Episode #560: Mindful Leadership and Lasting Impact: Marc Rothschild on Clubs, Retreats, and Empowering Others

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 your website traffic visitors directly into leads. It's not just another chatbot and it's not AI, but it allows a visitor to call, text or leave a voicemail immediately. Goes to you, your sales team or anyone else in the club instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact the league within 10 minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine times that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs on it. Vita Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside City Fitness, Philly, College Park. Become one of the next Halo companies to deploy the Wizard.

0:48 It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy Dave Gallen. He will get you all set up and let the leads flow based on the Wizard. Go get him. This is Pete Barr on Halo Talks nyc. I had the pleasure of bringing a friend of mine for a short 25 years to his first Halo talks. Coming in from the D.C. area in a tank top as requested. Mark Rothschild. Good to see you buddy. Hey pmo, how are you man? Good. So Mark and I go back to early stages of the health club industry in Rock Creek and Downtown D.C. and all parts of New York where there was a lot of growth but people didn't know about it yet in parts of Brooklyn and through an old school exec, Marc Tasher. So shout out to Mark for introducing us originally.

1:48 Mark, talk about how you started off in the industry, what kept you in the industry and how excited you've been to for, you know, like this next evolution for yourself. Let's see. Thanks for the intro. Always good to see you Pete. You've been an important part of my life for most of my life and I really appreciate that connection. Likewise. Let's see, I started 1995. I opened my first gym with a partner of my uncle, Paul London, who's been in the industry since the late 70s. He was opening a club with someone, knew I had the entrepreneurial spirit and asked if I wanted to get involved, which I did open that club and ran it for a little while, learned about sales and marketing and how to operate a business and then got involved with an acquisition of a club downtown. And I met Tasher and we started Sports and Fitness Ventures, owning and operating and acquiring a bunch of different clubs over the course of eight or nine years and then sold the company. And during that time I learned how to manage Facilities and manage people, get clubs built, improve profitability.

3:03 And one of the clubs that I opened during that time is Rock Creek Sports Club, which has been around for 25 years. It's doing exceptionally well, performs better than some of the bigger clubs out there. And more recently, I've learned that I've always been able to help people indirectly. I provide space for people to work out in. And then more recently, I just realized that I think I had something where I could offer some of what I've learned to other people, whether it's directly through fitness, whether it's through yoga, whether it's through. Not sure exactly what it is. But I. I just changed. And last year I went on a retreat to Costa Rica and I had one of the best experiences of my life.

3:55 It was hard for me to go. I don't like travel, went on my own, I don't like traveling on my own. I don't like meeting new people. Apparently I found out I do. I like traveling on my own. I like to meet new people, I like to try different things. I wasn't a yoga person. I woke up in the morning and I was uncomfortable because it's really hot, you sweat. I just had this amazing growth experience, which you and I can talk about personally. But it was an opportunity for me to learn how to, like, disconnect and realize that, like, there's a lot of anxiety and things going on in the world right now and you don't have to live in that. People don't have to live in that space. And what I'm looking to do is, and it's not always going to happen, is just provide a space for people to get away, disconnect from the anxiety. If they can do that, the other stuff will come. You know, you used the word and it's one of the things I had written down here. When did the word experiences replace trip, vacation, travel, resort, getaway? I feel like we've all kind of embraced this word experience and having experiences. I want to pay for experiences over material things.

5:17 How do you kind of define what your experiences are and what experiences you want to give to other people that make them memorable or change them? I think. I think it's having a professional. If you plan a vacation for yourself, you're gonna go to a Caribbean island and you're gonna check out the beaches and do all the touristy things. What's different here? The experience is having something that's. I don't like to use the word curated, but mindfully put together where every part of the Day, it's not planned, but the parts that are thoughtfully done. So when you go there, you're going to get the experience you're looking for, where you disconnect and you connect with nature and you learn how to breathe properly, and you learn tools like meditation and chant and how powerful they can be. And it's. You learn that it's not all scary. You can participate in these things if you want to, but that's the experience connecting with people, eating healthful foods and sweating out deep toxins. That's the experience most people won't get on their own.

