LIFTS Episode 101 - How Myzone Is Redefining Wearable Engagement

0:00We all have this 10 ,000 steps goal. It had not been a science. It came from a marketing campaign inspired by the Tokyo Olympics. People are feeling more and more overwhelmed by data. We got to a point where the majority of the clubs or the athletes were just looking at one data point instead of like the 25 that we were generating. And it made us think maybe we should focus on making the numbers more accurate or maybe we should add another layer of interpretation from a data analytics standpoint.

0:31Matthew Januszek:Welcome to this week's episode of LIPS. I'm Matthew Januzek and I'm here with my co-host Mohamed Iqbal. Mo, are you feeling wonderful today? I am. We're coming out of the Thanksgiving break here in the US, which some might say is even bigger than Christmas. I hosted 23 people from my wife's family. So I don't know if it'd be better than my family or my wife's family here. Kids and pets and all the things. But it's good to be back and we're in the last month of the year. I can't believe we're almost in 2026. We've got one of my favorite fitness devices. In fact, out of all of the fitness devices that I've ever used, including equipment, including our own equipment, I think this has to be one of the pieces I use more frequently than anything in the whole industry.

1:15Matthew Januszek:So there you go, Jason. That's got to be a positive start to the interview. You definitely always talk about it. I think you're in the Hall of Fame now, right? Is that right? uh i i think i'm more than a hall of fame actually i i i think i'm i'm several levels above a hall of fame i i'm now checking i'm actually i'm i'm a titan so is it in in in the ranking is is tight and pretty good jason i know you're not quite there yet but well that felt like that felt like a low blow yes that is uh that is very good and mo he knows exactly where he is in the the app pretend like he of course checks it every day but today i'm excited about this because we are joined by two leaders reshaping how the fitness industry thinks about data motivation and human behavior a few weeks ago it might have been two to three weeks at this point i actually spoke at my zones mo tech event in london which was just a truly incredible event and ever since i've been getting asked the same question in fact i got asked it this morning does the mo tech stand for me for me and everyone's like you have and i'm sure you guys are laughing because i'm sure you've been asked that also and of course i'm like it's for motivation it's not for mo but before we even begin jay and vahid i just want to settle this for the audience is mo tech motivation technology or did you really name it after me well it's motivation technology however as soon as we coined that term i said well we've got to have mo come over and actually host this thing for us so So I would have stayed more into it.

2:52Matthew Januszek:I was actually looking at the notes that I got over from Vahid, and I was wondering whether that was some reference to you, Mo, that you should be contributing to this piece. So I'm actually glad that you cleared that up as well, because I was unsure. There you go. Well, let me introduce our two guests today. First, we have Jay Worthy, who's a 25-year industry veteran with leadership roles at Life Fitness, TechnoGym, and now CEO of MyZone. He leads the entire organization. He is scaling innovation and helped really shape the evolution of member engagement. On his leadership, MyZone has become a leader, and he is leading MyZone in his next phase of evolution.

3:34We also have a second guest. And as Matthew mentioned, we usually have just three tiles, not four. But I'm excited to have Vahid. Vahid is MyZone's CTO. And before he joined MyZone, he was also the CTO of Push, if I have that correct, which was the first commercially successful velocity-based strength training product, which was then acquired by Whoop. And then you spent a couple of years at Whoop. You joined MyZone, I believe, earlier this year to really help its evolution into its next phase, which we're going to spend a lot of time talking about today. Jay and Vahid, thank you so much for joining us on Lyfts.

4:18Thank you so much for having us. It's great to be here.

4:20Matthew Januszek:It's great to be here, Mo. We've got an article and it said, is it time to stop using your fitness tracker? And I was curious because there seems to be this debate around fitness trackers and are people getting a sense of they're getting too much data and the motivation to use trackers is dropping off? And is it time to rethink? And I know that's a part of what you've been doing since you've been at my zone, Jason. But for me, I haven't had that experience. I have found that fitness track has, particularly my zone, has been extremely motivating. And it's always allowed me to probably push a little bit more than what I would do.

