Episode #517: Chris Craytor on Innovative Strategies for Health Club Growth and Member Retention

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1:03 This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC on location, IHRSA 2024, to be known in the future as the Health and Fitness Association. I have been able to get Chris Craeder for 30 minutes. He will be here uninterrupted. He is the chairman of the IHRSA board. A lot of street cred for that and everything we've done to get through the pandemic. We're gonna talk about Ursa. We're gonna talk about ACAC clubs, acquisition strategy. And we're gonna then talk about Weld, which is a software platform you need to know because it's probably your easiest and best revenue stream that you are not optimizing. So, Chris, welcome to your first halo talks. Maybe we'll do this annually. Thanks for having me, Pete. Glad to be here. Awesome. So, look. During the pandemic, everyone's like, Ursa's not doing enough.

1:48 Ursa's not doing enough. I was like, dude, we haven't funded Ursa to do what we need to do. So let's actually try and fund it properly and get the right people on the boat, and then you could actually make change. You can't just, like, flip a switch and say I gotta run a trade show and research it down. It's supposed to be, like, your $50,000,000 lobbyist group also. So talk about when you got involved, some of the things that you, like, had to address head on, and then, like, how we got to here. Sure. I I came on the Ursa board in 2018. So at the time, it was primarily a trade show company. You know, the vast majority of Ursa's revenue, still is, trade show. And now officially known as the Health and Fitness Association after the rebrand this week. Great I think it'll be good. I think we were a smaller, trade trade association. We're not very well known in public policy realms, certainly in DC. And you compared us to other bigger trade associations, we were not swinging at the appropriate weight. Right. You know, they had bigger budgets. They were they were writing bigger checks and so on. And most of our industry was kinda blind to why advocacy was important and why being in front of your congressional leaders was important. So 2020 hits, and everyone's really upset because we got shut down. We weren't essential. Mhmm. And now that we're not essential, everyone's wondering why haven't we done enough? Yeah. Yeah. Getting anyone to to cough up even a $100 for advocacy purposes was, met with a lot of, noes. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was a real challenge. When I came on the board, it was very difficult to raise money for advocacy. Now, fast forward to today, is IRSA with Liz Clark as the CEO and making that hire strategically Yep.

3:17 To really point us towards advocacy as a critical pillar along with education and along with research as the three things that IRSA, now Health and Fitness Association, is gonna be doing. Yes. And that switch happened because of the pandemic. I think many more club operators are aware of how important this is. And as we move forward, there's going to be increased effort to get into state houses because state level advocacy is where a lot of bills are, introduced and a lot of battles are won and lost. So I think getting more club owners involved and aware was a great byproduct of the pandemic, but we're still not where we need to be. Is that, you know, with Kevin McHugh and doing his, like, his team team 435 Mhmm. Is that kinda under the auspices of of Ursa as, like, a as a kinda sub, you know, guerilla marketing group, or is it completely separate? It's actually part of IRSA. So Yeah. Okay. The National Health and Fitness Alliance is the, advocacy group for IRSA that's, based on based here in the US and for US advocacy. Yep. There's obviously the Global Health and Fitness Alliance, which does this on a on a global scale. But on the NHFA, the Project 435, to have a club captain in each of the 435 congressional districts, was really around making sure that we had local constituents who were advocating for our industry across the country. Every congressional district has a health club, so why shouldn't every congressional dis district have an advocate for health clubs to their elected official? Yeah.

4:39 Sure. You know, one one of the things that kinda struck me is, when I got involved in the, the National Health Fitness Association that, you know, sub subcategory, committee a couple years ago, I was kinda shocked that everyone did just say, like, let's add a dollar to every, you know, take a dollar of everyone's, like, $400 membership. Go through ABC. You know, Daxko, we'll just collect it. We'll give it to, and there's 60,000,000 members. Bam. You got $60,000,000. And I was like, I don't wanna charge another dollar to my members, or I don't wanna share that dollar. And, also, I was I was I was kinda convinced that if we just said to a member all of our members say, like, hey. Click here and, like, send money to the Ursa pack or the HFA. I feel like they would do it. It's like, is there a reason why we're not, like, hitting up consumers? During the during the pandemic, as an aside, I listened to a podcast series about the, National Rifle Association. And I was just, like, shocked that, like, they have all these members that pay an average of, like, $40 consumers a year, and they got, like, a $100,000,000 budget. And they just you know, they they make shit happen. Not anymore, but, like, I feel like we have the power to do that. Do you see us, like, going downstream and actually having members participate in this? Or is that, like, maybe, like, 3 steps ahead and, like, hey. Let's just get everyone in here and see both? Yeah. It was it was really challenging in a couple of ways there. 1, getting everyone to agree on what to do Mhmm. Was really chall really tough. I mean, everyone has their own perspective on how they wanna handle it. Yeah. Additionally, everyone had their own legislative priorities. Like, Like, what's important to a big, large national club chain may be different than what's important to a smaller local regional operator or HVLP versus studios