6:25 So I have a connection through Becky, who facilitated the retreat last year at this place in the jungle. And you're in the trees, and they're howler monkeys in the morning waking you up, and there's never silence because they're crickets. And it's just. I don't know, it's a ma. It's a magical experience. Maybe I haven't traveled enough, but. But being on the Caribbean coast in the jungle and is an experience in itself. I think we're able to make it a little more special by giving people what. I don't think they. They know they need it, but I know. I know they need it. Yeah. So as. As an entrepreneur, how do you kind of toggle between, hey, maybe I'll go get a job at a company that does these kind of retreats and. And creates these type of opportunities and be a part of that, versus, hey, I'm going to go out on my own, and I'm going to do this because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are not looking for a job. They're looking for a lifestyle, and they're looking to basically create their own path. So you and I have been friends for 25 years. You've always been on the entrepreneurial tilt. You know, you got your own band, you do your own thing. You know, you wear a tank top to my podcast, you know, like, it's kind of running your show. You're running your own show, basically, in life. So. So how do you think about. Or do you even think about, like, hey, I'm going to go work for somebody else, or like, hey, like, I'm.

7:51 In a place right now where I. Know what people want because I've been in a health club. I've talked to thousands of people. I've had my own experiences. Like, why don't I just do this on my own? What you. I want to kind of go there for a second. Yeah, I. I just say, I Feel like I'm the guinea pig. Sorry for wearing the tank top. Just what I. Just kidding. I love it. You know what I mean? I kind of want to, like, I'm the guinea pig. I've been through a lot of life's hardships. I can list them all. I can. Some people tell me stories, and I'm like, yeah, give me more. That's nothing. Yeah, I've been through all the hardships. You and I both. Now I am where I am today, and where I am today is a result of all the experience up until today and the last two years of my life where I focused more on my fitness and mental health. I've.

8:42 I feel better. And I can. I can now. I now have kindness and compassion and patience and all these things for myself that I didn't have before, and now I can show it to other people. And, you know, I came back from the retreat and I decided I wanted to do it. I said I figured I could. I'm going to start a website. I've got a connection to do that. I can't work for other people. I just. I'm in my 50s, and I've been, like, working for Tasha. You know, that was. It was me and him, and we've made a lot of decisions together. I can't go work for a larger company where someone's gonna, like, be on me all the time. You know, when you talk about life experiences and I've been through my fair share as well as, you know, and you and I connected, and I appreciate you contacting me. Actually, 90 days ago, bro, is when you contacted me and said, hey, man, like, the old PDMO needs to come back because there's something going on. And I was in a. I was in a place where, you know, I. I wasn't forgiving myself for certain things, and I felt like I was in a hole psychologically with. With some of these deals, and I was trying to medicate around that. And I'm on day 90 right now, and I'm. I'm actually on 600th Soul Cycle is going to happen tonight, and I have got a very clear. I was trying to take edibles to go to sleep, and then I was getting up in the middle of night and ordering Gracie's Diner, you know, and eating and, like, couldn't care if it was like a Ben and Jerry's, you know, milk and cookies or like a. Like a bag of dots that had eight. Eight serving sizes or staying up

10:15 really late. I'm like, I just. I'm not doing that shit anymore. And I, and I kind of learned to like, hey, forgive yourself and then let's move on from here. And like, there's not a weight that you're carrying around except around your own neck that you. On your own neck. And nobody else actually gives a about what happened in the past, you know, like, move forward and be the best version of yourself. And that's when you, you were one of the trigger points to make sure that that happened. So. And it's been going, it's going really well. So from a standpoint of like how you've been able to kind of reframe like who you are and why people should gravitate towards you, what are some of the things that, that you would say, like, hey, come on this retreat with me and this is what it's going to do for you, or this is what it's done for other people, you know, besides just like disconnect, reconnect with nature, but like dig, dig a.

