Episode #544: Mark Fisher-From Broadway to Building a Unique & Thriving Fitness Community

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1:03 This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of bringing a longtime listener and one of the movers and shakers in our field of Halo, Mark Fisher. Mark Fisher Fitness, welcome to your first Halo Talks. Thank you so much. Very, very happy to be here. Awesome. So you're a unicorn guy. Yeah. Why don't you start off giving us the true story of Mark Fisher fitness in the, accidental, unintended consequence Yes. Of venue light. The sort of tale. The sort of tale. Yeah. So so, yeah, I let's see. My background, I kinda got into the space as the, you know, skinny guy that started working out in high school, hoping girls are gonna talk to me.

1:47 Went on to get a bachelor of fine arts in the musical theater, and that definitely proved my odds, to make out with girls, but also allowed me to have another incentive to start working out to take my physique seriously. I spent my twenties pursuing a career as a professional actor in New York City. I did okay with that, but I really caught the fitness bug. And what started as this hobby, this respite from the uncertain uncertain world of show business became this thing that I was really, really passionate about. I really, really got into. So throughout my twenties, I developed something of a niche following in the Broadway community. And then, you know, right around time I turned 30 years old, I had just done a, a national commercial for Allstate.

2:29 So I got a chunk of money. So for people not familiar, if you do national commercials, you know, it that's actually passive income. Right? So so I have this money come in, and I decided myself, I'm like, alright. I think I'm a I think I'm a TV film actor now. So I tell my agents, I'm like, alright. I'm not going to do regional theater anymore. I'm gonna stick in the city. And while I was here, you know, I had these latent entrepreneur aspirations that I think were bubbling up at this time, and I was studying the the nascent origins of the online fitness space. I was following sort of the first wave. You couldn't really call them, like, influencers, but, you know, this era and the late two thousands for people that are, like, you know, strength and conditioning nerds, you had the advent of a website called T Nation that introduced the works of, like, Mike Boyle and Charles Poliquin and Dan John, all these, like, legends of the field. And I wanted to make something that was reflective of the work of my mentors, but I wanted to make it for my friends. And my friends are Broadway people. So I've always been something of a, you know, eccentric, I guess you could say, and a reverent guy. So we created this interesting brand that was largely derived from me speaking out of tongues and my business partner codifying it. So for people not familiar, Marc Fisher Fitness doesn't call our members clients, so we call them ninjas.

3:40 And, we don't use the term gym because a lot of our members are not gym people. They don't like gyms. So we call it the enchanted ninja clubhouse of glory and dreams. And, our mascot is the unicorn. And, you know, the final thing I'll say before we open up to follow-up questions here is the tagline is ridiculous human serious fitness. So to be very clear, a lot of that can have the veneer of lightness, but my background's, like, pretty intensive rigor strength and conditioning. What I really wanted to make was the meat and potatoes of best practices that would encapsulate what I believe to be the best way to take care of a body through training, nutrition, even behavior change psychology. I just wanted to deliver in a way that was a little bit more interesting for my pals. And, yeah, it's been been quite quite the wild run. That turned out there was definitely a market for people that wanted the fitness to be good, but maybe didn't feel comfortable in some of the traditional spaces and places that were available to them. So that's kinda how we got here. And and as you kinda came up with these, you know, Broadway ask or almost like, you know, movie script related, you know Yep.

4:43 Colloquialisms. Let's say. Is that the right answer or might be? Yeah. I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did that kinda, like like, bring down some of the barriers to say, like, look. This might be hard and this might take a lot of work, but, like, we're gonna have fun doing this together and don't take yourself. We don't take ourselves as seriously as you maybe, you know Yep. Think we should. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly it. Right? And I'll I'll, you know, for the benefit of listeners that might be listening with a kid in the car, I'll spare you the some of the specific metaphors we've used internally, but fair to say, some of them are pretty blue. Right? We really kind of push the limits of, maybe what was acceptable, but exactly for that rationale. Right? And I think we got away with it because there was an aggressive nurturing, like, an aggressive almost wholesomeness to it. And the whole point was precisely that. Right? Like, you can't feel awkward and insecure about yourself if we're too busy, like, having fun and being silly and playing. Right? And, again, it's it's a little bit of an art because it it has always been very important as to be a coaching centric facility. Right? Like, we're like nerds. Right? You're imposing loads on someone's body. Things like, you know, biomechanics matter, joint position matters. But, ultimately, if people are not coming in, if they're not compliant, if they don't like the experience, we're not getting what we want out of this.

