JJ Creegan has helped build three of the biggest names in fitness — Planet Fitness, UFIT, and Orange Theory — and now works as a fractional COO/CEO helping emerging brands scale. In this episode, he and Eric dig into the K-shaped fitness economy, why the industry is "data rich but knowledge poor," and the exact visit-frequency formula that predicts member retention. They also cover the state of boutique fitness, the Pilates consolidation wave coming, and why the walls between fitness, medicine, and wellness are finally coming down.

Key Takeaways:

• 📊 Only 25% of the U.S. population holds a fitness membership — 75% of adults aren't engaging in fitness at all
• 💰 JJ's retention rule from his time at UFIT: getting a member to 10 visits in their first 60 days increased year-long retention odds by 50%
• 🚫 "You can't ever save a cancellation. You can only prevent it."
• 🔥 "Loyalty is fake. It does not exist in today's world. It's about relevancy."
• 🧗 If JJ had a blank check, he'd open a rock-climbing gym that integrates recovery and wellness — not a traditional gym
• 🏋️ Jet Set Pilates just signed its 400th license agreement and is set to open 150+ units this year
• 🩸 JJ's personal fight to get proactive bloodwork (testosterone) despite pushback from his own doctor
• 😴 The single biggest health upgrade in his last 5 years: being in bed before 9:30 PM for 7–7.5 hours of sleep

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/

Connect with JJ Creegan: 🌐 JJCreegan.com 📸 Instagram 💼 LinkedIn

Online coaching is a $28.9B industry racing toward $120B by 2031 — but 71% of people who start an online fitness program quit within 90 days. In this episode, Eric sits down with Cody McBroom, founder of Tailored Coaching Method, who's built a 7-figure, ad-free coaching business over the past nine years without ever accepting a pay-in-full client. Cody breaks down the "identity-based coaching" model that took his team's client retention from 3-4 months to 14 months, why AI is reshaping how people find (and vet) a coach, and his genuinely nuanced take on GLP-1 drugs and the fitness industry's future.

Key Takeaways:

• 💰 Cody built Tailored Coaching Method into a 7-figure/year business with zero paid ads and a strict no-pay-in-full policy
• 🧠 Identity-based coaching (built around self-control, self-discipline, self-belief, self-respect) took his coaches' average client retention from 3-4 months to 14 months
• 💍 The surprising reason divorce rates rise when only one partner in a couple loses significant weight
• 🤖 ChatGPT Health logged 230 million health-related inquiries per week the month it launched — and Cody gets new client applications weekly sourced straight from AI search
• 🔍 60-65% of Google searches are now "no-click" — Cody explains how coaches can get cited inside AI summaries via AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
• 💊 Cody's real position on GLP-1s/semaglutide: medically useful for extreme cases, but no substitute for the identity work required for lasting change
• 🥊 His mentor's blunt advice before going online: "train people for five years straight, and then you'll have the right to do that"
• 📈 Why he believes AI will "weed out" bad coaches rather than replace good ones

Connect with Cody McBroom:

• Website: tailoredcoachingmethod.com
• Instagram: @tailoredcoach (also searchable as Cody McBroom)
• Podcast: Choose Hard

OUR SPONSOR:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

Global expansion, jiu-jitsu black belts, and Dana White's secret philanthropy — Adam Sedlack, CEO of UFC GYM, is back on The Future of Fitness after a five-year hiatus, and the growth story is staggering. From surviving pandemic-era bankruptcies to opening a new location every single week across 46+ countries, Sedlack breaks down the pricing overhaul that fueled 25% member growth and record profit margins, why "the consumer always has the answer," and how UFC GYM built a scalable system for teaching high-skill disciplines like BJJ and Muay Thai across 180+ locations without sacrificing quality. He also opens up about the Mark Mastrov coaching tree that shaped his career, what Dana White is really like behind the cameras, UFC GYM's cautious-but-committed AI strategy, and his bold five-year vision to hit 50+ countries by 2030. Whether you're a gym operator, franchise investor, or just fascinated by the business of fitness, this episode is packed with hard-won lessons on pricing psychology, scaling culture, and riding the wave of combat sports going mainstream.

