Our guest on this episode of the Sport Lifestyle Podcast is Curtis Christopherson, the President, and CEO of Innovative Fitness.  Innovative Fitness is a 12 studio premium personal training experience employing 200+ trainers, serving 4000+ clients.  Learn how Curtis is innovating during this global pandemic.

We also find time to talk about Florida’s decision to make WWE professional wrestling an essential service, along with the ethics of playing golf in the age of social distancing. And, we learn that JP did time at an Outback Steakhouse slinging blooming onions.

References

Innovative Fitness

Transcript

Mike Gugat: [00:00:00] This episode of the Sport Lifestyle Podcast is presented by Empirika. That’s EMPIRIKA. E. M. P. I. R. I. K. A. EMPIRIKA exists to amplify your brand’s growth, a digital partner to the ambitious, the creative engine launching brands and igniting growth. The un-agency where relationships matter, not transactions.

Let’s connect at Empirikamedia.com that’s EMPIRIKAmedia.com let’s get the show started. This is the sport lifestyle podcast where the trade of sport collides with fashion and innovation. Your host Mike Gugat, Neil Schwartz and John Peters breakdown news, discuss trends and interview industry influencers.

The Sport Lifestyle Podcast is on now.

John peters: [00:00:51] All right. Today we have Curtis Christopherson from Innovative Fitness, the founder and CEO. Curtis, what’s going on?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:00:57] Oh, not much, man. Just plugging away as always.

John peters: [00:01:00] Thanks for joining us during what’s a crazy time for your business? I’m sure.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:01:05] Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, COVID 19 is challenging for a lot of people, but, uh, you know, for us in the fitness space, it, it hit us hard for sure.

John peters: [00:01:12] Absolutely. No, it’s definitely understandable. And, and you are uh headquartered out of Vancouver, is that right?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:01:18] Yeah, that’s correct. Vancouver, British Columbia.

John peters: [00:01:21] I, uh, brought along my, uh, resident Canadian buddy Joel den Engelsen to co-host this episode. Joel, what’s going on?

Joel den Engelsen: [00:01:28] Hey man, how you guys doing? So yeah, J brought me in on this and I’ve got to say it’s nice to have another buddy just South of me.

I’m up in Squamish so, it’s a pleasure to meet you Curtis.

That’s awesome.

John peters: [00:01:44] Next, next time we’ll bring all of our new friend Jeff Angus, since it’s a Canadian love fest here. But, uh, until then, I’d love to dive into it, man. First of all, what is Innovative Fitness? Tell our, tell our listeners.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:01:55] Yeah. So we’re a premium personal training company.

We have 12 locations, so high end boutique personal training, uh, over 250 trainers that span anywhere from Vancouver to Toronto. So Canadian based company been around for 25 years, and essentially we service, uh, high level executives, CEOs, business professionals and people that want to, you know, take their performance to the next level.

So, um, you know, we don’t train as much as we train athletes or celebrities in Canada. You know, the only athletes that we have to make money are, are a hockey players. And usually they’re on the road. And, uh, when you’re some sort of celebrity, you’re moving down to LA or New York. So at the end of the day, we, we cater and, and help people with their health, um, to take their health the next level and work with them two to three times a week usually.

John peters: [00:02:39] Got it. And is that, that’s a kind of a, an interesting niche there. W what you just said about the hockey players first, the masses. Um, can you talk, tell listeners a little bit about your perspective on the wellness market? People say it’s $4 trillion. I don’t know if I believe that, but any thoughts just on the general macro trends?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:02:56] Obviously it’s growing. So you know, you, you look at the generations that are, that are, you know, the consumers of today, they grew up with health and wellness as a priority in their life, whether it’s sports, whether they’re just health. And so, you know, obviously the health and wellness market is growing rapidly.

Um, it’s obviously important. And then you get the baby boomer generation that is now retiring and understanding that they want to live longer. So they’re adopting health and wellness in a completely different way than obviously the generations coming in as consumers. Um, and so, you know, it’s a really unique time.

There’s like a convergence of, of, um, everybody, everybody’s interest and, and prioritizing health and wellness in their lives.

