LIFTS Episode 106 - How YouTube Is Reshaping the Fitness Industry with David Sherman-Presser

28:29Matthew Januszek:Mo, I want to jump over to you with this because this is your world. You work with people that spend hundreds of thousands, even millions on developing apps. And as I'm listening to David talk here, this almost seems to be like the first place you start before you get the app and the app becomes another place to engage. And then you have the bricks and mortar location. So this almost seems to be a little bit of an ecosystem where you draw people in, you tell them the stories about yourself like this lady clearly has done here, you know, who you are, what your family are, where you go on holiday kind of thing and why you're an expert, which then seems to provide legitimacy for the fact that you've just invested all of this money on an app, which then goes to your facility as opposed to maybe starting with an app.

29:18Matthew Januszek:Now, I don't want to do you out of people coming to Sweatworks to build apps, but I'm interested in your perspective after what we've been talking about here today. You're both absolutely correct. So one, if you think about an average studio, David, or even a big box gym, you're roughly between$800 ,000 to$2 million in the initial Apple investment, including some TI and equipment and things like that. And just speaking to a multi-time founder who's opening up a new strength concept in New York. And I asked her, I said, have you validated this concept? Well, I think it's going to work. Have you tested it?

29:54Well, so-and-so is doing it, so we think it's going to work. And similarly to an app, Matthew, what we always tell brands before they go and spending, like you said, anywhere from half a million to several million on an app because they feel like it's a good idea is there's got to be an easier way to validate it. So some of the things in an app that we like to promote is to say, use a no-code platform, build out a prototype, and just launch it. Just test it. Alongside that, build an audience. Now, we're not as familiar with YouTube, David, as you are. So leveraging your app could be a really good idea.

30:28But we'll say, go build out a focus group, get this app out in front of other people before you make a big investment. And I think that is more relevant now than ever before. We're coming out of an era, I would say, almost the entire time I've been in this industry, about 15 years, where you've seen a lot of investment dollars coming in, whether it is from angel investors, private equity, VCs, they're all pouring money into the industry, and they have been. And we saw a boom of that related to AI over the last 18 months. That is now, I believe in 26, going to come down to a halt, especially for the more innovative ideas.

31:02So you're going to get some maybe angel funding. You may use your 401k money to go build something out. Before you do that, I agree with you. I think validating that concept on YouTube, kind of like your client has done here, or using Matthew, like a no-code platform to build out a simple app that you could do for$5 ,000 to$10 ,000 and just launch it. That's the way to go. Before you go invest in building out something or investing millions on an app, I think using this as a proof of concept would be really interesting. One question, David, for you, as you're talking about this and we're talking about these questions, one of the things that is becoming clear to me is that there are almost different strategies that you would apply to an individual influencer like Marie, to a single location gym like a zoo culture, to a regional gym like an EOS, or an international gym like a Planet Fitness, and probably different kind of programs as well for studios and others.

32:04Walk us through how these different brands and scales of brands should be thinking about their YouTube strategy, because I'm sure it's not the same recipe for everyone. 100%, it's not the same recipe. I think the starting point and the nuts and bolts are very similar. So again, going back, and I know I sound like a broken record, but going back to being very precise and specific on what your value proposition is and who your target audience is, is important across the continuum that you've mentioned. But yeah, I mean, if we start from, you know, influencer, creator, and then working our way up, I mean, a creator on YouTube, to be a creator on YouTube is to be a small business.

32:46And so the focus there is going to be building an audience and then monetizing that audience, primarily through YouTube, and then, you know, maybe expanding onto other platforms and to other products. You know, you see I know we've mentioned ecosystems a couple of times. You've seen now the biggest creators, you know, their YouTube channels, their nucleus, like a Mr. Beast or Mark Rober, and then they build digital products, physical products. Mr. Beast launched a theme park, you know, he's launching a banking app. So like you can, you can use your YouTube channel kind of like how Disney used, you know, their IP as the nucleus.

33:23And then they built products and experiences around that. And so as a creator, your YouTube channel is your nucleus, and then you need to monetize that audience. And the way you do that is going to be different than the way a gym or a company is going to use YouTube. So that's a, that's a creator and we can go deep in there, or we can, you know, focus more on these other folks. Cause I know that's the audience for this podcast. I mean, for a single location gym, I don't think it makes sense to spend a ton of time and resources on YouTube, but I do think it makes sense to maybe poll your users or ask your current customers, you know, what could be valuable from a YouTube channel?

