. And they want the value proposition close to their house. And so again, you know, it's so funny, I was on the CFA call yesterday, and on the call were 46 other president and CEOs of fitness companies. And they're sitting there sharing information and data that's private to their company. Also, we could come together to help continue to drive this movement in the state of California. And that's why I have so much respect for our competitors. There's great people out there trying to make an impact in the fitness space. And we're one of them. And listen, I wholeheartedly believe in what we're doing, but it's going to take all of us to make this movement happen to where it needs to go where instead of 50% of the people being obese, we get that down to the minority of maybe eight to 10%. And we change the discussion about how people live their life. I love that. It gives me the chills. I think you're right. There is a camaraderie in the fitness space, even among competitors, probably driven by the fact that many of us got into the space primarily because we liked to help people through fitness. And so that kind of unites us a little bit. It's very similar to our message. One of the things that we didn't like as fitness became more of the conversation, we started to see some companies and some people start to create their own silos and communities and our ways better than your way. And part of our messaging is, no, man, we're all on the same side. And for the average consumer who's just learning, there's so much to take from all of these different modalities versus me versus you. So I love that attitude. But that being said too, and since you guys don't look at as a competitor, are there things you guys are having conversations about how you can align or potentially get some of your stuff on mirror or tonal? Is Mark making any moves like that or talking about that? Listen, Mark is, that's what he does. He makes moves. And he's two football fields ahead of me on where we need to go. He slows things down for me because I can only handle, I'm not a smart guy. I can only handle so much at one time. But no, he's taking us there. And we've started this UFC fit on the go where we have online classes that people can take from home. But here's what Mark and his genius said, hey, it's not just about connecting a consumer to fitness at home, but it's about connecting different cultures with consumer, different consumers with fitness at home. So if I can have my Shanghai club do a hit class online and somebody in LA can take it, or if I can have somebody in Sydney, Australia do a boxing class and somebody in Long Island can take that class, you start creating connectivity between cultures and you have even more dynamic conversations about health, fitness, how it relates to their specific geography and how it relates to our specific geography. So I think Mark's looking at it globally and figuring out how to tie fitness, a specific fitness DNA to combine at home training and in gym training. That's very interesting. Okay, so let's say tomorrow, magic wand, all regulations and rules are waived. Now you can operate business however you want. You still have to deal with consumer fear and perception. So even though all the rules are people still may be afraid of going to the gym, there's still that perception that maybe this is a place where I could get sick or whatever. How are you going to handle that? Are there conversations around that, around building maybe trust around your consumer so when they come in they feel safe and they feel like they're in an environment that's healthy? Yeah, so this is where it's going to be tricky. It's a great question because you really have to put yourself in position to control the dialogue because you're going to have extremists always trying to create negativity about what you're trying to do. You're always going to have that and typically those are the loudest voices unfortunately. And so to control a conversation you have to ask a lot of questions. And so what we have to do is we have to go in and just talk to our members and talk to our team members and let them have a significant voice in the way that we operate. And the consumer is going to tell us, we're only going to do what the consumer wants us to do. And so what we do know is that when we did reopen for a short period of time, we enrolled more members than ever before as far as new membership acquisition. Oh wow, interesting. People were using, they were coming back in droves to use the club. There was a huge pent-up demand and they wanted more classes than we offered before. And so we were in a position that all of a sudden, it's like it was in 1995 again where there was no competition and everybody was coming back to the gyms. And so I think you're going to have a little bit of that, but we want to make sure education is on the forefront and that we're providing all of our consumers and everybody in the industry as much information using our platforms that we possibly can use. And then we want to make sure that we're tying in digital platforms, both social media, website and other platforms to make sure that that conversation can continue to be guided in the right way. And then as long as we have our people that are trained and educated and that know how to listen to our consumers and our members to take the right feedback the right way. And the biggest thing that could stop all this, stop progression is the word ego. You know, as long as we diffuse ego and we learn and we keep listening to our consumers, we'll provide the operating system that will allow the consumers to fulfill or feel fulfilled in the value proposition. Yeah, you brought up social media and media, new media has got so much power these days. I mean, it's got power to sway entire elections and memes get shared, you know, millions of times, very quickly changing the conversation or the perception around things. Do you guys have a strategy around new media? You said social media, is it the standard advertising or are you looking at trying to create ways of changing people's perceptions through this new media that really didn't exist as powerfully as it does even just as shortly as five years ago? Yeah, organic distribution is what's most important. And, you know, we