6:12 and on and on. So getting everyone to kind of agree on the priorities. Because with a group like the NRA as an example, everyone can understand what they're about and what they stand for. For fitness, we had lacked a focus Yeah. In that true north star that would get people attached to this is what we're doing. You know, if I go to the grocery store and check out, you know, I can add $3 to my bill or whatever for Right. Right. Or you get, like, a like, a red nose or something that's yes for a dollar. You know? Exactly. And that's 1,000,000 of dollars of, like, you know, donations that we made. Absolutely. But it's it's very clear what that charity is about and what it does. Yeah. Triple And so I think for us at, Health and Fitness Association now, it's going to be about how do we create that singularity of purpose that everyone can get behind. Right. And we're working on the strategic vision now for the organization, which should help. So if we have better alignment, I think that door could be open. Yeah. We have 70,000,000 members. Right. You know, we have massive part of this whole country that is engaged in some way with our business. So we're punching way below our weight in terms of our ability to make an impact. Yeah. And and not that not that, you know, Ursula or the HFA or whatever have, like, a voting block. Right? Whenever we have, like, say, we're gonna vote for this candidate. But, I was talking to Greta yesterday, you know, from Chelsea Piers who's been on the board for a long time. And I say, like, probably 65 to of the 70,000,000 people actually vote. Right? Because you've got active people that actually give a shit about themselves, give a shit about their communities, and and that that's somebody that has a say. I'm not telling them which whether it's democrat, republican, independent, whatever, but it's gotta be certain things. And I was watching CNBC the other day, and I was like, there's people that came out of the voting

7:43 booth on Tuesday, and they said, I'm a single issue cat voter. I'm a single issue voter. Like, there are probably a lot of people in the fitness industry like, I want more parks. I want more bike lanes. Want my health club to be tax free. I want all my shit that I buy to protect myself to be tax free. And, like, they might vote on that platform. You know? And and and and a candidate should say, like, I'm for the HFA or I'm against the HFA. And if you get to HFA, like, you're against, like, longevity, health. You're you're against, like, everything that, like, we know scientifically is is is is a way to to live your life. Yeah. It's been pretty crazy to watch this because, you know, politicians, clearly logic doesn't dictate what they do. Right. Right? So Money does, unfortunately. Even though we think we're in a democracy, we would've paid for play democracy. Yes. We are. And so when you look at, even our the FIT Act, which has been around for a while, getting HSA and FSA dollars to pay for health club memberships. Yep. Passed in 2018, and we haven't been able to get get it that far since. And why is that? Well, because everyone's like, well, HSA, FSA, some people think it's only for people who have a lot of money. Other people think it's for already healthy people. It's not hitting the population. It's gonna cost too much money and all this. Whereas we can put on our just logical hat and say, wait a minute. If more people are getting healthier, that's probably a good thing for society and has good economic value. That doesn't play into how DC makes decisions, unfortunately.

9:04 This is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from retailers that allow you to incentivize your members without having to do 0 down and 1 month free or giving away shakes or giving away t shirts. What you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal. There's something called rewards vault. The rewards vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions. You are gonna get those answers. You're gonna be able to target those members, and you're gonna reward them inside your club, inside your spa, and outside of the club, and outside of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues, and to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me.