5:54 And we, I think, really benefit from day one having just, like, a very crystal clear avatar and a very specific kind of person that we thought would, you know, want the good results, but, you know, might benefit from a little bit of a comedic lubrication, shall we say. Comedic lubrication. I like that. So so what are some of the early wins that you had related to to how you positioned it? And, you know, you had your niche following already Yeah. In the industry that you're in. Yeah. How how did you expand that, and and how did that is that something that's a playbook, or is that something that happens, like, was is that, like, special sauce? Yeah. I think there's pieces of it that are playbook, but not quite to that, you know, like a Lollapalooza style, like wham bam, like, holy crap. Right? Because the thing about this is right? So most of my work, I I should mention briefly these days, is coaching consulting on the business of gyms. Right? And, specifically, I work with personal trainers and strength coaches that open up gyms and are dismayed to understand they need to understand marketing, they need to understand workers' comp, they need to understand performance check ins, etcetera, etcetera.

6:55 Right? So one of the first things I will do with people, which is still a good move, you know, there might be listeners that are relatively sophisticated, but just haven't thought to do this is part of the game of marketing is people have to know you before they're gonna hire you. And in most situations, they need to kinda have some like and trust before they move forward. Right? You do you don't go right direct to offer, though. You know, put that aside. You probably can with certain page strategies these days. So the first move, I think, is to sort of develop what is your database of the people you already have relationship with. And for the love of God, at least let them know that you've opened up a gym, that you have this opportunity. You know, fitness is interesting too because virtually everybody, at least in theory, benefits from a fitness product. I'm not suggesting you're gonna hard sell your grandma. I am suggesting that if you have a business that people in your life would benefit from potentially working with you and would get value from, you should probably at least let them know on some regular basis that exists. And in Mark Fisher Fitness, we did that, but the thing that is distinct is number one, I had been professional actor spending my, you know, twenties. I was a friendly guy, right, hanging out in the bars in Hell's Kitchen. And, you know, I did I did a lot of shows, and I didn't do long range shows, but I went from show to show. So between myself and my cofounders, we literally knew by name probably 3,000 I'm not exaggerating. Probably, like, 3,000 people we actually knew. Right? And both of us basically now this is maybe not the best, like, you know, can spam, maybe not the most, you know, friendly, for what you should do for email marketing in 2024. But we basically just started talking to all our friends, basically dumped in our entire contact database. So that I think was useful because even at that time, I was hammering email marketing. Right? I was, like, several times a week. I was trying to

8:28 get value. I was establishing a brand. I was thinking from their perspective. Okay. What are their questions? What are their problems? And how do I help them and put on paper or digital paper things that will be useful to them? I think the other thing that was uniquely valuable about Marc Fisher Fitness, it's harder to replicate is in general, people talk a lot about niching. And for I'll say this for a lot of my clients, I don't reject that claim. But in practice, you know, depending on your market, you're only gonna niche down so far. Right? If you're, like, you know, say, like, a a town. Right? You open up a gym and you're doing small group personal training, whatever. Right? You're not gonna be like, I'm looking for, you know, men the ages of 37 to 39 that are former professional athletes that have two kids or may you know?

9:08 But at Mark Fisher Fitness, because the Broadway community had the distinction of number one, consisting of, you know, probably 10,000 people. And number two, a a very specific geography because, you know, all the Broadway theaters are in a very specific area. That that was a a useful strategy. It's, I think, kinda hard to pull from. And I'll say, I think we've leveraged the hell out of it. Right? We utterly crushed it, but it's hard to imagine, another specific situation where you have a community both that large, that insular, and then really anchored in a very specific, geography. 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. What you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services.