Key Takeaways:

🥋 UFC GYM opened 180+ locations across 46 countries in 2025 — debuting in Pakistan, Ecuador, France, and Morocco — averaging one new gym per week

💰 A 2023 pricing overhaul (entry-level access priced to local market rates, add-ons for BJJ, recovery, med spas) drove 25% member growth and all-time-high profit margins

🧠 "The consumer always has the answer" — Sedlack ditched ego-driven pricing once data showed people join gyms for two reasons: location and price

🥊 UFC GYM built an internal university, certifications, and modality-specific head coaches to keep quality consistent across 180+ locations teaching jiu-jitsu, boxing, and MMA

🎬 Dana White's off-camera generosity — supporting law enforcement, military, and staff through COVID — gets a rare behind-the-scenes spotlight

🌳 The "Mark Mastrov coaching tree" connects UFC GYM, Crunch, and dozens of fitness leaders — and Sedlack shares the janitor-and-wet-floors story that shaped his leadership style

🤖 UFC GYM's AI approach: empower the team to experiment now, stay patient on enterprise-wide integration, and learn from best practices as they emerge

🌍 The 2030 vision: 50+ countries, 3-5 new gym openings per week, and positioning UFC GYM as a destination for stress, sleep, and nutrition — not just fitness Connect with Adam Sedlack: 📸 Instagram: @CEOUFCGYM 💼 LinkedIn: Adam Sedlack

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/

Christian Drapeau, neurophysiologist and stem cell researcher, joins Future of Fitness to explore the body's natural repair processes and how they change as we age.

Christian breaks down the balance between breakdown and renewal, how that balance shifts over time, and why a single underlying process connects so many different systems in the body. He also explains why bone health has more to do with collagen and flexibility than most people realize, and how estrogen and menopause relate to the body's repair mechanisms.

This conversation is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not medical advice.

ABOUT CHRISTIAN DRAPEAU Christian Drapeau is a neurophysiologist, stem cell researcher, and the Founder and Chief Science Officer of STEMREGEN. His work focuses on the role of circulating stem cells in the body and the factors that may influence their activity. He first proposed that stem cells function as part of the body's endogenous repair system in a 2002 paper and is the author of Cracking the Stem Cell Code.

CONNECT WITH CHRISTIAN DRAPEAU TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stemcellchristian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stemcellchristian/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STEMREGENOfficial/

Brian Keane has built a fitness empire that most coaches only dream about — four bestselling books, over 580 podcast episodes, a top 0.5% global podcast, and more than a thousand coaches trained through his mentorship programs. But before any of that, he was a primary school teacher who realized twenty minutes into his first day that he'd climbed the wrong ladder entirely. In this conversation, Brian breaks down exactly how fitness entrepreneurs, gym owners, and online coaches can stay relevant — and even thrive — as tools like ChatGPT and Claude start answering the same questions clients used to pay for. He walks through his SCALE framework for building an unshakeable personal brand, why chasing universal likability is killing more coaching businesses than AI ever will, and the wild story of how a plane ride home from an ayahuasca retreat turned into a 16-hour writing session that became his most recent book.

Key Takeaways:

🪜 Why Brian walked away from a stable teaching career the moment he realized "the ladder was against the wrong wall" 🤖 The exact reason you can't out-compete ChatGPT or Claude on results — and what to sell instead 🎯 Brian's SCALE framework (Storytelling, Core Offer, Amplify, Leverage, Evolve) for building a business AI can't copy 🥃 Why being "someone's shot of whiskey" beats trying to be everyone's cup of tea in coaching and branding 📈 The real reason his Fitness Business Podcast pre-qualifies clients before they ever book a call 🔥 The Facebook post he almost didn't share — and why it became the most-quoted line in his bestselling book 🌿 How a 3-night ayahuasca retreat led to writing an entire book in a single 16-hour flow state 🤝 Why "authentic connection" — not AI — is what actually keeps Brian up at night in this industry 💡 The one question his mum asked him that changed the entire trajectory of his career