John peters: [00:03:37] And how do you guys, can you speak a little bit more to that, the, the convergence there you have, you know, gen Z, millennials, but I’ll obviously, I think the stat I read was, you know, 10,000 people are gonna retire every week for the next, uh, 10 years or five years. I forget the stat, but how are you addressing both uh both cohorts there?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:03:55] Well, I think we always say that people either want to look better, perform better, or live longer, and there’s, you know, people are motivated usually by fear and greed, right? So if you look at, you know, people that the baby boomers as an example that are retiring, you know, their major motivation is either to be around and spend time, quality time with their grandkids as an example, or live longer. To extend the length of how long they live. Um, and so, you know, catering to that, you know, obviously any generation, what’s great about our business model is that it’s personalized. So it depends on what your, doesn’t matter what your goals, needs, abilities. Um, injury history is like, at the end of the day, we have, we have a personalized approach. We work one on one with people, um, based on their needs and what they’re looking for. And we can customize a program, whatever their, you know, whatever they want. So.

John peters: [00:04:45] That’s awesome. I think the coolest thing so far after researching, speaking with people and yourself, obviously about Innovative, is you guys are almost this uh, legacy company in terms of how long have you’ve been around, but you are able to pivot and be very nimble like a startup. So, speaking of pivoting, I mean, let’s just address the elephant COVID. Um, tell us how you transformed your business digitally and, and Joel, I want you to chime in here too with your, your digital background as well. But Curtis, um, any thoughts on what you guys did? I think it was five days. Your post said.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:05:14] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, I, there’s, there’s different, a series of events that, that everybody’s gone through. And, and I, I remember the dates, like it was yesterday, even though it seems like it was a year ago. Um, and maybe I can go back and tell you about that. So Wednesday, March 11. Uh, was a really critical and pivotal day. I think for a lot of people. The 11th and the 12th really meant a lot, especially in the business world. So on the 11th, you know, um, I can tell you that I was, I was the one waving the flag in our business saying, you know, if there’s someone that could stay open the longest in the health and fitness and the service based business model, um. It would be us. We work one on one with all of our clients. We know their history, where they’ve been, where they’ve traveled. You know, we’re not a group class drop in model. So you know, we control our spaces quite strongly. And so I remember sitting with our executive team going, ‘Hey, you know what? We got to prep and plan for this.’

But the reality is that we’re going to be able to control possibly the environment a lot more in a lot longer than anybody else. And then, if you, if everybody recalls on Wednesday the 11th, uh, Trump grounded the planes to Europe, uh, the NBA had their, their, uh, first initial case, and then Thursday morning, NBA, NHL, uh, you know, Disneyland, um, all canceled their, their, uh, either their seasons or their business, closed their business and hysteria just went through the roof.

And so at that point on Thursday, the 12th we had to, you know, we had to make some major decisions and we said, ‘Hey, you know, why we gotta, we gotta figure out our stance on this and what we’re going to do.’

And so, you know, originally our thought was, you know, we were going to lean into our value system and say, Hey, and what if we’ve always been that legacy, um, and leader in this space, we’ve been around for 25 years. We pride ourselves on the communities that we build, both in our four walls and outside our four walls. Then we’ve got to take a stance and we’ve got to take a leadership stance of flattening the curve. So we, we got with our leadership team and said, Hey, you know what? It’s not mandated. It’s not forced. No one’s even discussed this, and no one’s even decided to close their doors. But we’re gonna, we’re going to take a stance, we’re gonna participate and flatten the curve, and we’re going to close our doors. Our last days can be February, I meant, March 20th Friday, March 20th and then what happened was on Sunday.

Um, prior to us obviously communicating this to anybody, our clients who our teammates Sunday, I got a phone call from a region that’s, that’s relatively close to some of our locations. And you know, I got told that four out of 12 guys that went on a trip to Austria for a ski trip, uh, tested positive for COVID and they weren’t involved or, or in our locations.

But I said to myself that this is way too close to home. And the last thing we want it to do is, is be a part of the problem and not part of the solution. So, you know, at that point we made a decision and said, Hey, we can’t, we can’t jeopardize the health of our teammates, our clients, our communities, the healthcare system. And we for sure don’t want to be in the news for having a break out inone of our locations. So on Sunday the 15th, we said, we’re gonna call it. Um, and you know, I remember that like, there was no other fitness companies around locally that I know of in particularly in Vancouver and Toronto that had made any of those decisions yet.

And so we had to get on a phone call with some of our franchise partners, which we have some to our teammates and tell them our, our stance. And there was, you know, there was a little bit of backlash, like difference of opinions. Didn’t think it was that bad. Didn’t think why, like why would we close down our stores and our studios if we didn’t have to?