10:03 This is real. I'm shocked that there still needs to be, like, clinical studies done. Someone's like was mentioning another podcast. Oh, yeah. There's this clinical study on, like, exercise that helps you do x y z. I'm like, dude, it helps you do everything. Like, why do we still do clinical studies? Like, we know the answer to all this shit. Yeah. It's just yes. Driving me fucking crazy. Yeah. Anyway alright. So let's pivot over to, you know, where where you started on at at ACAC. Talk about that club footprint, you know, how you guys are kinda leaning into more on science and and medical than the average health club. And, let's talk about some of the growth opportunities, you know, as you run that that side of your, you know, trifecta, I'll call it. Oh, yeah. I mean, ACAC Fitness and Wellness, it's a club company founded in 1984. Been around a long time. I've been there for 20 years. Been the CEO for part of that time, not the whole time. And we're based in the mid Atlantic states. Charlottesville, Virginia's home. And, you know, our club has always been about trying to get people into the club who typically were not part of the club marketing strategy. You know, when ACAC was founded, all the gym ads had really buff people, really strong people, very much, ideal body types and so on. Yes. And so the idea was could you craft a club from the ground up that made everyone feel comfortable? That was more of a community, center than it was necessarily a health club. And so this idea of getting everybody to come in who normally wouldn't has really been the foundational kind of aspect of our business. And that related to medical. So when you think about the medical side, you have a lot of folks coming out of their doctor's office who are being told you should exercise more.

11:34 Probably most people. But there wasn't that really easy way to say, well, what should I do? What's the answer to that question? The doctor might say, oh, you should walk more outside, or do you like gardening, or whatever. You know? So we developed programs for physician referral, and this was 20 years ago. And we were pre pandemic doing, you know, 7,000 referrals every every year, turning those into thousands of paying memberships every year. So it's a great membership pipeline, a great lead generation tool, but at the same time, having positive outcomes on people who needed to start exercising. So putting all that together, we really started, you know, diving into medical. We started doing more we we became a Medicare, certified, diabetes prevention program supplier, so we actually built Medicare for that. We developed a lot of relationships in our local communities with doctors and hospitals. We co own a, 6 location physical therapy clinic, group with a local hospital. We have, done, medical programs for our corporate partners, on and on and on. Because our thought process is really that if we can change someone's life and make a positive impact, we're gonna have a higher chance of keeping that member for a longer period of time Sure. Because we made a difference in their Just so people obviously are not gonna see images of the club, but give an analogy of what the club looks like. Does it look like a lifetime fitness? Does it look like a big club? Give me some analogies. Yeah.

12:48 Those are good comparisons. I'll take either one. Alright. You know, we we tend to run larger format clubs. So, we operate at the higher end of our market. We're not an elite club, you know, so we're maybe, you know, a little bit less than some of the clubs you mentioned in terms of price point. Yep. So we do wanna be a little bit more accessible. But we obviously wanna have a first class, 1st class club with equipment being cleaned. You know, again, at a price point that is kind of above what I call the HVLP or middle market that's kind of in the accessible more accessible luxury category. What what are some of the amenities that are in each one of the clubs? Sure. Like, our our larger clubs are gonna have, indoor and outdoor aquatics, spa, summer camp, childcare, obviously functional training, 5 group exercise studios, on and on and on.

13:32 So really, racket sports, as well. So we have a pretty broad section, of club offerings. Got it. And when you take a look at, onboarding someone from a 7,000 referrals that come through. A lot of clubs have tried to do this, but they either just don't you know, they might play zone instead of man to man. It's like, hey. Somebody comes in. I gotta get them in front of, like, either a nutritionist or personal trainer. Like, how do you guys define who that, like, entry point person is? What does that look like? Because obviously, there's a a significant amount of cost versus, you know, some things that are, like, revenue shares or having somebody in there. So and second part of that question is, what does it take for somebody that's not a a high end club to pull this off? Yeah. It's a great question. Obviously, finding the right people to run any program is crucial Yeah. In any business. I think we have hired, folks either with health care backgrounds. In some cases, we've had nurses in the clubs. In most of our larger clubs, we employ nurses even on a part time basis to help administer the programs.

14:34 Believe it or not, there are a lot of nurses that are burned out on being nurses in a hospital. And so, you know, coming to our environment is a, you know, a nice a nice change of pace. We've also been able when they onboard, you know, most clubs offer onboarding personal training sessions. Most clubs offer some kind of goal setting. It's no different than that. You know, you're really assigning someone to find out what the member's needs are and run them through a program. The the big differences are in that initial goal setting, you're talking about health history. You're talking about limitations. You're talking about, you know, what brought them in in the 1st place? What are their fears, about coming to a club? And so on. So it is a little bit of different interview process. We do do assessments. So we wanna mark on the 1st day of the program and the last day of the program how do they feel Yeah. About themselves, about their energy level, and so on.