34:10how can we complement your experience? How can we give you a complement your experience with digital content? And what would be valuable and additive for the physical experience? And so, again, that's building a YouTube channel, being focused on a very specific audience. And if it's a single location, a local audience. And then I tell everyone, don't overthink things, don't sweat the small stuff, you know, if you can do weekly or biweekly posting, that's all you need. And, you know, there are different formats on YouTube or different kind of surfaces. There's long form video, there's live streaming, and there's short form video shorts.

34:52If you can do one of those, one long form and one short form a week, and you're doing consistency, that's enough to cover your bases on YouTube. You don't need to post daily. You don't need to post super high quality content. If you know, if you're a single location gym and you know, this is what my audience wants, this is additive to them, doing it on a weekly or biweekly basis, I think is a great starting point and can be real value add to what your customers are experiencing in your gym. If then you're scaling up to some of these, you know, multiple location or like huge gym brands, then that's where I think you can invest a little bit more in, okay, how do we get creative with our content strategy?

35:41Like, yes, we have a value prop. Yes, we have a target audience, but can we develop something that's a bit more creative that, you know, can scale on the platform? And what that means is, you know, a YouTube channel at a, you know, at a scalable level, or for kind of someone who has really wants to grow it and maybe is a big company or wants to be a big creator, a YouTube channel is a TV network. And a TV network has, to be successful, you need to fill out your content slate, which means you need a variety of TV shows. And so the holy grail on YouTube is finding what I call TV shows or repeatable formats that you know your audience likes, is unique to you, and you can develop and deliver on a consistent basis.

36:29And if you are a big gym in this space or a big wearables company and you find a repeatable format like a Hot Ones or like a Brian Trahan's Penny Series or there's other examples of this that I can give and I can break down for you. If you can find that, then the world is your oyster and you unlock a ton of audience And then you can also unlock monetization on the platform. And so that's how I would really encourage some of these bigger players to think about YouTube. Is there something that a big player can, is there a TV show repeatable format that they can create that can then open them up to new audience, more loyalty, and then even potentially monetization opportunities on YouTube?

37:23or across other platforms.

37:25Matthew Januszek:What are you looking like, David, from an investment perspective? And I'm not talking about creating a full-blown series, but if you want to get into this, what would you say are those key skills or roles that you're going to need to invest in for a business? And then what are your thoughts around the creator? Is this something that if you own the business, it's going to be a lot easier for you to probably get involved in that. I'm just thinking that if you, let's say, you employ some people and trainers that work in the gym and then the trainers go, then a lot of your brand is attached around that as well.

38:05Matthew Januszek:So give us some thoughts on essential things that you need to get right to create a foundation to build upon and then your thoughts around the creators themselves based on the fact that there could be a certain amount of risk around making a significant investment in somebody who's probably not completely connected to the business itself? Yeah. So speaking to the investment question, you know, I think if you are a company, you would want an individual that is dedicated to this. So a, you know, social media manager, you know, a digital content person that understands the language of the internet and understands user behavior on the, on these platforms, because again, YouTube is a very different platform than an Instagram and TikTok.

38:52And so I think you need one person for strategy, and then you probably need one person, or it can be, you know, freelance person, or you can bootstrap and get, you know, a trainer or someone else at your organization to maybe do some filming and some, uh, some editing for you, you know, cause so that's, you need strategy and then you need post-production capabilities that would be the two kind of roles that i think are needed at a company to start to build and up you know and operationalize a youtube channel and then thoughts on creators and then from a creator perspective well so i guess before we get to creators i think what's most important is to nail the creative format and this is you know this is a test and learn thing here, but I think you want to try and develop, you know, a TV show or a format that people like, and you can do on a repeatable basis.

39:54So that, that the idea is more important than the creator, you know, and it can tie to your brand. It can be the, you know, the whoop recovery series, you know, whatever it is, the, you know, we got, you put people through 10 exercises and you look at what their recovery score is after each exercise and it's kind of like you know I have hot ones top of my hot ones is probably you know the most successful YouTube format and so if you can find something like that as a brand or a company that's the holy grail and so that should be the focus and then from you know from a talent or in front of camera perspective.