Um. And, you know, sure enough that, you know, after that, you know, we saw that next week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, everybody followed suit. So, you know, kind of pride ourselves on making that decision. We got a lot of positive praise from our clients. Um, and really the stance that we were taking and it was gut wrenching, right? Like, you know, some people have told us. You know? So what was it like or, yeah, you kind of, you know, your revenue’s going down. It’s like the minute we closed our doors is the minute that we stood on top of the cliff. Like that’s just a reality. So, you know, we went from, you know, having one of our best years yet to then having zero revenue the day, the day that we decided to close our doors, and then that went into an entire pivot strategy. Actually, it went into a conversation before I went to the pivot strategy. And before jumping in there, I, you know, kind of taking the mic right now, but. Um, you know, three things. I looked at:  crisis management, number one, we’re all going through it.  So COVID 19, you know, PR is a crisis. And so we are actually evaluating, you know, how we respond to this as individuals, as families, as organizations or as communities. So, you know, and we have to respond to it in some way. Um, so crisis management is one bucket.

Risk mitigation as a business owner is, is the second bucket. How can we mitigate risk as much as possible? So what I, you know, when I talk about mitigate risk, one of them is making the choice to close down so that we don’t spread the disease or the virus, you know, is, is one way to do that. And obviously the other way to do that is obviously, you know, from business standpoint, how do we cut our costs?

So, we had to, you know, we had already got ahead of that, send letters to our finance partners, to our, uh, like the banks as well as our landlords. And we had to mitigate as much risk as possible so we could, you know, we could stay in business for as long as possible.

And then the last one was, do we want to adapt or do we not? And that is the big one I think that we’re seeing in the fitness space. You know, it’s, do we want to adapt or do we want to shut the doors, turn off the lights, let this thing blow through and hopefully reopened, which we had the choice to do and we still have the choice to do. But when we evaluated it, we said, you know, for 25 years, we’ve built strong communities. Um, we’ve delivered a product and a service that we feel is a priority in many people’s lives. We feel it’s beneficial in many people’s lives. Obviously health and wellness. If there’s a time you need it, you need it now. And could we provide that service to people in their homes? And we wanted to do what the right thing was to do.

And if you look at our value system, like some of our values, we challenge status quo. We find a way, no excuse. We build strong communities. All of these things when we lean into it and said, no, we’re not closing our doors. We’re not making excuses. We haven’t done it for 25 years. We’re not going to start now.

So we, uh, we decided to adapt and pivot and, and, um, and you know, in under five days we reinvented our business. So, um, yeah. It’s kind of where we’re at.

Joel den Engelsen: [00:11:42] Oh, wow. Curtis, that is absolutely incredible. You said you turned the whole thing around from physical to digital in five days.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:11:48] Yeah.

Joel den Engelsen: [00:11:49] That is incredible. In a past life, I worked with, you know, any number of fortune 500 around the world, and everybody had the same mindset. It was all about digital transformation. You know, retail is dying. Our physical stores are closing, and I don’t think one of them ever got digital transformation inside of, you know, 18 to 24 months. And it’s just incredible. You guys, you know, you’re, you’re a small agile company. You’ve also been around for 25 years, so it’s not like you’re an upstart with three people.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:12:19] Yeah.

Joel den Engelsen: [00:12:19] It just blows my mind. Could you walk us through sort of those five days, what they look like for you and your team?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:12:26] Yeah, for sure. So Sunday the 15th is the day that we actually, I got on a zoom meeting with all of our employees to cross across the company. Um, you know, over 250 trainers that we have and let them know that we were going to be paying their salary for the entire week. We’re closing our doors, paying their salaries and their compensation the entire week. And that allowed us time, like out of anything, it just said, Hey, we’re not scrambling. We’re putting a plan together. We’re going to buy some time, and when we buy some time, we’re going to provide you the opportunity to take care of yourselves.

So we actually provide a resources to them, like what they should be doing, how they should be taking care of themselves, whether it’s rent, mortgages, talking to their banks, getting groceries, stocking up on things, because we knew that this thing was coming fast. So that was the first thing that we did.

The second thing we did is we took our executive team and broke it up into working groups. And we evaluated, we, the first thing we had to evaluate is what does this look like, right? What does a pivot strategy look like? Or a successful one, and we broke it down to six fundamental things.