have a policy at UFC, you know, if you think about how most businesses run their social media, they do a, we'll take Facebook as an example, they do a business page and that business page, the business controls the entire narrative, right? So if there's one negative comment, the business page deletes that comment. Well, what we decided to do was create a community page and we said, listen, as long as a member is not being disrespectful, we're going to leave every comment on that page that's put on that page. And trust me, that takes discipline because there's comments that you just want to delete. Yeah, did you see 24 our fitnesses page with all the comments? We went on there and it was like, oh my gosh, it was bad as people were, I guess they continued charging people after they shut down and it was not good. Well, I mean, there's a whole other discussion there. But what we want to do is we want to have the customers giving truly what they think, we want to be able to address what they think in a public environment. And so 24 hour uses a platform that they manage the entire, all their clubs through one social media voice. We decided to leverage our general managers inside the facilities in every facility, let them be the voice and represent our brand to that particular consumer. So if a consumer says, listen, your bathroom's dirty, the GM is not allowed to delete that. The GM must say, I apologize. We dropped the ball. We need to fix it. Next time when you're in the club, can you grab me so we can walk through where you saw the mess so I can better understand your concern and your complaint. As long as we can have those types of dialogues via social media without losing the word respect, it's going to allow us to navigate through all the difficult waters ahead. Yeah. Now you're adding a new skill to being a successful general manager, which is the skill of social media, which is totally different. Are people now, are you starting to see their talents rise a little bit like, oh wow, that guy or girl, they managed this social media page really well. It seems to be doing real well for them. What does that look like? What are the skills to operate your club's social media page that are surfacing as the better skills to have? Yeah. Listen, let's face it. Where this world is going, it seems like the majority of the population gets their news from whatever social media account they prefer to jump on. Having that skill set of digital and having that skill set to understand the different distribution points, whether it go from Pinterest to Facebook to Instagram, TikTok's going to be a huge player in the future. They have to be able to have that, but what I love about my general managers, if they know they don't have that skill set, you know what they do? They hire to their weakness and they go out and find somebody that does and they put them in position to own it for them and then that GM checks in with them on a regular basis. That's what it's about. True leadership is not being the best at everything. True leadership is about understanding where you're weakest and bringing in people to help you with that weakness. That's what I think my GM team does. Yeah. Some of the good news around this is because gyms are part of our heart and soul and we want to see them do well. At first, for us, it was a little disheartening, like, oh man, are they going to survive and what's going on. A lot of signs are pointing to the fact that the demand for fitness has not decreased. Now, the market has forced people to find it in different ways, but the demand is still very high and I am hearing more and more reports of, you know, during the prohibition era, you had speakeasies, right? The demand for alcohol was very high, so they kind of figured out a black market way around. I'm hearing about a lot of people opening their doors kind of black market style, letting people in to work out. Are you hearing about this yourself? There's a lot of gyms that aren't respecting the process and, yeah, they're doing it. And listen, I got to tell you guys, I thought about it. I really did. You know, when you're dealing with some of the economic situations that we need to deal with right now, that's the easy path. But whenever you take an easy path, at the end of that path, typically, you find that you didn't get to the destination the right way and it'll end up hurting you. And so, we chose to be very respectful of the process, be very disciplined about how to get there and we think we'll be stronger because of that. Yeah, I agree with you. Now, when you look forward, right, right now, because of COVID, it seems like there may be some lasting, some long lasting, maybe permanent changes to the way people work. I would bet money that distance work, where people work virtually, probably, it definitely went up right now, but even when everything goes back to normal, you're probably going to see a large percentage of that just maintain where people just work from home with the attitudes or maybe some of the fears around gyms that maybe rightly or not rightly so with the regulations. Once that's all gone, everything kind of goes back. Do you see any permanent changes to the market and fitness? Yeah, I mean, listen, first of all, I think I have to talk about our corporate support center. I'll tell you, the pandemic, I was able to identify one of my weaknesses and I didn't trust people. I had a very difficult time being able to trust somebody to do their job like I needed it to be done. And I was exposed as this pandemic hit because all of a sudden people couldn't come to the corporate office anymore. And I'm lacking in the back of my head. I'm going, I don't think they're doing their job right. I don't think they're doing what they need to do. I don't think they're working. They're probably watching a soap opera. I started second guessing everything and the people in that corporate office inspired me. And not only did they show that they could get in there and be disciplined and work harder than ever before, but their results improved. And it allowed me to understand that how powerful the word trust is and giving, and Mastroff is a great example of that, right? Mastroff, what he does is picks leaders and trusts them and lets them, empowers them, lets them