Episode #536: Marco Ferdinandi's Journey-From Asia to America with AQ Strong & Exxentric

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 call, text, or leave a voice mail. Immediately goes to you, your sales team, or anyone else in the club. Instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact the lead within ten minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine times that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs on it, Vida Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside, City Fitness Philly, College Park.

0:43 Become one of the next halo companies to deploy the wizard. It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com. Get a free thirty 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. This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of bringing Marco from Parts Unknown, Space, Hong Kong, and Jersey City. We are gonna talk about flywheel training. We're gonna talk about AQ Strong, and we're gonna talk about the future of fitness. So, Marco, welcome to your first Halo Talks. Be really excited to be a guest here today. Awesome. Thanks for growing out the mustache for the show. We really appreciate that. We know it probably was a lot of work.

1:28 Every day. Awesome. So, look, you've got a, a pretty, storied career here, going back, and you've known Ganelon for a long time with, with with kettlebell concepts Yeah. Into Velocity Sports, on the, on the Upper East Side back in the day. So give everybody a little bit of your background, and then we'll, we'll rift to current events. Yeah. I've been involved in, fitness industry, athleticism for a long time. Not myself the greatest athlete, but that's part of what spurs my passion is that I'm always trying to learn how to be better and be a competitor in some way. So I have a background in strength and conditioning, graduated from Rutgers, in New Jersey and started out as a strength and conditioning coach there, but very quickly went into a variety of fields. Worked on a cruise ship for a little while, went into commercial fitness, worked in a performance center in New York. It's still there, Velocity Sports Performance. Moved to Asia in 02/2010 with a company called Pure Fitness and, started my own brand in 2019 called AQ Strong, and that's what I've been doing the last few years. So so what prompted you to to to go to Asia? And, how is the pandemic, starting a new business in a foreign country? Well, I don't wanna go through that again. That's for sure. I'm sure nobody else does either. I really enjoyed it. I loved moving to Hong Kong. I moved there in 02/2010. Pure is a brand that's very similar to, I would say, Equinox in The US. It's a a premium lifestyle brand. At the time, we had a great leadership team, and my role was to basically build a personal training and fitness, services and product. And, we were able to do

3:01 some really innovative things. We we grew our client penetration from 8% up to above 20% in a matter of four years, so we just crushed it. And we were in a in in a great market to do it at the time. So we had a lot of fun there. We did some really innovative things, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai. But at some point, I saw that there was a gap in the market just for, you know, athleticism in general. And where the industry was going, we wanted to leverage this idea of athletic wellness. So we started AQ Strong with that purpose in Hong Kong. What is it? What's the AQ stand for? Athletic quotient, which is basically our our formula of what people need for lifespan, health span, and longevity, which is coordination, mobility, strength, power, speed, and, conditioning. Yeah.

3:48 So not necessarily anything magic there. It's how you put those ingredients together. So so given that you were out in Hong Kong, kinda understood the market by working at Pure, you know, when you started to to launch a new business, talk us through as an entrepreneur, you know, what what what size location were you looking for? You looking for something that was close to that current location because you have loyal members that were basically gonna follow you? You know, tell tell us how you kinda put that together because sometimes you start a business in a foreign country and Yeah. You don't know what the rules are. You're not really sure, like, the traffic patterns. So so talk us through how you got confidence to do that. Well, for sure, it was helpful that I've been there for for already eight, nine years, running the Pure Fitness Club because I built a great network of, you know, local partners, including, you know, the the vendors and the providers, but also local contacts, and importantly, a great local team of coaches that we had a great network with. We weren't going after the same customer. We're really going more after as opposed to a lifestyle brand, we were more focused on the athleticism of it. And so we were going after a different kind of customer, people who saw themselves as a little bit more competitive in a different way.