40:33I think if the show or the format is creative and is resonant with people and it connects to your value proposition and your brand, then I would worry less about who the creator is because people are coming back to it for the format. I think if you have great talent and yeah, I think if you have great talent and so you have great talent paired with a great idea or a great format, then that's just a win-win. And if that person leaves or they move on or they decide to do something else, the format still exists. But yeah, I would invest the time and focus on the creative format, less so the creator or the talent, if this is a business or a company that's spinning up a channel.

41:24Matthew Januszek:Just one other quick thing on that point for clarification. When you talk about the format, so would podcasting or would interviewing people about certain things be a format? And what other recommendations would you give around format, podcasts, things like that for gym owners? Podcasting is a format. Arguably, it is the most popular format in the world. Everyone has a podcast out there because it is repeatable. It's something that people are familiar with. and you know it's yeah almost anyone can do it if you have you know access to good stories and good yeah good talent um other my recommendation is if you are a company or a gym or a fitness operator how do you put your own unique spin on the podcast format so like the reason why hot ones and i know you come back to hot ones but what's hot ones what is hot ones what is that so hot ones is the most successful i would say kind of like talk show or or you know interview show in the world you know they if you are a big celebrity these days and you want to promote your uh you know your project it's more valuable for you to go on hot ones if you're a Matthew, you know, they just had Matthew McConaughey.

42:48They had, I can't see who else is on here. Maybe Dakota fan. I mean, these are the biggest celebrities in the world, the biggest athletes. If you want to promote your newest project, you go on hot ones as opposed to Fallon or Kimmel. Like this is the new late night circuit that people want to go on. And it is taking a tried and true format. You know, the late night, let's have a host, sit down with someone, a celebrity and ask them questions, but it is putting a creative spin on it of you got to eat 10 progressively hotter chicken wings and after each chicken wing you got to answer a question and like the hottest chicken wing is over a million Scoville's and so it has this dual narrative of you want to see what the questions Sean Evans the host is asking and also you want to see the celebrity in pain and you want to see the reaction so it's actually there are two narratives you know there's an a plot and a b plot we should do this

43:45Matthew Januszek:introduce a new element to our podcast yeah it's retentive and so and i've given this idea to other people you know if you do like exercise snacks so after every question you have to do 10 push-ups or 10 burpees 100 i work with a creator who has a um an endurance athlete he does he has a world record 4 000 push-ups he live streams every day and he does over a thousand unbroken push-ups he'll do 100 push-ups and he'll just talk and hold himself in a plank position and he'll just talk to his audience and so if you can combine a you know tried and true format with your own kind of creative spin on it that's where you can unlock real value and so yes podcasting is great if you can add something more creative to it even better you know other formats that are really successful.

44:36Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are other formats on YouTube that are successful. I would need to think a little bit more creatively about how you apply them maybe to how a company can adopt them. But yeah, if we were going to focus specifically on podcasting, I'd say that plus, you know, exercise, creativity, or kind of creative spin on it is what's going to take you to the next level. I would say the thing that I talk about with clients is copy with taste, don't copy and paste. I love that. Well, look, one of the things, one, you've got a real spinning. So if you hear silence, that's why I'm thinking, do we not have you go do 10 pushers?

45:17I don't know, not today. But now I'm thinking about how we could add this, two different elements to our podcast. One of the things that we'd like to wrap up on, on Lyft is our final thoughts and our final wrap up. So David, I'd love to start with you. If there's a key takeaway or one or two things that the audience should take away from this episode, what would that be? The two takeaways are YouTube can provide a very additive, complimentary experience to an in-person or brick and mortar gym or fitness studio. And I think that there's a lot of ways to do that with not a lot of time and effort.

46:04And so that you are increasing loyalty and engagement and retention among your current audience or your current customers. And then in addition to that, you have the opportunity to reach. I mean, there's 2 billion people on YouTube every single day. You have the opportunity to reach and bring in incremental audience by having a, even just doing the table stakes on YouTube, which is consistent posting and focusing on, which we didn't even get to kind of the best practices of, you know, packaging. YouTube mostly wants to know when they put a video in front of someone, are they going to click on it?