15:21 But also what kind of impact potentially have they made on their biomechanics or their demographic information, like, did you lose weight? Did you your blood pressure go down, etcetera. Yeah. So The the one thing I and I've been saying this phrase that I got on the back of my jacket here. You know, you can't have artificial intelligence until you have intelligence. Mhmm. So it sounds like this entry point is basically like filling in real data of, like, what are the triggers? Like, diagnose this person. And then who do you who's your software provider? Club Automation. Club Automation. So it's something Club Automation can say, hey. I could layer AI on top of your, on top of your eye, where a lot of clubs are like, yeah. I got the birthday, and I got the credit card. You know? Like, you don't really know your member, and then the 300 members leave, and you're like, oh, you know, we lost 300. It's like, nobody played man to man on any of those people. Like Yeah. They'll hold them accountable.

16:08 Where do you see the medical side of this going now that you have all this data and you're gonna get more and more in your deep? We're gonna talk about well in a second, but, like, you know what the you're in a unique position right now as an individual as well as, like, a company knowledge of, like, what these companies like Optum and and Tivity and Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Like, you know what they're looking for, and then you know that they're at some point, they're gonna reimburse most or all or more of this. So how are you kinda, like, pulling in information and results and, what what'd you call it? What what is part of the results? Your Outcomes.

16:49 Outcomes. Thank you. Thank you. Outcomes. That's the word I was looking for. Very good. We should be on that that show, like $100,000 Pyramid together. That show. I'm turning that around. I love that thing. So outcomes. I feel like you're like a couple like, you've you know what's around the corner. And and so how are you thinking about, like, packaging it up and, like, having that knowledge base of, like, this is where it's going. I'm actually, like, skating to where the park's going. Yeah. It's really interesting. You know? One thing that someone told me a while back was you can spend 1,000,000,000 of dollars trying to change health care, and it's still gonna change when it wants to. Right. Right. You know? So, you know, this industry has been waiting for preventative health care to get covered for a long time. So what we're seeing out there is programs and services being covered by payers that typically haven't been from those types of groups that are typically not losing their customers. So from a purely health insurance perspective, I'm talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and some of the retiree health plans, where this is health insurance you don't lose. So these folks are starting to cover prevention.

17:45 You're starting to see some inroads in those areas. And why is that? Well, because I have a model in those insurance plans, or they have a model rather, where, gosh, I want you as healthy as long as I can possibly get you healthy Sure. Sure. As long as you're on my plan. Yeah. Whereas if you go to a a health care from your employer, you might switch every 2 years. So why would why because they're changing their health plans Exactly. Based on cost. Exactly. So then why would a health plan cover prevention so the next guy gets the benefit? Interesting. And so then they keep but they don't realize that they might get that person back in 4 years when they rebid on it. So You know what's interesting about that is just an is analogy and, like, you know, sidecar conversation. A lot of the software companies in this space, when you do a renewal, they're saying, like, if you're on a SaaS play with us at at ABC, it's a 5 year agreement. Because I'm not gonna deal with you, like, switching, and I gotta move your data back and forth. Like, I'm either your partner or you're not my you're not my my client. You know? That may be one of the answers to, like, this whole health plan thing, but then they the the corporation is gonna be like, well, then they hold them hostage for 5 years versus, like, getting their return on outcomes.