4:58 So our environment and our whole mindset was we wanna open something that looks like an NCAA division one training center, that when you walk in there, you feel like you're part of a team. And so all of the requirements were driven by that. And what what what was the capital formation? Did you bring in some some members? Did you bring in some private capital that was already in Hong Kong? Or Yep. We had we had an angel no. We had an angel investor that that contributed the bulk of of what we needed to get started. But we started small. We just started with education for the first six months. We were doing coaching courses because we had a background in it. Then we did a pop up lab for about a year, which was basically a short term facility on a month to month lease, bare bones and just running athletic stuff, you know, using bare bones equipment. Once we had a critical mass of people who were interested, we had a good coaching network, then we went and took the leap into a full fledged facility, which was 10,000 square foot, which is still there to this day. That's great. And then did you find that a lot of the trends of, you know, weekend warriors or, you know, people are training for a triathlon or marathon or, you know, a tough model or a sport race, what have you, did you kinda was that proliferating at the time also in Hong Kong? Or or is it be ahead or behind the the No. I think it was it's a very competitive environment and things like adventure racing and and, you know, certainly High Rock's very successful in Hong Kong at the moment. I think it's it's tends to be right there in the trends with New York or London or LA and how people view their health and their wellness and their fitness in their very competitive

6:30 environment. But what we found is that, you know, athletic wellness is kind of like following the trends of sports science and bringing the sports science to the everyday individual. And that's where we really see that there's a lot of convergence even now in what's happening, internationally and in The US market. When you think about you know, one of the issues I have with this industry in general daily since I've been in it for twenty five years. Just one? Yeah. Just one. Just one. But I'm still here. The price to value is always off. The the the quotient of price to value Mhmm. Is always, like, you know, people are paying a monthly fee. Yep. And it's probably one of the top three things that they talk about that are important to them in their life. You know, if I see, like, a CrossFit charging, like, $65 a month, I'm like, they they might wear a tattoo that has CrossFit on it. So charge them 300 to 500 a month because it's probably the most important thing in their life. So when you're in Hong Kong yeah. So when you're in Hong Kong and you take a look at where you started with AQ and what you think the price to value is, or if you start a new venture in The US or whatever you're doing, targeting these athletes that, obviously, that extra couple seconds or those extra minutes, that's that might be the most important thing to them that they're gonna talk about. So how do you think about that, and what do you think the maximum is that people are gonna start to spend as they focus more and more on their longevity and, you know, just overall, you know, being an athlete till 50 or 60? We think of it as

8:04 as well, we have pretty good data on this from our membership base. We have about 400 members at the moment in the club. And the and the average revenue per member is just around $2.85 US a month. So but the bulk of that comes from them coming to structured classes. We we have our core product. It was what something we call semi private coaching. So our core belief is that everybody works with a coach. Doesn't have to be all the time. It doesn't have to be $24.07, but everybody works with a coach. That's where we see the greatest value. So that core spend of $2.85 is just the core of what people are coming in, just, you know, the price of admission, but they're getting a lot out of that. And then they'll top up. They'll top up for extra, you know, barbell classes or one on one sessions or recovery or some kind of manual therapy. So they're constantly topping up, and that starts to drive the revenue per member closer to $4.50 per person. And we still think that's probably about yeah.

8:58 Yeah. Go ahead. So there's a group out of New York that, picked to call themselves New York Athletic Clubs maybe. Mhmm. And you join you join like a squad. You don't actually join a physical location. When you're talking about, like, you you you're working with a coach, is there a coach that is responsible or, like, has, like, 50 or a hundred members kind of, like, underneath them? And then what's or how is that set up there? And and the reason why I'm asking the question is because I go to these clubs sometimes, and I'm saying, like, hey. You know, you lost 3,000 members last month. You know, you you that's basically, like, 50%, of your membership that you're churning annually. And I said to this crew of managers, sales managers, personal trainers, who's responsible for this? And nobody raises their hand because they're basically playing like zone defense. Yeah. So when you talk about coaches, talk about how that works or how it could work. We we follow the division one model, which is basically you have a head strength and conditioning coach, in our case, as a performance coach. And we have daily huddles in which the coaches talk about the athletes, which is everybody that joins. And we're talking about who's coming in for the day, who hasn't been in recently, and there's constant communication. But we don't assign specific athletes to specific coaches as much as we assign specific coaches who have areas of expertise. So So someone who might be strength power related is talking about strength power for everybody.