11:05 Layer deeper, you know? My experience obviously was personal. The short story is, is when I got there, I was in a lot of physical pain as a result of having gone there. Something happened the first day I got there and it infected the first five days of my seven day trip where my feet were completely raw, open blisters and things and sores on my feet. And I had to do yoga for an hour and a half on my feet. And I had to do Animal Flow, this other wonderful class. The guy, John Weeks does, by the way, a little plug for him. And I continued to do it and it was challenging for me. The entire time I was lit, I was in pain. Like holes in the bottom of my feet, stepping on them all. I've been pain the entire time and I managed to get through it. I managed to still have fun the entire time that I was there. And the pain was not enough to keep me away from doing that. And I got into the ocean for the first time because I couldn't get in before that because there was such excruciating pain from the salt. I got in the water and I cried because there was no pain. And I had a simple experience of like getting in the ocean and appreciating being in the ocean, you know, without having that same pain.

12:27 And then the rest of the trip was fine. You know, I learned that like, I can be in pain, I can still have fun and I can still be a positive influence on people. This is Pete Moore. I want to 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 want to 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 going to get those answers, you're going to be able to target those members, and you're going to 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 vaults. Your answer, Trust me, this is real.

13:45 For people that have, you know, worked really hard, burned the candle at both ends, you know, lived a certain lifestyle that, that, you know, like George Carlin, if, you know, one of his quotes was like, you know, I want to live and I want to, like, slide into my grave, you know, like weathered and, you know, busted up. Because I'm going to, like, I'm going to take this thing to, like, you know, the tilt and then I'm going to, I'm going to go in there. Are you surprised as I am how if you do take care of your body, you take care of your mind, it's actually going to repair itself in a relatively short period of time? Yes, yes. I, I, if you, Yes, I did so much damage to my body over the years, and I've been focusing slowly on getting back. I'm, I'll be 53.

14:40 I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm not an ego thing. I'm just saying I eat healthful whole foods for all of my meals. I exercise regularly. I do yoga, I do tabata. And, you know, you can, you can change your body. My cholesterol has gone down naturally. I don't know, it's. And now that I've had a physical change since the last retreat, I've lost 20 pounds of just fat from eating healthfully. And I think I have the ability now because I feel like I exude the joy that I experience there. I do have a lot of kindness and compassion for people to a certain extent. You know, unless they're yelling and screaming at me and then I can point it out and be kind when I do it, that conveys and how I treat people, the energy around me. I believe that there is energy and I've been able to make changes in a short period of time. So in my other classes that I teach, people keep coming back.

15:41 More people come back to those classes, Tabata or strength or the yoga classes that I'm teaching because they see the change that I've made in a short period of time. And I know that because they point it out. They're not. People are now asking me and I feel like that's my new charge. It's like now I'm gonna help people. So, so let's talk about the, the retreat that you plan in for September. What types of people are you, are you expected to be on there? How big of a cohort are you willing to take on this trip? And, you know, let's do a little infomercial for our audience here of people that, that should consider coming on.

16:24 Well, we've got, it's a small group right now. We've got seven people. We've got room for like four or five more. It's not a luxurious vacation. Like, there's no air conditioning. You'll get your sheets changed every day. You're going to have fresh towels, but you're going to stay in a bungalow with somebody else who, you know, you don't know. You can pay for an upgrade to be in the space. That's part of the growth experience. You know, everyone wants to be comfortable. You don't grow when you're comfortable. You know, you have to challenge yourself and do different things. So you're going to get there, it's going to be a little hot, but you acclimate in a day here. Can I give you what a day sounds like? Yeah, please. That's what I'm.

17:09 Okay. So wake up probably to the howler monkeys whenever they wake up, the jungle. And then you can get up, take your time, have a little fresh fruit, maybe some. You have some Costa Rican coffee, extra strong for the Americans. They like to do that. And then we'll take a walk to the beach, we'll catch some morning sun, meditate for a little bit. We'll take you through some guided meditation to help set, you know, intentions for the day, calm your nervous system. Then we'll head back. It's a five minute walk. We'll head back and we'll do yoga for an hour, maybe some more meditation. Then go have a whole, wholesome, healthful breakfast, whatever they decide. Breakfast every morning and Then when that's completed, got a few hours to explore the beach, rent bikes, go on excursion.