go. And I needed to have that medicine for myself and understand that that was my weakness. And now I understand that the world has changed and I need to be adaptable to understand that as long as I pick the right people and have the right people around me, man, go to work and do what you need to do. If you want to work from Thailand, if you want to work from some abandoned island somewhere, go do it. But as long as you get your job done, and I'm finding that trust is going tenfold. Now, as it relates to gyms, you know, it's interesting because what I'm seeing and feeling is that the proposition of community and attendance and accountability, it's what's being missed the most. And you remember, if you're in the fitness industry in the old days, right, you remember that we were taught how to overcome objections. You did listen, agree, overcome, re-enthuse and close. And you thought about, I don't know if I'm going to use it or I'm going to get equipment for my house. The way you re-buttle was the typical treadmill at your home is used to hang your clothes on, right? And you don't have the same environment. And I think the environment in fitness facilities is so much that attendance is required that, and that's where I bring in and I intersect mental health again, is that, you know, just showing up at a gym and having a conversation with another member at a gym or another team member at a gym will improve your mental health and will inspire you to do more on the fitness side. And I think that, yes, will there be 10 to 15% of consumers that probably will not feel the same way post COVID? I'll agree to that. But I also think there'll be 20 to 25% more consumers that will want to go into a gym post COVID. So I think we're going to win-win here. And I think over a period of time, as people get more and more, and let's face it, and we have short memories in general, right? We're going through an emotional time right now. So it's on the forefront of everybody's mind. But six months after COVID, memories are going to reduce. And we're going to get back some sort of normalization where people like that connectivity and that in-gym experience. Do you think you guys are going to continue to allow some employees to work remotely? Is that going to change somewhat? Yeah, when it makes sense. You know, so much of our brand is about people interaction and people awareness and making sure there's that relationship one-on-one. If we're going to be a high value proposition business, you have to be customer facing. If you're a low value proposition business, I certainly can see there's a way that, I mean, listen, if I was a $10 a month club with no labor, I could probably set up a check-in system and not have anybody in the club. That's not the way that we are driving our business. We're driving it through relationships and community and people. And the people that we have in our clubs want to be in the clubs. They want to connect with the consumers. And by them giving that message, it's going to allow, I think, for improved membership acquisition and retention. Do you have any advice for the just the gym owner and manager right now? I mean, we have a lot of a decent chunk of our audience are people that work in the fitness space. And, you know, percentage of those people are gym owners. They own one gym or one box or one personal training studio. Like, what's your advice for them? Because I see them struggling the most. They don't have the capital. They don't, you know, they didn't save more than a couple months or three months worth of rent, revenue and all that stuff. And like, what's your advice for them? Well, listen, let me share with you, you know, some of my disappointments or sadness as I've gone through this. And so, you know, there's people that were in my clubs that were my team members that I thought the world of, that I thought that, man, you know, we're going to develop this person and they could end up running a country somewhere. And they ended up being so self-serving and very selfish in their intentions. And they did not, they created divide versus bringing people together. And it was very difficult to lose those people because of the emotional connection that you have with them. But it's interesting, once the divide goes away and the team comes together, results improve. And so when my biggest piece of advice is know your people and do not allow division to be part of your culture because you have to work as a 10 multiple to overcome division and overcome negativity. Work with people that want to be there. The door runs two ways. Have people that want to be part of your organization that want to embrace your culture and drive that culture. So you just touched on something that's very top of mind for me right now. So like you, we had a lot of success when we did the remote thing, right? So we only have about 12 employees that work for us. But we gave everybody that option to work from home. And I had the similar fears, oh, my God, like I'm not on them. There's the accountability piece. And are they going to work? And we've had a lot of initial success. But I do have this fear of long term Simon Sinek just did an interview recently. And he talked about this that, you know, this is it's working for some people right now, but this is not the long term answer. Just people need that connection. They need that community. And so what I what's constantly going through my brain right now is how can I create that that community, that bond that kind of feel in a two dimensional world until we can get back to normal. Do you guys talk about that? Are there is there anything that you're doing right now to make sure you keep that bond and that community going with your team so you don't lose that connection and culture? Yeah, you know, the probably the most difficult piece of this is you can't have everybody that you'd like to have working working during this difficult period, right? We don't have members to service. And so we can't just have, you know, some of our clubs have 125 people on staff. And so I can't employ 125 people if I have no member workouts, right? So what we chose to do is make sure that we have the management leadership team still employed, no matter what. And they what they're doing is an incredible job