10:22 Gotcha. So from from a standpoint of looking at attrition in this type of model, how much lower is it than the average? If you correct for people who are leaving Hong Kong, because Hong Kong has been especially in the last few years, we've had a lot of exits from Hong Kong, our attrition is less than 10%. Yeah. If you put that back in, it's closer to 20% annual. So, most of the people that we've lost, we've lost because they've left Hong Kong completely. 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 zero down and one month free or giving away shakes or giving away t shirts.

11:11 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.

11:51 This is real. So you decided to come back to The US, hanging out in Jersey City, growing out an awesome mustache, by the way, if this was a video podcast. Thank you so much. So no problem. Talk about the, you know, why you gravitated towards the flywheel training. Talk about eccentric, and, eccentric. Sorry. And and where that started from, you know, with NASA and, you know, the systems in in space and how you brought that down back to Earth. Yeah. Wait. Well, I wasn't involved in that phase, but that's for sure. But but, I've met the eccentric team when we were in, Pure Fitness in Hong Kong as part of we had an innovation lab. We were really testing all the unique things, that were happening in the sports science world that we could bring into a fitness setting. And I learned about flywheel training. It was around 2014, '20 '15 when I learned about it. And I was like, wow. This is amazing because it focuses on, the eccentric phase of the exercise as much as the concentric. And you could do it at high speeds, which is really I mean, if you get into the science of it, which I'll leave for another talk, it's really valuable, for people to get results and to really improve their well-being as well as their performance. So we started using it in that setting. And then when we started AQ Strong, it was a core partner who became a partner reseller for the region. So it was natural for me when I came to The US to work with Accentriq, and I found that, really, the fitness industry doesn't know anything about flywheel training.

13:17 It's in the performance realm. You know, every major team in in NBA, NFL, you know, NHL, MLB, they're all using it. NCAA, they're all using it because it's exceptional results for athletes. But the fitness industry doesn't know anything about it. So it's an opportunity to educate the industry and really help people get better results, and it's a great product, a great series of products. And and is that something that is typically, like, part of a workout, or is that, like, the core workout? It it really is up to the user. I mean, you you can use it. For example, in the performance setting, they'll use it for just one purpose. They'll use it for to to improve power on a squat or power in in a a deadlift or to prevent hamstring injuries because you can train fast in eccentric motion and deceleration. But you can also use it for rehab. You know, you can also use it as to potentiate something before a game to improve your power before you go out and play. So there's so many applications, and you can use it as an entire training method. Or you could just sprinkle it in, which is basically what I do. I do all types of training, but I sprinkle it in on an almost daily basis as part of my routine. Gotcha.

14:23 And how how is this being marketed? Is this a certification for trainers to add to their current certification? How how do you is it a products, sale, business? You talk talk about the business. Yeah. At the moment, it's a product sale business. I mean, most of where it's gone into has been on the performance side where the coaches are exceptionally knowledgeable, so they know how to apply it pretty quickly. On the fitness side, that's where I think maybe there's a gap, and we're really starting to build on the education. So I think we need to lead with education and help train the entire market the value of not just Flywheel, but the value of eccentric and isometric training to our strength program. And as people start to understand that, as businesses start to understand that, they're gonna leverage it, and they're gonna it's that it's one way they can differentiate. Yeah. Especially with the trend in strength training now, it's a real opportunity for businesses.

15:11 Mhmm. So so as you go into the fitness industry, obviously, you've been around it for a long time. There are some franchisors that you could target, and Yep. They they have mandatory purchasing, that their franchisees have to do to stay in compliance. You go to to certification companies and try and get, like, an NASM or ISSA. You could go into, like, you know, different parts of the corporate wellness market where maybe they're managing facilities. What what's been the best results for you in penetrating the market, and what are some of the frustrations and and some of the ways maybe you've kind of thought through that?