46:46So thumbnail title are very important. YouTube is a click and watch platform. and then the algorithm is mostly tuned to retention. So someone clicks on your video, do they have a good experience based on how much of that video do they watch? And so focusing on those two signals and I tell everyone YouTube is like the gym. It's just once you know it works, it's rep sets and consistency. And so there's a lot of opportunity to better engage your current audience and to reach new audience and to do it without spending tons of time and tons of resources creating content on YouTube. Matthew, how about you?

47:25I know this is a topic that you were really excited to discuss.

47:29Matthew Januszek:Yeah, I think this almost should have been on the predictions episode from last week, to be honest. Over the last few and you guys and Anthony do the predictions. Yeah, I think if you look at where the opportunities are, underpriced attention as Gary V calls it. I would say for any gym out there, just doing some research before this episode, I would say that there's a hell of a lot of white space or blue ocean out there for a gym brand just to figure out the format. And a lot of gyms, certainly a lot of independents probably struggle to compete from an economic perspective with some of these big brands that have private equity behind them they have the opportunity to get best real estate potentially have the opportunity to hire some great talent i think some of the independent gym owners boutique studios i i think it's i think youtube if done right and probably and will definitely give people some opportunity to connect with you david but i think if you get a strategy i think this could be huge and we've mentioned a number of different creators out there and and there's there's there's some very successful creators out there in the space one who i particularly like and recommend that you would follow is a gentleman called james smith pt he's got his regular channel where he he teaches people how to exercise and diet and this sort of stuff but he's also got a business channel as well where he he talks about social media strategies and things and and i and you know he was a trainer i think he worked at fitness first actually and and he went on to create a huge channel, million plus followers.

49:09Matthew Januszek:And now he's got a number of different products and books and courses and things like that. And so, so people are doing this fairly inexpensively. Yeah, here you go. He, he also, he also does a lot of the creatine gummies out there, which blew up in the last six months, that there was no creatine in a bunch of these gummies. And those videos got, I think that video has, you know, millions of, I can't see on this. But yeah. And the other thing, and sorry to interrupt, Matt, the other thing we haven't even really touched on is, you know, let's say an operator or company is uncomfortable dipping their toe in the water.

49:46The first step can be partnering with a creator. Influencer, marketing, I mean, these creators have access to massive audiences and huge influence. And there are big people like a Jesse James West, Jeff Nipper. I mean, you know, all of the big supplement and protein companies, David Protein Bar, I see them all on Jesse James West, Will Tennessee, and they're all partnering with creators. And so if you want to try to tap into some of this audience without creating your own content, there are many opportunities to partner with creators. And some of that, you know, spend, return on ad spend is way, way higher than what you'll see in some of the other channels.

50:23So that's, we haven't even like, we didn't even totally dig into that, but that's a whole other area that I would recommend any marketing team have some base level knowledge of is like how to, how to tap into creators because they have audience and influence more so than almost any other, anyone else out there in the world.

50:43Matthew Januszek:So I think there's a lot of reasons why it's worth investing some time in the new year on figuring this out. It's certainly given me a lot of ideas. And you never know, we may see Mo and I eating hot wings on our podcast. There's spicy protein drinks. That's right, spicy protein drinks or something like that. Crazy. Mo, your takeaways from today. Yeah, I think I have a lot. This is really, really helpful for me personally, too. But this is something that I think about constantly. As an industry, we spend a lot of time, at least in my regular job, thinking about optimizing digital funnels. We look at conversion flows on our websites, engagement inside apps, as I talked about, retention through gamification, streaks and challenges.

51:27We track activation, obsessive return, and we fine-tune every little interaction just to either convert people or keep people in our ecosystem. And all that matters. But one of the big takeaways for me from this episode seems like we have a big blind spot as an industry. And we often overlook you two, even though it's where trust is built before any of these ecosystems even engage. And I think before someone even downloads your app, before they walk into your gym, before they care about loyalty or engagements, it sounds like they're watching from influencers who might not even belong to our gym.