The first one, let’s re-identify our target target audience. Who is our current target audience? Does that shift and change because of this and what does the behaviors attach to that target audience that we service? Because things are going to shift and change in terms of their routine, their behaviors, their reaction to this, you name it.

The next four out of the six or the four P’s of marketing.

So if you’re familiar with marketing, you know, I’ll, I’ll put it in this order because this is the order that we put it in. Product, place, price, promotion. Does our product have to change? And we said to herself after, by waiting it, it does not have to change. So, you know, our actual fundamental of our product does not have to change. But the second P of marketing, which is our third point was place. If we’re a physical, we are, we’re in a physical brick and mortar spaces. We provide services one-on-one. So obviously we couldn’t do that. I mean, social distancing isolation cannot, cannot make that possible. So our distribution had to change.  So our place obviously had to change. Uh, the third one is price. How price sensitive are people going to be? How are they going to prioritize this? What does that look like? Do we charge? Do we not charge? Um, how do we promote it? So that’s a fourth P and our fifth item that we talked about, you know, promotion is funny in this day and age, especially with COVID, like when people are under a lot of stress, how they react to that stress is going to be different. And how we show up in the world and how we communicate to our consumer is going to be, you know, is going to be a challenge or it’s going to be something that we have to consider anyways.

And then the last one is speed. How fast should we move and how fast do we need to move? And so those six things, we looked at it and go, ‘OK, we’ve got to put everything in place.’ And so that was kind of our guiding principle, like our values is what we actually made decisions based on. These were just like, okay, what is the, you know, the six fundamentals we have to pay attention to as we determine what our next five days look like.

And so what we, what we looked at is. We looked at, you know, target audience, I talked about this behaviors. What are people gonna need, whether they, you know, and, and the last one was speed. You know, what are they going to need first? And so our first, you know, question was what is the behaviors that people, so when they, you know, socially distance themselves or create new routines, or the kids aren’t in school, it’s not fitness.

So Maslow’s hierarchy needs comes up first, right? Shelter, safety, health, you know, you know, all Maslow’s hierarchy needs are giving me the first, top, um, topic that they’re going to think about or top of mind a naturally, subconsciously, like it’s survival mode and you know, one of those main ones that people have to eat.

And so we thought that sleep, diet, then fitness are going to be the, in priority of what they’re going to look at. They’re going to need sleep to manage their stress. They’re gonna, you know, they have to eat. So their diet is, you know, is gonna change. It’s gonna be super important and fitness as much as we want to prioritize it, that will probably be, you know, third on the food chain. And so we, we said to ourselves, let’s launch nutritional coaching and, and health coaching, you know, and, and we were already 90% done of developing a platform with, with our boys at Precision Nutrition. So we, we quickly rushed to launch that because we are one already close to launching it. And two, we thought it was a priority. So that’s the first thing that we did. Um, the second thing we did is we create a working group of, of you know, literally building out our plan to deliver our, our personal training product in home. So the distribution model around that. So that was another working group.

Um, another, the third one was how do we keep our community connected? And so we use this, this platform called Facebook, which everybody you should be familiar with. And, uh, and we use that as a private Facebook community to, you know, create motivation and positivity and support. And we created a, um, you know, a group called the Beat The Bug Fitness Community, where everybody’s going to band together and beat the bug together.

Um, and so we did that. And then the last one was, uh, uh, we created, this was actually the first one. We, we created a, uh, uh, gift cards slash a top up package renewal options that we could go to our customer base and say, ‘Hey, you know, why? Like if you’re here to support local, you know, uh, feel free to buy gift cards, you name it so that we can get revenue in the doors.’

So those four things, you know, is when we looked at it, then we rolled it out after that. So, so.

Mike Gugat: [00:17:45] As you speak about promotion, you’re, you’re promoting immunity, right?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:17:50] Yeah.

Mike Gugat: [00:17:51] And, and with that promotion, you clearly, before COVID had a clientele as you described, that’d be great if you would describe that clientele. And then the followup question to that would be, you know, in many ways this presents an opportunity for those folks to be promoters beyond just word of mouth, I would assume.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:18:09] Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, um, yeah. In terms of the question, you know, our, our clientele, uh, executive CEO’s, business professionals, stay at home moms, stay at home dads, people that are looking to perform better or live longer in their life, um, and want to outsource their health to professionals like us.