connecting with the team that is not working their day to day. They're doing an incredible job connecting with the consumers that aren't there day to day. And they're doing it through dialogues, through going, I mean, I just saw a social media picture where one of my GMs took, you know, seven or eight of his personal trainers out to a dinner. And they're not even working with us right now. They're just, they're on their own, they're collecting unemployment and they're not part of the team currently as we sit today. But he chose as a leader to say, I'm going to take these people out and make sure that they know that I'm still thinking about them. And so again, I think it goes back to trust, you know, and that word that I think we're all learning to embrace more and more. And as long as you have people that you directly work with that you trust and they're then cascading that down to other team members and people, people are smart and they know if you're sincere or authentic or you're not. And the work that some of these people are doing to continue to engage with their team that can't be currently employed with us is just incredible. Yeah. What percentage would you of the success of a gym would you say is the people in the culture versus the equipment in the facility itself? 135%. I mean, I mean, listen, the only the reason I love this company is because of the people. Otherwise it's the gym with equipment in it and I can go to an apartment complex and find that I just it's about the journey guys. And somebody asked me the other day about having a transaction and making millions of dollars and very financial based. And it doesn't motivate me. What motivates me is after this conversation with you guys going to my Sunnyvale Club and talking to that team and hearing how they're going through this process of COVID over the last couple of months and what they've been doing with their consumers and other team members. And what we're always going to remember now, we're always going to remember what we're going through today. So in five years when we're having this, now you guys are going to be in this 50 story great studio that because of your success. But when we're having a discussion again, and we're talking about, you know, this era, we're going to look back on it and remember this. And I think the journey is such an important part of what we do. And I think that again, you know, it's how you live that journey today that makes all the difference. Adam, you've talked a lot about emotional intelligence. I've heard you reference ego. So you sound like a very self aware person. And you also started as a front desk kid and worked your way all the way up to a president of a massive company. So I know you've obviously had tons of financial success. Talk to me about how much you've evolved and changed as a person from the kid who was probably making, you know, $8 or less an hour at one point to the amount of money and success that you've had now. How much of that has changed you and is your view on that different today than it was 10, 15 years ago? In a big way, you know, I remember as a GM and a district manager operating 100% with ego, and when somebody would fly in my parking lot, I would get them back. I would get them back 10, 40. Ego wars. And listen, performance at that point in my life was based on arrogance and confidence. And confidence is a good thing. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you have to have some ego, right, to be able to perform on anything that you do, because that comes from confidence. But it's not until you can be aware of how others are perceiving you that you can really make an impact in life. And I went through a lot of change in my professional career from going from that front desk kid that wanted a job to try to pick up, you know, chicks to, to, you know, becoming a family man, having four great kids, a great wife, and understanding that other people all have ambitions and goals of their own, and that their ambitions and goals need to be as important as my ambition and goals. And it wasn't always that way. And I think when you, when you start understanding that everybody sees life through their own lens, and it's okay to disagree. Life is about disagreement. As a matter of fact, that's how products become great, isn't it? Is that it's debate and disagreement and finding a true way to get to the end result. And I think, you know, this journey of life, it's been so incredible for me as an individual. And I have a lot to learn. I mean, I have a lot to learn. You guys have, you guys excel, you guys excel in many ways, right? There's things that I look to you guys and say, man, I wish I could, you know, articulate like this or, or, you know, have experience around, you know, some of the, the physiological things that you guys bring to the table each and every day. Well, well, it's a respect that I have for you guys that makes all the difference in the world. And, and I think that if as a, as a human race, and I'm not just thinking, speaking in the U.S., I think as a human race, if we can just understand how to listen to one another in a respectful way, not have our, our voice need to be the loudest voice in the room and continue to understand that all of us have individual opportunity, that approach, the way that you live your life will then cascade down to others and they can live their life in a, in a, in a more, in a, in a fuller way. So do you remember a moment in your life that was, you know, either humbling or pivotal for you where that kind of transition happened? Like I remember it took to be, I think I was close to 30 years old before that, that, because I was like you. That's what was, I had these superficial things that drove me for me coming from not very much was money and success and reaching a certain dollar amount. And something happened in my life that completely flipped that on its head and changed who I was forever. Did you have a moment in your journey that is very memorable to you that changed who you were? Yep. Yep. I'm gonna try to get through without getting emotional. I'm an emotional guy too. So, you know, when I started with family fitness then 24 hour and in, in, you know, 1994, and if you were to walk into my closet in 1999, I didn't have civilian