18:48 Well, it's so tough because thinking about that out loud here with you. They well, they wanna evaluate their claims on a on a annual basis. So Yeah. They're looking and say, hey. Did you lose me money? Okay. I gotta reprice it. Right. Right. And a lot of these health plans will buy down year 1, and then they charge you more year 2 knowing the switching costs are such that, you know, if they're close, they're in the game, they're gonna be okay. It is a challenge though. We we actually by the way, sidebar. We bid a, for our property and casualty insurance. We signed a 3 year agreement where it was a fixed price in the fall of 2019. So for 2020, 2021, and 2022, we had no increases whatsoever to our our property and casualty, which ended up saving us a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think LA Fitness actually sued their property and casualty insurance company because they said 1200 of their employees got COVID. Therefore, COVID was on the equipment. Therefore, that's a property claim, and they got fucking paid for it. Really? Yeah. It was unique. And they also went back to all the landlords and says, like, I don't have quite enjoyment of my location, so you have to reimburse me the rent. Oh my gosh. That's like 8 pound £800 gorilla talk. I love that. Doing that. Got it. For sure. Yeah. So, on the ACAC AC AC side before we move on, give me, like, specific states. You know, sometimes people like to say, hey. I'm gonna bounce to different cities. I can get on a southwest flight wherever I want, or I'm gonna basically build this in, like, concentric circles. So if if someone's an operator right now thinks that ACAC is potentially good home for their business and a good rebrand and has some of the things that we're talking about here on the amenity side, what states would you say or what areas of the country do you wanna be in the next 36 months? Sure. That's a good question. I think we

20:21 look for clubs that well, first of all, we're in the Mid Atlantic. So we're in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. You know, we typically go to markets that are maybe not quite the biggest market. You know? We're we're not trying to go to Washington DC, for example, and compete very competitive. A lot of good clubs up there. But kind of the mid midsize markets, we look for clubs that have a wide amenity set. You know, we love offering all those things that I told you about earlier, whether it's tennis or pools or spa, you name it. And anything we can basically make a long day's drive and get to Okay. You know, is gonna be primary. But we would still look outside of that for the right opportunity. You know, great clubs are hard to find. And I think you know this. I think everyone in the industry knows this. We're not building any more of them. So when you can find a great club that that potentially is looking for a transition, that has a compelling either real estate position, when we don't mind owning real estate also. In fact, we like it. We own a lot of it. Yeah. Sure. And a market that has a, you know, nice competitive landscape? Absolutely. You know, I think we you know, what we probably won't do is find clubs, you know, which probably not in our wheelhouse as much as clubs that are going to be, you know, what I would say kind of outside of our typical operating model, you know, because I think those would be harder for us to transition into what we do.

21:36 Sure. Sure. And when you say just to make a point here, you said, we're not building any more clubs. Because I feel like a lot of groups are coming to me right now and just saying, look. If I could buy something at a reasonable price, it it's a better return on investment than actually the the ramp up, the building, the permitting, getting it actually constructed. Is your comment related to the cost and the timing timeline? Absolutely. So if you look at what clubs are even built being built in the US, right, the ones that would kinda fit our model Yeah. Right, these larger multipurpose type clubs, who's building them? When's the last time you heard of somebody deciding just to build on their own? Only only municipalities that have some endgame that just trying to, like, lure some professional sports teams or, like, there's some there's some underlying sports complex that's addressing either youth market or addressing trying to pull in, like, some professional Right. Leagues in some capacity, I think, is the answer to that. I mean, if you look at this, right, who's growing? Private equity backed groups. Right? Where they're they're they have money behind them. That's a different kind of capital. Publicly traded groups, I mean, your lifetime can is building these bigger bigger clubs, obviously. Build 10 of them a year or whatever.

22:43 But and then franchise operators. Right? So franchises are continuing to grow. You still see some of those, but some of that's even slowed in the last couple years. So, you know, if you look at the pace of new club construction, it is not that fast right now. You have high construction costs, high interest rates. So if you're gonna go into a market and say, I wanna build a 100,000 square foot, multipurpose fitness tennis type club, unless you're charging a lot of money, it's gonna take you a long time to get that money back. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose, higher dose dot com. They are the leader in workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers, and other products such as PMF mats and sauna blankets.

23:37 If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, your time and your stop is now. You gotta get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market, having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for $200 per month where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we are already an authority in workouts. Higher dose, check it out, is a wholesale code, and we look forward to helping you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members. And, hey, let's get people happy, healthy, and sweating, and the recovery should be just as good as the workout.