4:58Matthew Januszek:It's allowed me to keep up to the minimum amount. Not that I necessarily needed that, but it definitely does support me making sure that even if I've got a busy life, I'm always getting the minimum amount of MEPS to retain my status. But there clearly is a view out there that maybe at this moment, there's too much information and people are losing some of the enjoyment that they had from exercise or walking because now suddenly everything's a competition. So I wanted to just throw this one out to you, Jason, as it may frame some of the things that you've been thinking about yourself in terms of how do people looking at wearables today?

5:35Matthew Januszek:Because clearly when MyZone came into the industry, you're one of the first people that really had a fitness tracker compared to where we are nowadays. um so so maybe um we sort of start there and get your views on on the um on that question yeah let's get going well look i think it's a great question and it's fascinating to us because it um it really underscores something that we've been working on for the last year so my zone's been around for for 14 plus years um and the the kind of the wearable space has has really accelerated over that period of time and so you know when my zone first was was uh conceptualized and launch to the market, there weren't really many folks doing what we do.

6:17And now you see a lot more. You know, Apple Watch is really just a digital watch. Wube didn't really exist. Garmin was kind of super focused on elite and very serious athletes, or a ring didn't exist. And now all of a sudden, you know, wearables are ubiquitous. And so there's lots and lots of choice. But I think one of the challenges in the space, which the article alludes to, and I think, you know, you started to see with consumers, is that fitness technology has continued to focus on more and more data points. I was actually with a customer just this morning, and they said to me, what you really need is HRV, and you need exercise preparedness, and you need recovery.

6:54And I said, actually, our point of view is we don't need that. And so when I came in, we brought on Tom, who's our global marketing director, now our CMO. And we said, look, we need to do some research. We really need to talk to consumers. We need to talk to gym operators. and we need to understand what it is that they love about MISO and what they want MISO to become. And so we did this really seismic piece of research, which we'd never done before. And what we learned stopped us in our tracks, right? And the reason it stopped us in our tracks is we went into it expecting to hear a lot about hardware and a lot about data and a lot about how data would drive their decision-making and help them change behavior.

7:34And what we learned was people were generally obsessed with how MISO made them feel. And so we started to scratch that itch. And what we really discovered was that the problem that we're not trying to solve is more and more data. And if anything, as that article alludes to, people are feeling more and more overwhelmed by data. And I think you and I both had a whoop for some time. I use a whoop right now, but you mentioned that I'm feeling a bit run down this morning. And my whoop told me that it's a red recovery, which I never get red recovery. So instantly it put me in that frame of mind. And so I think that consumers can become really overwhelmed with too much data.

8:11And even if they're not overwhelmed with the data, there's this big question around what do we actually do with the data to change behavior? So for us at MyZone, we've become really obsessed with this idea that we're interested in not just getting people to start exercise, but to stay exercising. And that, I think, is the really interesting point, because, you know, with the greatest respect to you, you're somebody who's worked out all their life. you're an incredibly athletic and fit guy. Well, we're also interested, we want to provide a solution for people like you, but we also want to kind of grow the industry and get more people in to the mix.

8:44And we're finding that there's just too much data overwhelm for the vast majority of people. And maybe I'll pause there because I know Vahid made a post on LinkedIn today, which I think was spot on when he talked about really how we grow this industry is attracting new people in and we need to understand what they need. Well, I think to keep in mind, of course, Our industry is full of wearable devices, software, and hardware products that give the user lots of data and information. And we're getting to a point where there's data fatigue. You get so much information first thing in the morning as you wake up, you look at your phone.

9:19And there's always that layer of actionability of the data. Like, do you really need to look at all of that data points? Or do you just need to know what to do with the data? Is the data actionable? That's number one. And I think a lot of the fitness trackers today are focusing on those who want to optimize, those who have like the basics of their life together, those who are already active, maybe the top 10%, 20 % of the population. And what we see globally is that about 80 % of people globally don't even do the minimum activity levels based on the WHO guidelines. And out of the 20 % who do, they probably do that as part of their job.

10:06Maybe they're factory workers. They have to walk to school, walk to work. So there's a very small number of people who are actually active because they want to be active, because they see the benefit. And to me, it feels like the data is not conveying the message or is not as actionable as it should be. And considering that the wearable devices are just adding more and more data, it basically means that perhaps we're going in the right direction. I remember back in the days, Mo, you mentioned push. For every repetition of an exercise, you do back squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead squat. Every repetition, we would extract metrics.