clothes anymore, right? We had nothing but purple clothes and every, every hanger was a 24 hour fitness shirt or promotional shirts and all my sweats were 24. My wife would get very irritated with me because we went out to dinner with our family. I'd wear 24 hour fitness stuff, right? And, and, you know, Don's a great example. I think all his team got tattoos of 24 hour, right? And I mean, it's, it's, it's, I was so in bed with that company. It defined me and my competitive spirit going through that 24 hour fitness road was like no other. I had loved it. I was, I thought there was nothing else out there but 24 hour. I don't know if you want to call it brainwashed, whatever it was, but you know, because of leaders like Mark Mastroff and Jim Rowley and, and other people like that, I just, I was just enamored with that organization. And the day that that organization said that we're not enamored with you anymore was the day that changed my life forever. And, and I felt like my family died. I felt like I didn't know what I just sat in the parking lot and literally cried and, and did not know what my future looked like and didn't, I didn't even have an identity. I didn't know, I didn't know who I was without, you know, the 24 hour fitness badge on my chest. And, you know, an hour later, I get a call on my phone, it's Mark Mastroff who is still at that point, the chairman of the board of 24 hour. And he said, Adam, you know, everything that you've done for this company, I appreciate. And there's people in the room now that don't share that same appreciation. They're, they're taking people, people used to be the number one value proposition of this organization. It's no longer that way. You go back home, spend time with your family. I'll be calling you within the next 30 days with an opportunity. And like clockwork, the guy gives me a call 30 days later. And, and so it changed my life though, right? It made me look at how I lived my life at 24 hour, how I became very one dimensional, how I was leading through arrogance and confidence. And I almost thought because of my results, you almost feel like you're untouchable. And, and, and if at the point when I was going through the 24 hour fitness leadership change, if I had learned to be adaptable, and although I would not have been as sincere and authentic, but I learned how to be more political with the CEO at the time, that was not Mark, you know, maybe I, you know, would have stayed with 24 hour for a longer period of time. I don't know. And maybe everything happens for a reason. And, and, and that's allowed me to evolve to who I am today. But, you know, I learned through that moment in my life, you know, who was important to me. It was interesting too, because you know, when you're a divisional president of a company, you know, there's a lot of people that, that send you text messages and, and, and emails on holidays. And then when all of a sudden you're not that divisional president anymore, it's interesting to see who still sends you those text messages. And it told me a lot. It told me a story about people and understanding, you know, who's in it just to be self-serving and who's in it to, you know, have a true relationship. And so, you know, that was, that was the point in my life that, you know, me professionally, you know, things changed. And I learned a lot about trust and loyalty with Mark. And, and, you know, if you look at Mark's history and you look at how loyal he is to people, as long as you don't lie, cheat or steal to him, that guy will be with you till you die. And, and that's, it was a huge lesson for me. And, and I feel the same way about my core people that nothing will happen to them as long as I don't lie, cheat or steal. Period. Do you feel like you have developed the skill to see that and find that in people? I feel like I have it, but just when I think I have it, something happens that says I don't have it. And so, you know, I have, I feel like there's a good gut instinct that I can, I can read people and I can sense they're authentic and real, but it's not a hundred percent, you know, there's, there's always, you always get surprised. I was, I was very surprised, you know, over the last three to four months by some of the people that I thought were just all in and obsessed that just didn't feel the way that I felt. And it was disappointing and it was sad to me, but it's just reality. Oh yeah. You put somebody in the, you back everybody in the corner, it's, you see sides of people that you've never seen before, you know, they, they can't feed their, their family or they don't have a job that they may not have. And so their true character starts to come out. And in all of you, all of you want people to do though guys is talk and communicate. Like, like, you know, there was one situation that somebody was a coach and I thought the world of them, I thought they represented our brand incredibly well. And they knew that our business was changing and they decided to resign. And instead of having a conversation about the resignation, they snuck into the gym, they got all their client folders, they stole a bunch of stuff from us and left versus coming in and saying, Hey, I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed. I'd like to talk to you about, you know, still talking to some of my clients so I can survive. At that point, the discussion changes and we, and we help them, right? But, you know, it's, you learn a lot about character and you learn a lot about people for sure. Yeah. Fear, fear does a lot of weird things to people, I think. And it's a very scary time. So people are doing acting in ways that may not be in their, even definitely not in their best interest. You know, one of my favorite things about fitness, Adam, and it's, as you're talking about your journey, it's obvious this happened to you, is that fitness is a very unassuming, it's a great entry point into personal growth. And it's unassuming because you don't realize that's what's going to happen. You start in fitness and you think, I'm going to, you know, look better. I'm going to get abs. I'm going to build some biceps. But when you stay on the journey, you end up growing. It's the best personal growth entry point I can think of because if you stay on the journey long enough