10:09 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. This is real. Did you morph into, you know, doing Broadway workouts for people that aspire to actually work on Broadway? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. It's it's sort of evolved over the past few years. Right? Because we still work with definitely people in the Broadway community. In the beginning, it was kinda all Broadway all the time, and it was a mix of people, I think, that were aspiring to become Broadway Performers. We you know, at one point, I had written down. At one point, it was like I mean, at one point, we literally had, like, 20 plus Tony winners that were, like, part of our membership base. Right? And we're in New York City. We're very large by the standards of this sort of independent brick and mortar gym, but, you know, we're not like 10,000 people. Right? So you had a combination of established industry players. You also had a lot of behind the scenes people, and that was also a big piece for us for a long time too.

11:33 Now over the past several years, I I think that has evolved. I think we still work with members of Broadway community, but I think it's zoomed out a little bit more broadly to, you know, people in the Hell's Kitchen area that don't feel comfortable in gym spaces. As you might imagine, it leads pretty heavily, queer identifying particularly for the men. So, again, we still work with a lot of Broadway people, but I would say it's opened up over the past several years to a with with love, we sometimes say the Isle Of Misfit toys. Right? If you if you ate lunch alone in a bathroom stall in middle school, you'll you'll likely understand what's going on here. Right. Right. And and then the the follow-up question to that is, as you're helping more and more companies, you know, from a consulting standpoint, how much of that is, like, creating a new playbook every time or basically, like, hey. Look. And we've got a book that that we wrote. It's like, here's your playbook. Yeah. You know, you could modify off of that, but there are certain things that we've learned that, like, there's no way to to to go to to shortcut.

12:30 Yeah. No. I I think that's yeah. That that's precisely right. And when I think about, like, how somebody gets better and and I might suggest this is probably principle for any field, but certainly in the world of, you know, independent brick and mortar gym owners. Right? So, again, so for context, you know, we're looking at, you know, the relatively smaller businesses. Right? We're looking anywhere from, let's say, 200 k to maybe maybe 2,000,000 per unit. We're looking for one to five locations per owner depending who we're working with. And we've recently started working more with franchises. Right? Because I'll also mention briefly, I don't know if you know this, Pete. I also am a franchisee, and I I'm a co owner of, an alloy personal training unit in New Jersey, which is an emerging, small group personal training brand, Rickmay.

13:11 Yep. Yep. So so as far as what, you know, we think is best for people, it's like you don't wanna make it up totally, and you probably don't wanna totally copy paste. Right? So when we work with people, we do have a library of very specific playbooks broken down by business function. And, you know, a lot of the game is helping the owner think through, okay, sequentially, what is the rate limiting factor? What is the constraint? Because you do have to make some decisions. You can't do everything all at once, and we find having as copy pastable done for you playbooks as you can to be a valuable starting point. And then in practice, people are gonna have to vary, both, you know, in some cases based on the market, in some cases based on the model, and in some cases based on the level of sophistication of the owner. Right? I mean, we don't need to go fully down the weeds here. But as an example, right, depending on the owner's relative skill at something like sales, that may or may not lend itself to various different front end offers and and sales funnels. When when you take on a new client, and I've had this experience, so I wanna see if it's similar to yours. I'll go in and somebody's kinda like at the at the end of their rope or the Yeah. You know, it's like they got a month of runway left. It's like, did you ever think about calling me like three months ago, four months ago? Maybe when I had a little more time, you know, to turn this shit. So how do you do you take on every assignment? Obviously, you got a lot of empathy for your rescuer like I am and you wanna help everybody.

14:33 But Yeah. You have to help everybody. Like, you know, like, someone called me up and be like, hey. I need to sell my studio. Like, when? And they're like, you know, I need to sell by, like, December 1 or I'm in default. I'm like Right. You know, we got a holiday. Like, I'm on the road right now. I'm hanging out with my buddy for his birthday. Yeah. Just turned 53. Ranger fan, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's Right. Yeah. It's tough because, you know, we wanna help them all, but, I mean, the way we think about it and, again, I we we do have some leeway based on the individual. But in general, if you're looking for someone doing an ongoing coaching, if they wanna hire us some workers for a year on retainer, where most situations, we're gonna be looking for at least a 15 k, revenue per month minimum. Right? Minimum.