17:58 Lunch is at 1:30 and then more free time in the afternoon. Sometimes in the afternoon we'll have a bike ride planned to go. We're close to Panama or to special beaches. We'll attend cacao ceremonies, learn about the cacao trees. Everything's optional. We visit a local tribe, they take us on their land and they like. They pull their fruits from the trees. You get to sample things. You crush sugar cane and make chocolate. You enter a hut and get blessed by a shaman who communicates with nature only and humans when they come into his place. I don't know. And you don't have to do any of that stuff. You can just go and you can sit on the beach and sit cocktails if you want, and go surf because they're great surfing beaches around there too.

18:51 Get away, disconnect, forget about all this stuff. Disengage, calm your mind and calm your body and then learn tools while you're there that you can bring back here and employ some of them. The tools that I've learned over the last year in my yoga training that have literally changed my brain and my life. And from a standpoint of how. Well, first off, how many days and what city is it in Costa Rica? It's seven days. It's Sunday to Sunday. Oh, you mean the details. It's Sunday to Sunday. It's in Puerto Viejo. It's on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. It's an hour south of Limon. You fly into San Jose.

19:33 We get a shuttle bus from there to the coast. It's like four hours, but we stop for food once you're there. There's restaurants and stuff. It's 2,400 bucks, includes lodging and all of your meals. We're gonna go out Thursday night. Name of the place, I forget, but sponsored by the Halo advisors and my buddy Pete Moore. A lovely dinner. Thank you, Pete, for that. Of course. Let's talk about a couple, couple modalities that, that are kind of prevalent. Switching gears, you know, back to the fitness industry, because you've seen everything over the last 25 years and yeah, I still do cycling a lot. I do trx.

20:14 What are some of the things that have impacted you maybe more than just like the physical side of it? So obviously yoga, you know, can you talk about, like, do you do hot yoga? Do you do regular yoga? Do you do some kind of special. Is there anything else that you're doing right now that you're seeing like, you know, results that are magnified that, you know, and the new modalities that are interesting. I, you know, I only know what's in my little world. Yeah. I don't know a lot of the new stuff that's out there because a lot of it's flash in the pan, you know, even something like spinning that was around for so long is kind of losing its appeal, it seems to me. What I do is I've incorporated yoga. I do three hours of yoga a week.

21:01 I religiously do two days of Tabata high intensity interval training. I have a class called Blast six rounds, four different exercises using Bulgarian bags and dumbbells and gliders and balls and body weight stuff. I strength train four days a week. I play pickleball a day or two a week for a few hours. Now I'm riding my bike again. I walk in nature with a helmet, of course. Fully geared up. Thank you. Yeah. So I like my focus now is obviously my family, but my physical and emotional well being. I realize how important it is to my job and showing up in my job and showing up in my family when I need to be there. I can't do that. When I'm not healthful, when I'm shoving bad food in my body, when I'm doing drugs, when I'm drinking, I can't be there.

21:58 This is what's important. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called higher dose higherdose.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. If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, your time and your stop is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market.

22:38 Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for 200 bucks 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. 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. So. And then from a standpoint, to kind of close the loop on the workout side, everyone's talking about workout recovery and doing a cold plunge and doing infrared sauna we're invested in higher dose and they got some great products.

23:25 What I've struggled with, and I've said this directly to a lot of people that are in the recovery space, is. If I'm doing three hours of yoga. And I'm doing two days of tabata and I'm doing pickleball and I'm doing four days strength training, can you prescribe me what recovery modality I should do, in what order, in what day and what is first and what is second? And what is possibly going to negate something? Like if I do an infrared sauna and then I do yoga and then I do a cold plunge, should I have done the cold plunge before yoga or after? Or does it not matter? Or like, is there anyone or have you gotten to the point where you can, like, figure out with your body, you know, like, how this actually supposed to, like, get into my routine yet? Because I feel like no one's figured that out yet.