🔗 Our Sponsor:

https://egym.com/int

Connect with Brian Keane: 🌐 Website: https://briankeanefitness.com/ 🔗 All Links: https://briankeanefitness.com/quick-links/ 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brian_keane_fitness/ 🎬 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/briankeanefitness 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briankeanefitness

Healthcare in America is stuck in a "sick care" model—we wait until people are already ill, then scramble to treat them. Dr. Gloria Winters, VP of Health Innovation at the YMCA of the USA, has spent the last year building something different: a community health operating system that pulls together your wearables, your medical records, and AI-driven insights into one place, so you actually know what to do with your health data instead of just staring at numbers. In this episode, she breaks down her "house" framework for the $5.6 trillion healthcare industry, why falls cost the country more than almost anything else, how she's working directly with HHS and the MAHA movement on preventive health policy, and why personal agency—not just data—is the missing piece in helping people actually change their behavior. If you've ever felt like your Apple Watch tells you everything except what you should actually do next, this conversation is for you.

Key Takeaways:

🏠 Healthcare is like a house — tech/data is the foundation, sick care takes up most of the "living space," and payers/regulators are the roof

💰 Falls are the #1 healthcare cost in the U.S. — more expensive than most people realize

📱 230 million people ask ChatGPT health questions every week — but personal AI health tracking is still fragmented and unverified

🔗 Interoperability is the real bottleneck — your wearables, scale, and medical records don't talk to each other, even though you use all of them

🎯 Personalization is the missing layer — knowing your heart rate hit 165 means nothing if no one tells you what to do next

🏛️ Dr. Winters is working directly with HHS, CMS, and the MAHA team on shifting national policy toward "upstream" preventive care

👁️ Human connection still matters — eye contact and relationship-centered care activate real neuroscience behind behavior change

🩺 The YMCA has quietly built medical clinics inside its facilities — including a Parkinson's exercise program that led medical providers to hire Parkinson's specialists

🌱 Her advice to gym owners: don't chase every trend — do an environmental scan of your community's actual health needs and pick one to solve

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/int

Something changed after 40. Recovery takes longer, energy dips, and the effort that used to work stopped working. You were told it's just aging. Neurophysiologist Christian Drapeau makes the case that it's something else entirely: the decline of your body's own repair system.

In this first episode of The Science of Vitality After 40, a four-part series with Christian Drapeau, host Eric Malzone explores the system almost no one talks about. Christian wrote the first paper proposing that our stem cells function as the body's repair system back in 2001, and here he explains what that system is, why it declines so early (by your early 30s you circulate a fraction of what you had at birth), and why the shift lands hardest on women in their 40s.

In this episode:

• What the repair system is, and why it works like a second immune system
• Why medicine treats the body's ability to heal as a "black hole"
• The steep, early decline in circulating stem cells and what drives it
• Why estrogen loss creates a "double whammy" for women at midlife
• Why weight-bearing exercise keeps emerging as the one clear lever
• What your circulating stem cell count may predict about how you age

Christian Drapeau is a neurophysiologist, a pioneer of stem cell mobilization, Founder and Chief Science Officer at STEMREGEN, and author of the bestselling Cracking the Stem Cell Code.

CONNECT WITH CHRISTIAN DRAPEAU Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stemcellchristian/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stemcellchristian Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STEMREGENOfficial/ Explore the science of the repair system: https://www.stemregen.co/blogs/articles/stem-cells-101-discover-what-stem-cells-actually-do-and-why-understanding-them-changes-everything-about-your-health?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=vitality_after_40&utm_content=ep1

Alberto Perlman has been trying to get on this podcast for years — turns out all it took was bumping shoulders at an industry event. As co-founder of Zumba, he's built the world's largest branded fitness program: over 15 million weekly participants, 200,000+ locations, and a presence in 185+ countries, all while surviving 25 years of hype cycles, fads, a pandemic, and everything in between. In this episode, Eric Malzone sits down with Alberto to trace the entire Zumba story from the beginning — a packed gym class in Aventura, Florida with a literal padlocked door, a co-founder who couldn't speak a word of English pitching investors, VHS tapes selling in the millions, and a brand that's somehow ended up teaching classes in the jungles of Thailand and mandated in schools across India. They get into brand protection at global scale, why Zumba refuses to chase the algorithm on social media, and Alberto's honest, still-evolving read on where AI fits into the next chapter of the fitness industry.

