Episode #529: The Growing Popularity of Salt Therapy in Health Clubs-Insights from Lisa Semerly

0:00 I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal partnership with The Prospect Wizard. And when I say wizard, I mean wizard. Obviously, you have a website. This allows you to convert voice mail. Immediately goes to you, your sales team, or anyone else in the club instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact a lead within 10 minutes, chance of them converting goes up 9 times that of the average. We got the Atlanta Clubs on it, Vida Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside, City Fitness Philly, College Park. Become one of the next halo companies to deploy the wizard. It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com. Get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy, Dave Gallon. He will get you all set up, and let the leads flow based on the wizard. Go get them.

1:03 This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have have the pleasure of bringing Lisa, chief revenue officer of halotherapy that we're going to bring into the mix here. Now the word halo actually comes from the Latin word of salt. So we are creating the halo sector, health, active, lifestyle, outdoor, and Lisa is focused on the salt side. So welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I have a past relationship, current relationship, and future relationship with Steve Spiro, the CEO of Global Halo Therapy. And, Lisa's up in Boston. She's sitting in her clear light, could be a higher dose, but it's not infrared sauna that has salt in it from Global Halo Therapy. So thank you for not only coming on the podcast, but actually being locationally relevant in your own workout recovery sauna. I try to practice what I preach. That's great. I'm sorry. We started a couple minutes late, but feel free to sweat as much as you want because we are on audio.

2:03 Okay. Fantastic. Give us your background on, on how you got to this awesome spot of helping people feel better and infusing salt therapy into their daily routines. So I started with a background in pharmaceutical sales, and I was a lead exec rep with Merck and Company for about 10 plus years in respiratory. From there, I took a buyout, decided to open my own medical spa and shift over into the wellness area, which I loved and never looked back from pharma, but it was nice having perspective both from, you know, pharmaceutical side and a more all natural wellness side.

2:46 It's from there. I own my facility for almost 5 years. I met Steve pretty much at the IRRRL at the onset, and that's how I was brought to Halo Therapy Solutions. I was a consultant and eventually, came on full time in sales and now work my way up to the chief revenue officer position. I've been with the company for about 10 years. Great. How much harder is it to sell products to doctors versus trying to sell workout recovery, solutions to health club operators or spas? Or is it about the same? No. I would say it's much easier to sell, wonderful wellness equipment to the private sector and the B2B sector. It's everybody's happy, they're excited to be talking to doctors, love doctors, but they have a certain arrogance, and they're bombarded with a lot of pharma reps at the time, and it was just harder to get headspace. If you look back 10 years ago and you start talking about helotherapy, 10 years ago, infrared saunas, LED technology, Where are we now today versus if that was, let's say, the 1st inning, of a of a baseball game, you know, versus the 9th inning? Where are we now? How much progress have we made, and how much are you still surprised when someone's like, oh, I never heard of that? I actually use that term where I'm like, how do you not know about Halo Therapy Solutions? But I can tell you, having gotten into the industry about a decade ago, a little bit more perhaps, with my respiratory

4:19 background. I was so excited, so drawn to salt. I talked about it all the time, and I can tell you one thing that hasn't changed. So when you're talking about salt therapy, people want it, but like you said, they don't always know what it is. Fast forward where we are today in this in this, you know, the evolution of Solv therapy, people understand a lot more, and then COVID hit, and it was like a tremendous accelerant for people's focus on respiratory health and overall immune health. So we have seen a tremendous uptick in in in the business. And, again, when you're talking about it, people want it, and they don't always know. And when they do, it it's a it's an easy sell.

4:59 So Gotcha. You know, we we spend most of our time, Dave and I, in Integrity Square focused on bricks and mortar health clubs, franchisors, franchisees, area developers. Some of the largest groups in the country, I am absolutely shocked that they don't have a salt cave in their fitness studio for people to go in pre and post workout because it really does, like, dries up your entire respiratory system. I mean, I used to do SoulCycle, you know, daily. And I went to a salt room one time before SoulCycle, and I literally, like, I I signed up for the next class because my my my respiratory system was, like, so, like, ready to go. I felt like it was, like, like, the cleanest engine in the world Yeah. For that day, and I woke up, you know, like, drooling the next day because I got such a good sleep afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So, like, I'm I'm shocked that, like, cycling students don't have, like, hey. Here's our, you know, our salt room, and here's, like, our NormaTec compression boots at the end, and, like, bookend me with a workout with workout pretty like a pre workout in in the in the cave salt cave, the workout, and then the post workout. So how has that kind of evolved into they the return on investment on this is, like, it's a no brainer. It is a no brainer. What so why why aren't people, like, jumping on this as quickly, or are you seeing, like, tea leaves of, like, hey. There's some spas that are really, like, moving this, and there's places that have opened that I'm, like, really excited about. Massively. We we started a pilot with Anytime Fitness this year. A second,