10:46It would give you the velocity, the power, the acceleration, the force. And one of the goals that we had was what are the other metrics that we should add for every repetition? What are the other metrics that we should extract as well? and we got to a point where the majority of the clubs or the athletes were just looking at one data point instead of like the 25 that we were generating and it made us think maybe we should focus on making the numbers more accurate or maybe we should add another layer of interpretation from a data analytics standpoint to explain what that data means to the user to make it more meaningful to them or maybe we should hide some of the data we generated but we don't show it to you because you don't care about.

11:25And I think the fitness, like the future of the fitness industry would be relying on those areas of providing perhaps less data instead of more, but adding more meaning to the data or providing the data that actually means something to the end user. I just want to, for the audience's sake, just take a step back. And when we talk about wearables, I think people think that wearables is something because it's been in the forefront for the last couple of years with Apple Watch and Aura and Whoop and others. Wearables actually came out of the 1960s. That was the first step counter. In fact, the original pedometer goes way, way before that.

12:02I think DaVinci might have created the actual first step counter. But in terms of mass market, the modern step counter traces back to a company in Japan, and they launched something called the Manapoki, which translates to the 10 ,000 steps meter. And they did that. And by the way, that goal had nothing to do with science. We all had this 10 ,000 steps goal, had nothing to do with science. It came from a marketing campaign inspired by the Tokyo Olympics and a Japanese character for 10 ,000. And that character represented a person walking. So they took this character, which looked like a person walking, to come up with the 10 ,000 steps.

12:40And that's how we today talk about 10 ,000 steps as being a goal. Fast forward, in 2007, Gettin University had a study which looked at three cohorts. And the first cohort just said, they gave them a pedometer and said, just go walk like you normally do. The second cohort gave them a goal of 7 ,000 steps. And the third cohort gave them the goal with the community. The one that performed the most and over-performed their goal was the one that combined the three things, the pedometer, the steps, and the community. So that showed that if you're tracking something, you know you're going to just do more than if you were not of tracking it.

13:16If you give a goal, naturally, you're going to want to outperform the goal. And third, community is so important. And in 2007, the founders of Fitbit saw the study and created Fitbit. Fitbit was founded in 2007. And voila, you've got the modern day wearable world then get kicked off. And I think, and I mentioned that history because so much of that to me is relevant as it relates to my zone and how operators and gyms think about wearables. Because to your point in that Washington Post study, 30 % to 50 % lose, I think you have to go back to the article, but 30 % to 50 % lose engagement after I think three to six months.

13:59And that seems to be a very, very high number. We've seen a lot of evolution happen in the last 15 years, most notably in bring your own wearable, right? We went through, I mean, I think we all remember the bring your own device transformation in the 2000s in the workplace where, hey, I want to use my own personal phone to check my email and message and all of those things. We had to have governance around that. And by and large, companies today have supported that for the most part. But if companies were able to do that, why not wearables? So as members are now walking in, and the number is going to be 40 % soon of most gym members that have come in with a wearable at some point, how do gems recognize this new product and new tool of engagement coming in?

14:48And to me, that's why I'm so excited about what we spoke about a few weeks ago and what you kind of launched with MoTeX in that MyZone has this platform to do that. And you're also shifting away from a proprietary kind of hardware or proprietary technology stack and moving more towards something that is a bit more agnostic, but leaning in on the motivation levers that I think as operators and as people in the fitness industry, we can only do not give enough attention to. I think that's absolutely right. And I think what's really interesting is, first of all, the study that you're referring to, the reason that they now know that that cohort that had all three elements was so successful really relates to self-determination theory.

15:35So we've got these kind of elements of autonomy and competence and relatedness around, you know, my choice and ownership of what I do, I can see visible progress in terms of competence. And then there's this community connection that allows me to tie it all together. So it is really interesting, because in the past, it was really just about data, it was just about hit 10 ,000 steps in that example. But it's not just about data. And we know fundamentally data doesn't create behavior change, there's lots of other elements and actually bringing it full circle back to what Matt said. Matt, you're probably not the type of person who needs to be kind of motivated every single day.