of health and fitness, you learn how to develop your body, you learn discipline, you develop a good relationship with food, then you keep going and you end up learning spiritual health and mental health and relationship health because, as you just said, the successful fitness businesses are the ones that have the best culture and community. And I can't think of a better time for fitness than right now. Yeah, no, it's a huge opportunity. It's not going to be easy, though. There's a road that is got three inches of ice on it that we're now climbing. And it's going to be a challenge. It's not easy. Nothing great comes easy as we all know. And so we're going to be on this difficult journey together. Guys like you that drive the message of why you should be working out, why you should be eating right, we need you guys. We need you guys to help us continue to drive the message out there in the facilities and the gyms, the facilities, the at-home products, we all need to come together as a holistic industry and make sure that we have an opportunity for people to continue to look at life in a little bit different way through fitness. And so it's not going to be easy. We got economic issues. We got economy. The economy is going to be in turmoil. The political instability is at all time high. But to your point, if we can just get into a gym together, we can work out together, things tend to solve themselves. Adam, what's the conversation been like with your kids? I know they're mostly grown. But I imagine during this time, most of us have probably drawn closer to the family. In fact, I think that's one of the greatest takeaways for me personally during this time is it's forced me to slow down a little bit, reconnect with a lot of my family and have more conversations with them. What are some of the conversations that you're having with your four kids during this time? What's it look like? I'm proud of my kids because during COVID, one of them graduated. One of them went from a junior to a senior. Then the other two, once going to Oregon State, moved up there and started her journey. And then the other one just enrolled in a community college. They've been so adaptable and they have different views for sure. Like my youngest daughter is, she loves Bernie Sanders. Oh, shit. And I'm the opposite, of course. She just rebelling. I know, I know. But she's all about it and she's all about that vibe. But you know what she does? She wants to talk about it. And again, it goes back to respect and belief and it's about getting around that table and just having a conversation. And her heart's as big as ever, but she says, hey, here's my problem. Here's my concern is that I don't want kids to be at a border in some type of jail. I don't want social injustices. Look what Donald Trump has done before he got elected. And so he cited all these examples and quite frankly, some of the things I couldn't overcome, some of the examples of character that we all look for in our leaders, there's some issues with our president. And at the same token, I love his policies. And that's the intersection. His policies are on point to me, in my opinion, and they help us continue to prosper. And so having that dialogue can be difficult with your kids because you want to be truthful and you want to make sure that the conversation stays truly authentic and respect their beliefs. But at the same token, if in my view again, if Bernie Sanders is the president, then I don't have a job. And all of a sudden, I give memberships away for free. And we are in a very different world. And so I think the dialogue has been at an all-time high. Pre-COVID, everybody's going 100 miles an hour and nobody comes to a dinner table. During COVID, everybody's at a dinner table. I just purchased my first RV. Oh, that's great. And I never thought I would. I never thought I would be that guy that purchased an RV. But I got a 35-footer and started going on these RV trips on the weekends. And you put out your whole family in one RV. You have a lot of great spirited conversations. And when I talked about the journey earlier, I would say COVID has amplified the journey in a much more family way during COVID than pre-COVID. And I've enjoyed the experience. Do you talk to your kids much about legacy? And is there something that you've created or done within the family that you want to pass down to them and then carry on? It's a tough one because I don't want them to think they have to live up to what I maybe have personally accomplished. I like that they know that I work hard. And I like to show them through action and through things that I do for them versus providing a huge expectation to say, if you don't hit this mark, you're a failure. And it's an incredibly philosophical conversation. But what I know is that my kids all have the biggest hearts and they're incredibly empathetic and they're incredibly caring. And I don't agree with all their views. A couple of them I do and a couple of them I don't. But my belief is through kind of leading by example, almost like I do professionally with my family, I hope that they feel some of that and they put that to good use as they start developing their professional careers. I've been blessed not to have any major problems. I did have my middle son. It's a little bit of a maverick. And when he was 14, he decided to borrow my navigator and go pick up his girlfriend at two in the morning. And I got called by the police. That's a whole different story. But when you get there, he was more afraid of my wife than me. But it was so funny because we went to the police officer and the police officer says, you got a hell of a son because he was so respectful to the police officer, admitted his blame, was not dishonest, told him exactly what was happening and say, listen, he told the police officer he was in love with the girl and he was just chasing her heart. And then, of course, the police officer, I mean, take him home, everything's fine. But you know what? When you guys were teenagers, I'm sure you got yourselves into a little bit of trouble. I know I certainly did. And what you want is truth and empathy and honesty. And am I going to get mad at him for being in love with somebody and trying to do whatever it takes to connect with her? Not really. I