24:25 Well, we we got a couple of minutes left here. So let's talk about, weld. And, you know, you and I have been, friends for a while, so I I've seen the growth of it. I've seen the final, like, the kinda, like, the tidal wave of, like, it kinda finally, like, hit the inflection point where, you know, when I say wealth to somebody, they don't ask me what it is. Right? They just tell me, like, I'm evaluating it at this point or they're they're already on the system. So talk about, you know, for a club that doesn't know about Weld, why they should know about it, what you guys do, how easy the implementation is, and I'll ask a couple more questions. Absolutely. So Weld Health is a software platform that connects health clubs and other retail settings to health care payers. So on one side of the business, we have the longer term medical programs like diabetes prevention, cancer programs, and the like. We do a lot of that work with YMCAs, medical centers, and that type of thing. We've been doing that for a long time, since about 2017.

25:15 What's really grown rapidly in the last 3 3 or so years has been our ability to process check ins for 3rd party reimbursed programs. So think those offered by, insurance based programs like Optimtivity, ASH, FitOn. And then now moving into some of the corporate programs where you have the likes of Gympass and Xiamo and ClassPass, FitOn also, Husk or Global Fit, all those operating in that space. You know, the reason why that's really taken off is that, number 1, those types of memberships have taken off. They're growing twice as fast as regular club memberships. So from 2010 to 2024, members have grown about 3% a year, roughly. Right? These are IRSA stats.

25:57 Health and Fitness Association stats. Anyway, so, right now, you have about 8% growth rate in the insurance based programs. So you're seeing a lot of growth happen there. You're seeing a lot of clubs doing it well. The problem is this isn't a set it and forget it. So you have to find out if they're eligible. You gotta put them in your member management system. You have to train your front staff. You've gotta submit your visits. You've then gotta hope it reconciles. And then you gotta figure out how to fix everybody. Yeah. Yeah. And then how do I turn somebody off in my member management system once they're ineligible? So there's all these steps that are involved in the process. And at scale, it's a problem. If you're a single club and you see 10 of these folks a week, you know, it's it's a little easier to manage. Or maybe 10 a month, something like that. But if you're a bigger club and you have potentially tens or 100 of thousands of these members who are part of your system, it can get kinda scary kinda fast because you're talking big dollars and big revenue. And what do you think? Well, I I think you know the answer to this, like, actually quantitatively. But if you give for example and say, like, hey. You were getting, a $100,000 from, from your Medicare Advantage client visits through whatever portals that you work through. Yep. And then you overlay Weld. Like, what is the differential between that 100 and what, like, they've lost in something? They even lost in, like, they should've let that person in. The revenue, for some reason, didn't show up. There was a data ish like Yeah. What's the magnitude? I got a 100,000. What what would I get on Weld on average?

27:23 Or, like Yeah. It's a good question. So, there's a wide range of the types of errors that come through. So we've seen a lot of clients are typically in that, you know, low low single digits, maybe up to 10% of rejection rates or bad data. Okay. And then you might have a member file that's, like, half bad. I mean, you could get thousands of bad members in your database that shouldn't be there. Right? So, Weld, we clean up your database, and then we go through and try to process a clean set of visits. So to give you an example, I was talk talking to a large customer here at the show. I asked them, I said, hey. Well, you know, what's your typical this is a potential customer. I said, what's your typical rejection rate? It's at about 5%. Right? So if you looked at it on a $100,000, right, assuming it's $5,000. Right?

28:05 Makes sense. Let's go straight to your bottom line. Right? It's the cost associated with that. For Wealth Health, you know, our large one of our larger clients, we got the rejection rate down to 0.12%. Wow. So when you're talking about the scale of that, you know, by keep but it just puts more dollars back in the pockets of the club, and there's better certainty that you're getting paid for those who who are coming in and using your facility. Got it. And and just so people understand the magnitude of without naming names, like, what are what are some of the size checks that are going to either an individual operator or, like, a 10 club chain from Medicare Advantage Programs? Oh, I mean, I'll talk to you about my clubs. Right? So we have ACAC I was gonna do an invisible NDA right now. Yeah. It's fair. It's fine.

28:47 But, you know, so for ACAC, it's in, you know, north of 50,000, you know, plus in these a month that are coming through, which is which is good. I mean, for, yeah. And for for some, though, the larger chains, it could be 1,000,000 of dollars every single month coming through on these programs. So you have about, in our industry, 2,000,000,000 plus of revenue being driven by these programs and growing. I don't think anybody realizes when you do the math on how much opportunity there is. And I was saying to a couple of groups the other day when I was doing a, like, business optimization playbook. I'm like, look. You know where these people live. Okay? They're they're on assisted living facility. Right? They your your the counterparties might actually tell you where they are and give you, like, a scatter chart. Go pick them up, dude. Like, send them an Uber, dude.