16:14But my bet is over the number of years that you've been using MyZone at Hall of Fame Titan status, there'll be months where motivation has been low, travel has been high, but MyZone kept you in the game, right? And that's probably the competitive edge with your brother to stay ahead of him. And that's what we're bringing to the table. So it's not just the data. It's not just the goal, but it's also the community element, the kind of the gamification element. And so we know this now, Vahid and I and our team, because we partnered up with Heather, who you met recently at our event, Dr. Heather McKee.

16:47And she's a behavioral scientist and she's really helping us go from we think this works. And so we're going to give it a go to we know this works and here's why. And so that's driving kind of credibility into everything we do and also drives an opportunity for us at MyZone and our partners to start really doubling down on the things that would genuinely change behavior. Right. So with all of that in mind, then get to the kind of the next part of your commentary is, well, how do you kind of remove friction? And we talked a lot at the event about MyZone Go, which is essentially our way of bringing people into the MyZone ecosystem without making them buy a proprietary wearable from us.

17:28So we'll still make wearables. We still do make wearables. We actually just launched one called MyZone Max, which is a really high quality ECG chest-based product, reinvention of our MZ3 product. And it's absolutely fantastic. And it's really loved by the people that use that product. But we also recognize that if we want to kind of grow the pond, we want to bring more people into gyms and into the kind of the wellness and lifestyle industry, then we have to remove the friction from the process. And so to the extent that, you know, somebody has an Apple watch or an Android watch on their wrist, it doesn't make sense for us to try and then sell them a secondary wearable.

18:09They already have something that's capable and functional enough to allow them to experience MyZone. And so that is what MyZone Go is all about. It's about removing barriers, removing friction, allowing somebody to walk into one of our gym partners, see a QR code, scan it, and immediately start having a MyZone experience without any friction, without any delay, without any barriers. When you look at wearables, there are so many metrics that users tend to anchor on. And I've spoken to probably thousands of people over the last several years, and obviously thousands of people that wear wearables.

18:45And I'm always curious, what kind of wearable do you have? And you can always tell what's important to them. For a lot of users, steps is still something people talk about. And there's been a resurgence of steps and a movement around walking to say, hit 20 ,000 steps, 25 ,000 steps a day. And that's been important. For others focused on recovery, as Jay, we were just talking about maybe HRV is that thing that they anchor on. And if you look at my zone's original kind of set of users of MEPS and how you've coined it, it's more heart rate zones and heart rate intensities. You look at Ormstery Fitness, that's what they've anchored on.

19:19When you think about all of the biomarkers, and if you add Aura or Wolf, they even have temperature sensors, blood oxygen sensors. There's so much that can be tracked now. Now, how do you pick and select? Because I would gather that what motivates people or that anchoring metric is going to be a little bit different. Maybe community is the great equalizer, but that anchoring metric is going to be a little bit different. How do you know or surface what metric is important for them? Because otherwise, I've always been curious why wearable companies don't do that, right? Because you always kind of get the same interface.

19:55and but maybe if you could surface that anchor metric for that user that it would keep them more engaged. Jay, maybe I can quickly chime in here. I think there's been lots of advancements in hardware products. You can buy a$50 smartwatch today that gives you your HRV, tracks your sleep, gives you your steps. It even gives you your blood oxygen levels and your blood pressure as well. So I think it's really important for us to look at the hardware not as the ultimate product that will give you the value, but as an enabler for you to have the experience that you're looking for. Whether you're using your smartwatch or Apple Watch or MyZone device, it tracks your biological and bio data using the sensors that are embedded on the hardware.

20:45And the hardware is becoming more and more accurate as we're moving forward. But all of these are the enablers for the experience that you want to ultimately subscribe to. And that's basically what MyZoneGo gives to the users that you can have your smartwatch, you don't have to buy MyZone device, particularly to start with, but ultimately the experience that MyZoneGo offers to you is the one that keeps you moving as part of that. And going back to your question about HRV, about the steps, I was reading some articles earlier today that was talking about what happens to you in terms of longevity if you walk for 10 minutes a day.