15:52 Yeah. Well, the best is is to focus on a company that really wants to improve their personal training program. So any company that really wants to add revenue in their personal training, Flywheel is a phenomenal device because it immediately creates an opportunity for engagement between the coach and the user. And it's something that people feel different about. As soon as they use it, they feel a difference. And it as if they keep using it, they see a difference over time. So it gets great results in a short period of time. They start to feel a difference, and it leads to more personal training. So that is a key leverage point right there. Same same is true for small group small group training as well. And and what's the price point on, I guess, having what what do you do you buy a set or you're like for for 10 or 20 people? What is that? Well, there's a there's a range of products, but it it's as little as a home product, which is the active, which is around 1,200 US starting in that range. And Black Friday is gonna be a great time to grab them because they're gonna be running some discounts.

16:49 To the professional sets, which are much larger, have a wider variety of accessories available. I mean, the the power output you could put on these things, if you're into cycling, you know what top power is, 3,500 watts. It's limitless. I mean, you could do, really intense workouts. That range is a couple thousand, and it depends on what accessories you want. And and there's a wide variety of them. There's also a a leg extension and leg curl machines. So there's some variety of products in there for depending on your use case, depending on what you'd like to do with it. Gotcha. And how'd you get hooked up with this company originally? Through Pure in in Hong Kong. So we brought them in as part of our innovation lab and, got to know the team at Accentriq. We have very similar philosophy on strength development, strength training, that the idea that people are robust. And if you just challenge them, they'll step up to the to the demands and really grow. So we share philosophy. We share values, and the products are just exceptionally well made and simple, easy to use. Gotcha.

17:46 It from from from a standpoint of what you want to accomplish, you know, over the next three three to five years. Talk us through, you know, you've you've been successful in international markets. You've been successful in The US. You know, how how do you kind of view your career path? And for others to kinda think about and say, hey. Yeah. I like where Marco is. I like his, you know, career experiences, international travel. You know, what what what else do you wanna achieve, or where where do you wanna go with this? Yeah. There there are two things I would love to see happen in the next few years. The first is this concept of athletic wellness. We wanna spread the message that, you know, lifestyle is great, but there's but you need some purpose. You need some something that that certain periods of your life, you're you're competitive at something. Certain periods of your life, you're really looking at your health span, and you're always balancing that out. And athletic wellness is really important to us. We wanna spread that. Whether it's to AcuStrong internationally or other means, that's part of my message. And the other is that flywheel devices are gonna be a standard. Just like, you know, you go into any club and you see pin loaded machines from Life Fitness or Technogym, you're gonna see flywheel devices because the benefits of eccentric and isometric training are just so good, and they overpower the benefits of just concentric, you know, pushing alone. Yeah?

19:02 So they're just so good that they're gonna become the standard. And and if brands can figure out how to leverage that, not only is it great for business, but it's great for the end user. Everybody wins. Mhmm. And then what are some of the things that you see as potential trends going down the road? Obviously, you've got the Ozempic and and Mhmm. Wegovy or whatever that's called, which everyone thought, hey. This pill is gonna come out, and it's basically gonna eradicate the need for people who go to the gym. And now it's actually There's always a pill. To reverse. Right? There's always there's always now it's like you have to do strength training Yeah. Or else you could end up in, like, assisted living, you know, at an early age or you're just gonna, you know, whittle away. So, you know, as you see some of these trends and you see, like, the health savings, the spending account, and and FSA that you could use towards fitness, how optimistic are you that that, you know, over the next five to ten years that this obesity and diabetes and loneliness that we're actually at the epicenter of solving it? That's basically what we're trying to do. I mean, I think The US could correct it. So The US is is particularly bad at this, I think, you know, in terms of the obesity epidemic. I I think a lot of it is systemic, not just within the fitness industry, and maybe beyond the fitness industry to solve by itself. But what the fitness industry can do is is remove the barriers to entry for anybody coming in. And that's, you know, one of the great benefits of this HVLP model is that it it just really expands the size of the market and gives access to a lot more people. But then it's up to all the variety of boutiques and differentiators to really educate that group