29:31 Like, you actually go in and just have to go, like, a mile to pick up money. Yeah. And it actually change the results of your community. Just go pick them up. It's it is amazing. I mean, you have, you have a lot of these programs that are everywhere. So I had a friend of mine who's running clubs, and he was debating whether or not to put them in or or or take them out and or these programs. He said, look, all your competitors are offering these things, so you can decide if you don't want this business or you do. Now, obviously, every program is different. They're not all right for every model. But for Weld, the idea is let's streamline this thing. Let's make the clubs as much money as possible. I'm a club owner too. Yeah. And at the same time, for the insurance payers, they're excited because there's fewer issues. There's fewer phone calls. Their back office gets less. So Yeah. Really, you're creating a win win win up and down the system, and that's and that's what we're trying to achieve.

30:14 Like, back in the day I mean, I'm in this industry now since 2000. 1999, you've been in it for 2004. Yeah. So I think it used to be where if you had a SilverSneakers, there was only one club. It was, like, exclusive to, like, little micro territories. Right? So now everyone has the opportunity. It's not exclusive anymore. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in this. And the one question the follow-up question before we end is, like, who manages who's the best person internally of a club chain to actually be to manage their Well to Health relationship? And who's the one that should be thinking about how do we market to the Medicare Advantage community and actually find out where they live and pick them up and do, like, we're doing stretching, we're doing bagels, and we're doing coffee.

30:55 Okay? And I know that, like, the math works for me on the bagels and coffee Yeah. That I'm gonna pick up $300, you know, an hour. So who's is it is there somebody who has a title or should have a title inside of a health club chain that you're like, that's the person that needs to manage it? Because I feel like sometimes people get lost in the wrong department. Sure. You know? So number 1, on a bigger club chains, you obviously have, you know, bigger resources. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know? But, you know, for somebody, like, again, like for ACAC, right, we have somebody who is dedicated to customer retention, and that's the person who manages this program. Right? Who it should be, customer retention. Whoever's in charge of your retention efforts a lot of times goes into this because they're gonna have an understanding of how to work with your member database, who these people are. You know, they're not gonna be necessarily technology afraid.

31:37 Right? What I don't wanna do is put more and more burden on, say, a general manager, for example, a manager like this. And is there, like, a chief revenue officer in some of these places that are like, hey. Like, we gotta actually, like, put the pedal down on this because we're not we haven't they don't even wanna think about. The chief revenue officer is gonna like us. Right? Because we have more money coming in. But what we find is those people who are actually doing the accounting really love us because now their job just got a lot easier. Instead of having to chase down stuff in 10 different portals and go through a bunch of spreadsheets and submit it on their own, we're automating a lot of those items so they can really focus on That's great. On their job. Awesome. I mean, this is a great example of you had a frustration. You figured out that I there's nothing out there. I gotta figure out how to solve my own frustration. And once I solve my own frustration, then that becomes a business. Absolutely. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs don't throw stuff together that you think there's an opportunity until, like, you have a personal frustration or business frustration. You figure out how to solve it, and then that that turns into a business model. And then try and figure out what the special sauce is of the model, how to price it. Right. So great to have you on, man. Good talking to you. We've been talking a lot lately, so I'm glad that we became friends. I wanna first say thank you for your service because we needed leadership here, and and you provided that steady hand.

32:50 Getting Liz whatever role you had in approving that or convincing her, awesome hire. I think a lot of people who have leadership position don't get credit for the hires they make, so thank you for that. And, look, managing like a 3 stool, you know, platform with ACAC, IRSA, Ursa, and, and well that I've seen the growth of all 3 of them. So congrats on that. I hope you get a little bit of time to, you know, work out, hang out with your family, and, you know, watch some football. So thanks for that, and, you know, definitely get in touch with Chris. He's very accessible. Get on these platforms. They're they're powerful on the wealth side. And, hit me up if you want to, become an ACAC. And, you know, you could go on to your, post retirement plan. Love it. Hey. Thanks for having me on. Alright, man. Good to see you. Cheers. Awesome.