21:2510 minutes a day is a pretty short walk. But ultimately, if you do it consistently, that could add to two years of extra longevity to your life. Heather was sharing a result of a more recent study today as well, that if you do one minute, the limits are going even down. If you do one minute of rigorous activity every day, you will see a big drop in the likelihood of death in the next six years of your life. So the results show that ultimately what you want is to have a healthier, happier, longer life. right it's not about you don't look at your hrb score you don't look at your number of steps because you want to see how many steps you've done it's because you want to live a healthier lifestyle and for my zone as well that is the same thing we want to motivate you to move further so the data that we're showing you or the metrics that we're including into the user experience will be around um what is it that you should see in order to encourage you and motivate you to move more, but at the same time, what is it that is meaningful for you?

22:32A big part of that is also the research that we do, the market research, to see what actually users are looking for. As you said, a user may be looking for HRV versus sleep versus steps. That's number one input to our roadmap from a product standpoint of what is it that the users are looking for. But the second part of that is, is that data meaningful? If you give you your blood oxygen or blood pressure on a day-to-day basis. It is interesting to look at it for a week, but then it becomes repetitive for you. Then we need to go a layer deeper, look at the analytics on that data and see what is it that you want to actually look, you need to look at versus what you want to look at.

23:12So there's a combination of what the research tells us, what we're capable of collecting from a hardware standpoint as an enabler for our experience. And the third one is the market research that we need to do to make sure that we are offering users what they're actually looking for and combining and fusing all of that with the motivational and behavioral science principles that we have to make sure that that data is actually telling you something that you want to keep in mind instead of requiring you to process more and more information on a day-to-day basis. Jay, do you have something? Yeah, I think that's spot on, Vahid.

23:50And I think for us, the other thing to remember is data alone is not sufficient. So whatever data we might bring into our ecosystem or my zoners and our users in our ecosystem might want that they tell us through research, we already now have a kind of a base belief that data alone is not sufficient. So it needs to be data plus some kind of goal mechanic, some kind of target, and then community as well. And it's the it's the nexus of those three things that really drives long-term behavior change and the data on its own is not enough and then on this on this notion of an anchor metric I actually I fully agree with that and I also agree with the idea that everybody has slightly different needs but we do think there's a really nice kind of lowest common denominator if you like this is almost like the the base the base metric that everybody can use whether they're a semi-pro athlete a pro athlete or brand new to exercise.

24:50And that's effort because effort is relative. So we have effort points. We have my zone effort points. And that has been right from day one, the beauty of my zone. And one of the things that we recognize now is probably part of our secret sauce. And so we're looking at how do we continue to use people's effort and reward people's effort. And we all know what it's like, because I think all of us are fairly active. So we're not necessarily the most representative of, you know, Joe and Jane average out there who are looking to try and get fit, say this January post, post holidays. But even, even folks that are really active, really engaged, have those difficult months that you get injured, work gets in the way, family challenges, travel, you know, there are always reasons you get sick, there are always reasons why, why it can be difficult.

25:39And so for us, it's about how do you kind of acknowledge and recognize effort. And a key ingredient of that, which we're starting to now build into our products going forward is this element of forgiveness as well. And I think that's also one of the big problems with traditional wearables is I collect all my data. And if for some reason, I miss or I leave it behind or I don't get the data, it's like everything is lost. And so we think this element of forgiveness is absolutely foundational as well to recognize that sometimes you're going to kind of pull off the horse and that, you know, we can help you get back on the horse and keep your street going.

26:18Matthew Januszek:I was just wondering with the exercise and keeping people working out or moving as being one of these things as an industry we've been trying to do for years. When I was researching for this interview, I was looking at an article from Baylor University And the article was titled Why TikTok Keeps You Scrolling. And it looked at some of the research that explains the science behind social media addiction. And Jason, when we spoke prior to your event, you mentioned some of the stuff that you were looking to do to keep people engaged into using your app. And looking at my children and anybody that's got kids that are teenagers or younger would probably agree that getting them off the phone for a few minutes to have a conversation is extremely challenging.

27:09Matthew Januszek:And my guess is that the science around apps like TikTok and Snapchat is extremely sophisticated. I know myself, I struggle once, even if I go and do some research on YouTube for anything, suddenly 10 minutes later, I'm watching videos about cars or aeroplanes or something crazy. So there's clearly some developments now in science and AI, which looks at things like variable reward loops, unpredictable novelty, social validation, the triggers that a lot of these companies are using. Have you found anything in your research that has helped you unlock getting people to not just use your app, but to somehow move into the behaviors that you're trying to get them to use?