mean, my wife, on the other hand. But no, I mean, listen, it's like you guys, you learn more and more, especially during this COVID period about being a better parent and being more aware of your family and having slightly different discussions. But I'm crossing my fingers every day. You want a better life for them than maybe than what we went through as we grew up. I'm curious about these things, right? I have a one year old, right? So I'm new to this game. And so I always like talking to someone like you that's kind of bent through the ringer, right? Four of them and they're all pretty much grown. Looking back now and knowing that you probably had some of them in early ages when you were coming full circle, ego-wise and stuff. Are there things that you wish you would have done differently or implemented into your structure or family culture now that you maybe didn't do 15, 20 years ago? Yes. I was so obsessed with work. I was a seven day a week, 15 hour a day guy and I didn't have enough family balance. And so my wife's a miracle worker. I mean, she think about her, she moved 20 times with four kids and she supported me working and going out there and doing what I did. And so if I could rewind the clock, you know, I had my kids young. I was immature. I was probably too young, you know, when you're 21 years old and having kids, you're probably too young. I would be a different parent to an infant today than when I was 21 years of age. And so I think your experience and everything you've been through in life is going to make you an incredible father. And, you know, you can never replace the time that, and I look back on this now, you can never replace that time of their growth and the best ages in the world are those toddler years. You know, I always say this, once they start creating body odor, things change and, you know, they become very independent and they don't want to hang out with you as much. But, you know, when they go from two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, I mean, those years where you're their center of their life. That's when they worship you. Oh my God. I would come through the front door, all four kids would run to me and give me a hug and, you know, you fast forward to today, you know, that only my dog comes and runs to me. And so, you know, the, you know, a word of advice is, you know, you're way ahead of this, I'm sure, with your maturity, but, you know, you only get one chance. You only get one chance every year. You only get one, two. When they're two, you only get that once. When they're three, you only get that once. And that journey and that experience is something that can never be replaced. And when you're on your deathbed, you know, we're not going to be counting our money, but we're going to be remembering when they turn two, when they turn three, when they turn four. Yeah, I love that you said, I have one coming in October, but I have two older children, I have an 11 and a 15 year old, and I have a baby coming in October. And it's going to be different this time around. I think I was, like you, young, and you're just not nearly as aware or mature as a parent. So, I can completely relate to what you're saying. Did you buy a pair of new balanced shoes to go with your RV, by the way? It's such a funny story. And so, you know, my wife started having me look at this. And so I said, okay, and so I did it. And so they threw in a lot more. And, you know, there is definitely things that you have to learn about RVing, you know, the white tank, the gray tank, the black tank, and the apparel changes drastically. You know, my wife got this big straw hat, and you know, and then we're shopping, literally last week, we went RVing to Palm Springs and came back, and on the way back, we stopped by the mall. And I never, I grew up in Oregon, and I never thought I would want a pair of Birkenstocks. Oh no. Man, you're going all in. But campers have Birkenstocks. And you have to get them. And so my wife got a pair, and I would have size 14 and a half feet. They didn't have my size, but now she's going online. And so, man, I've arrived. I'm a camper. Before we hang up, I want to, you got to share with us one Mark Mastroff story that we probably don't know. And it could be either something that's impacted you on the leadership side, a funny story, whatever. You got to share a personal Mark Mastroff story. Well, I mean, I have a lot of them. I know. You're trying to sift through the ones you can say on there? Give me a good one. I don't want one that everybody's heard. I want one that maybe you have to dig deep and think back to, or maybe the most. I mean, obviously, you've become extremely loyal to the person. I have a handful of people in my life, I feel the same way. There's normally something that occurred in our relationship that made me say this, I'm right or die with this person forever. Matching low back tattoo, something. Well, before I share that with you, I've thought about this a lot because as you move up professionally, people, you get recruited a lot. And so, I've been very fortunate, met toward by Mark. And then there's been a lot of people that have worked with Mark that have also helped me through Mark's association, through my professional tenure. And guys like Jim Rowley and other people that have really had all their contribution to help me become who I am today. And when I look at people and I look at sometimes when people leave just for money or leave for just because you can make an extra 5,000 bucks or what have you, I always think back to the only reason anybody would want to recruit me today is because of Mark Mastroff. If he didn't invest into me over the last 20 plus years and he wasn't there and patient with me through all my mistakes and my issues and challenges and I get terminated from 24 hour in 1997, hypothetically, I'm not having this conversation with you guys today. And so, could I go find another job right now and probably make more money? Absolutely. But what kind of person, what kind of family person would I be if I showed that that was my number one motivator? And what kind of business leader would I be if that was my number one motivator? Now, don't get me wrong, Mark pays me very well. And so, I'm very happy with what I make. But we all have