52:03People are learning and getting educated. and you brought up the creating gummies example, which is actually how I learned about that controversy. And they're deciding whether they can trust you, whether they can believe in you. So in a lot of ways, I would say that YouTube sits above the funnel that a lot of us target. It's almost like the first point of engagement. It's really where we build free trust conversion, credibility and trust. And I just think that as an industry, again, this is just my perspective, but I do work with a lot of industry leaders. YouTube is treated as an afterthought and that's something only influencers do.

52:39And that's something that we should be doing. And it sounds like that that's a mistake because if you take a step back and the things that you talked about today, YouTube should help shorten sales cycle. It should help improve our conversion quality. It should help increase engagement. I was just looking at ZooCultures set as well and I've actually been there. I did not get that through YouTube, but I heard about the YouTube presence and you can buy a day pass for 60 bucks. So you could even make it almost like a mecca destination to come through. So I'm also curious about this. I'm going to have to talk about that on this episode.

53:09But if we could layer AI on top of that to help repurpose the content that's created, personalizing education, David, as you talked about, I just feel like YouTube becomes the infrastructure that none of us have really thought about instead of it just being a channel, right? We should really view that as an infrastructure. So to me, that's the opportunity. I just have so much to kind of take on. I'm probably going to go back and re-listen to this episode and we should probably have a follow-up conversation. YouTube is 20 years old. Most people either don't know this or forget this. YouTube started as a dating platform.

53:44So like, you know, YouTube is... I didn't know that. Yeah, it launched Valentine's Day 2005 because Chad and the founders thought that the first use case for YouTube would be people uploading videos and meeting each other through dating videos. which speaks to how different the internet was in 20 in 2005 versus 2025 um but you know the thing youtube is going for world domination and the the the best proof point right there right now is you know in the last two years they've brought on the national football league like the crown jewel of live events and sports and then uh what was it two weeks ago they made the announcement that in a couple of years, the Oscars, which is like the crown jewel of kind of like old Hollywood legacy is coming to YouTube.

54:31So YouTube will now have NFL and Oscars. Like this is, you know, people that are not paying attention are surprised that YouTube owns living room, YouTube's own podcasting. This has been very intentional building for, you know, two decades. And in some ways, there's still a lot of tailwinds and a lot of growth opportunities, even though it's been 20 years. Like there is still a lot. And Matt, you mentioned it, a lot of white space and a lot of opportunity for brands and companies and creators to come in and do YouTube well and to build audience and to build revenue streams off of it. And David, they just seem to do things well.

55:09So I am a lifelong Jets fan. Moved to DP about 10 years ago. I'm sorry about that. My best friend is a Jets fan. Different conversation. In fact, my best friend who's house on Matt today, you can see some Jets stuff behind me here. The NFL was on direct TV with NFL Sunday ticket, which was awful. The absolute worst experience, and it constantly frustrated me almost as much as the Jets losing every season. But I will say that one of the brightest spots with this NFL season and last year is when it came to YouTube, it was just frictionless. I got the NFL Sunday ticket. It was actually cheaper. Most things go up in price.

55:47They went down in price, and the experience was unbelievable. And the ability to comment and look at the feeds, I enjoyed better than watching it on any other NFL. Now I'm better on any other platform. So I think you're right. I think YouTube is investing a lot in experience and engagement and community, all things that are important to our industry. We just can't, we haven't leveraged it.

56:07Matthew Januszek:Well, David, where can people find out more about you? We will put some links into the YouTube channel and that, but just maybe just read it out for us as well. Yeah, I mean, well, I will be at all of the, health tech events over the next couple of months. I'll be at HFA. I'll be doing a panel there. I'll be at FIBO, Connected Health and Fitness. So I would, you know, I love going to the events. I'd love, you know, I'm a health and fitness geek. I have a bunch of wearables on right now. So I speak the language of health and fitness. But yeah, people can find me. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm addicted to LinkedIn.

56:39It's the one platform I spend a lot of time on, social platform outside of YouTube. And then, you know, the website, our website is structurecreation.com. I tell everyone I'm a structure creator. That's what I do. It's what I like doing. So that's where people can find me. But yeah, I'll be at a lot of the events that I know you guys will be at as well over the next couple of months.

57:00Matthew Januszek:Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please check out David. And also, although we didn't get into this, I'm sure if you do like and comment, then we'll get this out to more people and we'll be able to get more fantastic guests like David on in the future. So I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we did. And thank you very much for listening.