15:19 If somebody is, you know, wants more help with just marketing and they wanna engage us for a twelve week marketing sprint, that's gonna be a little bit less of a commitment. And if you have 30 clients in your own space, then, you know, we think there's enough juice there that we can potentially help you. But, like, here's the real talk, Pete. Right? Here's here's, like, here's the ugly talk. Here's what no one wants to say about. Right? Yeah. Let's do it, man. You might suck. Turns you up. You might be bad. Do you know what I mean? Like, so you might have, like, so and to be very clear, if you're listening to this, you know, and I'm triggering the hell out of you, though I don't know how many people with, you know, eight clients are listening to listening to Halo, but maybe you are. Maybe you're a real, like, killer up and comer. In practice to my mind, if you've got again, that's a crude algorithm, but if you're 30 clients, like, okay. There's kind of the thing happening here. Further, you know, if some of the plays are things like, if you don't wanna do paid ads. Right? Okay. Well, what do we got? Alright. Well, let's talk to referrals. Well, filling out seven clients, that's that's a volume game. Okay. Well, let's talk to former clients. Oh, I don't have any former clients. Okay. Okay. Right. So, so I like to see people get, like, a certain proof of concept. And, again, I I don't mean to say that that's, like, a % guaranteed. Further, my if I'm looking to help somebody to your point, like, I wanna help you, but I got a lot of free stuff. Right? I've killed myself. There's, like, free books.

16:31 There's there's there's podcast. There's YouTubes, and I'm very happy to send people some content. And if they're able to run with it, you know, hopefully, they can get at least to the starting gate, which for me is at least 30 clients. And then from there, hopefully, we can work with you. Now, again, you know, as we both well know, that doesn't speak to profit margin. That doesn't speak to coachability. That doesn't speak to all sorts of other things that are important. So, you know Yep. I'm I'm sure you're the same. Right? You do your best to, like, suss it out to, you know, set expectations in a very direct way, and then, you you know, you figure it out together. And, you know, the longer I've been in the game yeah. I think, yeah, I think, what I say with great respect, I think sometimes, like, firing crimes is, like, underrated. If you know this is just not the right fit, it's not in everybody's best interest. And I think there's ways to do that that are professional and respectful in everyone's best interest. So so before we get to the, to to to, an overview of the announcement that you're gonna make that'll be after the podcast launch Yeah. Just, relates to your business. Give me, like, three situations where you went into a consulting assignment, and you had an moment. And that moment resulted in what? Did it result in somebody adding workout recovery because they had extra space? Did they take out towel service and put in a service that optimized revenue? Did they completely overhaul all their personal trainers because they found out that these weren't the right fit? Or did we did you scrap, like, their marketing plan because they were going after a completely wrong demographic and forgot who they

18:03 were? Something like along those lines. Yeah. What are some examples? I I mean, like, you know, a lot of my work, you know, is focused on the marketing piece. And, certainly, you know, there we have plenty of, like, very specific testimony as far as results. I mean, thinking about things that are, you know, maybe useful for listeners that I have learned by work with people. It's like, oh, oh, oh, and and, again, some people listening is gonna be obvious. Right? The first one is, you know, particularly, again, if you're an independent gym owner, you gotta talk to strangers. That that's just the game. You you have to talk to strangers. One thing that Sure. And this has been very important for us, particularly because my gym in New Jersey, very different brand than Marc Fisher Fitness. It's a franchise model. It's not personally branded. Why did you do that? Why why why would you pay a franchise fee? Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me circle back that in one second, Pete. But, yeah, that's a great question. I always have because people are often like, what? You evolved to unicorn guy? So, you know, in that particular brand, you know, we had to get it going. And certainly, you can you you can indeed do probably paid ads. Right? In 2024, everybody everybody some people are upset because it's not as cheap as it was. And in a lot of markets, like, listen, I'm in Midtown Manhattan, even North New Jersey. It's like petting a deer.