6:33 group from Anytime Fitness is is is you know, we just talked about, starting another pilot with them with the Halo Sauna. We're we're talking with all kinds of people. We have Equinox, World Gym, Thecovere. I mean, we are partnered with so many amazing fitnesses, gyms, and wellness. Woodhouse Day Spas are, you know, one of our top national Sure. Chains. Spavia is another one. So we're really I think we have the best partners in the industry bar none. And, it's the only way to address respiratory health in an all natural way. And like you said, what salt therapy does is it gets down into those small airways and draws out all that moisture, mucus, and impurity. It kills anything in the airway, and it helps with inflammation throughout the airway. So it's an all natural approach to healing. Started about 185, 185 years ago, but it's backed by about 50 years of science, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. So you hit that sweet spot for folks that are looking for an all natural approach to recovery and healing and respiratory health and skin health.

7:42 I could go on because salts medicinal, benefits are just tremendous, and then you add to it that it is a has a calming effect. Mhmm. And people just it's an aura cleanse and a grounding effect. So it has lots of different ways that it helps folks to improve, like, their whole well-being, and then more specifically, athletes with a better oxygen exchange and helping to strengthen that abdominal wall. And and then what we do so you mentioned salt rooms. We we sort of the industry moved away from salt rooms and caves, and really where it's at now is stacked modalities. So like the sauna that I'm in, we stack it with red light, we stack it with salt therapy, and of course, the infrared heat, maximizing the footprint, maximizing the return on investment for one of these facilities.

8:34 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're 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. This is real.

9:37 So one of the things that's kinda shocked me about workout recovery that already happens in, like, personal training or group training is that there's, like, a there's a routine and there's, like, a sequence to everything that goes on. You know, you take a soul cycle class. You know, there's certain amount of songs. There's a warm up. There's a weight exercise. There's a cool down, you know, so on and so forth. There's a stretch. Same thing with, like, yoga. You'd say, like, there's a progression, Pilates, so on and so forth. Have you seen groups out there that say, okay. You know, you can sit in the salt room right now that you're in that's also an infrared sauna. You can put an LED light on. Okay. Those are it's like a, you know, the trifecta of, like, return on time. However, you know, if I'm doing a certain amount of workouts and I'm trying to become, you know, training for for cycling or or or, you know, a 5 k or 10 k or whatever I'm training for. You know, you should really do, like, cold plunge in the morning. You should do, like, the infrared in the afternoon. You should do a salt room, like, every day.

10:36 You should do, you know, NormaTec, you know, before or after you work out. I feel like that there's, like, a lack of a prescription or people knowing, like, hey. Here's my education. Here's, like, what you should do and when you should do it. And if you actually do it in a different sequence, it doesn't work. I I feel like no one really has, like, clearly articulated to me, like, hey, man. If you do an infrared shot and then you do a cold plunge, like, you might as well have done nothing because it basically just Right. You know, like, eradicated, like, the benefit of both. I I don't even know the answer to that. I should. Right. I'm kind of embarrassed. Coal. Hey. Cut the cut the video. Cut the audio. Like, I don't know the answer to this. No. So so what's the answer to that? Like, why isn't somebody come out with that? Therapy is huge, and, you know, again, one of the, I guess, positive things that came out of COVID is people really being focused on their immune health and realizing that self care is essential, and they need to fortify their bodies, and they need to and then coupled with, like, gyms offering all this amazing, you know, training and and workouts and all this great equipment, but not really having a recovery arm, which does everybody a disservice because now they're prone to injury. They can't get back in the gym fast enough. Like you said, there's it's like a complete misunderstanding of how these modalities are best used or stacked.

11:59 So that is that's been a little bit of a a gap, and I think it's starting to close a little bit because people are recognizing that, you know, it's it's an important and essential piece of the workout program. So the World Halotherapy Association is, I'm the president of that association, and that's one of the things I'm I'm doing right now is all of this training on all the different modalities that exist, coupled with the the different ways that you would want to potentially use it based on the needs of the guest or the member. So a little shameless plug for the World Halo Therapy Association, which is still I mean, I I was gonna plug it for you. I was gonna plug it anyway.