decisions to make and I've seen people where Mark has invested into and shown incredible loyalty to that became very self-serving and I just won't, I will never, ever leave Mark's side unless he tells me I should. And so, I hope to figure out how to lead like him someday because I think that's the most powerful thing is that when money does not become the motivator but being around him becomes the motivator. So, when I think back, I'll just tell you the first time that he impressed me and I was blown away. So obviously, when you're a new GM and he walks into your club, you're going to be on pins and needles because you want to impress him, you want to know your numbers, the KPIs, the DPR, all that good stuff. And so, I felt like I was pretty good at all that. And then, after we went through all the business parts of, this was in Rancho Pinesquitos, which is really the first time I met him. And we walked through the club and he goes, hey, listen, Adam, you're doing a really good job. You're tied on your numbers, you're in your community, you're doing well. I got to tell you though, why are you allowing your janitors to mop the floor with water? Because all that's going to do is hurt your floors and you're going to have to replace your floors in about 18 months. And I'm like, oh, Mark, you're right. You know what? I apologize. I'm going to get on that. And he goes, okay. And so, he leaves. We get done, he leaves. And of course, I'm like, oh my God, I just let him down. I'm mopping floors with water. And so, but a week later, I mean, Mark's a CEO of a company, Northern California, he's probably never going to ever come back. And I just completely forgot about mopping floors with water. And so, a year and a half goes by. And Mark is in San Diego visiting the market and tours the clubs. And at that point, we started emailing back and forth a little bit. And he started his mentorship with me. And I felt more confident with him. And he comes into the club and we're doing well. And he's meeting the staff and congratulating the staff. And there's two things that he did that blew me away. The first thing he did was he took me outside and he taught me the lesson of understanding a journey, which he made me go outside and look at birds for five minutes. Just stare at birds for five minutes. I'm like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. But I'm sitting there looking at birds for five minutes. And then he made me tell him about the birds experience. And that very moment taught me to slow down and enjoy the little things in life, right? And I thought it was very impactful. But the next thing blew me away then some, which we were walking around the club. And the janitor was mopping with water. And after a year and a half or whatever it was, after thousands of conversations with different people, different managers, board meetings, acquisitions, everything else he's gone through, he said, didn't I tell you not to let that janitor mop the floor with water? I had forgot about it because it wasn't even in my mind. Right. And he had to remind me again that a janitor was also again, mopping the floor with water. So, you know, his recall is insane. No, insane. You know, I had only met him maybe four or five times in my career. And when we first got reconnected here, I was at the Hawaii, I mean, I won Hawaii six years that I was there. And so I always saw him there. But I mean, again, he's talking to everybody, but son of a bitch remembered conversations him and I had 10 years, 15 years before that, I couldn't believe it. Knowing, like you said, how many thousands of people he probably talks to a year. It's amazing. It's amazing. Unbelievable. That's awesome. Well, Adam, it's been great talking to you. I want to say this, and this is not we're not affiliated at all, but it's apparent the job you guys are doing with the UFC gyms. I've been in several of them and they are definitely among the best clubs I've been in. Not just equipment. You guys have amazing equipment. By the way, I think UFC gym, I think, you know, MMA type stuff, you guys have incredible bodybuilding equipment, cardio equipment, recovery equipment. So I remember we all went together and we were so impressed, but the culture, you can feel it. You could tell it comes from the top down and probably one of the, and this is where, you know, this is where you know, I'm telling the truth here, what I think, if you're going to become a trainer and you want to learn how to be a good trainer, we've always said it's probably better to start in a corporate type facility because they handle a lot of things for you. UFC gyms are probably one of the better ones to start in. You're going to learn a lot of good culture, going to be a good facility with good leadership. So kudos to you guys. It's obvious you guys are doing a great job. And you know, by the way, a good guest for you guys. I don't know, have you had Neil Spruce in here? We know Neil. He's so passionate about fitness. It reminds me of you guys in your circle here. But you know, hey, I want to thank you guys. I mean, I just, I love talking fitness. I mean, I think we could do it all. We could probably do this for 12 hours, right? For sure. In this chat. If it's okay, can I, can I shout out to a couple of people? I just want to, I want to thank all the people in the clubs that are fighting the fight. And it's not just, I mean, UFC gym, obviously, you know, you guys have my heart, but it's the industry. I just want to thank everybody for going out there and continuing that grind. We're going to get through this as a community, as a family. And we're going to be better on the other side of this. And good luck to the, the new Seattle club that we have in pre-sale. And also a good luck to Point Loma and Temecula that are starting pre-sale here in the next couple of weeks. Excellent. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks, guys. More and more for me, it's, it's, uh, I'm getting like, ooh, I'm getting closer to the, to the new balance. I think it's all about more and more. Each decision. I didn't start closer. I didn't start off caring much about the way they looked already. We'll begin with, I already started off low. It's getting lower now. I actually, I actually, you're not even a runner. Yeah.