24:13 I don't think any, I don't think anybody knows. And you just do what's right. I don't do cold plunges. I do saunas because I really like them. I understand the benefits of a cold plunge, but I'm kind of a wuss. Yeah, I'm not a cool. I got to admit, it's like I can, I'll put myself in other uncomfortable situations physically, you know, keep the cold stuff for other people. Yeah, I just do what works for my body. You know what I mean? If I, If I ride 40 miles on a Sunday, I'm not going to go strength train my legs on Monday. I'm probably going to sit in the sauna and I'll probably do a yoga class for 45 minutes. And that's my recovery. The yoga is my recovery from the bike ride. That's my stretching. So it's physically active. I'm burning calories, but I'm also getting the benefits of the stretching from the yoga.

25:01 And then to kind of close the loop here, let's say you replicated you by a thousand, okay. And you had a thousand people doing basically your workout routine. Is there a health club that is accommodating everything that you want to do? Is there? I. I've been telling some of my health club operators as an example, you know, hey, look, you don't have a pickleball court, but you've got people that play pickleball and there's plenty of free pickleball courts around here. So why don't you create a pickleball team, okay, and have Somebody is like the head of the team at your club and let them kind of run the pickleball for you. Just like in a, in a, in a universities like 700, you know, student led organizations, like create member led organizations. Right. And that becomes your ability to say to people, hey, I don't have a pickleball court, but I got a pickleball recovery program. I got a pickleball strength program.

25:57 I, I got Mark Roch, who runs pickleball, introduce you to him right now. He's over here. How do you think the clubs can kind of continue to capture and retain you? And are you seeing that happening or are you kind of like, you know, diluting? Are you moving away from the club? Are you moving towards the club? Are you neutral? Where are you as a, as an evangelist of always being in the health club and always feeling the good energy of being in a health club as an employee and a member? Yeah. Where are you and like, could you bring it in or is it going out? It's going. I'm. Well, I mean, I, I feel like people should do what they're really good at and specialize in. So I don't, I play pickleball, but I could run that business. I don't want to run that business. Right. So we can do programming for it if it's gonna, if the reward is worth the effort, Find a lot of programming that you do takes a ton of effort and you may not make that much money on it.

26:58 So what I've done is I'm moving away from the things that I don't know. People may want it, but they can get it somewhere else. Yeah, I run a gym. Come and come and do all the things. We have 60 classes on the schedule. Do that stuff, lift weights, get a personal trainer, do some Pilates. If you want pickleball, go somewhere else. If you want to get stronger, you want to move better, laterally, hire one of our personal trainers. That'll happen. Yeah, that's good. And are you seeing an influx since. COVID of what's the demos like in your club and how has that changed? Well, let's see, we lost a good portion of our members when it first happened and then in the slow growth back, which we're back to where we were before, by the way, last month. Oh, well, but we're doing. Just seemed like 45 better in personal training with the same number of members. But what I found was during COVID a lot of the people coming into the gym were younger.

28:01 Our market's a little bit older based on where we live and the homes surrounding us, but started getting younger. So our usage went up even though our membership was down by like a thousand people. So we expanded during COVID and like I said, personal training has increased. People are still joining the club and our dropout rates are like well below industry standards, well below 2% a month and have been. So that's big. That's really big on the retention. It's huge. People love. We've created the difference between we're not a gym. That's the difference. We're a community of like minded people that want to support, that support each other and if you're not that type of person then they're not a member for that long because they don't fit in.

28:47 Yeah. And it's not exclusionary. It's just like if you're going to be here, be nice. Right. You know, so it's changed my attitude also as a business owner. Awesome. Well look, we'll get all the show. Notes up here on the, on the retreat. We'll get a link directly to the sign up. I know you're only looking for four or five spots but look out for Mark and what he's doing. We've been friends for 25 years and there's a level of trust also. I know that when he puts on an event, whether it's a musician, as a musician, as an executive or as an experiential leader, that it's going to go off flawlessly and it's going to be with compassion.

29:29 So good to see you, brother. Appreciate everything. Our friendship and guidance over the years, you've helped. Thank you me in many ways and I want to reciprocate. So go Halo and go to Costa Rica and I'll see you soon. Good stuff. All right, brother, Congrats. Appreciate it. Thanks.