12:42 So, like, if you wanna front run me, that's cool. I'm good with them. So so, you know, so as you look at you know, maybe without naming the actual client account, the thing that I think about sometimes is I'll go into a club or I'll go into a sauna, and they'll have, like, you know, one infrared sauna. They'll have, like, 2 NormaTecs. They'll have, you know, maybe, like, a really small salt room. When you go in or could you give us an example? Someone's like, hey. I went in there just to have them, like, set up, like, this really small workout recovery area just to, like, prime them on it, and get them used to it. But they actually came back, and now it's, like, x thousands of square feet. Can you give us an example of that? Or like where that's happened? Yeah. Where it's like you're like, hey. I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna try and have them, like, you know, like, kinda walk their way into recovery, and they're like, wow. Like, this is now, you know, 5,000 square feet, and it's got a salt room, and it's got this in it. It's got you know? And they kinda totally bought in to the whole recovery instead of just saying, like, yeah. I'm gonna take the small room, the sales room. I'm gonna, like, test this out. Yeah. So that's a good example. I mean, I don't have where because recovery doesn't require a massive amount of space necessarily if you have the right equipment. And so one of the huge benefits is is just being able to take a small, let's say, 40 by 48 inches, 4 foot by 4 foot space, and then stack or layer your infrared heat, which works on pain management, weight loss, muscle recovery,

14:13 lots of great things, cleaning out the cells, and then you also have your salt therapy, which, of course, is a complete detox of the skin and the lungs. You can add red light therapy. We have a halo red that has been tremendously popular. That's what we started with down in Florida with Anytime Fitness, is that halo red. It's a small footprint, and you don't even have to dedicate a room to it necessarily. So it's full red light immersion. It's patented, and you're getting so much recovery in the form of that small space. So I don't really have a great example of who has had an expansive sort of space taking in lots of equipment because, really, we have a sauna and we have a halo red, which is the red light in salt. We do do build outs in the form of salt caves. It's just not where the industry's going. The return on investment isn't as good. We do a lot with IV therapy groups as well, and they prefer a smaller buildout with, like, say, 2 to 4 loungers where they'll include, you know, sound therapy and then these these loungers, they do the drip. So people are really getting into this concept of layering these different modalities, in smaller spaces to to to maximize their return on investment and, and really recovery. So you don't need a lot of space for recovery. Well, I actually bought a couple of, halo pockets. So I've got the, the, self use, inhalotherapy machine. CBD salt that goes through? I got the CBD salt as well. Yeah. It was sent

15:45 that was sent under, under separate postage. Okay. Alright. And it was written down in hand, so I was like, I wanna make sure who sent this to me and then fact check that back. No. It's been highly regarded factory US based patented. It's amazing. We're the only company that offers the patented CBD salt, halo salt, halo CBD salt, and I can tell you I've tried it as well in both my sauna and my pocket. It feels like you just had a glass of wine. It it also has amazing benefits for respiratory and skin, and I think it's gonna be a game changer in terms of the, evolution of the salt therapy industry and and how we're keeping up with what's going on. CBD is a huge industry, and we've now patented, a a farm assault with the CBD.

16:32 Awesome. From from a standpoint of, how long you could stay in a salt cave per day, what what's the answer to that? So you can't really OD on salt, which is the good news, especially with our equipment because it's salt perfect technology. It's not an excessive amount of salt where you're, you know, ingesting some, and some of it's a systemically absorbed. Again, a salt cave, not as popular, but I'd say 45 minutes is a sort of a average. If you've got that smaller 2 to 4 lounger room or cave, 30 minutes is best. If you're in a halo red, full immersion red light and salt, 15 minutes. 15 minutes, $35, no labor. And like you said, who's not doing that all day every day? Exactly. Exactly. And and from a standpoint, just so people understand, like, the maintenance on this and, you know, you know, in between people using the sauna, You know, just talk about how quickly these, you know, like, the cycle time is on being bring people in and out. Yeah. So with the, with the halo red, which is the red light, full red light, patented red light immersion with salt, most powerful red light on the planet, 4 wavelengths of red. It's unbelievable, technology. 15 minutes, and there's no downtime in between. You can put 4 people an hour in.

17:49 So that's great. Minimal cleanup at the end of the day, you wipe it out. Boom. You're done. You put enough salt in in the generator for your for the entire day, 6 to 8 sessions, so it's very low maintenance. The sauna is a little bit more maintenance because, you know, people are gonna sweat a little bit. So we always recommend baking soda water solution with paper towels. The end of the session, maybe wipe the wood down. Again, leave the salt inside the environment. It continues to self clean. At the end of the day, you wipe the glass down, free from the salt, and and you're off, you know, you're off and running. So very little maintenance. Our generators are backed by a lifetime warranty. They're the most lifetime warranty. They're the most user friendly, virtually maintenance free, which is why our equipment is the gold standard. And, yeah. So that's it's very easy to offer. And and and some of the locations, I know you're just, you know, doing some beta tests with Anytime, and I know you've been in in resorts for a long time. Yep.