20:36 and try and bring them up to the next level and and blur the lines between training in a location, training at home, training on the road, whatever it may be. Just finding ways to make training not just a part of my life, but have some purpose here. What am I working for? What am I working towards? And how does it enhance my life and my well-being and, eventually, my health span? I I would say I'm generally an optimistic person. So, yeah, I think it's achievable, but definitely there are headwinds. 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 PEMF mats and sauna blankets.

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22:15 From a standpoint of what you're doing, you know, locally, are you currently, you know, training for anything in particular? At the moment, myself for training, no. I love to get outdoors. I'm I'm always about learning the skill. And right now, I'm putting a lot of time and effort into, Indian clubs, mace, and gada, which is a, you know, a skill I've been working on for the last few years. I guess you could call it a new well, I would say I guess you could call it a new training style, but it's been around a couple hundred years. But but it's very Middle Eastern style, originated from martial arts by using small clubs, wooden gutter, like, kinda like a heavy club, and a mace, which is basically a a long stick with a ball, a heavy ball at the end of it. And just learning how to train with those styles is it's been a lot of fun. You know, there's a lot of flow. It's not very different from a training style like kettlebells, to be honest. It it involves some level of skill, technique, as well as using your strength and your power. Got it. And and the last question is that you've, you know, been around the world, and you've been successful on the management side and the sales side. You got any quotes or, you know, things that, you know, Marco says I that that's always coming out of his mouth or anything? Little little wisdom nuggets for us? Well, my favorite, to be honest, is what we well, our tagline at AQ Strong, which is strong as a choice. And and that's you know, comes a bit from my stoic philosophy that I've adopted over the years, And it's it has a lot of levels and meanings to it. You know, it's just yeah. Your your wellness and your fitness is within your control,

23:45 but your emotional well-being is within your control that you choose every day what you're gonna set out to do and achieve it. So for me, strong as a choice is something, you know, I got a sticker on my phone with it. It's on my laptops. It's everywhere I go, I see it. So for us, that's that's a big philosophy that we all share in in our company and just as individuals. So about a month ago, I started, I saw a, I think it was Seinfeld, that was talking about stoicism and Marcus Aurelius. And, so I got on the yeah. I I got on the, on the daily stoic, and I've been watching a lot of It's brilliant. A lot of videos and try and take everything and kinda turn it into a positive or just realize that you're in control of what you're in control of. It don't let other things, you know, knock you down. So it's actually been very, it it put me at ease Yeah. More more than, than than I was before. So I, if anyone wants to check out stoicism, it's definitely a philosophy that that will empower you. It's been tremendous through COVID. That's for sure. I mean, it's it's kept me grounded, you know, in particular, when when we were in Hong Kong, zero COVID, which was very intense, but it also the timing of it was intense because it was right when the rest of the world was opening. So as we see everybody else starting to live their lives again, we were just going into lockdowns. And Yeah. Honestly, so stoicism was a big help in that period because seeing the business, you know,

25:17 basically sitting there doing nothing was was a challenge. Yeah. No. It's a guy named Ryan, Holiday. Yep. He's That's filed, virtues of, stoicism. Alright. Well, we'll leave everybody with that. Marco, thanks for coming on. Great work My pleasure. On on many fronts. It sounds like you affected thousands of people. Thank you so much for the time today. So if I build a successful business, you know, to solve these problems, we're not we're not in the nonprofit industry. So to find out that your location's still humming in, in in in Hong Kong's great, athlete quotient, and, let's keep making everybody stronger. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it, Pete. Thank you. Awesome.