Key Takeaways:

🔒 The wild true story of how Zumba started — including a padlocked gym door and a line out the building 30 minutes before class

🗣️ How Beto (Zumba's creator) pitched investors without speaking English — and the 60-day scramble to teach him one phrase

📼 How Zumba's business model evolved from VHS tapes and infomercials to an instructor-membership model that still drives the company today

⚖️ The realities of protecting a global brand — including having to legally challenge a dictionary in Denmark over trademark rights

📱 How Zumba grew one of the biggest social media followings in the fitness industry without chasing the algorithm

🌍 The surprising places Zumba has ended up — jungle classes in Chiang Mai, a sign in Bhutan, mandated school programs in India, drug rehab initiatives in the Philippines, and PTSD support for police officers in Colombia

🤖 Alberto's candid, unresolved take on AI's role in the future of fitness and where human connection still wins

💪 Why Alberto believes fitness deserves more recognition as the "number one intervention" for public health

🤝 A call for more collaboration and advocacy among leaders across the fitness industry

Whether you're building a fitness brand, running a gym, or just curious how a local dance class became a global phenomenon, this conversation is packed with lessons on scaling a brand the right way — through community, not shortcuts.

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/int

Before he built one of the biggest names in youth sports training, Will Bartholomew was a walk-on at the University of Tennessee trying to survive fall camp with a quarterback named Peyton Manning. In this episode, the D1 Training founder sits down with Eric Malzone to trace the whole arc — training athletes in an open field back in 2002, opening a patio-carpet-and-turf gym with racks he screwed together himself, and slowly turning that into a franchise system now closing in on 220 locations nationwide. Will gets honest about the messy middle: no point-of-sale system at location two, why D1 doesn't open on Sundays, selling off 27 real estate properties and a physical therapy business to go all-in on the gym he actually loved, and the advice from his father that changed everything — "never scale anything until you've scaled it yourself." He also digs into what makes a great youth strength coach today, how D1 uses radical transparency and scorecards to keep coaches bought in, why he thinks the $115 billion youth sports market is still in its first inning, and the balance every sports parent is chasing between competing hard and keeping the game fun. Whether you're a gym owner thinking about franchising, a coach trying to build a real career in strength and conditioning, or a parent navigating the youth sports world, this conversation is packed with hard-earned lessons from someone who's lived every side of it.

🎯 Key Takeaways

• 🏈 Will's path ran through a state wrestling title, a full ride to Tennessee, a national championship alongside Peyton Manning, and an NFL knee injury that redirected him straight into the weight room business
• 🌱 D1 Training started in 2002 in an open field before opening its first real location in spring 2003 — patio carpet, hand-built racks, and burned CDs for music
• 📈 32 corporate locations opened between 2003 and 2015, fueled partly by real estate deals and a young Peyton Manning as an early, hands-on business partner
• 🧭 A mentor's blunt question — "what are you actually the best at?" — pushed Will to sell off his real estate holdings and his physical therapy company to focus entirely on D1
• 🤝 D1 didn't start franchising until 2017-2018, after spending a full year rebuilding the business model around real footprint size, staffing, and consumer behavior
• 📊 Radical transparency drives coach retention — weekly scorecards, EOS-style meetings, and 90-day reviews so coaches always know exactly where they stand
• 💰 The addressable market for youth sports and strength training now sits around $115 billion, and Will believes the industry is still in its "first quarter"
• 📱 D1 is investing heavily in tech, including its own app, athlete testing verification, and partnerships with recruiting platforms like On3 and Rivals
• ⚖️ On competitive youth sports, Will's take is simple: keep it fun, because burnout comes fast when winning becomes the only point
• 🎙️ Will also hosts "The Turf," a show spotlighting coaches and athletes who've shaped the training world, from John Gruden to Tim Tebow
• 🚀 The mission driving everything: put inspiring, motivating strength coaching in every community in the country — not just another gym franchise