18:45 Have you starting to get have you gotten any or have, like, the operators that you're supplying on these beta tests gotten any feedback from the consumer? You know, like, my my my, review of, you know, doing a salt room and then soul cycle, you know, I just I felt like I was, like, 2 x the capacity Yeah. To to to have you seen things like that or, you know, some of these moments? You're like, wow. Look. I told now I did told you they would like it, but, like, there's here's some other things that have come out. So we get tremendous testimonials. Like, people are blown away. Like, it you're treating more chronic conditions, but people will go in an assault session, you know, whether it's a a booth or a room, and they just you know, it's not a magic bullet where you're gonna come out and you're gonna, like, all of a sudden feel transformed, but in some ways you do because you are, you know, as I said before, you have this sort of grounding effect and aura cleanse from salt. It it also is, for folks that have congestion, so they're breathing it in their upper airway.

19:47 It helps with those swollen nasal passages and you it liquefies that mucus. So they're they're starting to drain, they're breathing a little bit better, and they walk out feeling like, wow, that was crazy. I I'm I'm relaxed. I I can breathe better. And so we have those testimonials all the time. And then customers love it. Facility owners are making money with it very easily with minimal labor. So, I'm so passionate about salt therapy, and, honestly, it's to it's I I eat, sleep, and breathe salt, I mean, really every day and have for the past decade, and I can't say enough good things about it from having done it as a facility owner and also somebody who talks to people every day, and that's where my passion is. I wanna talk to people getting into the industry so that they understand why salt, you know, why halo therapy solutions, and why our equipment? And and so I'm very passionate about that because I can speak firsthand why it's amazing from a customer perspective and a facility owner. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.

20:57 We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose. Higher Dose dotcom. 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. 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 paid 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we are already the authority in workouts. Higher dose, check it out. There's 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.

22:04 I'm glad you came from the pharmaceutical industry, which definitely has, you know, very strong educational foundations on on training people that are out there advocating for their products and services, whether that's on a recurring basis or whether that's a one off. I think the medical industry has definitely proven that I need somebody who knows what they're talking about. I'm gonna arm them with clinical studies. I'm gonna arm them with, you know, everything except that documentary I I read on the Purdue Pharmaceuticals, everyone else sounded like they actually do their their job very well Yeah. On on educating the sales team properly and sending them properly. Having come from that background, you know, is there, like, is there, like, a quote that you have or a, like, a a way that you think or, you know, like a like a corporate sales hat that you kinda wore, but now it's, like, more of an entrepreneurial sales hat? Yeah. Or, like, you wake up every day and you're like, hey. I'm gonna do this. And you got, like, some, you know, mantra that you say if it's if it's appropriate or or some words of wisdom to people that start working with you. So I have a lot of mantras, and 90% of life is showing up as one of my favorites. And that really did come from this pharmaceutical days when we were required to make 8 calls a day, and you're dragging through your day, and you're like, oh my gosh.

23:19 The last thing I wanna do is go into that doctor's office and get beat up and go try to, you know, back down a gatekeeper, blah blah blah. And it was inevitable that I just showed up in that last call, and it always was one of my best calls, and it worked out really great. So I'm very competitive. I'm a d one athlete, former d one athlete. I've always had the mindset that you get out of life what you put into it, and I've that I I work when the work needs to be done. I that's probably my biggest, I don't know, like, what I need to improve on is is realizing that I have to, you know, sort of balance my life a little bit more because I love what I do, and I can do it 7 days a week if I'm not careful, which isn't good. But, no, I I think I another quote that I really love and it's one that I connect with, this year more than ever is success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. So what I would say to somebody who's getting into business ownership, it's not for the faint of heart. And you have to be disciplined, and you have to have the stomach for it.

24:29 And you have to what I would say to them, aspiring entrepreneurs, drown out the noise. When I started, I took a buyout from a Fortune 500 company. I I had a tenured position. My husband thought I was nutso, and I'm like, nope. I I gotta get I can't. I can't do this anymore. I I'm I'm pivoting. I'm doing this. I have a passion for this. I never looked back. I've never been happier, but the amount of noise that I had to tune out, self doubt, which you're plagued with when you're thinking of giving up one career and moving into another. So my biggest advice would be believe in yourself, tune out the noise, and put one foot in front of the other and just make it happen. Well, I'd say welcome to the halo sector. Feel free to use the word halo, but obviously you use that, like, a 100 times a day. So we love that you guy what you guys are doing. We've been early advocates of of, global halo therapy. Good friends are Steve. He actually went to my summer camp. Granted, it was, like, probably 10, 15 years earlier than me. So, we became fast friends, and we're trying to get, as much workout recovery, you know, into the mainstream as possible. So thank you for your reference. Thanks for leaving your cushy job, and, thanks for waving me, the Halo flag. Whether it's for Halo SECUR or Halo therapy, just keep waving.

25:43 I appreciate you, Pete. It was awesome being with you today. Good to see you. Take care. See you soon. Thank you.