That’s what they, that’s why they do, the world has come to a place where people, if you can afford it, like to outsource things because you know, we’ve never been more stressed and have had less time. And so what we do is we find that gardener, it’s not just about the accountant or the dentist or the, you know, the lawyer anymore. It’s about the gardener, it’s about the chef, it’s about cooking. It’s about, you know, whatever it might be. And fitness is one of them. And so we became a staple in a lot of people’s lives. You know, they would outsource their health to us. They came to us three days a week and we would, we would be essentially, they didn’t have to think about it. They would come to us, we would train them. And we were that lifestyle management solution. And so we, we kind of told ourselves that whether it’s COVID or not, why does that have to change? Obviously people are. Are worried about money, financial security, stability, items like that, but if anything, they shouldn’t give up.

They should probably give up the gardener before they give up their, their health. And so, you know, with us, we’re fortunate that a lot of our business comes from word of mouth cause everybody knows another person that probably either has similar interests, wants to perform better, wants to live longer, live in a certain geographical region that have the same level of affluence. And, uh, and now, you know, post COVID and now that we’re delivering this product in home to home, uh, which I can talk about. You know, we’re getting a lot of people that are, you know, shocked and surprised that they’re working with a trainer in their house. You know, it’s like, how is that possible? Because the fitness community and the wellness community, that average pivot or you know, how they adapted to this, I’m not gonna name any, any organizational names, but they didn’t. Right? There’s some large organizations in the fitness and wellness space that said, we don’t know what this looks like day to day. We don’t know what this looks like week to week. So all we’re going to do is we’re going to shut our doors and we’re going to stream, you know, live free content to keep our community in tact to give a solution.

Nothing wrong with that, right? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But you know, in order to…

Mike Gugat: [00:20:24] Until one of your Peloton instructors actually get sick.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:20:28] Right. Yup. Right. So that’s the thing. It’s, it’s, um, the reality is we looked at it kind of going on. At the end of the day, all the streaming services out there, whether it’s paid or free, whether it’s on YouTube Live, Facebook, Live, Instagram Live, you name it. A, It’s a bloodbath.

So there is so much noise in that, in that space. Right now, every independent trainer, every organization is providing some sort of free content that’s delivered to the home. But that existed before COVID. Right? There’s something called Beachbody Live. There is Insanity. There is P90X there is, you know, DVDs like, and our consumer had that choice to begin with. And so if they didn’t choose that to begin with, why did they choose us pre COVID anyways? It’s because it was the coaching, the accountability, the personalization, the face to face contact. So if they chose us for those reasons, before COVID. They would definitely choose that, that solution after. And so now what’s funny is that as much in physical you know, contact with people. We’re virtually in contact with people. And even that alone is for, from a mindset is, is really, you know, um, fulfilling. It’s fulfilling for people because they’re not just looking at their, their spouses or their kids or dealing with what’s at home. They’re interacting with someone that is also coaching them with, you know, around their health, you know, in their home.

And so. Anyways, long story short, we, you know, we did this pivot in five days and the one that took the most was, was the product that we delivered the most, which was, you know, 95% of our revenue, which was the personal training. Like how did we do that? I mean, launching gift cards, launching, you know, nutritional coaching there is some complexity to that. Launching a Facebook community, not that’s not that difficult in today’s world. Um, but launching our personal training, it was you know, it was, it was quite intense. So it’s, you know, it took a lot of work in a short period of time and, and we’ve been able to do it. So.

John peters: [00:22:25] Hey Curtis, maybe, um, maybe we’ll get you all out of here with one last question kind of looking forward. Um, I think this is on everyone’s mind and, and you know, I have to say, just as a side note, um serious. Kudos to you guys. I mean, you can hear the community and passionate bleed through. Your voice. And, uh, very similar to our last interview at George Foreman and Everybody Fights. I see a lot of similarities between both your brands and how you built your communities. And just to remind listeners, there is an ongoing lawsuit right now with Town Sports International who are still charging their gym, you know, their, their gym members. And so I think, I just want to reiterate how tough of a decision that had to have been, and I’m sure it’s going to reap large rewards down the road for you guys, but kind of going forward. you talked about psychology before we hopped on. How do you view this as people getting back in the gym when this is all over. Is there going to be a lag time? Is there going to be delays and and, and related the virtual fitness concept, both are going to be okay. Brick and mortar and virtual is gonna get to work together in the future, presumably, right?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:23:24] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a couple of great questions. So number one, this is, um, our behaviors are going to be forever changed. How we interact with people, how we consume things, how we, you know, everything like, you know, we thought 9/11 was impactful in the way we fly, the way the security, you know, and other other industries associate with, like that were impacted by 9/11.