19:09 Right? It's like like it's it's pretty burnt out. Like, people you have the the amount of follow-up needs to happen. Your show rates are not gonna be what they are. Some of you listening might be lucky. If you're in a smaller market, you can still have markets where it doesn't look like that. So you do have to have a page strategy, but the page strategy cannot replace press and flash. It can't replace talking to other local business partners. It can't replace, you know, Orange Theory. Listen, they built a lot of their brands going in the parking lots in front of Target and just talking to strangers and offering them free workouts. Right? And that play, I think still works even more sophisticated markets. You can't really replace that. Now it's gonna cost you time, in ways that you might prefer to, and I would I suspect, you you know, probably a lot of people you work with probably prefer just be appropriately capitalized to spend when you need to spend on a grand opening because, you know, it's hard to climb up that hill if you don't get where you wanna go after opening. So, to sidebar for a second as far as the thinking behind the franchise. Yeah. I mean, listen. I've known Rick for a lot of years. We've we've spoken together a lot of events. Mark Fisher Fitness, I love so much. I've learned so much from it. It's done amazing stuff I'm so proud of, and it I just knew it wasn't gonna scale. Right? There's a lot of operational complexity in that business. A lot of things I didn't I didn't know. Right? I did a lot of things right intuitively, but I didn't make a simple business. Right? It made a really cool, confusing business. You know? Also, it made a lot of money. Yeah. It's it made a lot of money over the years, but, you know, it's not really designed to scale. And even the brand, you know, it I I don't think it took a takes a business genius to say you're probably not gonna have, like, the, you know, the the unicorn ninja glittery rainbow

20:41 whatever gym in in Nebraska. So, you know, to my mind, I was thinking about, you know, what kind of the next opportunity might be. I I've done you know, this is maybe getting a little bit of weeds, but I've done other kinds of investing. For me, I was just more interested in something where I could put my my thumb on the scale and maybe get a better return because I'm going into something where I can affect the return, and I'm coming in batteries included. It also was a situation where I happen to have an operating partner on the ground that was willing to be the on the ground guy and do most of it. So it allowed me kind of a favorable position to essentially function as an equity adviser while I have somebody to do the stuff, and I consult and I can advise. And then, of course, also, you know, I just like learning. Right? You know? And I knew that for me also knowing Rick, I like the model. I even welcomed and this is why it's not a good fit for everybody. Right? Because, again, I know I'm like a unicorn guy. But, first of all, I'm an operator heart, number one. Right? So I don't mind, like, run the play. And number two, I didn't mind binding myself with some limitations on adding some of the complexity built in the MFF, particularly if I'm looking to do it at scale and really through other people, and build a model that, you know, it's we're not talking McDonald's in the fitness industry. Right? But the advantage of a good franchise model is you don't need geniuses to run the system. Now listen. I have some amazing people I work with there, and you're always gonna be better off with awesome people. But I think they've built a mouse trap that made a lot of sense to me, and I thought I would learn things. And, I thought it would ultimately be a good investment, and I believe that's true. Well, I like to throw batteries included, by the way. I don't think anyone's used that before. Okay. Like Yeah.

22:11 Sure. I stole from somebody, but yeah. 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. 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 paid 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we are already an 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.

23:26 Yes. It's you you got a successful consulting firm. You've also got, you know, a successful location. So as you thought about potential exit strategies or so somebody knocked on your door and said, hey. I wanna buy you. Yeah. What are some of the things that went through your head, you know, financially? What are some of the things that went through your head emotionally? And and and where are you at right now? Yeah. So Maybe you could dispose of maybe knees or no knees. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think we've we've said this explicitly. But yeah. So this isn't at the time of this recording, this will be very popular by the times go live, but I'm in the process of finishing, signing a seller purchase agreement for Mark Fisher Fitness. So, yeah, it's interesting because this type of gym, particularly a gym, you know, named Mark Fisher Fitness is like, hashtag key man risk.