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/

Can you actually train yourself to age like an athlete instead of just "aging well"? In this episode, Eric Malzone sits down with strength coach and Just Fly Sports founder Joel Smith — eight years coaching at UC Berkeley, five Olympians, nine medals, a world record, and four national track titles under his belt — to unpack what real athletic longevity looks like beyond the buzzwords flooding the fitness industry. They dig into why "meaningful movement" beats generic training programs, how play, seasonality, and community pickup games might matter more than your macros, and why coaches and gym owners need to help clients rediscover the athlete that's already inside them. If you've ever felt like your training has gotten stale, boring, or disconnected from actual joy, this conversation is the reset you didn't know you needed.

🏃 Redefining "athlete" — why unofficial pickup soccer at the park might be more athletic than any structured gym program

🌱 Meaningful movement > mindless reps — how skill, culture, sunlight, and friendship shape movement that actually sticks

🧠 Inner vs. outer training — the difference between grinding through weights and the fluid, reactive nature of true athleticism

🎾 The power of "soften" — a mindset shift for breaking through frustration and unlocking better movement quality

🗣️ Coaching through nostalgia — how asking clients "what sport did you play as a kid?" unlocks confidence and motivation

🍂 Training in seasons — borrowing from Chinese medicine and elite coaches to cycle bodybuilding, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, and sprinting throughout the year

🤼 Bring back play — tug of war, pool noodle games, and field days as legitimate tools for building athleticism at any age

👨‍👩‍👧 Longevity is human, not algorithmic — why AI can't replace the art of coaching someone toward their own physical richness

🎯 Individual expression matters — helping clients find the specific movement patterns where they shine, instead of one-size-fits-all programming

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

Eric Malzone sits down with Eric Bormel, Managing Director at Solomon Partners, for a deep dive into mergers and acquisitions in the fitness and wellness industry — breaking down exactly what it takes for a fitness brand, gym, or health tech company to get acquired, what drives valuation beyond revenue, and how founders can pick the right buyer instead of just the highest bidder. Using the recent Rouvy-to-Zwift acquisition as a real-world case study, Bormel pulls back the curtain on the M&A process from first meeting to closing the deal, explains why connected fitness companies like Peloton are finally stabilizing after the post-pandemic crash, and shares why consumer subscription brands like Strava and Zwift — along with wearables like Whoop and Oura — are currently the hottest categories for investors in the fitness tech space. The conversation also tackles AI's growing role in personalized health, wearables, and gym operations, plus the widening gap between CEO confidence and consumer sentiment in today's economy. Whether you're a gym owner, fitness entrepreneur, or just curious about fitness industry trends and investment activity, this episode is a crash course in fitness M&A, business valuation, and where smart money is heading next in health and wellness.

Episode Takeaways:

• 💰 M&A 101 — the difference between intrinsic value (cash flow) and extrinsic value (revenue/EBITDA multiples) when valuing a fitness business
• 🤝 Picking the Right Buyer — why trust matters more than the highest offer, and how to find a buyer aligned with your goals
• 📈 Inside the Ruby-Zwift Deal — a real case study breaking down how a major fitness tech acquisition actually comes together
• ⏳ The M&A Timeline — why a typical deal takes 6 months (and sometimes years of relationship-building beforehand)
• 🚴 Connected Fitness Comeback — how Peloton and the connected fitness category clawed back to profitability after the post-COVID crash
• ⌚ Wearables on the Rise — why Whoop and Oura are pulling in serious capital and customers in the health tech space
• 🏋️ What Buyers Want Now — why consumer subscription brands with strong data and loyal users are winning over enterprise SaaS
• 🤖 AI in Fitness and Wellness — how AI is reshaping personalization, wearables, virtual care, and the member experience (without replacing the workout itself)
• 📊 CEO Confidence vs. Consumer Sentiment — the surprising economic disconnect happening right now and what it means for fitness businesses
• 🚀 Founder Advice — how to know when your business is actually ready to sell, and what really drives a successful exit

OUR SPONSORS:

🔗 Perfect Gym: https://www.perfectgym.com/en

🔗 EGYM: https://egym.com/int