This is impacting human behavior to a very high level and how we interact and how we behave and when we’re ready to, to, you know, socialize as an example. And it’s not going to be a V like our anticipation or my anticipation. It’s not like, Oh yeah, the health authorities say, yeah, you can open up for business and then there’s gonna be a lin out of the door. Like, everybody’s going to deal with this differently. And I think there’s gonna be some people that are gonna be ready to, to, to connect with, with other human beings. And there’s going to be a, you know, a leg for other people and understanding how they you know, what they want to do and how they interact with people.

And so there is going to be a lag. And that doesn’t even include the fact that there’s going to be some, you know, secondary and tertiary waves of COVID, right. Um, that it’s probably not going to be, you know, this is gonna, you know, swoop through and then we’re going to be, you know, uh, in the clear, It’s going to, there’s going to be secondary and tertiary waves that are going to come through that are going to impact us again.

Um, in terms of. In terms of overall, you know, the actual training service, you know, worst case scenario, we believe that this is a new revenue stream. And if I can give any, any business owner, you know, um, some perspective. I mean, people always told me that I had to have other revenue streams and I said, no, we don’t have to have other ways to generate revenue. I mean, we’re always going to be. Human beings are always going to interact with each other and, and uh, you know, that’s never going away. And when 98% of your revenues is delivered face to face and then you can’t do that anymore, um, it begs a question that I should have diversified earlier. That being said, we have now, and if you look at the solution that we have, how does it fit into our model?

Well, I’ll tell you certain ways. Number one, we have a community that travels and whether you live on the East coast, whether we live on the West coast. A lot of our clients go down to Palm Springs or Phoenix for two to three months. On the West coast and they’d go down to Florida on the East coast and they have secondary homes.

And so when they leave and they come off our schedule, we’re not servicing that client for two, three, four months. And so now they can stay connected with their trainer two or three days a week and, and stay connected to not only their trainer, but to their health and wellness while they’re on the road.

Same goes with corporate travel. Um, you know, no different than when someone’s traveling on the road. Now they can stay connected with our coach and stay connected with their, their fitness so that, that’s not put on the back burner. And then the other, you know, target audience is a great example as a stay at home moms.

You know, we’ve never gotten into the childcare model. Like we just, that wasn’t something that we wanted to play ball. Um, and so we didn’t, it takes up physical space. There’s complications with it. There’s a responsibility with it. And licensing with it. And so we said, Hey, you know, we’re never going to get into this space.

And we cut off the opportunity to service people that, you know, had young kids at home and now, you know, we can service people in their home where they might not have nannies or any kind of support network to, to let them, you know, get in, you know, get outside their home and come to a come to our workout.

So there is solutions. Um, I think it’s here to stay. I think that’s what’s great is that now we have different revenue streams. We can service our existing clients or service, you know, a complete new audience. And, uh, I’m excited by that. And then, yeah, go ahead.

John peters: [00:27:00] Oh, no, I was just going to say, it sounds like you’re a silver linings type of guy and, and uh, it, it’s going to be awesome to kind of see the, the reaction of, of your community. I’m sure there’s been positive outpouring support to date and, um, you know, we’d love to keep this discussion going, Curtis, and have you back on to kind of talk about, um, six months after COVID or four months or whenever that might be?

Curtis Christopherson: [00:27:21] For sure.

Mike Gugat: [00:27:22] I can’t, I can’t, I can’t wait to turn my kid into a 30 pound kettle bell.

Joel den Engelsen: [00:27:28] I have 115 pound lab I’ve been using the last couple of weeks. It’s fantastic. I think he’s tired of it, but I love it.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:27:34] Yeah, exactly.

John peters: [00:27:36] And I haven’t worked out at all, so there we go. But Hey, Curtis, CEO, founder of Innovative Fitness. Thank you so much for taking some time, man. I really, really appreciate it.

Curtis Christopherson: [00:27:44] A wesome. Well, thanks for having me.

John peters: [00:27:45] Absolutely.

Mike Gugat: [00:27:47] You can subscribe to this podcast and all major podcast platforms until next time, play harder. At least look good doing it.