24:13 So, you know, it is great advice to think about the exit going in. Candidly, I didn't. Like, I was an actor that I, like, accidentally opened up this weird, like, unicorn gym for my friends, and it did really well. And, listen, I don't wanna undersell myself. Like, I think I I took to this well, and I'd like I'm real I consider myself a real student of the game of business. But, you know, in practice, in the beginning, we would joke, not joke, the exit strategy. We were just gonna, like, light it on fire whenever we're just gonna burn it down when we're done. Right? Yeah. We'll just be oh, now it's done. We saw walk out naked, and we're like, that was a chapter. Right? And, you know, that that's an okay way to go. Right? But the problem is if you like the the the community, if you like the mission, if you like what this business is and how it functions in the world, you know, it's all cute to say, like, I'm just gonna burn it down, but you want to have a nice home. Right? And but, of course, selling an independent gym is not without challenges. Right? And it's an interesting moment in my corner of the industry, right, because you're seeing the the rise, the aging actually, of these independent gym owners that, you know, kind of where the first generation like me to maybe have, like, a little bit more business awareness. We opened up our gyms, at least in the small group. I don't mean to suggest that people weren't doing good stuff before my generation, but this sort of smaller coaching centric independent model, And some of them, you know, had done pretty well over the years, and your what you want from your life begins to change. Right? And I got to the place where, like, I'm thinking of I think a little bit more like an investor. I don't mind getting my hands in the operation, but I like to think more about the models. And I love MFF, but the consulting business has been starting to really

25:46 grow at a really nice clip. It's the work that I'm on fire about. And, you know, it's interesting. I I attempted candidly to run the business without an operation role the past couple years, and it was just it was just hard and things that, you know, like, I, you know, know on some level, if you don't have somebody there, it's really driving the vision of the business. It's it's hard to do, and you have to, you know, it's a particular type of person could do that. And listen, my team is amazing. Right? I'm not taking away anything from them. I think they've done a great job of running it in my absence, but just got to the place from the one hand for me. I was like, alright. Listen. I have this other opportunity that I'm on fire about. I have a a two and a half year old daughter. Right? And I have a very brief window with her. It's very important for me to optimize my life in a way I can spend time with her. And then three, I really want this business to be loved and cared for with passion, with somebody's on fire every day to get up and solve the problems that that business needs to be solved. And we got lucky and that, like, you know, this was the, yeah, I mean, a little bit like one of those crazy karmic things. We had a someone that had been a trainer for four years, who had been a coaching client for five years, who had opened and grown a pretty cool business in Gowanus that was, you know, not, you know, not somewhat related to MFF's brand in a lot of ways. And it just so happened he was starting to think about, okay. I'm ready to start to search for another location. I really wanna understand what it would take to scale this just as my business partner and I were starting to think about, okay, what might be an off ramp here that, would allow us to trust that this business is going to have an opportunity to flourish with someone getting their arms

27:20 around it. And then so that our brains can can be freed. Right? Because, you know, it's all well and good, I think, to own multiple businesses. And, like, Tony Robbins has, like, a hundred and five business he owns. You can't operate multiple businesses. Right? And I just found and and, admittedly, part of this might be my own, you know, speaking of some of the emotions of this too, Pete. It's like, part of it is I I just think there's no way for the current as much as I tend to not be operating this year, true, that wasn't even on the org chart. Right? And my business partner who's fifty fifty owner, he hasn't worked in the business in, like, four years. Right? But for me, I would be lying if I didn't say it continued to take up a fair bit of psychic space. Right? I had always made myself very accessible as, like, the small business pizza shop owner.

28:02 So, you know, it's was not uncommon for both team members or clients, to come to me directly if there either was an issue or positive feedback or something something. And I think for my brain space to free myself up, I think for this next phase as an entrepreneur and what I foresee is my opportunities, I just decided it was time to make a clean break. We were able to find a deal that we felt was favorable for both sides, and I'm very excited for them and and will, you know, do my best to support them and cheer them on and, while I get to pursue other things with space that's now created. Gotcha. Awesome. Alright, man. We'll we'll we'll put a, a a follow-up here on the, the actual press release. Congratulations on on the success there.

28:44 And, I'm assuming once this deal goes through, you're still gonna be part of the halo sector and hustling away. %. Yeah. Now I'm, like, life in this industry. Yeah. Like, I just I love fitness. I love this biz. I love, like, yeah, I love every all all I do is think about, like, gyms all day long. I mean, it's like, I love it so much, and I'm excited I get to do it as a career. Awesome. Alright, man. Thanks for being on. Hopefully, we've got a little bit of a a piece of wisdom here on, a couple different things on how to optimize your business from a person who's got a lot of experience and experience where you get when you don't get you what we want, and he is gonna help us sidetrack that way there, whether his name's on the door or not. Awesome. Yeah, man. Appreciate it, Pete. Thanks.